Working in growth isn't easy. Most of us don't have a tour guide. We learn by making mistakes.

Here's a few of my biggest mistakes over the past few years 🤦🏻‍♂️

1. I didn't spend enough time managing up.

I thought that my executive team understood what growth was focused on, and why. In reality, we were often totally misaligned.

I should have spent way more time making sure I had executive buy-in to be successful.

2. I didn't fight hard enough for resources.

I always had a hard time advocating for more headcount. Especially engineers. Rather than let it be a blocker, I focused on revising the scope of my projects to the resources I had.

I thought I was being a team player. But in retrospect, this ensured that I didn't get the resources I needed to be successful.

3. I focused too much on quick-wins.

Related to number 2, that meant I focused too much on quick-wins at the expense of the much larger opportunities. The big, impactful ones.

I thought I was gaining momentum. In reality I was creating an internal brand that growth only focused on small incremental work.

4. I lost focus on the people who use the product

I once presented six charts in a slide deck to explain the story behind our monthly churn.

My manager pulled me aside.

"Andrew, you're in this room because you know the data...But this group cares more about the people than the graphs. Next time, walk us through a painful customer churn - then share the data to illustrate how often this happens"

It was a great reminder to stay close to the users. Not just the spreadsheets.


These are just a few. I've made a million more mistakes in my journey. I'm still focused on getting a little better every day.