Brian Balfour

JANUARY 12, 2017

Quick note: We recently announced the next Growth Series , an 8-week program for designed for experienced practitioners in growth (past participants came from Dropbox, Google, LinkedIn, Evernote, Airbnb, Soundcloud, Facebook, and many other companies). It's by application only, and if interested, you can learn more here.

Onboarding 56

Onboarding Education B2B Implementation 56

Andrew Chen

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

Amid the vast, monochromatic corridors of Uber’s San Francisco headquarters at 1455 Market Street – two football fields worth of gleaming LED lights, light woods, concrete, and steel – the office was still mostly occupied at 8PM. The Cold Start Problem. Introduction. Too much surge, and riders would switch to competitors.

Scaling 63

Scaling Operations Revenue Metrics 63

Brian Balfour

FEBRUARY 7, 2017

I recently spoke with Andy as part of a 1 hour interview covering: How he brought a web-first product to mobile Activity notifications, rich push, and other techniques for driving mobile growth and retention Andy’s “Mobile Growth Stack” for 2017 You can watch the full interview here, and check out the truncated text version below.

Retention 62

Retention Benchmarking Metrics Rollout 62

Andrew Chen

JUNE 21, 2017

This pic is from two years ago, taken at Uber’s HQ on 11th and Market. It didn’t take me long to learn that if a random rider or driver emails Travis on his @uber.com email, he’ll read it and often forward it to the teams to fix ASAP. This essay came out of me reading these notes and getting inspired to write my own.

Transportation 110

Transportation Scaling A/B Testing Energy 110

Andrew Chen

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

One of the most frequent questions that founders ask is – I’ve read all about the importance of user growth, so now, how do I hire a Head of Growth? However, it’s rarely easy to hire a Head of Growth. It’s asked often for good reason. “It depends” is the right place to start.

Scaling 82

Scaling Marketing Recruitment B2B 82

Alison Green

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

Growth challenge – This challenge consists in finding “clusters” of emails (of organizations, corporations, NGOs, student associations or institutions) to be invited to our acclaimed free newsletter, featuring the most relevant happenings in our industry. You will thus master the techniques of A/B testing and online marketing. •

A/B Testing 119

A/B Testing Benefits Marketing Energy 119

Andrew Chen

AUGUST 21, 2023

Now that a few years have passed, what have we learned about the dynamics of this sector? Below is a graph of creator earnings, which show a similar curve – via API scraping in the essay The Economics of OnlyFans – showing that while some creators earn up to $100,000/month, the median is closer to $180/month.

Media 88

Media Real Estate Revenue B2B 88

Andrew Chen

JUNE 25, 2019

Hi readers, The growth teams at Uber and Airbnb occasionally met over the years to share best practices, brainstorm ideas, and share observations on the startup world. I’ve had folks over to 1455 Market St, the headquarters of Uber, and I’ve reciprocated with visits to the Airbnb offices too. It’s fantastic, and I hope you enjoy it.

User Experience 111

User Experience Retention Marketing Travel 111

Andrew Chen

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

This is the type of spikey, bad viral growth you don’t want! Hello readers, Viral growth — specifically the type baked into product features, in the form of invites, sharing, and collaboration — is a topic I’ve been endlessly fascinated by. Viral growth and retention are inextricably linked.

Retention 72

Retention Marketing Metrics Media 72

Andrew Chen

JANUARY 9, 2020

In the interim, I’ve stayed pretty active on Twitter, writing tweetstorms that sometimes turn themselves into essays on here. For a quick summary of the essays that did make it onto here, including a couple guest collaborations, here’s an easy set of links: The Passion Economy (guest essay by Li Jin, a16z).

Marketing 110

Marketing Retention B2B Scaling 110

Andrew Chen

NOVEMBER 1, 2018

The reason for this is that the steps for starting and scaling a new startup share many of the same skills as investing in a new startup: 1) First, we seek to understand the existing state of customer growth – including growth loops, the quality of acquisition, engagement, churn, and monetization. There was a lot to learn.

Metrics 111

Metrics Scaling Marketing Media 111

Andrew Chen

JUNE 25, 2019

Hi readers, The growth teams at Uber and Airbnb occasionally met over the years to share best practices, brainstorm ideas, and share observations on the startup world. I’ve had folks over to 1455 Market St, the headquarters of Uber, and I’ve reciprocated with visits to the Airbnb offices too. It’s fantastic, and I hope you enjoy it.

