Lauryn Isford

Lauryn Isford is the Head of Product Growth at Notion, managing Notion's product-led growth engine and self-serve business. Before Notion, she led growth at Airtable, and previously worked on growth teams including Meta, Dropbox, and Blue Bottle Coffee. Lauryn is an active angel investor and advisor supporting companies building product-led go-to-market motions. In Today's Episode with Lauryn Isford: 1. From Blue Bottle to Airtable and Notion: How did Lauryn first make her way into the world of product and growth? What are 1-2 of her biggest takeaways from Dropbox, Facebook and Blue Bottle? What does Lauryn know now that she wishes she had known when she started? 2. What is Growth: 101: How does Lauryn define growth? What is it not? When is the right time to make your first growth hire? What profile should your first hire in growth be? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when hiring growth teams? 3. Mastering the Onboarding Experience: What are the core elements of a successful onboarding experience? How important is time to value in onboarding today? What are the biggest mistakes product teams make in company onboarding? What is the most effective onboarding technique and workflow in PLG today? Why are 90% of current onboarding's done badly? 4. Making Growth work with the Rest of the Org: What are the single biggest barriers to growth and product working together well? What can leaders do to make their growth teams work well with product teams? How can growth teams experiment and test with product without messing up codebases?

Lauryn Isford

Head of Growth

AirtableNotion

Brought to you by Public—Invest in stocks, treasuries, crypto, and more: https://public.com/lenny | Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life: https://miro.com/lenny | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments: https://www.geteppo.com/ — Lauryn Isford is a product growth leader and practitioner, who most recently led Growth at Airtable, and is about to start something new 🤫. In today’s episode, we get into the many tactics Lauryn has learned about optimizing onboarding flows. Lauryn describes how overhauling Airtable’s onboarding led to a 20% increase in activation rate, the company’s unique segmentation process, and why North Star metrics are so vital. Lauryn also shares her framework for a PLG growth funnel, and how to use a reverse trial to leverage the benefits of both freemium products and trials. If you’re looking to find growth opportunities within your funnel, this episode is for you. Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/mastering-onboarding-lauryn-isford Where to find Lauryn Isford: • Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurynisford • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurynisford/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ Referenced: • Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days: https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/1442397683 • Blue Bottle coffee: https://bluebottlecoffee.com/ • Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/ • How to determine your activation metric: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-determine-your-activation • Elena Verna on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/elena-verna-on-how-b2b-growth-is-changing-product-led-growth-product-led-sales-why-you-should-go-freemium-not-trial-what-features-to-make-free-and-much-more/ • The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company: https://www.amazon.com/Ride-Lifetime-Lessons-Learned-Company/dp/0399592091/ • Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon: https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Men-Odyssey-Astronauts-Journey/dp/081298871X • Fifth & Mission podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fifth-mission/id1457274965 • The White Lotus on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-white-lotus • Belfast: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12789558/ • Figma: https://www.figma.com/ • Miro: https://miro.com/ • Zoelle Egner on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/videos/what-pr-is-and-isnt-good-for-according-to-zoelle-egner-head-of-marketing-and-growth-at-box/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Lauryn’s background (03:48) Lauryn’s spicy take on experimentation (06:44) Why doing the right thing for customers should be the ultimate goal (08:54) How Airtable rolled out Airtable Forms with A/B testing (11:38) The importance of onboarding (13:15) Airtable’s onboarding revamp and how it increased activation by 20% (16:57) How Airtable’s guided onboarding wizard improved the user experience (18:00) Why reducing reliance on tooltips can be a good idea for complicated products (20:06) The importance of meeting users where they are (22:52) How Airtable segmented users by learning styles (24:10) Airtable’s activation metrics (27:22) How the week-four multi-user collaboration metric was operationalized (30:45) Other metrics Airtable used (34:34) When Airtable changed their North Star metric  (36:26) How much time to give a North Star metric before pivoting (38:05) Trials vs. freemium and what a reverse trial is (42:51) How to have self-serve options when you’re not fully self-serve (46:04) Onboarding experiences that aren’t very helpful (47:31) How to help users understand features (48:42) Why user education is more important than pushing premium features (50:03) The role of guardrail metrics  (51:40) Lauryn’s PLG growth funnel framework (54:26) How Lauryn’s framework helps teams communicate more clearly (55:57) How Lauryn structured the growth team (57:53) B2B growth as an emerging space  (1:00:18) Lightning round Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. 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

Lauryn Isford

Head of Growth

AirtableNotion