5 ms·

Ask HN: In your organization, what does the growth department do?

10 points by m88m 5y ago

is it focusing on funnel? involved with product? helping sales?

speedgoose 5y ago
We don't have that.
- darkMatterDev 5y ago
  Ditto, there's no growth department. There is sales to get new business and there is product teams to ensure the product fits the market right.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    Who defines the market and makes sure they want to contact sales?
rco8786 5y ago
A/B testing, basically.
MattIPv4 5y ago
Top-of-funnel improvements -- a/b testing site changes to increase sign-ups, brand awareness/loyalty, etc.
andrejguran 5y ago
it's their job to figure it out ;)
acwan93 5y ago
I've seen this kind of position in a lot of startups/tech companies ("Growth Manager", whatever that means). To me, it sounds like a product marketing position.
muzani 5y ago
I think it's a catch all term for something result driven. They manage bugs, products, do sales and marketing, remove legal obstacles, UI/UX, events, PR. Often just identifying what's preventing further growth and calling for company resources into that direction. Much of the sales on an app isn't marketing/sales at all - look at something like Fortnite. Part of it is community and UX, but the end goal is more money.
rozenmd 5y ago
Everything from trying to reduce drop-off during initial sign-up, to increasing likelihood of converting from a trial user to a paying customer, all the way to creating in-app cross-sells to recommend our customers try other products we built. Almost everything we build is initially an experiment, and we have analysts run the statistics against a control group to see if it worked before productionising.
johnsmith4739 5y ago
Managing Growth in a late-stage startup: most depts (hr, mkt, sales, cs) perform growth experiments, I coach/facilitate/educate; Think like this: most metrics can be improved with expertise; known knowns - - but some metrics need new solutions, and for that you need to analyse, hypothesise, experiment... unknown unknowns. And this is why growth is everybody's business. Growth process is informed with insights from data science + behavioural science (this is my background) Experiment design + implementation (randomised trials) + interpretation (bayesian based) Decision to implement in production or scrub and start again. quick wins: //> a tweak to the search button yields 15% more sales //> a change in ad copy lifts conversions 17% //> behavioural recruiting interviews to be more objective... //> ...and we do around 200 of these per year

10 points by m88m 5y ago

is it focusing on funnel? involved with product? helping sales?

speedgoose 5y ago

We don't have that.

darkMatterDev 5y ago
Ditto, there's no growth department. There is sales to get new business and there is product teams to ensure the product fits the market right.
- paulcole 5y ago
  Who defines the market and makes sure they want to contact sales?

rco8786 5y ago

A/B testing, basically.

MattIPv4 5y ago

Top-of-funnel improvements -- a/b testing site changes to increase sign-ups, brand awareness/loyalty, etc.

andrejguran 5y ago

it's their job to figure it out ;)

acwan93 5y ago

I've seen this kind of position in a lot of startups/tech companies ("Growth Manager", whatever that means). To me, it sounds like a product marketing position.

muzani 5y ago

I think it's a catch all term for something result driven. They manage bugs, products, do sales and marketing, remove legal obstacles, UI/UX, events, PR. Often just identifying what's preventing further growth and calling for company resources into that direction. Much of the sales on an app isn't marketing/sales at all - look at something like Fortnite. Part of it is community and UX, but the end goal is more money.

rozenmd 5y ago

Everything from trying to reduce drop-off during initial sign-up, to increasing likelihood of converting from a trial user to a paying customer, all the way to creating in-app cross-sells to recommend our customers try other products we built. Almost everything we build is initially an experiment, and we have analysts run the statistics against a control group to see if it worked before productionising.

johnsmith4739 5y ago

Managing Growth in a late-stage startup: most depts (hr, mkt, sales, cs) perform growth experiments, I coach/facilitate/educate; Think like this: most metrics can be improved with expertise; known knowns - - but some metrics need new solutions, and for that you need to analyse, hypothesise, experiment... unknown unknowns. And this is why growth is everybody's business. Growth process is informed with insights from data science + behavioural science (this is my background) Experiment design + implementation (randomised trials) + interpretation (bayesian based) Decision to implement in production or scrub and start again. quick wins: //> a tweak to the search button yields 15% more sales //> a change in ad copy lifts conversions 17% //> behavioural recruiting interviews to be more objective... //> ...and we do around 200 of these per year