The Return of Growth Loop Teardown ♻️
Who's next? 👀
First things first…
Happy New Year! 🎉
As one of the earliest GLT subscribers, I can’t say how much I appreciate you being here. I wish you an incredible 2024, and hope to help you in some small way on your growth journey. 📈
As you may have noticed (😅), it’s been a while since I published the inaugural edition of Growth Loop Teardown, which focused on AllTrails’ rapid growth. In classic fashion, as soon as I created this Substack, I was immediately inspired to create all kinds of content except a growth loop teardown AND also took on a consulting project (shoutout to Prematch ⚽️ - they’re hiring and they’re awesome), so I apologize for the wait!
In the meantime, I did publish something for those of you running (or working in) earlier stage startups:
👉 The 12-Bullet Point Startup + 10 sense-check Questions: How to see the biggest levers and risks in your business from Day 1. [There’s also a Notion Template].
The best motivation
Nothing motivates me to get me back in the lab 👨🏻🔬 like sweet, sweet validation.
When I hit publish on my Growth Loop Teardown on How AllTrails Acquired 55 Million Users Organically 🤓, it was a bit nerve-wracking.
Did I get it right?
Did I miss something important entirely?
Would someone at AllTrails look at my teardown and say “lol, what an idiot”?
That’s why this 4-word comment on LinkedIn from Ron Schneidermann, CEO at AllTrails, absolutely made my week 👇
And as if that wasn’t enough, Sam Sabeti, Product Lead at AllTrails, added a comment here on Substack to peel pack some layers on one of the ideas I shared. 🔥
So the pressure’s on to follow it up with an equally on point analysis of another company’s growth.
Let’s do it.
The choice is yours 👀
A little while ago I asked on LinkedIn which company I should analyze for my next Growth Loop Teardown, but there wasn’t overwhelming favorite.
So let’s try that again: who’s next? 👇
Notion - How did a product so hard to describe - that competes so directly with Google Docs - become completely ubiquitous in the tech world?
Linear - People have been working on building a JIRA killer for years. How did Linear leap to the front of the pack and manage to grow profitably?
Anthropic - Why is this OpenAI competitor predicting $850 million in ARR for next year, and how did they do it while playing “second fiddle” to the makers of ChatGPT?
Headway - How did a tiny startup launch “yet another book summary app” into a crowded market & become the undisputed market leader in just a few years?
Let me know which one you’d like to see - your (collective) wish is my command! ✨