As a founder, product lead at Pinterest and PM for a couple products at Google, as well as a growth partner for Initialized Capital, I’ve seen many product teams struggle to grow. Many products start out with a bang. Some find product-market fit with sustained growth. A few have gone through spurts of hyper-growth. But more often than not, I’ve seen most of them linger then fizzle.

“FOUNDERS LAUNCH THEIR PRODUCT, WONDER WHY IT ISN’T GROWING LIKE GANGBUSTERS AND THEN IMMEDIATELY TRY TO FIX THEIR GROWTH PROBLEM.”

They turn to growth tactics like optimizing their on-boarding funnel, SEO or push notifications before really understanding what they are building and who they are building for. This may create an initial burst of short-term growth.

But it ultimately leads to high churn of your possible customers, while ignoring problems in the core product.
Before trying different growth tactics like throwing spaghetti at a wall, startups need to take a fresh look at their users, evaluate their product end goals and re-define the journey they want their users to take to get there. Here are some tips that can help define a path which will clarify the different steps needed to unlock product growth.