Breaking the rules of growth: Why Shopify bans KPIs, optimizes for churn, prioritizes intuition, and builds toward a 100-year vision | Archie Abrams (VP Product, Head of Growth at Shopify)
Archie Abrams is the VP of Product and Head of Growth at Shopify, where he leads a 600+ person growth org across product, design, engineering, data, ops, and growth marketing. Shopify powers over 10% of e-commerce in the United States, with $235 billion in GMV in 2023 (roughly the size of Finland’s economy). He previously led Consumer product and growth at Lyft and was at Udemy for 8 years as SVP of Product having joined the company when it was 10 people. In our conversation, we discuss: • Why Shopify optimizes for churn • Why the core product team doesn’t use metrics-based goals • Why they keep multi-year experiment holdouts • How they structure their growth team • The benefits of not having a CMO • Lessons learned about integrating sales into a product-led growth model • The power of discounting as a growth lever • Much more — Brought to you by: • Explo—Embed customer-facing analytics in your product • Dovetail—The customer insights hub for product teams — Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/shopifys-growth-archie-abrams — Where to find Archie Abrams: • X: https://x.com/archieabrams • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/archie-abrams-b6aa8b6/ — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Archie’s background (02:30) Shopify’s impressive growth (06:17) Shopify’s unique approach to churn and retention (08:43) Monetization model and success metrics (11:08) Long-term experimentation and metrics (23:00) Examples of big wins that Archie’s team has shipped (26:42) Monetary friction (27:14) Metrics (29:47) Shopify’s growth team structure (33:03) Goal setting and forecasting (37:10) Examples of long-term results within Shopify (41:36) Shipping neutral experiments (42:05) Building a hundred-year company (48:04) Why Shopify doesn’t use KPIs (51:30) Shopify’s “Get s**t done” framework (54:30) Cross-team collaboration (58:48) The importance of an opinionated founder (01:01:12) Growth and sales integration (01:06:42) Shopify’s marketing structure (01:08:49) Insights on discounting from Udemy (01:11:09) Lightning round — Referenced: • Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/ • Tobias Lütke on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiaslutke • Gross Merchandise Value: Calculation and Best Practices: https://www.shopify.com/retail/gross-merchandise-value • Brian Chesky’s new playbook: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach • Glen Coates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glcoates • Harley Finkelstein on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harleyf • Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/ • Scientific Advertising: https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Advertising-Original-Claude-Hopkins/dp/1640954252 • Four-Minute Mile: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Minute-Mile-Roger-Bannister/dp/1493038753/ • The Sopranos on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-sopranos • Suno: https://suno.com/ — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. — Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe