The

Growth
Report
How customer data fuels
high-performing growth
organizations
 Introduction
Growth is the single most important ingredient for the long-term survival of a business..

It’s little wonder then that executives across all industries are asking themselves: What does
it take to build a successful team and company that can continuously improve and grow?

Despite growth being the north star for every conceivable business, the discipline of
growth is still in its infancy. As a result, credible best practices have been hard to find —
until now.

To better understand how best-in-class companies have built out high-performing growth
organizations, Twilio Segment, the #1 customer data platform, interviewed leaders from
over a dozen high-performing growth teams.

In this report, they share their experiences figuring out how to solve the world’s hardest
growth problems, so you don’t have to.

“The notion of a
standalone growth
team is still an
experiment.”
Morgan Brown

VP, Growth, Shopify

The Growth Report 2

 Methodology
Twilio Segment conducted interviews between August and October 2021, then
performed a thematic analysis to identify trends in the data.

Participants (n=15) were senior growth leaders at fast-growing companies with an

average of $600 million annual recurring revenue.

Job Titles

VPs 50% Directors 33% C-Level


16%

Segment’s Growth Report partners

The Growth Report 3

 Key takeaways
Quality data fuels Growth leaders The discipline 

rapid business drive organizational of growth is
growth innovation maturing
To grow faster than 
 Recognized for their What started out as growth
the competition, high-
 expertise in digital hacking has become a
performing growth leaders transformation, legitimate discipline, at
recognize that their teams best-in-class growth least in the eyes of
need near-constant access leaders are rewarded with executives and board
to accurate, real-time data.

the freedom to make key members.

organizational decisions.

For this reason, growth Growth practitioners have

leaders prioritize With this power, they proven themselves to be
implementing quality data
leverage cutting-edge methodical yet agile team
infrastructure and
organizational designs, leaders who consistently
governance early in their
such as cross-functional deliver results.
tenures.
growth squads, to
maximize their team’s
performance.

“Insights are the

lifeblood of growth;
they’re what fuels 

the machine.”
Lauren Schuman

VP, Product Growth,
MURAL

The Growth Report 4

 What growth is...
As a relatively new function within an organization, and one that’s still emerging, there are
often misconceptions as to what “growth” exactly is.

What follows is the consensus among the growth leaders we interviewed about how you
should and shouldn’t define growth.

Growth is an objective and Growth is a mindset

condition
“To drive growth, you must have a growth
Regardless of which metric you’re trying to mindset,” argues Charudatta Wad, Senior
grow, from revenue to engagement, it Engineering Manager, Growth, Lyft.

needs to go up and to the right.

Unlike a fixed mindset, in which people

“Growth is about the maximization of an believe their talents are innate, people with
area of the business,” says Thibault Imbert, a growth mindset believe they can improve
VP, Growth at GitHub.
their abilities with time and effort.

In its simplest form, growth is also a state They’re comfortable with failure because
of being.
they recognize they learn important
lessons from it. “The losses are just as
“Growth is a stage or condition of important as the wins,” says Kieran
increasing, developing, or maturing,” says Flanagan, SVP, Marketing at HubSpot.

Grace Bacon, VP, Growth Marketing,

Showpad. Aligned with this mentality, growth leaders
feel it’s important to take risks. “You have
Growth is an operating to be willing to put yourself out there,” says
Lauren Schuman, VP, Product Growth at
principle MURAL.

Growth teams value efficient operations.

For this reason, they focus on driving the By balancing big swings with incremental
biggest gains with the smallest resources.
improvements, growth leaders are more
likely to see high returns.
To quickly move the needle, growth teams
leverage methods like data-driven decision
making, rapid experimentation, and user
research.

The Growth Report 5

 What growth isn’t...
Now that we’ve established what growth is, here are a few insights from growth leaders
about what it isn’t.

Growth isn’t a shortcut Growth isn’t uniform

The discipline of growth may have evolved The discipline of growth can accommodate
out of growth hacking, but it has come a many use cases.

long way since then.

“Growth is one of those things that’s so

Gone are the days when growth hackers deeply personal, so specific to the
scoured the internet for quick and easy company, to the industry, to what problem
wins. Today’s growth leaders skillfully apply you’re solving,” explains Emily Lonetto,
frameworks designed to deliver steady, Head of Growth, Voiceflow.

long-term growth.

Each and every leader we spoke with had a

“People think that growth is a shortcut. But unique definition of growth and raised
there is a science to growth, and a distinct industry misconceptions about
strategy, a very clear understanding of the growth, suggesting growth is
outputs and inputs,” explains Thibault multidimensional.

Imbert, VP, Growth, GitHub.

“There are so many interpretations of what
growth could be,” agrees Grace Bacon, VP,
Growth Marketing, Showpad.

The Growth Report 6

Team
structure
Not unlike growth itself, organizational design is
meant to maximize the performance of a company.

