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Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods)13 October 2022

How to build a high-performing growth team

5Frameworks
15Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Strategy4 steps

Onboarding as a Retention Lever

Treat onboarding as a habit-and-retention engine, not a conversion funnel — and accept lower conversion to weed out the wrong users.

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Innovation3 steps

Opinionated Defaults for Onboarding

Encode what you've learned works into product defaults — make the right choice easy and the wrong choice hard, without removing choice.

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Leadership2 steps

Painter, Architect, Surgeon Hiring Archetypes

Match your growth hire to your stage — a versatile painter, a structural architect, or a precision surgeon.

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Strategy4 steps

PMF for Candidates (People, Mission, Financials)

Evaluate a company you might join like an investor evaluates a deal — across People, Mission, and Financials.

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Leadership4 steps

The Growth Competency Model

Four competency buckets for hiring, evaluating, and balancing a growth team without chasing a unicorn.

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 1

Myth Buster45:30

Done Right, Onboarding Should Sometimes Lower Conversion

Fishman challenges the assumption that onboarding is purely a conversion play. If it's working, conversion may actually drop a little because you're weeding out people who were never the right fit and would have churned. The real challenge is finding the sweet spot where retention gains outweigh the conversion you sacrifice.

  • Good onboarding can reduce the number of people who convert
  • The people weeded out were likely wrong-fit and would have churned
  • Weeding them out improves retention among those who remain
  • Risk: cut conversion too far and retention gains won't offset it

“I actually think if you're doing it right sometimes conversion should actually decrease a little bit”

Adam Fishman · 45:30
#onboarding#conversion#retention

Hot Take· 2

Hot Take32:30

Bias Toward Promoting Growth Hires From Inside

Asked whether founders should hire an up-and-coming external candidate or promote internally, Fishman comes down firmly on internal. He believes in creating opportunity inside the company, gets faster time to results, knows what he's getting, and lowers the risk of a bad hire.

  • Fishman skews strongly toward internal hires for growth roles
  • Internal candidates often already own a competency like customer knowledge
  • Faster time to results and a clearer read on the person
  • Much lower likelihood of making the wrong hire

“I tend to skew more towards internal hire to be perfectly honest because I believe in creating opportunity inside a company”

Adam Fishman · 32:30
#hiring#growth-team#internal-mobility
Hot Take48:30

Never Redesign Onboarding for Redesign's Sake

Fishman strongly dislikes redesigning something just to redesign it. You should revisit onboarding regularly, but only fold in changes when you've learned something net-new about your users or growth model. Micro-tweaking a solid onboarding flow rarely moves the needle; a hard-earned new insight is what creates outsized impact.

  • Revisit onboarding regularly, but not just to change it
  • Only rework it when you've learned something fundamentally new about users
  • Micro-tweaks on a good foundation rarely move the needle
  • A hard-earned net-new insight is what drives outsized retention impact

“I very strongly dislike the idea of redesigning something for redesigning's sake”

Adam Fishman · 49:00
#onboarding#product#redesign

Explainer· 3

Explainer36:00

Onboarding Is the Only Thing 100% of Users Touch

Adam Fishman argues onboarding is the single most underappreciated growth lever because it is the only part of a product that every user experiences. Unlike any feature, onboarding is mandatory to use the product, so it's the first and best chance to deliver on the promise the brand made in the market.

  • Onboarding is the only product experience 100% of users encounter
  • You'll never get 100% feature adoption of anything else
  • It's the first chance to either excite or disappoint a customer
  • It's also when users are most motivated, so you can add friction and learn about them

“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…”

Adam Fishman · 36:00
#onboarding#growth#activation
Explainer19:30

Users Come With an Emotional Frame, Not a Logical One

Fishman explains a core idea from user psychology: most people arrive at your product in an emotional state, yet teams instinctively try to appeal to the user's logical brain. He argues you must first understand the emotional challenge driving them to seek your product before addressing anything else.

