Growth, as a function, is only a decade old. Many companies are establishing growth teams for the very first time, and there’s still very little practical advice for thinking through the timing and sequence of building your first growth team.

We decided to leverage our experience and the expertise of top growth practitioners, including Adam Fishman (Lyft, Patreon), Adam Grenier (Eventbrite, Uber), Ben Williams (Snyk), Casey Winters (Pinterest, Grubhub, Eventbrite), Hila Qu (GitLab), Laura Schaffer (Amplitude, Twilio), Lauryn Isford (Airtable, Notion), and Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox) to help you get started.

What does a growth team do?

Growth teams don’t build net new products or features. Instead, they work on creating distribution strategies that help acquire, activate, engage, and monetize customers on the existing product value.

“Most product and marketing teams are built to create or expand the core value provided to customers. Growth is connecting more people to the existing value.” —Casey Winters (ex Eventbrite, Pinterest)

Growth teams and pods are typically formed around (1) acquisition, (2) activation, (3) monetization, and/or (4) engagement goals. And 90% of the time, acquisition is the first goal new growth teams take on. This is our recommended approach as well, because:

  1. There is more user volume in the earlier stages of the customer journey for the growth team to take a scientific, data-driven approach to finding the best ways to increase distribution.
  2. Most businesses experience the biggest drop-offs around the acquisition parts of the user journey, giving a way to faster time-to-value for the newly formed growth team.
  3. Improved acquisition leads to healthier engagement and monetization; thus, by refining these initial stages, businesses can also enhance downstream metrics.
  4. Monetization is a complex issue involving all company stakeholders, so the growth team must build organizational trust before addressing this crucial element.

How does growth look at different company stages?

Growth efforts and team compositions vary depending on the stage of a company’s development. Just like with the first product or marketing hire, it is a difficult decision to determine when growth specialization and hiring are worthwhile. Here are our guidelines:

Before PMF: Develop a growth model hypothesis

Many founders get caught up in growth hype and try to hire growth talent as early as possible. Don’t fall victim to this trap—you will only waste precious capital and equity for lackluster results. Growth is about increasing the distribution of the core product. If there is no validation that the product has found PMF, growth has nothing to grow. PMF has to happen first, then growth.

But that’s not to say you shouldn’t think about growth pre-PMF. As you explore potential product-market fit, it is crucial to have hypotheses on how you will distribute your product. For example, if you are planning to be product-led, then the product has to be designed with acquisition, monetization, and retention distribution goals in mind from the very beginning. If you are planning to be marketing/sales-led, then the product experience will look very different from inception, as you will have humans responsible for growth levers and distribution.

Founders must assess their PMF strategy and develop the best-fitting ways to distribute the product to create predictable, sustainable, and defensible growth. It can be product-led, marketing-led, sales-led, or combinations thereof. But just like you wouldn’t outsource your PMF to a PM, you cannot outsource your initial growth ideas.

Finding PMF: Founder-led growth

During early signs of traction and initial scaling stages, it is important to validate that the growth model hypothesis was correct. Founder-led growth is the best path here, where the founder drives growth efforts across product-led, marketing-led, or sales-led motions.