It’s a tool that, when wielded by a thoughtful leader,

can result in gains like faster decision-making,
improved operating efficiency, and better cross-
functional communication, among other benefits.

High-performing growth leaders recognize the

power of organizational design. As a result, they are
very intentional about how they structure their
teams.

The Growth Report

“Organizational

design follows

strategy, not the

other way around.”

Thibault Imbert


VP, Growth,


GitHub
 Most growth leaders prefer 

cross-functional tiger teams
Most growth leaders embrace “tiger teams”
(otherwise known as pods or squads),
which rally cross-functional employees
around key missions.

“It’s hard to have real growth unless teams

are working in some sort of ‘tiger team’
pod format versus sitting in their own
lanes, not collaborating with each other,”
explains Kieran Flanagan, SVP, Marketing at
HubSpot.

These teams are typically tasked with

driving the growth of a key metric, such as “You can find great
one aligned to the customer journey.

growth professionals
The benefit is speed: You no longer have to
negotiate for resources across everywhere. They
departments, so you’re able to execute and
see results much faster.
probably don’t have
“I like the concept of tiger teams because growth in their
you can mobilize fairly quickly,” agrees
Lauren Schuman, VP, Product Growth,
MURAL. “Growth is a speed game.”

current job title.”

James de Feu,

Pod structures also empower teams to be

agile and work on solving high-value Director, Self-Serve Growth,

problems.
Klaviyo

“Growth pods facilitate growth teams to

bounce between low-hanging fruit
opportunities. They aren’t stuck to one
corner of the product,” agrees James de
Feu, Head of Self-Serve Growth, Klaviyo.

The Growth Report 9

 Engineers, data analysts, and “When growth arises out of marketing, the
designers are indispensable initial reaction is to hire more marketers,
when, in fact, usually what marketing
needs is engineering support, business
These team-based organizational
analytics, and data science, or revenue ops
structures employ individuals from a
to stitch together the MarTech stack in a
variety of functions. Every pod is staffed
way that makes sense of their data,”
with a product manager or marketer, who’s
continues Morgan Brown, VP, Growth at
responsible for driving the strategy and
Shopify.

leading the team.

A small minority of growth leaders also hire

They’re joined by at least one engineer,
dedicated resources to run user research,
data analyst, and designer—key players
quality assurance, or operations.

who uncover the insights that direct their

teams’ efforts and subsequently take work
“You find the right people to work on the
across the finish line. Without these
right problems together, and that becomes
individuals, no growth initiatives would be
the most powerful part of growth,” explains
realized.

Lauren Schuman, VP, Product Growth,

MURAL.
“I've seen this over and over, where you
have all the best intent but you don't have
engineers, data people, designers. You're
going to have extremely limited impact,
because you're going to be so slow,
working with shared resources,” agrees
Thibault Imbert, VP, Growth, GitHub.

Growth Pod

i.e. Activation Team

Growth Growth Growth
 Growth

Product Engineer Data 
 Designer
Manager Analyst

The Growth Report 10

 Growth teams are embedded in
functional hierarchies
In the majority of the companies we
interviewed, tiger teams are embedded in
functional hierarchies. While the growth
leader sees the benefit of cross-functional
collaboration, leadership may find it easier
to divide the organization into distinct
functions.

“MURAL as a company is a functional

organizational structure,” says Lauren
Schuman, VP, Product Growth, MURAL.
“But the way our product organization
works, we’re really more organized into
[cross-functional tiger] teams.”
“With a shift of our
traditional online
marketing teams to a
growth marketing
model, our teams are
spread out and
embedded directly
with the product and
engineering teams
for the products
we’re working on.”
Paul D’Arcy

CMO, Miro

The Growth Report 11

 Many companies embrace
matrix management
While serving alongside their cross-
functional counterparts to solve a problem
or achieve a goal, workers often report up
to functional leaders. This structure allows
growth leaders to empower a cross-
functional team to drive results without
sacrificing individual employees’ career
development.

“The product manager reports into the

head of product, the designers into the
design team, the engineers into the
engineering team,” explains Kyle Gesuelli,
VP, Growth & Data, Frame.io. “But they
come together every single day and they
have a unified feeling of a team.”

“They’re all working

towards the same
thing, yet they report
up into different
teams.”
Kyle Gesuelli

VP, Growth & Data, Frame.io

The Growth Report 12

 Organizational structure isn’t
one-size-fits-all
While our research revealed clear trends,
it’s important to remember that there’s no
right answer when it comes to
organizational structure. Growth teams are
tasked with solving a wide variety of
problems for companies with a diverse
range of attributes. For this reason, every
growth team is structured differently.

To determine the best structure for your

organization, consider your unique context.

