I help Freemium B2B/B2C startups build systems and strategies to acquire, activate and monetize users. I help your team focus on what matters and drop the distractions.
Depending on your scale and stage, I advise both the high-level and nuanced details of:
Whether to invest in a growth team - What are the tradeoffs of building a growth team?
- Is building a growth team appropriate given our stage and user base?
- What are the tradeoffs of experimentation?
- What returns should we expect in first 6/12/18 months?
Building growth teams (when to do it, who to hire, what pitfalls to avoid) - When should we bet on starting a growth team?
- What constitutes a minimum-viable growth team?
- What role should we hire first? (hint: it's not a Head of Growth)
- What makes for a good growth eng, data, product or design candidate?
- What tooling do we need? Who are the best vendors? What’s a good deal?
- How to prevent false starts and wasted months b/c of improper data setups.
- How to make the team results oriented without losing sight of the bigger picture?
Scaling growth team output - “The team is running a lot of experiments, but we’re not getting results. What’s wrong?”
- What process will help us scale without slowing down?
- How to structure goals and incentives into the org?
- What makes for a good eng, data, product or design candidate at your stage of growth?
- Should our product or other teams start doing experimentation ?
- How to think about building the growth experimentation muscle into an existing org?
I serve as a sounding board and share how the best companies approach growth.
Companies I’ve helped
- ClickUp: Built product growth team from 0 to 1. Hired team of 10, and built systems/process to make it a well-oiled machine. Led Monetization efforts and drove > $10M ARR.
- Spotify: Joined pre-IPO. Led freemium monetization in product and doubled Spotify Premium subscribers from 65M to 130M+.
- Product Hunt: Led product, content, sales and support.
- Tandem: Sounding board for CEO and Head of Product.
- Yelp: Built an experimentation process that 20x’d eng velocity, allowing us to run 10 exp/wk. Turned m.yelp.com into an app download growth engine (4x’d app downloads).
Specialty
My specialty: scaling growth for Freemium B2B and B2C startups.
Specific Areas
- Content marketing and SEO strategy
- Landing page and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
- Onboarding and activation
- Stickiness and engagement
- Referral/virality
- Pricing and packaging strategy
- Paid conversion and monetization strategy
- Music + Podcast Tech
- Mental Health
- Humane Tech (apps that help you use apps less)
- Creator Economy (helping creators scale and get paid)
Approach
(1) jump on a call and understand your needs
(2) start with free advising, provide value
(3) formalize if there's a fit
Curious?
or email me here.
FAQ
How would we work together?
There are typically three configurations
- Hands-off Advisor (1-2 hrs/wk)
- Hands-on Advisor (3-4 hrs /wk)
- Fractional Head of Growth (8-16 hrs /wk).
What’s the difference between Advisor and Fractional?
Hands-off Advisor (Sounding Board)
With 1-2 hours a week, I serve as a sounding board. We talk through your issues and opportunities. I help increase the resolution of thinking and share learned growth intuition around what initiatives are likely vs unlikely to work.
I help augment your team’s growth skillset by providing general guidance.
Hands-on Advisor (Thought Partner)
With 3-4 hours a week, I can dive into your users and their needs, your market and its landscape, your initiatives and their execution. I get as close to the execution as possible without actually executing.
I help augment your team’s growth skillset by serving as a thought partner.
Fractional Head of Growth
Fractional typically works best when you want to invest in growth, but aren’t ready to commit to a full-time hire.
Where can I deliver value?
Here are three scenarios where I can bring value:
Scenario 1: Post-PMF, want to build growth from 0 to 1 Instead of spending 3-6 months on recruiting a full-time growth hire, companies will bring me in as a cost-effective way to:
- assess the state of the growth stack
- implement the right data infra/tooling
- identify and help hire the minimum viable growth team that will be able to drive value and validate your initial growth hypotheses
Scenario 2: Post-PMF, want to scale growth from 1 to 10 - There’s a small growth team in place, but founders have a nagging sense that there should be more output for the investment.
- I identify gaps and build systems (around people, process or product) that can be dialed in to deliver consistent output and help the team scale.
Scenario 3: Pre-PMF, are curious if growth can unlock PMF - Unfortunately, growth can’t get you product-market fit… PMF comes from the core product.
- But it is possible that you have unlocked PMF but aren’t investing in the right combination of use case and channel that turns the embers into a fire.
- In this scenario, I advise on how to construct a portfolio of bets that help quickly identify where to double down and where to cut.
