Lenny's Podcast · Oct 13How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods)
Adam spent over four years there. Routing high-potential creators to a human early raised first and second month revenue by 25 percent, and the team then built opinionated defaults (three to five tiers, a $3 or $5 entry price) into the product. Speed to first patron and first $100 processed served as proxy retention metrics.
Tips
- Default to promoting internally when making a first growth hire▶ 32:46Sean turned out great despite a very different profile from the external hire Ben.
- Route high-potential users to a human during onboarding, then productize it▶ 39:27Connecting creators with the right human at the right time raised first and second month revenue by 25 percent, which raised their LTV by a similar amount.
- Build opinionated defaults that make the wrong choice hard but possible▶ 42:58Guardrails based on what worked across hundreds of thousands of creators became a major lever for driving desired behavior.
- Use early proxy metrics instead of waiting 90 days for retention▶ 47:25
- Redesign onboarding only when you have a new hard-earned insight▶ 49:05
- Screen companies on people, mission and financials before you join▶ 53:20Adam did this well at Lyft and Patreon, and poorly at Wyzant and Imperfect Foods.
- Back-channel references on a company and its manager before joining▶ 1:01:05A PM at Patreon asked Adam for past reports to contact, the first time this had happened in Adam's career.