Marketing

Breakthrough

Growth

“There is no
definitive structure
because each Product Engineering
company has
nuances.”
Kieran Flanagan

SVP, Marketing, HubSpot

Kieran Flanagan’s structure for 


setting up your growth team for success.

Source: Setting up your Growth Team for Success

The Growth Report 13

 Deep-dive: 
 Both teams have a product manager,
Frame.io’s team structure product designer, backend engineer, and
two frontend engineers, along with shared
QA. These workers, including the group
The growth team at Frame.io is centralized
product manager, report up to their
under one leader: Kyle Gesuelli. It consists
distinct functions despite coming together
of a growth marketing team, product
as a team to work toward a unified goal.

growth team, and data science team.

The data science team is separate but

The growth marketing team resembles a
informs everything the growth team does.
functional hierarchy, with growth marketers
reporting into growth marketing
leadership.

The product growth team, on the other

hand, is cross-functional and matrixed. It
consists of two teams: one focused on
engagement and one focused on
monetization.

Frame.io’s Team Structure

VP - Growth & Data

Director - Growth Marketing Group Product Manager - Growth Director - Data

Lifestyle Marketing Senior Analytics 
 Product Manager
 Product Manager
 Senior Analytics

Data Engineer
Manager Engineer Monetization Engagement Engineer

Inbound BDR Senior 
 Engineering 
 Senior Analytics
 Senior Analytics


Growth Marketer Manager Engineer Engineer

Inbound BDR Inbound BDR Product Product Backend

Analytics Engineer
Designer Designer Engineer

Backend Frontend Frontend

Engineer Engineer Engineer

Frontend Frontend
Engineer Engineer

The Growth Report 14

Core
processes
Repeatable processes are a key feature of any high-
performing team. And they’re especially important
for fast-growing companies looking to scale their
operations. When designed well and continually
optimized, they can be a competitive advantage,
allowing a business to outrun its rivals.

High-performing growth leaders recognize that, to

achieve sustainable business growth, they must be
methodical and design repeatable processes their
teams can follow to fortune.

In this report, we investigated three distinct

processes: how teams defined their growth
strategy, how they approached experimentation,
and the steps they followed to engage their
customers.

The Growth Report

 Developing your growth “So, talk to people in the business, gauge
the opportunities and blockers that they’re
strategy facing.”
High-performing growth leaders we
interviewed follow five high-level steps to
develop their growth strategies.

1. Speak to executives and collect data

from peers



Growth leaders start the process by

speaking to executive leadership.

“When it comes to the recipe for building

your growth strategy, you want to hear
from the CEO or whoever owns that
strategy,” argues Thibault Imbert, VP,
Growth, GitHub.

The goal here is to develop an

understanding of your company’s vision for “You must be able to take a step
growth.

 back and see your business
“You need to understand what the
from that ten-thousand-foot
company’s external goal is,” continues Kyle view, and at the same time,
Gesuelli, VP, Growth & Data, Frame.io. deep dive into the details of
“What are they trying to achieve?”
what the data and trends tell
Team members, especially those who are
you. To drive growth and be a
long-standing at your company, are also a good leader, you need to
valuable resource. They can help identify balance the two.”
roadblocks or hurdles to success.

Mona Nasiri

Director, Product Growth and
“You’ve got to engage with all corners of
Monetization, Zendesk
the business to successfully understand
what it is that you’re trying to resolve,” says
James de Feu, Director, Self-Serve Growth,
Klaviyo.

The Growth Report 16

 2. Determine your growth loops 



Growth leaders next evaluate their levers of

growth, or the inputs that are going to
drive the outputs.

“There are usually a core set of inputs that

drive the underlying engine of what drives
growth at a company,” explains Morgan
Brown, VP, Growth, Shopify.

Say your goal is to grow annual recurring

revenue.

Kyle Gesuelli, VP, Growth & Data, Frame.io

recommends asking yourself, “What’s
working within my organization? Where is
that growth going to come from?”

Core Processes

Secular Tailwinds Opportunities

Rise of Self- More More 

Employment

 Merchants GMV International


E-Commerce

Growth
Share of Wallet




Consumerization More

Of The Enterprise

 Channels, Machine Learning


Partners, &
Capabilities

A prototypical growth loop at Shopify. 


Source: Shopify Earnings Presentation


The Growth Report 17

 3. Measure your baseline

Growth leaders measure how they’re

performing today before moving forward in
the process. This allows them to have a
baseline to compare with in the future. It
also validates their understanding of their
company’s growth loops.

“The quantitative part allows you to gut

check [the qualitative part],” says Lauren
Schuman, VP, Product Growth, MURAL. “It’s
hard to know whether one lever is going to
be the main driver versus another lever
unless you put some type of quantification
to it.”

