#132 - Dan Hockenmaier and Gustaf Alströmer

Dan Hockenmaier is the founder of the growth strategy firm Basis One. Prior to Basis One he was the Director of Growth Marketing at Thumbtack. You can learn more at BasisOne.com. Gustaf Alströmer is a Partner at YC. Prior to YC he was the Product Lead for Growth at Airbnb. You can find Dan on Twitter @danhockenmaier and Gustaf is @gustaf. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year. Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ *** Topics 00:00 - Intro 00:50 - Dan's most unpopular advice 1:45 - What growth strategies do people jump on too soon? 2:20 - Questions Dan asks a company he's advising 3:50 - Traits Dan looks for in early growth hires 6:30 - How product and growth are tied together 11:30 - Good/bad learnings from Facebook's growth team 14:00 - A/B testing 17:00 - Retention and other metrics 20:45 - The importance of experimentation 23:45 - Getting ideas for A/B tests then choosing which to do 25:00 - Advice for employees who want to get a growth program going 29:00 - B2B vs consumer growth tactics 34:00 - Pricing experiments 35:30 - Paid marketing 39:30 - Launching in new markets 40:15 - Hiring for marketing 43:45 - Metrics for marketing hires 45:45 - Toni asks - Why did Airbnb grow so fast? 48:45 - Step function growth changes for companies that already had scale 49:55 - Michael Savage asks - It would be great to discuss growth into new regions for example Africa and UAE. What would their approach be, how does it differ from region to region, culture to culture? 52:30 - Justin LaRosa asks - What are some of the most common drivers of viral growth? 55:20 - Hiring a growth agency vs building your own team 58:20 - How do you think about growth in the context of improving humanity?