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. Most first-time founders either track nothing or drown themselves by logging every click, and this piece makes the case for the... Mean CEO Essay Event Tracking Strategy: What to Measure and Why Violetta Bonenkamp
  2. Video How to Use PostHog: Step-by-Step Guide for Product Analytics & Session Replay PostHog
  3. This is the piece that answers the second half of your question head on: when is it too early to even care. Skok's site is the... For Entrepreneurs (David Skok) Essay Why Early-Stage Startups Should Wait to Calculate LTV:CAC, and How They Should Use It When They Do Jared Sleeper and David Skok
  4. US benchmarks quietly assume US ACVs and US venture cash, so they mislead an Indian founder. This piece grounds the numbers in... upGrowth Article CAC Benchmarks for Indian B2B SaaS by ARR Band: The Real Numbers for 2026 Amol Ghemud
  5. A founder-voice conversation, not a metrics lecture, on why a pretty LTV:CAC ratio can still sink you if the cash takes years... The SaaS Podcast (SaaS Club) Podcast How to Calculate CAC, LTV, Retention and Churn (Startups Unplugged with Paul Orlando) Omer Khan (host), Paul Orlando (guest)
  6. Once you suspect a spike, this guide shows you the mechanic that actually proves it: split customers into cohorts by the month... Stripe Resources Article · About a 12 minute read SaaS Cohort Analysis: A Guide for Businesses Stripe
  7. Video · About 35 minutes Building a Growth Machine (Relay Ventures CEO Summit 2018) Brian Balfour
  8. This gives you the mental picture and the evidence in one place: a bucket full of holes barely fills no matter how fast you... Amplitude Article The Leaky Bucket Problem: More Users Don't Mean More Long-Term Growth Noorisingh Saini
  9. This is the essay that reframes the whole question. Instead of asking whether your DAU/MAU is high enough, it tells you to look... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay The Power User Curve: The Best Way to Understand Your Most Engaged Users Li Jin and Andrew Chen
  10. Most active-user counts quietly measure app opens, which is exactly the dishonesty this question is trying to avoid. This piece... Mixpanel blog Article Monthly active users (MAU): Definition, formula, and 2026 benchmarks Mixpanel
  11. Video Nine Business Models and the Metrics Investors Want Anu Hariharan
  12. This is the honest counter-argument most growth advice skips: when you have low traffic, formal A/B tests usually cannot reach... Entrepreneur Essay The Case Against A/B Testing at Early-Stage Startups Andrew Cohen
  13. Before you run anything, put your real numbers into this and see how many conversions per variant you would actually need. It... evanmiller.org Tool Sample Size Calculator (Evan's Awesome A/B Tools) Evan Miller
  14. Torres takes the next step after you accept you cannot reach significance: figure out what you are actually trying to learn,... Product Talk Article What to Do When You Don't Have Enough Traffic to A/B Test Teresa Torres
  15. When a lot of your funnel lives on WhatsApp, in-store, or over a phone call, the clean website conversion metrics stop telling... Ginesys Article · ~12 min read How Indian D2C Brands are Getting Customers to Return to their Site Ginesys
  16. The core problem with a WhatsApp first or offline heavy product is attribution: you genuinely do not know which channel a sale... Google Analytics (GA Dev Tools) Tool · 5 minutes to build your first link Campaign URL Builder (Google Analytics) Google
  17. This is the most direct piece we found on the founder-led versus formal-function question, and it argues hard that most early... First Round Review Article · About a 20 minute read You're Not Ready for a Head of Growth: Run This Founder-Led Growth Playbook Instead Matt Lerner
  18. This is the piece nearly every other CAC explainer is quoting from, so go to the source. Skok walks through how CAC, lifetime... For Entrepreneurs Essay SaaS Metrics 2.0: A Guide to Measuring and Improving What Matters David Skok
  19. Video Startup Pricing 101 Kevin Hale
  20. A ready spreadsheet so you can plug in your own margins and spend instead of rebuilding the formulas yourself. It maps CAC,... Growth with Gary Template CAC LTV Ratio Heatmap Template Gary Yau Chan
  21. Most founders call a paid campaign a winner or loser off a handful of clicks, and this piece walks through exactly why that... GuessTheTest Article Calculating Sample Size in A/B Testing: Everything You Need to Know Deborah O'Malley
  22. Video Facebook Ads Learning Phase Explained Hernan Vazquez
  23. When one ad beats another, this free calculator tells you whether the gap is real or just luck. You plug in visitors and... VWO Tool A/B Test Statistical Significance Calculator VWO
  24. This is the cleanest explanation of the one idea that decides your first channel: Google captures demand that already exists,... Big Flare Article · About a 12 minute read Meta Ads vs Google Ads for Ecommerce: The Demand Generation vs Demand Capture Framework Daryl Mander

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 →