To rely on their baseline data, these leaders “Data is both your measuring
must have quality data infrastructure and stick and your dousing rod. It
governance in place. By enforcing their
company’s data standards, a CDP can helps you determine where 

improve the quality and trustworthiness of you are and your progression
their customer data. toward where you want to be,
but it’s also the raw material
that helps you understand
where to focus your efforts to
grow faster.”
Brian Kotlyar

SVP, Demand Generation, New Relic

The Growth Report 18

 4. Identify Performance Gaps

Growth leaders next review these data to

diagnose issues and identify chances to
improve.

“At the end of the day, just follow the data—

the data will tell you where the
opportunities are, where the problems are,”
says James de Feu, Director, Self-Serve
Growth, Klaviyo.

Some growth leaders instead opt to do

customer research at this stage.

“The first step is identifying those gaps

either through community or by asking
questions and reaching out to customers
proactively,” shares Emily Lonetto, Head of “The majority of the work goes
Growth, Voiceflow.

into data integrity and the

More often, it’s a combination of the two. quality of the data—making
5. Test your hypothesis
sure it’s sound, because bad
[data] in is bad [data] out,
Growth leaders then make an educated quality in is quality out. Even if
guess about how to solve their
performance problems.

that’s directional because

you’re learning how to
Lauren Schuman, VP, Product Growth, measure something in a new
MURAL recommends asking yourself, way, it’s incredibly important
“What hypotheses and assumptions do we
have about this part of our business?”

that you’ve built that

infrastructure.”
Finally, they validate their ideas with some Marissa Aydlett

combination of A/B testing and user Chief Growth Officer, Showpad
research before scaling their efforts.

The Growth Report 19

 Conducting Experiments
High-performing growth leaders we
interviewed follow nine steps to conduct
experiments. IDENTIFY

1. Identify a gap or opportunity
 OPPORTUNITY
The first step growth leaders tackle is
identifying a problem to solve. This starts
with exploring historical customer data via
a CDP, comparing their performance to
external benchmarks or internal targets,
and then identifying gaps and
opportunities for growth.
IDEATE

“We get lost in data for a while — in a good

way — because we're storytellers, so we
always want to find the thread and the
narrative in the data,” says Grace Bacon,
VP, Growth Marketing, Showpad.

HYPOTHESIZE
2. Ideate ways to solve the problem

Growth leaders next meet with their teams

and try to brainstorm ways to solve the
problem at hand.

PRIORITIZE
“We might run a ‘how might we’ session,”
explains Lauren Schuman, VP, Product
Growth, MURAL.

Often, the best ideas are intuitive.



“You need to have gut feel,” agrees Thibault TEST

Imbert, VP, Growth, GitHub. “The danger is
when you have a gut feel and then you’re
not testing it.”

The Growth Report 20

 3. State your hypothesis
“At Klaviyo, we aim to be the most
experimental team at the company,” says
Hypotheses invite you to document the James de Feu, Director, Self-Serve Growth,
problem, propose a solution, and Klaviyo. “Having a robust experimental
anticipate results.
methodology is crucial to making that
ambition a reality.”


“You cannot just start asking, ‘Oh, why is
this happening or what is happening?’ You 4. Be ruthless about prioritization

need to have a hypothesis,” says Mona

Nasiri, Director, Product Growth and Growth leaders pointed out the need to
Monetization, Zendesk.
select your tests carefully.

Emily Lonetto, Head of Growth, Voiceflow “It's tempting, when you're a growth
recommends asking questions like, “What’s practitioner, to look at all the opportunities
the problem that we’re solving? Why is this and start a lot of conversations about all
important? How do we measure success?”
the things you can fix. You end up getting a
lot of people excited, but you lose
After selecting a test to run, growth leaders momentum because you don't have a ton
design their experiment.
of resources,” says Thibault Imbert, VP,
Growth, GitHub. “Focus is so, so
important.”

Prioritization matrix to inform Marissa Aydlett, Chief Growth Officer,

growth decisions Showpad agrees: “You are wearing a
million different hats and the same applies
for growth. You need to be able to take a
HIGH

hat off, so you can have the focus on the

MAYBE YES
next thing you need to be doing.”

For this reason, growth leaders must

Business Value

prioritize solving the problems with the

greatest potential impact for the least
effort.

NO MAYBE
“We focus on opportunity sizing the
experiments we want to run and prioritize
LOW

HIGH Effort by Organization LOW the ones that we think are going to have
the greatest impact,” agrees Morgan
Brown, VP, Growth, Shopify.

The Growth Report 21

 5. Build out your test plan
“It’s about regularly building beta lists,
building relationships with people who can
Once growth leaders have landed on an help to validate things, on a smaller scale
experiment to run, they establish their before we launch,” confirms Emily Lonetto,
variations, prepare to run the experiment, Head of Growth, Voiceflow.

and record their baseline data so they can

measure any improvements following the 7. Launch your test

test.

