Conference Presentation, Panel
Scaling Growth | Gustaf Alstromer, YC Partner (formerly Airbnb) & Ed Baker (formerly Uber)
- Ed Arons and Gustav Sorensen led the scaling of growth teams at Uber and Airbnb, having previously built viral social apps in 2007–2008 that reached tens of millions of users.
- Early viral growth strategies at the time relied on exploiting platform loopholes, such as a Facebook app that auto-tagged 240 friends per user via a "Zodiac Photo Album," which was shut down after reaching tens of millions of tags in 24 hours.
- Mobile growth at Voxer succeeded by optimizing the initial onboarding experience, specifically matching phone numbers with address books to ensure users saw friends upon their first app launch.
- The core metric focus shifted from user acquisition at Facebook to retention and engagement, where "friending" was identified as the number one driver of Monthly Active Users (MAUs).
- The Facebook growth team structure included five critical functions (product, engineering, analytics, design, marketing) working within a single organization of approximately 500 people, a model Ed later replicated with a five-person team at Uber.
- Uber's "North Star Metric" was defined as "weekly trips" rather than just rider count, acknowledging the two-sided marketplace requirement to balance supply (drivers) and demand (riders).
- Growth at Uber faced unique challenges due to real-world frictions, such as drivers failing to complete their first trip due to nervousness or logistical barriers like document verification and vehicle inspections.
- Unlike social platforms focused on organic virality, Uber and Airbnb utilized paid acquisition strategically, investing in performance marketing to accelerate growth and market liquidity in competitive environments.
- Paid marketing strategies were dynamically adjusted based on local market constraints, prioritizing driver acquisition in supply-constrained markets and rider acquisition in demand-constrained periods.
- Global expansion required localizing strategies, such as building a WeChat bot for driver sign-ups in China to bypass latency issues and the lack of desktop access.
- Key product gaps for global scaling included translation capabilities and adapting authentication or payment mechanisms to local regulations, though Ed noted only 5–10 countries require drastic deviations from US norms.
- Airbnb's growth culture evolved to integrate data and experimentation into all product teams, effectively merging the dedicated growth team with the core product organization to eliminate silos.
- Uber merged its product and growth teams to better align on retention and engagement goals, moving away from a purely "evangelizing" growth function to a unified operational model.
- Institutionalized "experiment reviews" are held bi-weekly to challenge team instincts, revealing that counterintuitive results are common and essential for validating product decisions.
- A specific copy tweak at Facebook Japan—changing the word "invite" to "announce"—transformed the country from the lowest to the highest viral growth rate by addressing cultural discomfort with intrusion.
- Retention strategy evolution at Uber involved shifting focus from new user acquisition in the "land grab" phase to reducing churn and increasing re-engagement as the active user base matured.
- Long-term growth advice emphasizes investing in channels with true scale (e.g., SEO, paid search, video) and maintaining engineering/data science capabilities rather than relying on short-term viral hacks.
- Ed recommended keeping users logged in indefinitely on websites, noting that auto-logout mechanisms offer no growth benefit and often hinder retention.
- Audience Q&A clarified that while North Star metrics guide overall direction, growth accounting must track new acquisition, churn, and re-engagement separately to balance the S-curve of growth.