The convention in startupland is that moving fast, putting in the energy, time and work are the guiding principles that yield results - and ultimately growth. While these are key factors in how we prioritise experiments and make decisions, there's one element missing - direction. What's often ignored in the prioritisation process are the vectors of velocity, momentum, and lift as they relate to how we decide what to do next. Choosing the 'right' thing to experiment on -Litmus tests for understanding the health of users -Strategies for product scoping, and growth -Arriving to the right metrics Being comfortable with change -Knowing team and what brings them energy -The evolution of processes over time -Growing product, team, culture, and community in flux Coming to conclusions and the next choice -Reflection and retrospectives -Learning to say "No" or, "Not right now" -Picking the next thing to work/experiment on John Sirisuth, Head of Growth at OurPath, joined us at The Family to share his early insights on leading Growth, prioritising experiments, and creating a company culture where Growth is all-hands-on-deck.

1. Prioritising everything:
Making decisions when
nothing makes sense

2. OurPath
We’re here to help
people take control
of their health

3. OurPath
We’re here to help
people take control
of their health
Dreamers
Doers
Everyone in-between
Happiness
Livelihood
Well-being
Team
Values
Together
Understand
Enable
Empower
Knowledge
Action
Augment

4. introduction
First Head of Growth (Intern, Oct 2017)
9 employees to 50+ today
Under $4M in funding
About me

5. introduction
Speed
Energy
Time
One-dimensional approaches to Growth/prioritisation
Decisions when there is no ‘clear’ indication

6. Choosing the ‘right’ thing

7. our
Health is personal
User first, always
• Users are people
• Not optimising for results, optimising for
shortening user time-to-value
• Name of the game is constantly engaging
with who is using our service
• Everyone on the team, in one form or
another interacts with a user
• NPS qualitative feedback
• User reviews
• User interviews
• #feedback

8. problems needed solving
Continue to ask questions
Getting familiar with user needs
• What is the thing people want to achieve?
• What have they done before to solve this
problem?
• Have they encountered any barriers in the
past?
• Why have they sought a new solution, us in
particular?

9. net promoter score
NPS 0-10
How likely are you to recommend us to a family member or friend?
• Couple the NPS with qualitative feedback
• Parse out the themes from detractors,
neutrals, and promoters
• Collect and evaluate feedback regularly –
communicate to team

10. retention & engagement
Define the core retention metric
Filling a leaky bucket ≠ growth
• What is the user’s offline analog solution for
solving the problem?
• What action(s) on the platform indicates that
the user is deriving some form of value?
• How are we charting these actions over
time?
• Are the cohorts becoming ‘stronger’ over
time?
• Are the cohorts trending towards 0?

11. compounding growth
Build something that gets better over time
Linear vs exponential growth
• Easy to think short-term and in immediate
gains
• Easy to launch a campaign, harder to
capture its output
• Cohorts of users must be built on top of
each other
• AR(E)R (AARRR)
• With the on-boarding of each new user,
the experience becomes better over time

12. velocity
How do we get there faster?
Is this the thing that’s going to take more users where they want to go?
• Apart from hypothesis-led, 10x ideas – we
evaluate on impact
• Are there any barriers to implementation?
• Is the environment conducive to learning
quickly?
• Shipping experiments quickly for results
and learning quickly are very different
things.

13. experimentation
Hedging your ‘bets’
Everyone has ideas
• What do the data say?
• Qual/quant
• How are users behaving currently?
• What is the intended user behaviour and
outcome as a result?
• In what way will the idea bring greater value
to the user?
• How will this age over time, how does the
user respond?
• Acknowledge risks, don’t be afraid to take
them – but always learn

14. Comfort with change

15. investing in team

16. understanding environment
Open channels of feedback
Everything changes
• Changes are stressful, understanding what
stresses people out is also stressful
• Build a culture in which we can have difficult
conversations, so we can solve difficult
problems
• Great power of physical environment and
colliding with one another

17. organisational change
Build for the future to build the future
Encouraging leadership and learning
• Discover each other’s superpowers and ask
about them, empower your team to cultivate
those things (and cross-pollinate them)
• Always be learning, create a platform for
people in which new insights are deeply
cherished
• Prepare for the good that comes of people
feeling empowered, curious, and able

18. process evolution
Growth @ OurPath
Everybody should feel valued
• Entire team involvement, “Hey, what do you
think about this?”
• Idea backlog
• Smaller meetings, key stakeholders with
open communications
• Primers and recaps
• Prioritised solutions pro-typed and fleshed
out
• Problem-based squads forming

19. user transparency
Stay communicating with users
Early, retained users are loyalists
• Collecting feedback is great, involving users
throughout the building process is better
• Let them know that you actively listen to
them
• Celebrate your users, after all – they’re the
reason why we’re here

20. Coming to conclusions

21. reflection
What happened?
“We did a thing”
• What was the hypothesis?
• What was the metric that trying to be
moved?
• Where was the direction we want to move
towards?
• Are there any gaps in the data?
• Was this experiment designed in the most
robust way possible? If so, how? If not, how
can ensure it is for the next time?

22. saying ’no’, or ‘not right now’
Is this aligned with direction and team?
Taking the temperature
• Why is this still the thing you’re focused on
at the moment?
• Why is this still the thing that will take your
users where they want to go?
• Why is the team willing to spend their time,
energy, and effort in on this particular thing?

23. making moves
Data, direction, decisions
Now, where do we go from here?
• Why are the data saying that there is light
and heat in this direction?
• Can we reduce any more barriers to learning
(on the org side), or can we reduce any more
barriers for the user to execute the intended
action (to create lift)?
• If we can do more that will take us in the
right direction quickly, let’s do that (are we
learning, is the user receiving value, is there
potential for compounding growth?)

24. Say hello
hello@ourpath.co.uk
@johnsirisuth