Once they’ve validated their hypotheses,

“The key thing is to figure out which of growth leaders release their experiments
those two things are you doing: Are you out into the wild. The faster they do so, the
doing the pre-post or are you doing an A/B faster they learn.

type of methodology,” says Brian Kotlyar,

SVP, Demand Generation, New Relic. “Once “We try to launch [experiments] as quick as
you understand that, you can then possible to get learnings on our specific
schedule your experiments and plan them hypotheses,” shares Lauren Schuman, VP,
appropriately.”
Product Growth, MURAL.

6. Validate your idea

“We deploy [experiments] in the order that
allows us to learn and maximize our impact
Before launching an experiment, growth in the shortest time period possible,”
leaders first validate their hypotheses.
agrees Morgan Brown, VP, Growth at
Shopify.
Thibault Imbert, VP, Growth, GitHub asks
his team: “Have you done research on the
fact that this experiment is likely to be
successful? Have you tested this before
putting it in front of a million customers
and burning these users potentially with an
experience that’s completely broken or
terrible?”

To do so, they typically turn to user

research.

The Growth Report 22

 8. Evaluate the results
9. Share your learnings

Once the test has run its course, growth Finally, growth leaders share their insights
leaders next crunch the numbers. Do they with the broader team, including
reach statistical significance? Are the leadership.

results in favor of or against the change?

“The learnings that you get from the data

It’s important to first develop a clear can be immediately utilized as you think
understanding of what actually took place.
about tweaking or shifting or enhancing
your strategy,” says Mona Nasiri, Director,
“This is where your crisp hypotheses come Product Growth and Monetization,
into play,” argues Charudatta Wad, Senior Zendesk.

Engineering Manager, Growth, Lyft. “If your

initial hypotheses and experiment match, Sharing the learnings also ensures multiple
that’s great. But a lot of times you see team members don’t duplicate their efforts.

unintended consequences.”

“If you want to be a successful growth

Informed by the outcome, growth leaders team, don’t waste your time doing
can determine appropriate next steps.
experiments someone else has done,” says
James de Feu, Director, Self-Serve Growth,
“Compare the outcomes and journeys of Klaviyo. “Do everyone a favor and share
those groups over time, then understand whatever you have and everyone wins.”
which is the better treatment, and then
deploy that treatment to the whole
audience,” says Brian Kotlyar, SVP, Demand
Generation, New Relic.

“Speed in this game is a 


universal good. If you can figure 

out something a little bit faster 

than your competitors, it feels
groundbreaking.”
James Kim

Chief Growth Officer, Courage+Stone

The Growth Report 23

 Engaging Customers
High-performing growth leaders we
interviewed follow five steps to enagage
experiments.
1. Collect customer data

Before growth leaders can personalize the

user experience, they must collect first-
party data from their customers.

“We make sure that we have a critical

understanding of a couple of key variables
about every user,” says Kyle Gesuelli, VP,
Growth & Data, Frame.io.

To get this data, growth leaders most “It’s always a balance of ask
commonly use a customer data platform to versus infer when building
track behavior-based data (like `User data. Because the first step

Logged In`, `Application Opened`, or

`Order Completed`) and track key actions of personalization is getting
happening across all stages of the funnel.
that data in the first place.”
Emily Lonetto

Head of Growth, Voiceflow

Acquisition steps tracked via a CDP

1
analytics.track('usr_123', 'User Signup', {

2
type: 'organic'

3
})
User Signup
4

5
analytics.track('usr_123', 'Video Played', {

6
video_id: 'vid_123',

7
video_category: 'Sports'

})

Video Played
analytics.track('usr_123', 'Subscription Upgraded', {

10

pre_plan_id: 'free',

11
 new_plan_id: 'pro_30',

12
 new_plan_name: 'Professional',

13

14
 })
new_plan_mrr: 30.00,

Subscription Upgraded
15

The Growth Report 24

 2. Create customer profiles

Growth leaders next leverage automation

to aggregate user data into a 360-degree

view of each customer. This is where a

customer data platform comes in handy.

A CDP allows growth leaders to not only

map their customer journey, but also

personalize and track every interaction

they have with every individual in their

database.

3. Enrich profiles with 


third-party data

Many but not all growth leaders strive to

limit the first-party data they collect to

make the customer experience as

frictionless as possible. Instead, they

choose to supplement their first-party 


data with data from third parties.

“We seek to be personalized wherever can

be, whether that's [with] data we've

collected or data we’ve enriched,” says

Brian Kotlyar, SVP, Demand Generation,

New Relic.

“Proper implementation of a

CDP is really, really critical. It

empowers you to create a

unified profile and set of traits

for your end-user or customer.”