  • Most users arrive with an emotional frame, not a logical one
  • Appealing to the logical brain first is the wrong move
  • Understand how low their lows and how high their highs are
  • People seek the product to solve an emotional need, not because it's technically best

“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…”

Adam Fishman · 19:30
#user-psychology#growth#customer-knowledge
Explainer42:30

Opinionated Defaults: Make the Wrong Thing Hard, Not Impossible

Patreon codified a product principle called opinionated defaults: make it hard to do the wrong thing and easy to do the right thing, without eliminating choice. Learned from data across hundreds of thousands of creators, it steered them toward a three-to-five tier pricing model with sensible entry price points while still letting them override with added friction.

  • Opinionated defaults make the wrong choice harder but still possible
  • Learned from behavior across hundreds of thousands of creators
  • The sweet spot was a three-to-five tier pricing model, not one tier or forty
  • Friction on changing defaults nudged creators toward what worked best

“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…”

Adam Fishman · 42:30
#product-design#onboarding#defaults#patreon

Story· 4

Story06:30

The Time Lyft Drove a Pink-Mustache Car Into the Office

Fishman's most tangible memory from his early Lyft days was the launch event out of private beta. The team opened the office's big garage-style doors and drove a car with a pink mustache on the front straight inside, with drivers piling out to high-five press members, capped off by a giant pink mustache cake.

  • Launch event marked Lyft coming out of private beta
  • A pink-mustache car was driven into the SoMa office
  • Drivers piled out to greet and high-five press members
  • They served a giant pink mustache cake

“we actually drove a car into the office with a pink mustache on the front of it and then a bunch of drivers piled out…”

Adam Fishman · 06:30

“we also served a giant pink mustache cake at this event”

Adam Fishman · 06:30
#lyft#startup-story#launch
Story08:30

Interviewing Joseph Gordon-Levitt While He Was Dressed as Travis Kalanick

While Joseph Gordon-Levitt was filming Super Pumped, Fishman interviewed with him to be an advisor for his company Hit Record. They spoke over Zoom during a break between scenes, with the actor fully in character as Uber's Travis Kalanick, and Fishman notes JGL is the polar opposite of Kalanick in person.

  • Fishman interviewed with JGL to advise his company Hit Record
  • The Zoom happened between scenes of filming Super Pumped
  • JGL was fully decked out as TK, hair slicked back
  • In person JGL is down-to-earth and calm, the opposite of Kalanick

“he's the guy that plays Travis kalanick the CEO and founder of uber so he did this interview with me and he was like in…”

Adam Fishman · 08:30
#uber#super-pumped#story
Story27:30

Brick Walls and a Borrowed Chromebook: Spotting Execution in a Young Hire

Fishman describes hiring inexperienced-but-driven growth people. Without guidance they run through brick walls, missing the door right next to the wall. He illustrates the execution and work-ethic he looks for with Ben Lazier, who during his Lyft interview borrowed a crappy Chromebook to duck out and ship work at the job he was actively trying to leave.

  • Driven junior people will barrel through brick walls, missing the nearby door
  • Founders must invest in advisors, coaching, and mentorship to guide them
  • The two competencies to look for early are customer knowledge and growth execution
  • Ben Lazier borrowed a Chromebook mid-interview to deploy work for his current employer

“that very driven and hungry and enthusiastic person is going to run through a lot of brick walls which is great except they're going to…”

Adam Fishman · 27:30

“wow this is a guy that like really knows how to get stuff done”

Adam Fishman · 30:30
#hiring#growth-team#work-ethic
Story38:00

How a Human Touch in Onboarding Lifted Patreon Creator Revenue 25%

At Patreon, Fishman's team experimented with product-led sales: connecting high-potential creators with a human at the right moment during onboarding. Doing so lifted a creator's first- or second-month revenue by 25%, which mattered because month-two payments were a key LTV input. They then productized what the humans were doing to make it scalable.

