20VC The Memo: Inside the Growth Engines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Instacart with the Growth Leaders Who Built Them; How Instagram Went from 440M to 1BN, How Twitter Changing Their Signup Flow was a Needlemover and How Removing Card Payment Requirements for Uber Changed the Business in India

Casey Winters is the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite where he leads the PM, product design, research, and growth marketing teams. Prior to Eventbrite, Casey spent close to 3 years at Pinterest where he led the growth product team giving him unparalleled inside the growth engine.

Andy Johns is one of the pre-eminent growth leaders of the last decade. Andy’s career started in growth at Facebook when the company scaled from 100M-500M active users. Since he has worked in some of the leading growth orgs at companies like Twitter, Quora and more recently at Wealthfront as Head of Growth and President.

Bangaly Kaba is the Head of Platform Growth @ Popshop Live, a live streaming mobile marketplace that combines commerce, entertainment, and social. Prior to Popshop, Bangaly led the product growth and consumer product orgs at Instacart and before Instacart was Head of Growth @ Instagram, where he built and led the product team that helped grow Instagram from 440M to > 1B monthly actives in 2.5yrs.

Elena Verna is a master when it comes to all things starting and scaling growth organizations. Previously, Elena spent over 7 years as SVP Growth @ SurveyMonkey where she ran product, growth marketing, and data teams. Post SurveyMonkey, Elena worked with the rocket ship that is Miro both as Interim CMO and as an advisor.

Ed Baker is an angel investor and growth advisor to various startups including Lime, Zwift, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer, and Playbook. Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013-2017. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook.

Rob Schutz is Chief Growth Officer and Co-founder at Ro, the healthcare technology company building a patient-centric healthcare system. Under Rob’s growth leadership, Ro has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the country. Prior to Ro, Rob was VP of Growth at Bark, the makers of BarkBox, and helped scale revenue from zero to $100 million.

In Today’s Episode Revealing Tips Inside The Growth Engines of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter:

1.) Casey Winters:

• How does Casey define “growth”? How does it differ from product?

• How do the best growth leaders decide between art vs science when making growth decisions?

2.) Andy Johns:

• What is Andy’s biggest advice to founders looking to build their first growth team?

• What unexpected choice did Andy decide to make at Twitter that moved the needle for new user acquisition?

3.) Bangaly Kaba:

• What were some of Bangaly’s biggest takeaways from scaling Instagram from 440M users to 1BN?

• What decisions did Bangaly make without data? How did they go? What did he learn?

4.) Ed Baker:

• What are Ed’s biggest takeaways from facebook around structuring growth teams?

• What are Ed’s biggest pieces of advice for startyups looking to grow internationally?

• What were some of Ed’s biggest learnings from working with Travis @ Uber?

5.) Elena Verna:

• What is the difference between a good vs great growth model?

• When does one need to change or amend their growth model? How does one know when it is working?

6.) Rob Schutz:

• Why does Rob believe that startups should not diversify their customer acquisition channels too quickly?

• How does Rob assess resouirce allocation and spend on new channels? How did this process look when partnering with the MLB for Ro?