Lenny Distilled

How to build a high-performing growth team

October 13, 2022

Featuring: Adam Fishman (Executive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft)

9 quotes · 7 insights

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Emotional needs trump logical features

Most people come to your product with an emotional frame and a lot of people want to appeal to their logical brain right away. And the reality is, don't do that. You have to understand the mindset that people are in.
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 00:19:47

Healthy PLG benchmarks: 20-35% signup, 5%+ conversion

We would improve the first month of revenue or the second month of revenue that a creator made on the platform by 25%. By improving a creator's first and second month revenue by 25%, we were then able to improve their overall value on Patreon by an equivalent amount.
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 39:25

The best activation metrics correlate with long-term retention, not vanity metrics

One of the things that onboarding really drives is habit formation with the product, which leads to retention. I have seen companies shift their curve outward by 10, 15, 20 percentage points from making those changes.
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 00:38:15
If you're doing it right, sometimes conversion should actually decrease a little bit. You might actually have fewer people getting all the way through successfully, but I think that's okay because a lot of those people were probably not the right people for your product.
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 00:45:32

Brand is how people feel, not what you say

I like to think of your brand is the promise that you're making and your product experience is your delivery of that promise. And those two things have to be in lockstep with each other, or you're going to have mismatched expectations and some really disappointed customers.
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 00:00:00

Friction can be your friend

One of our product principles, which became opinionated defaults, which is basically making it hard to do the wrong thing when you're setting up your Patreon page and easy to do the right thing but not eliminating choice.
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 00:42:46

Growth is a system, not a collection of tactics

Onboarding is the only part of your product experience that a hundred percent of people are ever going to touch. Good luck getting a hundred percent feature adoption of anything else in your product, right?
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 00:00:00

Trust your gut about culture fit - it's never wrong

When you're interviewing at a company, you are actually investing an even more scarce resource. You're investing your time. There is no way to get more time. We're all on a finite clock. You can always get more money.
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 01:00:09

Adam's "criteria" refers to his PMF framework for evaluating companies: People, Mission, and Financials as three essential factors when choosing where to work.

Any time where I've shortcutted my criteria, where I've settled for two out of three, or thought one was great, when really it wasn't, has not ended well for me, for the company.
Adam FishmanExecutive in Residence at Reforge, Former CPO at Imperfect Foods, Patreon, Lyft 00:56:41

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