Kyle Gesuelli


VP, Growth & Data, Frame.io

The Growth Report 25

 4. Integrate with communications tools
5. Send personalized messages

Once growth leaders have aggregated Finally, growth leaders send personalized
their customer data, they plug it into messages to key segments of customers.

customer communication platforms like

Autopilot, Intercom, and Appcues.
Why is personalization important? “One of
the big drivers of growth is relevance,” says
“We’re using Segment Personas to pass this Morgan Brown, VP, Growth, Shopify.

unified set of traits into all of the tools that

touch end customers,” confirms Kyle “Personalization is table stakes,” agrees
Gesuelli, VP, Growth & Data, Frame.io.
Thibault Imbert, VP, Growth, GitHub. “Every
single time we talk to customers, we strive
Some companies instead choose to build to create an experience that’s going to be
customer engagement tools themselves. empathetic and personalized.”

Technology partners like Twilio, which

offers APIs for voice, SMS, and video, help
these builders make customized tools that
serve their business needs.

75% 75% of business leaders say personalization is

table stakes for digital experiences.

Source: The State of Personalization 2021, Twilio Segment

The Growth Report 26

 Data is the thread that ties it 
 “Data is this ephemeral passing beam that,
if you do not have something to capture it
all together with, you will not have it,” says Emily
Data is leveraged across all three core Lonetto, Head of Growth, Voiceflow.

growth processes. From validating

hypotheses about what will drive For that reason, implementing a customer
sustainable growth long-term to data platform is imperative.

conducting rapid experiments that drive

incremental improvements across the “Your infrastructure is important in making
customer journey, data empowers teams to sure that your data is clean, it’s reliable, and
make impactful, time-sensitive business that, when you do have that great idea—
decisions.
let’s say six months from now—you have a
foundation to stand on.”
When asked about the role of data in
growth, every growth leader agreed that
it’s instrumental.



“Data is the most important part,” says

Charudatta Wad, Senior Engineering
Manager, Growth, Lyft. “You 



“Data is everything to a growth team,”

agrees James de Feu, Director, Self-Serve
Growth, Klaviyo. “The first thing I do with
any growth team is, we come in, we spend
the first four weeks just head in the data
warehouse, trying to understand.”



These champions leverage data to track

their growth, uncover performance gaps,
and measure the impact of experiments.
They also recycle it to curate an
unparalleled customer experience.

But data is not without its challenges.

The Growth Report 27

Measurement

practices
Measurement practices have a significant impact
on a company’s ability to grow. Whereas sound
measurement practices empower leaders to make
informed decisions on the fly, questionable
measurement practices can cause leaders to
fumble, mistakenly leading their teams awry.

High-performing growth leaders recognize that, to

guide their teams in the right direction, they must
be able to track their company’s key metrics via
real-time customer data.

The Growth Report

 Data democratization leads to “For us to be able to understand what joint
faster decision-making
success looks like and then orient our
projects and OKRs around that is critical,”
Growth leaders are very passionate about says Kyle Gesuelli, VP, Growth & Data,
making company data accessible to every Frame.io. 


team, as it empowers individuals to quickly
make informed decisions.
Without dashboards filled with key metrics,
growth leaders would largely be shooting
“The value of having that real-time data in the dark.

available to anyone is that anyone,

anywhere can make better decisions faster, “Data drives all of our understanding of
which is a superpower for any growth where we are, where we're going is driven
team,” shares Morgan Brown, VP, Growth, by it, and all of our decision making is
Shopify.
informed by it,” says Brian Kotlyar, SVP,
Demand Generation, New Relic.


Dashboards rally cross-
functional teams around key “So, having dashboards which represent
that data is non-negotiable. It must exist or
metrics
else we cannot function.”
Growth leaders value analytics dashboards
for their ability to keep everyone on the
same page, working toward the same
goals.

Revenue

Referral

Retention

Activation

Acquisition

The Growth Report 29

 Real-time data powers “We want to make sure that people stay
customer communications
healthy and engaged,” says Thibault
Imbert, VP, Growth, GitHub. 


Leveraging real-time customer data to
power timely customer communications is 2. Conversion Rate (CR)

key to growing your business. For growth

leaders to deliver messages at the most One of the first places growth leaders start
opportune time, they and their tools must when it comes to measurement is
have access to real-time customer data.
analyzing the conversion funnel.

“The ability to not only monitor and From the first time a new visitor lands on
understand what’s happening in real-time your site, to when they eventually purchase
but also to action off of that is critical in your product, it’s vital they can
creating that seamless experience,” argues systematically measure and eliminate the
Lauren Schuman, VP, Product Growth, biggest points of friction.

MURAL. “If you can’t communicate with

somebody until 48 hours after they’ve
done an important action in your product,
you’ve probably lost them.”

Key metrics


For modern growth teams, metrics offer
two things: 1) They help you identify how
your business is doing, and 2) They tell you
what to focus on.