User Experience 48

User Experience Retention Marketing Travel 48

Brian Balfour

JANUARY 4, 2017

I recently wrote about the most common mistakes with CAC (customer acquisition cost) that can derail growth efforts before you even get started because CAC is a metric that's foundational to growth strategy. Standard $25/month – Likely targeted at Mid Market companies. Average marketing/sales cycle is less than 30 days.

Sales 71

Sales Sales Marketing eCommerce 71

Andrew Chen

JANUARY 9, 2020

In the interim, I’ve stayed pretty active on Twitter, writing tweetstorms that sometimes turn themselves into essays on here. For a quick summary of the essays that did make it onto here, including a couple guest collaborations, here’s an easy set of links: The Passion Economy (guest essay by Li Jin, a16z).

Marketing 52

Marketing Retention B2B Scaling 52

Andrew Chen

MAY 14, 2018

[Hi readers: I wanted to share a podcast interview I did with Adam Risman of Intercom, who interviewed me on a wide array of topics including Dropbox’s viral growth methods, my time at Uber, and future growth strategies. Those working in growth and retention must continually seek “fresh powder.”. Hope you enjoy! -A].

SaaS 71

SaaS Retention B2B eCommerce 71

Brian Balfour

JUNE 20, 2017

A couple months ago Tal Raviv (Growth PM @ Patreon) sent me a short email - "Brian, the results are in. So Susan Su, Head of Marketing at Reforge, dug in with the Patreon team to produce this amazing piece. If you want to learn more about onboarding strategies and frameworks, consider applying for the next Reforge program here.

Onboarding 84

Onboarding SaaS Metrics Sales 84

Andrew Chen

DECEMBER 13, 2018

I recently did a podcast with Ryan Hoover, co-founder of Product Hunt and my sister Ada Chen Rekhi, previously SVP Marketing at Survey Monkey – here’s what we talk about: The network effects that makes Silicon Valley what it is. So I spent three years there, like a really, really fun experience —. Very, very structured.

Engineering 79

Engineering Scaling Marketing Manager 79

Andrew Chen

DECEMBER 13, 2018

I recently did a podcast with Ryan Hoover, co-founder of Product Hunt and my sister Ada Chen Rekhi, previously SVP Marketing at Survey Monkey – here’s what we talk about: The network effects that makes Silicon Valley what it is. So I spent three years there, like a really, really fun experience —. Very, very structured.

Engineering 40

Engineering Scaling Marketing Manager 40

Andrew Chen

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

Dear readers, Building a new growth team is hard. You have to figure out the macro organizational issues – how it fits in with marketing, product, and other functions – as well as the micro, like how to measure the success of these teams. What’s the difference between a “growth hacker” and a growth team?

A/B Testing 110

A/B Testing Engineering Marketing User Experience 110

Andrew Chen

JANUARY 31, 2018

One of my 2018 goals is to spend more time writing – stay tuned for that – and am looking forward to sharing some incredible learnings I’ve gotten from Uber over the past few years. Essays from 2017. 10 years of professional blogging – what I’ve learned. So much to learn from this experience.

Marketing 67

Marketing Metrics Scaling 67

Andrew Chen

JANUARY 23, 2017

Many awesome growth folks were there, including Elena Verna at SurveyMonkey, Nate Moch at Zillow, Sean Ellis at GrowthHackers, etc. This is why it’s no surprise that one of the most common questions I get is: What’s next in growth? Technology, products, growth, and marketing don’t exist in a vacuum.

Media 100

Media Marketing Advertising A/B Testing 100

Peter Winick

APRIL 4, 2024

Welcome to the latest episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership featuring our special guest, Liz Wiseman, CEO of the Wiseman Group and renowned author of bestsellers like “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter “ and “Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work.” Liz Wiseman Yeah.

Hospitality 300

Hospitality Real Estate Manager Energy 300

Andrew Chen

MAY 28, 2019

No wonder the consumer investment team ended up digging into this trend by doing a market map report — the analysis led by Li Jin and including work from myself, Connie Chan, and others. And in fact, the combined revenue of Headspace and Calm are more than half of the entire podcasting market.

Advertising 93

Advertising Revenue Media Marketing 93