Why Founders Must Own Their Growth Story

The Growth Insight 🌱

Why Founders Must Own Their Growth Story

Picture this: You've built something amazing, and now you're thinking "Time to hire a growth expert!" Hold that thought. Here's why you, the founder, need to be in the driver's seat of your growth journey.

The Secret Sauce is You

Every startup is like a unique recipe - your product, your market, your vision. No growth expert, no matter how talented, can understand these ingredients better than you do. It's like trying to have someone else explain your life story - they might get the facts right, but they'll miss the soul of it.

The Product-Market Fit Puzzle

Finding product-market fit is like solving a complex equation where the variables keep changing. As Willie Tran points out, it's not just about growing numbers - it's about understanding the deep connection between what you're building and who you're building it for. This insight lives in your founder DNA.

Think Loops, Not Funnels 

The old way of thinking about growth was linear: pour more in at the top, get more out at the bottom. But modern growth is cyclical. It's about creating self-reinforcing loops where each satisfied customer helps bring in the next one. As a founder, you need to design these loops into your product's DNA from day one.

The Early-Stage Growth Trap

Hiring a growth person too soon is like hiring a race car driver before you've built the engine. They might know how to drive fast, but if the fundamental machine isn't ready, you're just burning fuel. Instead, founders need to:

• Deeply understand their users

• Build growth mechanisms into the product itself

• Create sustainable, repeatable growth patterns

• Test and learn directly from the market

Remember: The best growth strategies aren't borrowed - they're built from the ground up, with the founder's fingerprints all over them.

Credit: Inspired by "Growth Loops are the New Funnels" by Reforge

What’s Up with Tech🖥️

OpenAI Drama 🔍 Ex-researcher Suchir Balaji claims OpenAI might be breaking copyright laws with ChatGPT's training data.

Safety First 🚨 Character AI tightens safety measures after tragic teen incident, adding strict moderation and screen time alerts.

Claude Upgrades 🚀 Anthropic boosts Claude with 3.5 versions of Sonnet and Haiku, plus exciting new computer abilities.

IBM's AI Move ⚡ IBM releases smaller but mighty Granite 3.0 AI models, claiming they pack the punch of bigger rivals.

Kraken's Chain 🔗 Crypto exchange Kraken plans to launch Ink, a new Ethereum layer 2 network, joining forces with Optimism.

Crypto Politics 🗳️ Presidential race heats up with Trump signaling crypto-friendly stance, while Harris suggests stricter oversight.