Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:13:03 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:13:03] S1: I'm definitely guilty of this one. That is a really good one for sure. But it's so obvious in hindsight, so I love that you shared that.
01:13:09 · Elena Verna
[01:13:09] S0: Yes. And then the last one. Growth teams are often too obsessed about removing friction. Because if we remove the steps, then more people are gonna get to the destination. And to an extent, if you cause horrible friction in your product where it's just confusing about what the next step is, I agree. Go fix the friction of the cognitive load that it takes to complete a step. That is the friction that you should be working on. However, just removing steps or yanking or simplifying things to an oblivion where you lose an identity of what you even do or what you're capable of doing is a completely failed growth tactic. So, simplifying may be an initiative of a different problem that you're solving, but if you ever have a line item on your roadmap that says simplified onboarding, please cross it out. It's not going to work because simplifying onboarding is an action. What is the problem that you're solving? You're never trying to solve a problem of simplifying. You always have a problem of people are confused in it, where people don't know where to go or they get lost in it, or they're not educated enough. That is the problem. And simplifying might be a solution, but it can never be a problem on its own. And too many growth teams are just obsessed with this notion that came out, I think in early 2000s, like, Oh, simplifying is like the biggest growth hack that you can do. Please don't do it. It's only a solution to a very specific problem set of too much complexity.
01:14:48 · Lenny Rachitsky, Elena Verna
[01:14:48] S1: Wow. That was a big one to end on that I think will help a lot of people avoid wasting time. Again, a whole other podcast conversation probably focused just on onboarding advice that you probably have... That I know you have. We've reached the last item. Is there anything else you wanna share about this list before we go on? [01:15:07] S0: I think we spent so much time on the list. We're ready to go. [01:15:10] S1: Much. Just enough time. And kind of on that note, wanna call an audible. And so we were gonna talk through all of your frame... Your favorite frameworks. I like the way this conversation has gone. I don't want people to get overwhelmed with information. So one idea is just just list maybe your favorite growth frameworks just for folks to go check these out and not spend too much time on each one.
01:15:30 · Elena Verna
[01:15:30] S0: Yep. Let's do that. Okay. Great. So the list of my favorite growth frameworks. And to me, by the way, it's not a solution, it's a pattern. It's a pattern that exists across almost every single company out there and it's a starting point for your ideation and to figure out how you can almost shortcut to possible list of solutions as opposed to trying to figure out too hard of how to even define a problem on its own. So number one, it's probably expected if anybody has read anything or listened to me talk, is growth loops. I think anybody who thinks about growth anybody who thinks about growth in the funnel fashion versus understanding what the growth loops are is missing out on the ability to create sustainable growth engine. So, it's very important to think about actionreaction that generates another action, and it's a self contained flywheel that can spin. A lot of resources on it at Reforge, Brian Balfour and Casey Winters and Andrew Chen wrote a lot about this. Highly recommend anybody looking into. My next favorite growth framework is actually written by you, Lenny, and Dan, which is a race car framework. Everybody has a really hard time often thinking about what are all of the parts of growth initiatives and which are long term, what are short term, how much are they going to actually produce in results. And RACECAR framework is wonderful because it separates different initiatives into, hey, there's some engines, loops, that are just going to keep on spinning. There's some fuel that you're going to need to add into it, potentially like paid marketing dollars. There's some turbo boosts that you may have in your race car that are going to be, let's say, big user conferences that you're going to hold as a product, or there's lubrications and optimizations that you're going to need to do of pouring oil into that engine so it actually performs correctly. It's beautiful. I talk about it all the time with everybody. The next favorite growth framework for me comes from Bangaly, and that's adjacent user theory. I think that one's very powerful in terms of thinking about growth evolution.
01:17:40 · Elena Verna, Lenny Rachitsky
And as we talked about adding different growth models to your growth ecosystem, different growth loops, but also adjacent users which are outside of your ideal customer profile or ICP, outside of your core user, and how Growth Team can really bring them in and add additional to your product without even expansion of product market fit by just optimizing their experiences. I'm gonna stop at these three because I think those are the most powerful ones. [01:18:09] S1: Cool. On that last one, Bangaly was on the on the podcast. We'll link to that episode if you wanna go deeper on the adjacent user user theory. I love how, like, that was, like, a few minutes on things that could change people's life if they adopt one of these frameworks and learn how to think about growth in this way. It's, like, such a powerful mental model for thinking about all the stuff you've been talking about this entire conversation. [01:18:30] S0: Yes. Those frameworks are like my church in my mind, like how my system of beliefs, of how I think about growth and how I think about it on the strategic level of owning it as a strategy, not just like a tactical or an initiative. [01:18:47] S1: The Church of Elena Verna. Amazing. Okay. So before we wrap up, I wanna bring us over to, contrarian corner, recurring segment on this podcast, where I like to ask the guest if there's something they believe that most other people don't believe. Contrarian opinion, you might say. Is there anything that comes to mind?
01:18:47 · Lenny Rachitsky, Elena Verna
[01:18:47] S1: The Church of Elena Verna. Amazing. Okay. So before we wrap up, I wanna bring us over to, contrarian corner, recurring segment on this podcast, where I like to ask the guest if there's something they believe that most other people don't believe. Contrarian opinion, you might say. Is there anything that comes to mind? [01:19:08] S0: I do have a very contrarian opinion, although it's not so much related to growth as opposed to maybe your personal growth. And my contrarian opinion is that full time jobs are not the best way to monetize the skill that you have. It's one of the packages that everybody should evaluate and take advantage of. But too many people blindly default to that package and don't explore other options that are both available on the market as well as best suited for their personalities, for their interests, and for their skill set. It's like a default plan that everybody subscribes to that is faulty in itself. [01:19:57] S1: Wow. Okay. Wait, we got to hear more. So what are some other packages? I think we're like buying some of these packages, these other options. But I guess what should people be thinking about when you say this in terms of what can they actually do and explore?