1
Rational Growth
An introduction to growing user signups via
data and analytical thinking
By Sandi MacPherson
Via interviews with Andrew Chen
Kindly sponsored by:
2
Rational Growth
We live in world where it's easy to write code, but still hard to get the code into the
hands of customers and users.
Luckily, the same skills that make technology products possible the analytical thinking
that drives the engineering skills for product development can be applied to
"engineering" the growth of your users as well. The foundation of this thinking is to
build a spreadsheet that models out how people discover and sign up to your product.
By refining this model with real life data, you can to simulate different scenarios and to
prioritize product changes. Finally, by deploying this code to real life and observing its
effects, you can then further refine your model to make better changes in the future.
This eBook will focus on thinking about your signup flow, which is often the highest
point of leverage in your product. Products often lose 80-90% of their users within the
first couple screens and the first couple minutes of their experience. Improving this is
key to having a successful product. But the ideas explained here can be applied
anywhere- whether you're trying to encourage more inviting, sharing, or more.
This is an introduction to the topic there is much more literature out there, but I
hope this is a good starting point to learn to think analytically about growth.
Written by Sandi MacPherson (@sandimac)
Based on interviews with Andrew Chen (@andrewchen)
3
From Visual to Spreadsheet
"All models are flawed, but some are useful" George Box (Statistician), 1979
Before you can start this eBook, you need a product. And you need some users
who are signing up to your product, even a small trickle will do. If you haven't done this
yet, no optimization process will help you! So start there first. Even better is a product
that has deeply engaging usage and a vi