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
Aatif Awan, Head of Growth LinkedIn - Growth Hacking is Dead. Long Live Growth.
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.
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.
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
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