Grow & market

Channels, metrics, and loops that turn early traction into growth.

What founders use for grow & market, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

  1. From the founder of CMX and author of The Business of Belonging, a practical framework for deciding whether to build community... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~25 min read A Founder's Guide to Community David Spinks In 7 answers
  2. A blunt, practical guide from Demand Curve's founder on which paid and organic channels fit which business, and why most... julian.com Article · Long-form guide Startup Handbook: Customer Acquisition Channels Julian Shapiro In 6 answers
  3. Lenny distills how the best product teams pick a single North Star that captures real customer value and drives the whole... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~20 min read The North Star Playbook & Choosing Your Growth Metrics Lenny Rachitsky In 5 answers
  4. A tactical conversation on growth, retention and building a personal audience as distribution, from the founder of Demand Curve... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~90 min episode Building an Audience Before You Need One (Julian Shapiro on Lenny's Podcast) Julian Shapiro & Lenny Rachitsky In 5 answers
  5. Justin Welsh built a multi-million-dollar solo business purely on a systematized personal-brand engine; his free, no-fluff... justinwelsh.me Article · Weekly newsletter + archive The Saturday Solopreneur (Justin Welsh) & LinkedIn Content System Justin Welsh In 5 answers
  6. The definitive playbook for network and community-led products, drawn from Andrew Chen's a16z experience and interviews with... Harper Business Book · Book (~368 pages) The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects Andrew Chen In 5 answers
  7. Based on studying 100+ consumer companies, Lenny shows that lasting growth comes from becoming world-class at one growth... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~20 min read The Growth Engine: Kickstarting & Scaling a Consumer Business (Step 6) Lenny Rachitsky In 4 answers
  8. Concrete retention benchmarks and cohort-analysis methods gathered from dozens of top companies, so you can tell a healthy... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~20 min read How the Best Companies Measure and Improve Retention Lenny Rachitsky In 4 answers
  9. When you have no budget, the worst move is to pour your limited time into a channel that was never going to work for your... Portfolio (Penguin Random House) Book Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares In 4 answers
  10. The canonical book on making community a competitive advantage, from someone who trained community teams at Facebook, Airbnb,... Wiley Book · Book (~256 pages) The Business of Belonging David Spinks In 3 answers
  11. Battle-tested referral advice from the person who turned Airbnb's host referral program into its biggest driver of supply... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~20 min read Building a Referrals Program Lenny Rachitsky In 3 answers
  12. Julian Shapiro's growth handbook frames brand and messaging as downstream of who you're for and what you replace, practical... julian.com Article · 20 min read Positioning (Startup Handbook: brand and marketing foundations) Julian Shapiro In 2 answers
  13. The canonical explanation of why linear funnels break and self-reinforcing growth loops compound, from the team that trains... Reforge Blog Article · ~15 min read Growth Loops Are the New Funnels Brian Balfour & Reforge team In 2 answers
  14. The original, still-used test for whether you have product-market fit, from the person who coined 'growth hacking' and grew... Startup Marketing / GrowthHackers Article · ~10 min read The Sean Ellis Product-Market Fit Survey (40% Test) Sean Ellis In 2 answers
  15. The definitive explanation of why every marketing channel decays over time, from an a16z general partner who wrote 650+ essays... andrewchen.com Article · ~8 min read The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs Andrew Chen In 2 answers
  16. The flagship Indian growth community, built by ex-CRED growth leaders, combining cohort learning, in-city events and a peer... GrowthX Course · Community + cohort programs GrowthX, India's Largest Growth Community Abhishek Patil & Udayan Walvekar In 2 answers
  17. The definitive framework for building products people return to without paid nudges, the Hook Model, backed by a million-plus... Portfolio / Penguin (nirandfar.com) Book · Book (~256 pages) Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products Nir Eyal (with Ryan Hoover) In 2 answers
  18. A myth-busting piece showing most 'viral' growth is actually broadcast reach, so you can stop praying for virality and engineer... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~12 min read Virality Is a Myth (Mostly) Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
  19. This is the canonical argument that you do not need a mass market to build something real, you need a small number of people... The Technium (kk.org) Essay · ~15 min read 1,000 True Fans Kevin Kelly In 2 answers
  20. If your worry is whether the product itself is the problem, the honest signal is the shape of your retention curve, and Balfour... brianbalfour.com Essay The Never Ending Road To Product Market Fit Brian Balfour In 2 answers
  21. The book behind the "One Metric That Matters" discipline, which is exactly the mindset you need to judge whether a ship worked... O'Reilly / Lean Series Book · 440 pages Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz In 2 answers
  22. This is the piece that named the problem you are asking about: the difference between numbers that make you feel good and... The Blog of Tim Ferriss Article · 10 minute read Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics Eric Ries In 2 answers
  23. Data and tool pages tell you what WhatsApp can do; founder stories tell you what it actually took. This show interviews Indian... Spotify Podcast · Episodes about 25 minutes The Indian D2C Playbook Isaac John Wesley In 2 answers
  24. Once you know your curve should flatten, the next question is where it should flatten, and this piece answers it with concrete... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~10 min read What is good retention? Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers

Show the next 24

The questions

Growth fundamentals & metrics 18

Measure what matters, grow what compounds.

What growth metrics should I actually track as an early-stage startup? 3 → How do I know if I have product-market fit before I try to grow? 2 → What is a growth loop and why is it better than a funnel? 2 → What are the 'four fits' I need before growth compounds? 2 → How should I set up a simple growth model or dashboard? 3 → All 18 questions in Growth fundamentals & metrics →
Paid acquisition basics 18

Buy customers profitably, or don't buy them.

Should I even be running paid ads at this stage? 2 → How do I know if my paid ads are actually profitable? 2 → What makes a paid ad actually convert? 2 → How do I pick which paid channel to start with? 2 → How much budget do I need to test a paid channel properly? 2 → All 18 questions in Paid acquisition basics →
Social media & personal brand 18

Build an audience before you need one.

Why should I build a personal brand as a founder? 2 → Which platform should I focus on to build an audience? 2 → What should I actually post if I'm not a natural writer? 2 → How do I turn an audience into actual customers or signups? 2 → How long does it take for content and personal brand to pay off? 2 → All 18 questions in Social media & personal brand →
Community-led growth 18

Turn users into a movement.

What is community-led growth and is it right for my startup? 2 → How do I start a community from zero? 3 → How do I solve the cold-start / chicken-and-egg problem for a network or community? 2 → How do I keep a community engaged instead of dead? 2 → How do I tie community to real business outcomes? 2 → All 18 questions in Community-led growth →
Retention, referral & virality 18

Keep them, and let them bring friends.

Why is retention more important than acquisition? 2 → How do I actually improve retention and make my product habit-forming? 2 → When should I build a referral program? 2 → Is my product going to go viral, and how do I make it more shareable? 2 → How do I measure and analyze retention properly? 2 → All 18 questions in Retention, referral & virality →
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →