Read the original at Lenny’s Newsletter ↗lennysnewsletter.com · subscriber post
By Lenny Rachitsky · lennysnewsletter.com · @lennysan on X · YouTube · LinkedIn
The post offers a step-by-step guide to hiring and structuring a first growth team, drawing on interviews with a dozen growth practitioners. It argues growth should follow product-market fit, that acquisition is usually the first focus, and that a centralized or decentralized team structure should be chosen based on the company's bottlenecks and maturity.
Subscriber post — summary only01Key takeaways
- Hire for growth only after product-market fit; premature growth hires waste capital and equity.
- Before PMF, form hypotheses about how the product will be distributed, whether product-, marketing-, or sales-led.
- Founder-led growth is the best approach during early traction, and the founder sets the growth mindset.
- Avoid hiring a growth leader first; a hands-on builder-type generalist is usually a better initial hire.
- Centralized teams optimize for velocity but risk the rest of the company disowning growth; decentralized tribes build growth culture but slow execution.
- Growth team structure should evolve with business needs, so expect to reorganize as the company matures.
“Most product and marketing teams are built to create or expand the core value provided to customers. Growth is connecting more people to the existing…”Casey Winters · Lenny’s Newsletter
“Growth is about increasing the distribution of the core product. If there is no validation that the product has found PMF, growth has nothing to…”Lenny Rachitsky (newsletter author) · Lenny’s Newsletter
02Frameworks mentioned
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.