How top performers procrastinate differently
"Quiet quitting" might be a risk for less motivated employees. But your best people squander months of runway too. Hint: the time thief...
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One actionable growth idea per week, for impatient founders & their teams.
Useful mental models, actionable tips, interview questions, growth tactics worth stealing.
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- 2 min
When "growth" isn't marketing (or product)
How Love Electric doubled growth by turning off marketing.
- 2 min
My best startup marketer interview questions
Startup Marketing VP hires have a 70% failure rate. Here's an interview technique to cut thorough B.S. answers and boost your odds.
- 1 min
Overthinkers & Underthinkers
Teams adopt a culture of overthinking or underthinking — and either one can slow us down. Fortunately, it's an easy fix!
- 1 min
1,000 Wrong Turns
Here’s a little thought experiment. We all know that every great startup made plenty of wrong turns. A16Z calls it “the idea maze” and it...
- 2 min
The Negative Value Rule
How do you calculate the fully loaded cost of a new feature? (The answer might shock you)
- 3 min
How to move your startup team faster
Pushing talented people seldom works. Instead, I start by understanding their blockers - exogenous and endogenous.
- 2 min
How to Improve your ROAS
Technically, it’s always okay to have a negative ROAS for some of your ads as long as you're learning. But how do you measure learning?
- 2 min
Here's Everything I Know about Hiring Marketers
I’ve spent two decades recruiting and hiring marketers in Silicon Valley and the UK. Here’s everything I’ve learned, neatly packaged...
- 2 min
My #1 Strategy for Employee Engagement
How to boost employee engagement? Here's my #1 strategy. But first, don't confuse "engagement" with "urgency." Engagement causes urgency, no
- 2 min
Spotify’s “growth hack” was a clever lawyer
Can lawyers growth hack? Not all growth hackers are marketers - Spotify can chalk up much of their success to clever lawyers. Here’s...
- 2 min
4 non-cliche tips for hiring startup marketers.
Looks like all of a sudden, my “founder” friends are desperate to hire good people. And recruiters are actually turning away clients. 🤯...
- 2 min
Should Startups Hire from Corporates?
It’s tempting to think that someone from a big successful company will gallop in and give your little startup hockey-stick growth. That’s...
- 1 min
The worst way to start a job description
In the next five years, unemployment rates will be negative in real terms.¹. Your startup is only as good as its people, so hiring is...
- 4 min
Why you should not hire a t-shaped marketer
If you’re a marketing recruiter in 2021, “T-shaped marketer” is the brief. That elusive combo: Broad “base knowledge” of analytics...
- 1 min
Hiring for growth (the 50% + 90% rule)
The most common question I get from founders? How to hire good growth people. (It’s hard; “marketing” is only a subset of growth). My...
- 1 min
Before I Call Someone out… I Ask This Question
Each year I give myself one personal development goal. In 2010, as a Director at PayPal, I challenged myself simply to “ask great...
- 1 min
Why Most "Hard Working" Startups Fail
When setting OKRs (Objectives & Key Results), are you focused on pushing everyone to work harder and achieve more? That makes sense in...
- 1 min
Your Next Growth Hire - Which Role?
“What roles have you seen that make the biggest impact on growth?” I get that question a lot. Most recently, from my old friend Tom,...
- 2 min
Hiring: Internal Locus of Control
In my time as a VC and as a PayPal exec, I had to evaluate a lot people. One massive predictor of success is an internal locus of...