Growth Dives
Each week I reverse engineer the products of leading tech companies. Get one annotated teardown every Friday.
Growth Dive Mini (1-min read) š£ How Notion nails invites
Growth Dive Mini (1-min read) š£ How Notion nails invites Trying a 60-second read this week. One insight, 300 words, super fast šļø If you like it (or donāt!), hit reply ā Iām testing this format for the busier weeks š š£ Download as a PDF here or read online here. Last week we covered Slackās invite flow, and ā thanks to confirmation bias š§ ā Iāve been noticing details on invite flows everywhere since š So, this week weāre covering Notion. I was wrapping up a project on Q1 learnings for a...
Growth Dives: What Slack's invite flow teaches us aboutĀ virality
What Slack's invite flow teaches us about virality A closer look at the mechanics behind Slack's PLG growth loop Read online here Slack was the fastest startup to hit a $1 billion valuation after launching in 2013. Today, it has over 42 million daily active users ā including 77% of Fortune 100 companies ā with paid users spending about 90 minutes actively working in Slack. Huge volumes. High engagement. And a product thatās expanded well beyond self-serve PLG into enterprise B2B (i.e. big boi...
Growth Dives: the underdog app no one is talking about
The 500-year-old underdog no one is talking about What Royal Mail teaches us about using illustrations and empathy-first design Join in the conversation on LinkedIn and read online here Last year, I forgot to send my gran a birthday present. I felt crap. Partly, I didnāt realise how fast April flew by. But mostly, I dreaded the faff of posting a parcel. I once queued so long to send one that the line went round the block. The UK postal experience. Source: Guardian As a result, parcels pile up...
Growth Dives March recap
Growth Dives March recap Lessons from stepping back on LinkedIn, leaning into user feedback and building better habits. Stanley and me up Hellvelyn, Lake District Hello to all 1,279 of you wonderful subscribers. What a month itās been. Last time I checked, it was February. And now somehow itās April. What happened? Over the last 30 days, I reached 10K followers on LinkedIn, posted three articles, celebrated my birthday š, did some Growth Dive user interviews and went on the most incredible...
Growth Dives: Designing on thin ice
Designing on thin ice What the Scottish Avalanche App reveals about the stakes of product design While this is a story about app UI, it intersects with impostor syndrome in male-dominated spaces, cognitive biases in the mountains and more. Expect something different today ā°ļø Read online here Not my photo, weather was terrible š (Source) What are the risks of bad product design? Churn. Frustrated users. A flood of 1-star reviews. In the grand scheme of things, not much. Few apps are truly life...
Growth Dives: Duolingo's 6-step reactivation experience
Duolingo's 6-step reactivation experience It's not just about getting users back - it's about what happens next. Read online here I hadnāt opened Duolingo in three months. But with a trip to Spain looming, I tapped the green owl ā expecting the same experience as before. But something had changed. Instead of the normal homepage, I got a new reactivation experience: a cute sleeping owl, a check-in, personalised copy and a CRM series. Thereās two types of people in this world: those who can...
Should you copy a competitor?
Should you copy a competitor? Here's when it works (and when it doesn't) Thank you to Erin Weigel (Author and Senior Design Manager @ Deliveroo), AngĆØle Lenglemetz (Product @ Cleo), Daphne Tideman (Author and D2C Growth Consultant), Joseph Fitzgibbon (Founder @ Growth & Company, former Head of Growth @ Graze and ClickMechanic), and Octave Auger (VP Marketing @ Faria Education Group) for contributing to this š I hear this all the time from founders: āLetās not re-invent the wheelā āWhat do the...
3 big mistakes I made in Feb (and how Iām fixing them)
Three mistakes I made in February & a user research request š¤ Read online here February was wild - plenty of highs, but also some lows. Growth slowed, my open rate dropped, and I lost momentum. This issue goes through what I got wrong - and how Iām fixing it. In the midst of it all, I published three essays: How Slack drives activation with empty states UX research from Slack, ChatGPT & Grammarly Gemini's (annoying) launch into Gsuite Outside of writing, I made time for life: I enjoyed...
Growth Dives: How Slack drives activation with empty states
How Slack drives activation with empty states Onboarding, delightful copy and the element of surprise Read online here Do you know the dinosaur? The āLonely T-Rexā of Chrome. Or perhaps youāve seen the āBlue screen of deathā on windows. Or maybe Appleās āSpinning wheel of deathā ā ļø Pre-auto save these signalled the end of the world. Lost files. Reboots. Frozen screens. Seeing these stirs feelings of frustration and dread (as the names suggest). These are what we call empty states. Empty...
Growth Dives: How to get answers quickly and avoid features thatĀ flop
How to get answers quickly and avoid features that flop UX research from Slack, ChatGPT & Grammarly Read online here One of the most common things I hear from founders is: We keep launching features that have no impact. They just flop and we donāt know why. This is whatās known as a feature factory, something Marty Cagan covers in his book Inspired. Itās where teams have a constant state of busyness to launch feature-after-feature without having a positive impact on core metrics. One way to...
Each week I reverse engineer the products of leading tech companies. Get one annotated teardown every Friday.