While the specific metrics being tracked

differs from business to business, across
the growth leaders we interviewed three
key metrics stood out:
1. Monthly Active Users (MAU) or Weekly
Active Users (WAU)

“Growth works better when

As the most basic way of measuring user
engagement, it should come as no surprise you’re learning faster.”
that growth leaders are actively measuring Kieran Flanagan

active users, though company context SVP, Marketing, HubSpot
dictates whether activity took place on a
weekly or monthly basis.

The Growth Report 30

 Most growth leaders measure and optimize
their conversion rates across the customer
journey.



“We track conversion from one part to

another, so from traffic to trial, trial to
shopping cart, shopping cart to purchase,
from trial to purchase,” says Mona Nasiri,
Director, Product Growth and Monetization,
Zendesk. “We call it win rate.”
3. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

While it’s easy to get wrapped up in the

minutiae of clicks and impressions, it’s
equally important for growth leaders to
take a step back and look at what’s most “The speed at which you can
important—revenue.

process data is very, very

Most growth leaders list annual recurring relevant. If you’re making a
revenue as their north star metric.
real-time messaging decision,
and the data is delayed, your
“Our core metric is annual recurring
revenue (ARR),” agrees Kyle Gesuelli, VP,
decisions are going to be off.”
Growth & Data, Frame.io. “We’re a SaaS Charudatta Wad

business, so that’s what really drives us.”
Senior Engineering Manager, Growth, Lyft

The Growth Report 31

Tools and
technology
A leader’s choice of technology can make or break
their business. Unless managed carefully, tech
stack sprawl can be incredibly debilitating to an
organization, leaving you with inefficient spending,
siloed data, and substandard customer
experiences.

High-performing growth leaders understand that,

to rapidly grow their businesses, they require a
seamlessly integrated tool stack capable of
powering their team’s key operations.

It should come as no surprise, then, that CDPs like

Segment were highlighted as the centerpiece of a
modern growth stack.

If engineering is too busy to help them swap out

tools, or if they discover new tech that will help
them increase conversions by 50%, a CDP helps
growth leaders get up and running with new tools
in minutes.

The Growth Report

 Growth teams prefer best-of- “We’re always evaluating new tools,” says
breed tools
James de Feu, Head of Self-Serve Growth,
Klaviyo. “We use plenty at the moment, but
Most growth leaders have specialized tools we’re always on the lookout to see what’s
for everything from experimentation and new, what can make our lives a bit easier.”

user research to feature adoption and

marketing automation. In fact, the majority
of the leaders we interviewed choose best-
of-breed software over all-in-one suites.
These tools offer greater flexibility and
customization that often leads to improved
performance.

Customer data platforms sit at

the center of the stack

Three in five growth leaders we interviewed

use Segment, the industry’s #1 customer
data platform, to tie these best-of-breed
tools together. By integrating their growth
stack, they create one source of truth for all
of their customer data. They also trigger
automatic enforcement of their company’s
data standards, which keeps their data
clean and reliable. Finally, they aggregate
real-time customer data into unique
profiles that empower the team to deliver
personalized communications.

Growth teams are seeking the

next game-changing tool

Most interviewed growth leaders recognize

that adopting cutting-edge tools before
they’re on their rivals’ radar can be a
competitive advantage in and of itself.
Indeed, the right tool can streamline your
processes and supercharge your growth.

The Growth Report 33

 Growth teams practice what
they preach

Many SaaS growth leaders actively use

their own software, either to collaborate
with their colleagues, onboard new
employees, or present content to their
audience. GitHub, Klaviyo, MURAL, Shopify,
and Showpad are but a few examples.

“Everything happens on GitHub, and that

allows everyone in the company to keep
using the product,” says Thibault Imbert,
VP, Growth, GitHub.



This opportunity to leverage your own

product is priceless for growth “Hypothesis-driven, generative
practitioners, who must bridge the gap digital leaders need to be risk
between product value and customer tolerant. Not everything is
needs.


going to work out. This sounds
“When you join Showpad, you get right into like failure. However, the key to
it because so much of our software is great the builder ethos is to fail small
for the ability to share content but also to and fast and understand that
learn,” says Grace Bacon, VP, Growth
Marketing, Showpad. “I know Showpad
failure provides a critical data
really well because I’ve been living and stream for future success.

breathing it.” A risk-averse approach limits

experimentation and, in turn,
limits customer-generated
information digital teams can
use to refine and improve.”
Steve Sloan

CEO, Contentful

The Growth Report 34

 Growth teams leverage
custom-built tools

With engineering resources on hand, many

growth leaders choose to build their own
solutions.

Lyft built a custom CDP and messaging

platform for engaging their customers
across the lifecycle.



“We want decisions to be made as fast as

possible, and the best way to do that is to
build a lot of these tools internally,” says
Charudatta Wad, Senior Engineering
Manager, Growth, Lyft.

