Interesting.

Chamath's four-part framework:

1. Acquisition – Get people in front of your product …

What is the thing people are here to do?

How do you get them in the door quickly?

2. Activation – Provide a great initial experience …

What is the “aha” moment or “must have” experience?

How do you get people to this point as fast as possible (i.e. in seconds)?

3. Engagement – Keep people engaged, deliver value …

How do you continue to deliver as much core product value as possible?

4. (Virality) – Get people to recommend your product …

Similar to McClure's metrics for pirates: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/09/startup-metrics.html

Main takeaways:

1. A few folks -- most notably Chamath Palihapitiya -- talked about using growth on top of a very strong core product foundation, and not as a means of trickery. Most sustainable growth happens after product-market fit.

2. Distribution needs to be part of a product, not something slapped on.

3. Cultures with measurement/data front and center are more conducive to growth: you need to find what is actually working and not what someone thinks is going to be effective. There's certainly some disagreement on the specifics of how to create that culture.

See also:

A primer on A/B testing: http://numeratechoir.com/a-primer-on-ab-testing-yummy-candy/

Canel Joyce's notes: http://www.caneelian.com/2012/10/30/what-is-a-growth-hacker-does-your-startup-need-a-growth-team/

Answering 3 key questions can help you decide how your growth strategy relates to your product.

First, what’s your product’s “atomic unit”? This is the fundamental object that people are consuming and/or creating. Some examples:

Instagram – photo

Twitter – tweet

Tumblr – post

DropBox – file

Codecademy – lesson

It’s important to identify and hone in on one atomic unit. Juggling multiple often results in a disjointed and muddled product experience.

Second, what’s your product’s core benefit? Here’s one way to go about figuring this out:

Identify your “must have” users – who are the people who would be very disappointed if they could no longer use your product?

Ask 20-30 of these users to explain the primary benefit they receive from the product. It’s ideal to ask these questions through an in-product survey, when users are in the mindset to answer them accurately.

Group then narrow down the responses to 3-4 benefit statements and ask people to choose their favorite.

Ask users why they chose that benefit.

Third, what’s the KPI that predicts whether a sign-up will activate and become an engaged user?

For Facebook, it’s getting an individual to 7 friends in 10 days.

For DropBox, it’s getting a new user to link a computer and add a file.

Every growth tactic you consider should be judged according to how well it aligns with your product’s atomic unit, core benefit, and key user activation metric.

Finally, once you set the growth metrics, it’s important to continuously question them – are these still the right metrics to focus on as your product evolves?

Optimizing sign-up flows

How do you evaluate different sign-up flows and decide where to allocate time and resources? The first step is understanding all of the various channels that are bringing new users to your product. Determine the conversion rate of each and prioritize based on the following 4 points:

It’s easier to build on a strength than to improve a weakness.

Likewise, it’s easier to get an active user to do more than to get an inactive user to do anything. LinkedIn, for instance, sends “Who’s been viewing your profile” emails to active users of the site (20% CTR) rather than inactive members (5% CTR).

Desire – Friction = Conversion. It’s a lot easier to reduce friction than to create desire.

Apply the 10% rule: Assuming you can increase the conversion rate of each channel by 10%, how many incremental users do you get from each flow?