Building high-performing teams

Melissa Tan, longtime growth leader at Dropbox and Webflow and a former advisor to companies like Canva, Grammarly, and Miro, discusses building high-performing teams and growth teams. The conversation covers Dropbox's growth lessons, people-focused leadership, team culture and ownership, hiring and interview design, and how to structure early growth functions.

01Key learnings

• Hire first-principles thinkers who are humble and collaborative, since that combination drove much of Dropbox's innovation, according to Melissa.
• Start go-to-market and monetization planning early rather than treating growth as a layer added on top of the product later.
• Introduce a PLG motion when the product is intuitive to onboard onto and has a viral component; move toward enterprise sales once larger customers demand enterprise features.
• Give direct feedback framed around observed behavior, its impact, and a better alternative, while restating your intent to set the person up for success.
• Create ownership by carving out meaty, independently owned scope for each team member, such as problems along the funnel, rather than splitting work into tiny slices.
• Use a DACI-style framework with defined operating rhythms to clarify who drives, decides, contributes, and is informed in cross-team growth work.
• When hiring PMs, test live problem solving and give candidates feedback during a prep call before their presentation to observe how they take input.
• Pick a first growth hire who is a strong first-principles thinker and analytical, prioritizing attributes over narrow expertise early on.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.