“In building products in highly

Frame.io leverages a custom-built tool for dynamic environments, there
experimentation. “We across the business are always tensions such as
adopted feature flags, constructed on the growth vs stability or exploring
backend, where we put a certain
percentage of the population,” explains new approaches vs exploiting
Kyle Gesuelli, VP, Growth & Data, Frame.io. existing ones.


“It’s a home-grown system that we can
deploy within our admin tool.” Navigating these uncertainties
is ultimately one of the most
challenging things about
building a startup or managing
any new product, but also one
of the most rewarding.”
Nadim Hossain

VP, Product, Databricks

The Growth Report 35

Tips, not
tricks
There’s a misconception that growth strategies are
a series of quick wins, or a way to hack your market
share at lightning speed. But that’s not the case.

The growth leaders we interviewed told us time and

again that shortcuts won’t lead to long-term,
sustainable growth. Instead, they advised focusing
on internal buy-in, and cultivating a deep
understanding of both your product and
customers. Here's an overview of their top tips (not
tricks) for success.

The Growth Report

 Know thy customer


“We thought of [growth] as an opportunity
To effectively grow a business, you must for us to be able to have a meaningful
have a profound sense of empathy for your impact on the company's growth in a way
customers. This ability to tune into your that felt cross-functional,” says Grace
customers’ needs complements your data Bacon, VP, Growth Marketing, Showpad.
analysis, user research, and
experimentation efforts.

“You need to understand your customer

and what they’re trying to achieve,” Kyle
Gesuelli, VP, Growth & Data, Frame.io.
“What’s their business need?”

Use your product

To appeal to your customers, you must first

understand the product you’re trying to
promote. Otherwise, you can’t effectively
articulate how your product solves your
customers’ problems.

“You’ll have limited impact if you don't truly

understand what the product does,”
explains Thibault Imbert, VP, Growth, “Growth is about taking on
GitHub. “So you need to use the product. initiatives, getting them up to
You have to eat your own dog food.” speed, and then getting
Partner cross-functionally
everybody on the same page
enough that you can have
Cross-functional collaboration is key to the impact in a really quick way, or
success of growth teams, whether people in a long and sustainable way.”
are brought together in pods or divided by
function.

Grace Bacon

Often, growth teams play an active role in VP, Growth Marketing, Showpad
breaking down silos in their organizations.

The Growth Report 37

 Create lasting value

 “And that growth isn’t done just by people
in the growth team. It’s those two big
To retain your customers, it’s important to things.”
facilitate undeniable impact and do so
quickly. Only by delivering lasting value to
your customers can you grow your
business.

“To drive product-led growth, we must get

users to the value of our product
immediately—and in the most seamless
way possible,” says Lauren Schuman, VP,
Product Growth, MURAL.

Spread awareness

Because growth is such a young discipline,

growth leaders need to educate others
about what they can expect from the
growth function.

The growth team at Shopify, for example,

“To drive growth, you need to
educates their counterparts about their start with a compelling
goals and philosophies. “On the best underlying story. Without that,
growth teams, everyone has a shared no amount of landing page
worldview. You ask anyone on that growth
team, and they’ll tell you what the inputs
optimization or keyword
are,” says Morgan Brown, VP, Growth, spending strategy is going to
Shopify.
work. The content and the
message are really what drives
Similarly, the growth team at Klaviyo
educates others about how they can work
things.”
together to drive business growth. “The Kyle Christensen

one aspect of growth education which
takes up most of our time is demystifying CMO, Zuora
how people can work with a growth team,”
says James de Feu, Director, Self-Serve
Growth, Klaviyo.

The Growth Report 38

 Good data is inseparable from growth
Renowned growth leaders see data as inseparable from the practice of growth. Without
access to accurate, real-time data, their teams would be unable to drive sustainable
business growth. As a result, data analysts are frequently embedded in cross-functional
growth teams. These professionals enable growth teams to make time-sensitive, data-
informed decisions in part by creating custom dashboards.

High-performing growth teams share a commitment to quality data infrastructure that

empowers teams to execute core growth processes, such as validating their hypotheses,
conducting rapid experiments, delivering personalized communications, and defining
strategies that result in sustainable business growth. Across industries, Segment is
considered the essential tool to have in your growth stack.

“Having great telemetry is a

necessary condition for being
a great growth team. You
cannot be great at growth if
you do not have rock-solid
data infrastructure”
Morgan Brown

VP, Growth, Shopify

The Growth Report 39

 Lay the foundation rapid
business growth requires
Twilio Segment’s 2021 Growth Report makes it clear that investing in quality data
infrastructure and governance is an essential task for any leader looking to drive
sustainable business growth.

Join the 20,000+ companies who feel empowered to measure and manage their
performance with accurate, real-time data.

Learn how to supercharge growth

with Twilio Segment.
Schedule a demo

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The Growth Report 40