LinkedIn's Head of Growth, Aatif Awan discusses how to think about Growth from first principles instead of worrying about Growth Hacking. He shares insights from growing LinkedIn to 380 million professionals that can help you create the right Growth culture, team and processes. Visit: http://tractionconf.io

1. ​ Aatif Awan
​ Growth @ LinkedIn
Growth Hacking is Dead.
Long live Growth.

2. Early 2011
Growth at LinkedIn
• 10 people on Growth team
• 100 Million LinkedIn
members
• Acquisition
Today
110 people
380 Million
Acquisition, Onboarding,
Connections, Retention
& Resurrection, Comms

3. Popular Growth Tactics
+
“Get your free email at Hotmail”
at the bottom of each email.
12 Million users in 18 months.
Jumpstarted growth by cross-posting
to Craigslist without an available API.

4. Why not use these tactics to grow your product?

5. Using these examples to drive growth for a
startup is like using Penicillin’s accidental
discovery to develop the next antibiotic.

6. Growth Hacking
A hyped-up collection of anecdotes, tactics and theories.

7. Pixie Dust Theory
You can sprinkle growth
tactics on your product and
make it grow.

8. Wizard of Oz Theory
You can hire a growth hacker who will make your
product grow.

9. Jack and the Beanstalk
Theory
Just do something. You never
know what might magically
grow your product.

10. Growth
A scientific approach to growing a product’s usage.

11. Reasoning from First Principles
“I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by
analogy. [With analogy] we are doing a thing because it’s like
something else that was done by other people. [With first principles]
you boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason
up from there.” — Elon Musk

12. Startup success = Product + Growth + Revenue
Product
Make something
people want
Growth
Get lots of people
to use the product
Revenue
Get someone to pay for the
product or for access to its
users

13. Good Product Comes First, Growth Second
• Investing in growth before
you have a good product is
a waste of resources.
• It might seem to work
initially, but reality catches
up eventually.
DAUs for Viddy

14. Good Product Leads to Good Retention
• Retention curve for good
products flattens out after a
few months.
• If your retention isn’t good,
nothing else matters.
Good retention
Bad retention

15. You can Improve Retention by…
• Getting feedback from existing users to understand what’s
working and what’s not.
• Finding a segment of users for whom your product has good
retention.
• Getting users to experience core value (A-ha moment)
sooner.

16. Once you have good retention, it’s time to grow.

17. Picking Your Top Metric
• Define one primary metric that
• is aligned with the success of your business
• measures value for users
• is summable

18. User Behavior
Identifying Growth Channels
• Do existing users share your
product via word of mouth?
• Are people using search to find a
solution?
• Do users have a high LTV?
Channels to explore
Virality, referrals
SEO, SEM
Paid acquisition
• Does having more users improve the
experience?
Virality
• Are your target users already on
another platform? Partnership, Integration

19. Prioritize
channels
and levers
Brainstorm
hypotheses
and ideas
Assess
impact on
primary
metric
Prioritize
based on
impact,
likelihood
and effort
Build, A/B
test and
measure
Growth Requires Continuous Prioritization and Feedback

20. Hiring for Growth
• Analytical
• Get shit done
• Curious – Ask why?
• Find new ways to do things – Ask why not?
• Prior growth experience is optional

21. LinkedIn Growth Team
SEO Network
Growth
þ
Onboarding
Comms
SEO, Conversion
optimization,
Public profile
PYMK,
Virality,
Connections
Onboarding,
Activation,
Intent discovery
Engagement through
Email/Push,
Resurrection

22. Culture
• Set ambitious goals
• Move fast
• Data trumps opinions
• Continuously learn
• Celebrate wins

23. Thank you!
www.linkedin.com/in/aatifawan
aatif_awan