Growth Products: Understand Your Business Stage
As product leaders, it’s safe to assume that we are all focused on growing our business. Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic bullet for driving growth. Ultimately, your trajectory for building successful growth products is a function of your product’s maturity. To break it down, I will share three scenarios for product stages that will help guide you in developing effective growth strategies.
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Pre-Traction Growth Products.
- More so than any other growth stage, this is the time to “do things that don’t scale.” In other words, this is the time to take chances and make things happen. For example, many startups take off because their founders “make them” take off. In order to turn your product into a long-term success, you need to operate at a level that builds the necessary momentum to bring your business to a point where it can scale. Ultimately, without this heavy-lifting, your product will never take off.
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Early Traction Growth Products.
- In order to reach this point, you’ve probably identified a few product features that work well. However, you may not have a full understanding of all the drivers for growth because you tried out so many different experiments. At this stage, the priority is to focus on building scale and taking your early success to the next level. In addition, this is where you need to be mindful of how your business landscape is changing. This will ensure that you can stay ahead of the curve and remain nimble with your decision-making.
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Scaled Growth Products.
- At this stage, your model for growth has been operationalized. In other words, you know exactly what you did to achieve success. As a result, you can use this model to expand your product’s capabilities. Most importantly, you have the resources to build upon your early successes. In many cases, this can involve acquiring other businesses or services to advance your product goals.
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About the speaker
Elliot Shmukler is the CPO at Instacart where he oversees the customer experience for the leading online grocery delivery service. In addition, Elliot brings 20 years of experience in building online consumer products with product leadership roles at companies like LinkedIn, Wealthfront, eBay, and About.com.