  • Connecting the right creator with a human at the right time lifted month-1/2 revenue by 25%
  • Second-month payments were a key input into a creator's LTV
  • Onboarding work shifted retention curves outward by 10-20 percentage points
  • What isn't scalable with humans becomes scalable once you productize it

“the right person at the right time would improve the first month of Revenue or the second month of Revenue that a Creator made on…”

Adam Fishman · 39:30

“I have seen companies shift their curve outward by 10 15 20 percentage points from making those changes”

Adam Fishman · 38:00
#patreon#onboarding#retention#product-led-sales

Takeaway· 5

Takeaway36:30

Your Brand Is the Promise, Your Product Is the Delivery

Fishman frames the relationship between marketing and product as a promise and its fulfillment. The brand sets an expectation in the marketplace and the product experience must deliver on it in lockstep, or customers end up disappointed by mismatched expectations.

  • Brand = the promise made in the marketplace
  • Product experience = the delivery of that promise
  • The two must be in lockstep or customers feel misled
  • Onboarding is where that promise is first tested

“your brand is the promise that you're making and your product experience is your delivery of that promise”

Adam Fishman · 36:30
#branding#product#onboarding
Takeaway20:30

User Research Builds Your Model of the Customer, Not the Feature

Lenny shares a reframe he attributes to one of the Collison brothers: user research is misunderstood as directly informing what you build. Instead, research informs your model of the customer, and that model is what drives what you build. The more research you do, the more your model evolves.

  • Research doesn't directly tell you what to build
  • Research informs your model of the customer
  • That model is what should drive product decisions
  • In a customer interview you seek to understand, not to find the solution

“user research informs your model of your customer and that model informs what you build”

Lenny · 20:30
#user-research#product#customer-knowledge
Takeaway47:00

Use Proxy Metrics Instead of Waiting 90 Days for Retention

To judge whether an onboarding change trades conversion for retention, you can't wait 90 days to find out. Fishman looks at early proxy metrics. At Patreon, a creator's velocity to their first patron and first $100 processed predicted eventual size, success, and retention. They also qualitatively sampled who was coming through.

  • Don't wait 90 days to learn if a change worked
  • Look at proxy metrics that predict long-term retention
  • At Patreon, velocity to first patron / first $100 predicted success
  • Pair proxies with qualitative sampling of who is onboarding

“the answer is not wait 90 days to find out right like nobody has that kind of time and so what I tend to do…”

Adam Fishman · 47:00
#metrics#retention#onboarding#proxy-metrics
Takeaway1:00:00

Interviewing at a Company Is Investing Your Scarcest Resource: Time

Fishman reframes job hunting as an investment decision. Just as an angel investor does diligence before deploying money, a candidate should do diligence before deploying time, which is even scarcer. You can always recover from a bad money bet, but time is finite and non-recoverable.

  • Choosing a job is an investment decision, like investing in a company
  • You're investing time, an even scarcer resource than money
  • Bad money bets are recoverable; you can climb out of bankruptcy
  • Time is fleeting and cannot be regained, so do real diligence

“when you're interviewing at a company you are actually investing in even more scarce resource you're investing your time”

Adam Fishman · 1:00:30

“you can always get more money if you make a bad investment decision”

Adam Fishman · 1:00:30
#career#job-search#decision-making
Takeaway1:01:00

Back-Channel Reference Your Future Employer Like an Investor

Just as investors back-channel and companies back-channel candidates, candidates should back-channel the company. Talk to current or former employees who aren't on the interview circuit, since their incentive to act as a salesperson is greatly diminished and they'll be far more candid about what it's really like to work there. If a company refuses to let you talk to people, that itself is a signal.

  • Companies and investors back-channel; candidates should too
  • Talk to current or former employees not on the interview circuit
  • Off-circuit people are less incentivized to sell and more candid
  • A refusal to connect you with people is itself a red flag

“you can talk to current or former employees who are not on the interview circuit and because they are not on the interview circuit their…”

Adam Fishman · 1:01:00
#career#hiring#due-diligence