Advices on how to incubate Growth inside a big company like Adobe

1. Growth in Unexpected Places
“How to Recruit and Launch a Growth Team at an
Enterprise Business”
Thibault Imbert,
Head of Growth, Adobe Spark
@thibault_imbert

2. Who is this guy?
Started as a web designer
Developer
Technical sales
Product Manager
Growth

3. I wanted to be that guy

4. I wanted to be that guy
B game

5. I wanted to be that guy
B gameA game

6. What is Spark?
Adobe Spark

7. What is Spark?
Pros Market Expansion

8. What is Spark?
Adobe Spark
Spark PostSpark PageSpark Video

9. Before everything…

10. It starts with organic retention
You can’t grow a crappy product

11. If everyone is doing it, no one really does
Growth

12. We all care about
Growth!
What we saw

13. We all care about
Growth!
Release/Launch
What we saw

14. We all care about
Growth!
Release/Launch
Dammit, let’s
ship this!
What we saw

15. We all care about
Growth!
Release/Launch
Dammit, let’s
ship this!
Revenue
Activation
Retention
Acquisition
What we saw

16. We all care about
Growth!
Release/Launch
Dammit, let’s
ship this!
We all care about
Growth again!
Revenue
Activation
Retention
Acquisition
What we saw

17. 1.0 attempt
Any ETA on the new
instrumentation?
PM/PMM
We have these
features for the June
release first
This will have to go on
the backlog
PM
EM
Product

18. 1.0 attempt

19. This just does not work

20. Executive sponsorship

21. Start small, show early wins

22. Outside of Product
In Product

23. Start small

24. getfeedback.com
Start small

25. getfeedback.com
Start small

26. Start small
Impact of the “Follow us” CTA
on followers growth

27. Buy-in on the mission
Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness
Ask for forgiveness with results
Management support

28. Why a dedicated team?

29. No context-switching
Accountable
Empathy
Empowered
Dedicated team

30. Recruitment

31. Mindset > Skills
Driven by results, not tech
Customer empathy
Determined
Characteristics

32. Build vs Buy
Test before building
3rd Party -> Homegrown

33. So, you have a team now…

34. Growth Product
2.0 attempt
We have code ready
we need to checkin
We have this
experiment we would like
to run!
PM
Engineer
Who are you? Let me
see your code
Great! Do you
have resources to make it
happen?
PM
Engineer

35. Challenges with a separate team
Why are you in my code base?
Why do you get to take short cuts?
We are already planning on doing this!
That’s not how we work!

36. Two words: Build trust

37. A squad, not a team
Still part of the product team
Tour of duty
Easy org setup
Velocity

38. 3.0 attempt
Engineer Engineer
Growth Product
Hey Irina, can you
review my PR?
Sure, let me check!

39. Squad composition
PM PD EM EngineersPGM DS

40. Launch

41. Organization structure
Product
Spark
Video
Spark Page Spark Post
Spark Core

42. Organization structure
Product
Growth
Growth
Marketing
(PMM)
Spark
Video
Spark Page Spark Post
Spark Core
Growth Squad
(PM, PD, PGM, EM, Eng, DS)
Corporate
Marketing
(PMM)

43. Process
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)

44. Process
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)

45. Process
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Backlog
(sprint planning, link to
experiment)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)

46. Process
Ship Meeting
(stakeholders signoff)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Backlog
(sprint planning, link to
experiment)

47. Process
Ship
(soft launched)
Ship Meeting
(stakeholders signoff)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Backlog
(sprint planning, link to
experiment)

48. Process
Experiment
Results Review
(what did we learn)
Ship
(soft launched)
Ship Meeting
(stakeholders signoff)
Experiment Plan
(control vs variant, baseline,
metric)
Experiment Pipeline
(lever, hypothesis, ICE
prioritization)
Backlog
(sprint planning, link to
experiment)

49. Our stack
Pipeline Planning Jira

50. Examples

51. NPS

52. Dashboard in delighted.com

53. Sync with Slack

54. Start a thread for follow up

55. Landing Pages

56. SEO landing pages

57. SEO landing pages stack

58. SEO landing pages stack

59. SEO landing pages stack

60. Data democratization

61. Automated reports on Slack

62. Summary
It starts with organic retention
Start small, show some early wins
Focus on numbers, not tech
Build a squad, not a team
Mindset > Skills
Ideate, prioritize and move the numbers!
Spread the culture

63. Thank you!
Follow me @thibault_imbert
(we are hiring)