Stop tracking metric lists. Start using metric trees. These are the 4 steps of the decision making framework for your project: Identify key metrics Identify factors for respective key metrics Identify levers for those factors Identify leading indicators Steps 1 & 2 help you to identify the problem (or opportunity…

A more provocative title for: What do products like Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences & Google’s UAC mean for the future of Digital Advertising? The sign of times to come A few years back, I attended an event Google India had organised for mobile marketing practitioners. They were pitching a then-new product called Universal App Campaign, which had already been acronymized as UAC. The idea was simple: you can use just one campaign to promote your app across all of…

A practical framework on giving creative briefs and judging creative output — Engineers’ problems Tobias Lütke, CEO and founder of Shopify, has credited two books for enabling him to succeed in his role. Talking specifically about High Output Management, he said: “…basically, at the end of the day, creating a business is an engineering exercise. …

How to build Growth team in your startup Before Product-Market Fit Only after the value that a startup is supposed to deliver to the market is found, it can even begin to think about distributing it. …

How does the role of Growth function evolve with scale of startup? — Quick Recap This article is 4th in the ‘On Growth’ series. A quick recap of the series so far: In the first article, we covered the objective and outline of the series. In the second article, we covered how to quantify Product-Market Fit (PMF). In the third article, we covered how to…

Or: Why do startups started by college dropouts insist on an MBA degree and 5+ years of experience? —

Fantastic beasts and where to find them This article is 3rd in the ‘On Growth’ series. In the first article, we covered the objective and outline of the series. In the second article, we covered what the objective of the startup at the outset should be (i.e. achieving Product-Market Fit…

What do predicting the next US president and improving on-boarding of your product have in common? As I write this, the US presidential election is less than a month away. …

In professional life, new experiences and opportunities creep up on you unannounced. In one of my previous roles, I was once asked to come to office on a Saturday as the CEO wanted to talk to me. I was in a junior individual contributor role and my team was in…