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Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva)

Melissa Tan is an advisor, investor, and growth expert. She’s worked with fast-growing startups like Dropbox, Canva, Grammarly, and Miro, and for the past 2.5 years has been the Head of Growth at Webflow. There, she led the company's self-service business across Product, Marketing, and Growth, in addition to leading the charge on pricing and packaging. Prior to Webflow, she was Head of Growth for Dropbox’s B2B product, where she played a pivotal role in propelling their growth. In today’s episode, we discuss: • Attributes of high-performing teams • Tips for developing talent and seeking a mentor • How to create a strong culture of ownership • Frameworks for hiring PM and growth talent • Common pitfalls companies face when implementing growth strategies • Lessons from scaling Dropbox • The DACI framework for increasing team velocity • How to actually embrace first-principles thinking — Brought to you by AssemblyAI—Production-ready AI models to transcribe and understand speech | Mixpanel—Product analytics that everyone can trust, use, and afford | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-high-performing-teams-melissa Where to find Melissa Tan: • Twitter: https://twitter.com/melissamtan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissamtan/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Melissa’s background (04:12) What’s next for Melissa (06:45) Lessons learned from Dropbox (11:49) When to add sales to product-led products and vice versa (14:28) Managing people with a people-focused and results-oriented approach (17:14) An example of people-focused leadership (20:26) The importance of talent development and why Melissa invests in it (22:26) Tips for finding a mentor (24:58) Specific questions to ask when you are interviewing for a role (27:49) Companies Melissa has worked with (28:33) Attributes of high-performing teams (31:38) Creating a sense of ownership among team members (34:36) Building a team-first culture (36:54) Avoiding burnout by knowing your limits (39:24) Developing talent and unlocking potential within your organization (42:45) Melissa’s hiring practices and what she looks for in a product manager (44:40) The exact interview sequence Melissa utilizes (49:58) Common pitfalls when creating growth teams (53:43) “Flying formation” and the DACI framework (56:48) Who should own revenue (58:19) When to invest in growth (1:01:06) What to look for in your first growth hire (1:04:35) When it’s appropriate to hire an advisor (1:06:19) First-principles thinking (1:09:50) Lightning round Referenced: • Jiaona Zhang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiaona/ • Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead: https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/0385349947 • Tim Ferriss: How to Find a Great Mentor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVo1aZCyfO4 • Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity: https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Revised-Kick-Ass-Humanity/dp/1250235375/ • How to Monetize a Freemium Business: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/how-to-monetize-a-freemium-business • DACI framework: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/daci/ • Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't: https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Eat-Last-Together-Others/dp/1591848016/r • The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself: https://www.amazon.com/Untethered-Soul-Journey-Beyond-Yourself/dp/1572245379/ • The Four Agreements: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Agreements-Practical-Personal-Freedom/dp/1878424319 • Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/winning-time-the-rise-of-the-lakers-dynasty • ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/ • Webflow: https://webflow.com/ Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Melissa TanguestLenny Rachitskyhost
Jun 17, 20231h 14mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Melissa Tan reveals how to build resilient, high-impact growth teams

  1. Melissa Tan, former growth leader at Dropbox and Webflow and advisor to Canva, Grammarly, and Miro, breaks down what it takes to build high-performing teams and high-performing growth organizations.
  2. She reflects on Dropbox’s evolution from viral PLG success to B2B, highlighting lessons about hiring for first-principles thinkers, execution quality, go-to-market strategy, and aligning the whole company around growth.
  3. Melissa shares her people-first leadership philosophy—developing talent, giving direct feedback, creating ownership, and being a leader people follow across companies—while still running a rigorously results-oriented culture.
  4. She also gets tactical on hiring and interviewing PMs, when and how to invest in growth, what your first growth hire should look like, and how to structure collaboration between product, growth, marketing, and sales.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Hire for first-principles thinking and humility, not just experience.

Dropbox’s most innovative motions came from smart, humble people who had never done the job before but could break problems down, ask the right questions, and collaborate deeply; this often outperformed hiring purely for domain experience.

Execution details matter more than copying growth best practices.

Early Dropbox growth experiments failed because they blindly applied generic tactics; real progress came when they became more user-centric, hypothesis-driven, and tailored to Dropbox’s unique product, data, and users.

Decide your go-to-market, pricing, and PLG vs. sales motion early.

Delaying clear decisions on enterprise sales, pricing, and consumer-to-B2B pathways caused Dropbox to lose ground to competitors and created painful pricing migrations later—proving these choices should be front-and-center from the start.

Caring deeply and driving results are not mutually exclusive.

Melissa builds loyalty by investing heavily in people’s careers while making expectations, metrics, and goals extremely clear; she gives direct feedback framed by belief in the person and offers support to help them hit ambitious outcomes.

Create ownership, not fragmentation, when structuring growth teams.

She resists over-hiring or slicing tiny surfaces (e.g., “just checkout”) because it dilutes ownership and motivation; instead she defines meaty problem areas (activation, monetization, etc.) and expects PMs to behave like accountable owners.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Dropbox also hired for people that were just really humble, collaborative, and team oriented. And the combination of those two things…led to tons of innovation.

— Melissa Tan

I actually think they can co-exist. I have a very people-focused approach to how I lead and manage, and I also create a very results-oriented culture on the team.

— Melissa Tan

The devil is in the details and the devil is in how you execute.

— Melissa Tan

Growth shouldn’t feel like it’s a layer on top of product. The best way to execute is to have go-to-market and monetization front and center from the start.

— Melissa Tan

If you take people that are just super smart, they’ve never done it before, one advantage is they can innovate because they come in with, ‘I don’t know anything. Let me just figure this out.’

— Melissa Tan

Lessons from Dropbox’s growth journey and shift into B2BPrinciples and ingredients of high-performing (growth) teamsPeople-first leadership: developing talent, retention, and mentorshipHiring and interviewing great product managers and growth leadersDesigning go-to-market strategies: PLG vs. sales-led, pricing, packagingCommon pitfalls when companies first invest in growthStructuring growth in an organization (ownership, flying formation, DACI)

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