Learning
Learn growth properly.
Growth is a discipline with a body of knowledge, and most of the confusion around it comes from words used loosely. This is where we teach it straight: what every term actually means, and lessons in the order that builds understanding, not in the order they were written.
Lessons
Three tracks, in order.
Start at lesson one of a track and read forward. Each lesson stands alone, but the order is the argument.
TRACK 1
Foundations: what growth is
01What is growth management?The discipline itself: what it covers, what it is not, and why improvised growth stalls.
02The 9 dimensions of a growth systemThe map: every dimension a growth system runs on, and the question each one answers.
03What is a growth audit?How a system gets diagnosed: structure over vanity metrics, and what a score can honestly claim.
04Why growth efforts failThe recurring failure patterns, and why the weakest dimension sets the ceiling.
05Growth loops vs funnelsWhy compounding systems beat linear ones, and what that changes in practice.
TRACK 2
Demand and leads: how buyers arrive
01What is demand generation?Creating demand among buyers who are not looking yet, and capturing the few who are.
02What is lead generation?Turning interest into a pipeline with definitions, scoring, and a clock on the handoff.
03Demand generation vs lead generationTwo jobs that get conflated daily, and what breaks when a team runs only one.
04MQL, SQL, and PQL explainedThe qualification stages, what each one requires, and where teams disagree without noticing.
05When to hire your first growth personThe signals that say the system needs an owner, and what to hire for first.
TRACK 3
Measurement: how you know it is working
01How to measure product-market fitThe signals that say the market is pulling, beyond the founder's optimism.
02What is a good retention rate?Benchmarks by model and stage, and how to read a cohort curve honestly.
03Net revenue retentionThe single number that says whether the business grows without new customers.
04CAC payback periodHow long the money takes to come home, and why it beats most ratio arguments.
05How often to audit growthThe quarterly rhythm, and why the change between two audits beats any single one.
Glossary
Every term, in plain language.
The words people use around growth, defined the way we would explain them across a table. Search or scroll.
A/B test
Showing two versions to comparable groups and measuring which performs better. One variable per test, or the result teaches nothing.
ABM account-based marketing
Running marketing against a named list of target companies instead of a broad audience, with effort scaled to how much each account matters.
Acquisition
The repeatable process of winning new customers. A channel here, a campaign there is activity; acquisition is a system with known costs and rates.
Activation
The moment a new user first experiences the product's real value. Everything before it is a promise; everything after it is retention's job.
ARR / MRR
Annual and monthly recurring revenue: the subscription income that repeats without a new sale. The base number most SaaS metrics build on.
Attribution
Working out which marketing effort caused a result. Software sees clicks; much of the real influence travels through conversations it cannot see.
Benchmark
A reference number from comparable companies, used to judge whether your own number is strong, normal, or a problem for your stage.
CAC customer acquisition cost
Total sales and marketing spend divided by new customers won in the same period. The price tag on growth.
CAC payback
How many months a new customer's revenue takes to repay the cost of acquiring them. Under 12 months is strong for most models.
Churn
The rate at which customers or revenue leave in a period. The quiet number that decides whether growth compounds or leaks.
Cohort
A group of customers who started in the same period, tracked together over time. Cohorts reveal what averages hide.
Conversion rate
The share of people who take the next step: visit to signup, trial to paid, MQL to SQL. Every funnel stage has one.
Dark social
Buying influence that analytics cannot track: private messages, communities, podcasts, word of mouth. Usually the largest channel and the least measured.
Demand capture
Converting the small share of buyers who are actively looking right now, through search, comparison pages, and direct offers. Immediate, measurable, and rented.
Demand creation
Reaching the large majority not in-market yet, through education, point of view, and presence. Slow to show up, and it compounds.
Demand generation
The discipline of making buyers want what you sell: creation and capture run together, with the split chosen on purpose.
Expansion revenue
Extra revenue from existing customers: upgrades, added seats, new modules. The cheapest growth a business has.
Flywheel
A growth system where momentum feeds itself: happy customers create the inputs that win the next customers.
Funnel
The linear path from stranger to customer, narrowing at each stage. Useful for measurement; limited because it consumes what it is fed.
Growth
Not a department and not a hack: the compounding result of a healthy system across product, acquisition, retention, revenue, and the team running them.
Growth audit
A structured diagnosis of how mature a company's growth system is, dimension by dimension, against a published standard.
Growth governance
Running growth to a stated standard with a record of whether it held: standard, diagnosis, prioritized work, and a quarterly trend.
Growth loop
A system whose output becomes its own input: users create content that attracts users, buyers refer buyers. Loops compound; funnels do not.
Growth model
The specific way a business grows, written down: where new customers come from, what makes them stay, and what makes the cycle repeat.
ICP ideal customer profile
A precise description of the company or person you serve best. Everything downstream, from ads to scoring, aims at it.
Intent data
Signals that a buyer is researching: pricing page visits, review-site activity, comparison searches. Behavior speaking before the form does.
Lead
An identifiable person who showed interest: a form, a trial, a conversation. Interest, not yet intent.
Lead generation
The system that turns interest into pipeline: capture, qualification, scoring, and a fast handoff with a clock on it.
Lead nurturing
Staying usefully present with leads who are not ready, with content and timing that respond to what they actually do.
Lead scoring
An explicit points model that ranks leads by fit and behavior, so that qualified means the same thing to everyone.
LTV lifetime value
The total revenue a customer brings over their whole relationship with you. Judged honestly only next to CAC and payback.
MQL marketing qualified lead
A lead that fits the ideal profile and has shown real engagement, crossing the scoring threshold marketing and sales agreed on.
North star metric
The single measure that best captures the value customers receive. Useful as a compass; dangerous as the only instrument.
NRR net revenue retention
Revenue from existing customers this year versus last, counting churn and expansion. Above 100 percent means growth before any new logo.
Onboarding
The designed path from signup to first value. In self-serve products, onboarding is the sales team.
Opportunity
A qualified deal in the pipeline: a real buying group, a real need, an amount, and a stage.
Pipeline
The total value of open opportunities, staged by how close they are to closing. The sales side's forward view.
PLG product-led growth
A motion where the product itself acquires, converts, and expands customers; usage signals replace sales calls until size demands one.
Positioning
The place your product occupies in a buyer's mind: what it is, who it is for, and why it over the alternatives, decided before they talk to you.
PQL product qualified lead
A lead qualified by what they did inside the product rather than what they typed into a form. The strongest signal self-serve has.
Product-market fit
The market pulling the product out of your hands: retention curves that flatten, users who would be very disappointed without you.
Retention
Whether customers stay, return, and get more value over time. The gate every other growth effort passes through.
SAL sales accepted lead
An MQL that sales reviewed and formally took ownership of within the agreed window. The explicit handshake most teams skip, then argue about.
Self-reported attribution
Asking every new customer how they heard about you, in their own words. The cheapest honest measurement in marketing.
SLA service level agreement
The written promise between marketing and sales: what a qualified lead means, how fast it is routed, and what happens when it is rejected.
Speed to lead
How fast a new lead gets a human response. Minutes multiply conversion; days bury it.
SQL sales qualified lead
A lead sales has engaged and confirmed as real: need, intent, and readiness for a serious conversation.
No term matches. The glossary grows; tell us what is missing from the contact page.