Let’s start with a home truth: your growth team isn’t the same as your product team.
While the best growth strategies are often product-led and customer-centric, there is more to growth than product alone, you need:
- Marketing to drive initial traction
- Brand to create a relationship
- Customer support to maintain that relationship
Heck, you even need legal to make sure you’re conscious of what is and isn’t allowed.
Growth isn’t product.
And no, it’s not marketing, either.
While generating traction and acquiring users (aka, marketing) is important, we’ve all learned — often the hard way — that the whole system collapses if you’re not retaining users, keeping them happy, and turning them into advocates. This means growth isn’t product, and it isn’t marketing. So where does it fall in an org chart?
Defining what makes an app growth team
Once we acknowledge these two blunt truths (I’m Dutch, so I don’t beat around the bush), it becomes easier to understand what growth actually is. It’s not a department within your organization.
App growth is a disciplined, cross-functional approach, focused on what truly scales your business. So a growth team is simply a group of people dedicated to driving that scale (again, not a department).
If we look at Phil Carter’s Subscription Value Loop framework, we can see app subscription growth is the result of three key stages:
- Value capture: Converting free users to paid, so you can reinvest in the organization (monetization)
- Value creation: Building a world-class product that delivers real value (activation/retention)
- Value delivery: Distributing that value cost-effectively across channels (acquisition/referral)
Getting this loop to work requires every part of your organization to work together.
This is where growth teams come in. When done right, they’re incredibly powerful. Depending on your stage, goals, and bottlenecks, you’ll need different skills and people in your cross-functional crew.
Think of it like the Avengers: a seemingly random group of superheroes thrown together save the world. On paper, they shouldn’t work — one’s a billionaire in a weaponized suit, and another’s basically an intergalactic Viking god. Yet, it works. Each brings a unique (and sometimes weird) perspective that’s crucial to the mission.The same goes for your growth team. Each member will come from a different background and bring their own strengths, but together, they’ll drive real impact.
How a growth team works: goal and process
It all starts with the team’s goal, just like any other team. What are you focusing on? Where’s the biggest growth opportunity? Personally, I figure this out by running a full growth audit, which helps pinpoint the most impactful areas to work on.
What that normally involves:
- Reviewing all customer insights and data to deeply understand the target audience
- Analyzing performance data across platforms, from acquisition all the way through to retention
- Conducting a light review of key channels — their setup, performance, and gaps
- Interviewing key team members to assess the current growth strategy and approach
In short, I’m examining every part of the growth model to uncover: Where are we underperforming, and why? Often, metrics are connected, so it’s about identifying the root cause.
Example
In a recent audit for a subscription app, I noticed ARPU was lower than expected. At first glance, that seemed like a monetization issue. But digging deeper, I found the real cause: a very high percentage of users were on monthly plans, which pulled the average down. After this, I explored other retention and monetization metrics, ran calculations to estimate the potential impact of optimizing that one lever, and started building a case for where to focus.
From there, the next step is to clearly define the growth team’s goal:
- What is the exact measure of success?
- How are we measuring it?
- What is the current baseline?
- What is the timeline or deadline for improvement?
- What are the key themes — the areas we’ll explore or test to move the needle on this metric?
As mentioned earlier, you can only start building your growth team after you’ve defined this focus. Once that’s locked in, the team can rally around the goal and begin working through a structured growth process:
- Analyze data to identify opportunities
- Ideate potential experiments
- Prioritize experiments using a clear framework
- Run experiments
- Analyze results
This process is continuous and should be supported by a solid meeting cadence. The growth meeting is where the team comes together to review progress, discuss experiment outcomes, and align on the next sprint’s focus.
A strong growth meeting cadence typically looks like:
- Weekly or bi-weekly growth meetings to drive momentum
- Short standups for quick updates in between
- Monthly alignment meetings with other departments (e.g. product, marketing, data)
- Quarterly strategic reviews to step back and reassess priorities
Can a growth team focus on multiple metrics?
In an ideal world, no. They should be hyper-focused on one key metric, to maximize impact. But in reality, especially for early-stage or smaller companies, that’s often not practical. There may not be enough volume or velocity to run enough meaningful experiments on just one area.
In those cases, the team can focus on two (maximum three) metrics, but with clear ownership. Assign a dedicated owner to each metric to ensure accountability and avoid spreading the team too thin. This helps maintain clarity, speed, and impact.
Is your subscription app ready for a growth team?
Put like this, growth teams sound pretty incredible! But another harsh truth (Dutch, I warned you) is that not every company needs a growth team — at least, not in the traditional sense.
Before picking out your superhero names, you need product-market fit (PMF): signals that your app resonates with your audience. This might look like people being willing to pay for your app, using it consistently, or referring others. Your PMF doesn’t need to be perfect, but you need some traction signals.
Trying to scale growth without PMF will lead you to the classic leaky bucket analogy. (It may be overused, but it’s just so accurate.) The growth person won’t be able to grow your app fast enough, and your app growth will be stunted by issues that require time to understand and resolve. In other words, a leaky bucket.
If you’re pre-PMF and want to grow, you could consider a first growth hire with strong product or go-to-market background, but the approach will still be different to ‘typical’ growth (i.e. longer sprints, more research, focus on getting PMF).
At the early stages in a small app startup, growth is everyone’s job. Often, it’s the founder leading the charge, or if they lack the experience, a fractional growth lead steps in to guide the strategy and execution.
3 Common growth team structures
As you grow your team, you’ll start forming more ad-hoc growth teams— often in a cross-functional setup — and eventually bring on a full-time growth lead to run them. Over time, this evolves into multiple dedicated growth teams, each focused on a specific KPI. These teams might be structured by area (e.g. acquisition), target market, or geography, but they all align under a shared, organization-wide growth strategy.
There are three common growth team structures (note that the departments and roles in these visuals are just examples):
1. Independent growth team structure
A standalone team focused on a specific growth lever (like acquisition or retention). As you scale, you can spin up multiple independent teams, each with a different focus.
The independent model is more common in larger organizations and is rarely the starting point — mainly because there’s not enough ongoing work to justify a fully-dedicated team, and it often requires a significant organizational shift.
2. Cross-functional growth team structure
Team members come from different departments but collaborate on growth initiatives while still contributing to their original teams.
Each model has its pros and cons, but for the majority of companies starting out and keen to set up a growth team, I generally suggest starting with the cross-functional growth team structure as it gives speed without needing new headcount.
3. Mixed model growth team structure
The team is essentially cross-functional, but you have a separate ‘growth’ department that also sits in those growth teams.
If you have several existing growth hires, chances are you’re operating in this structure already.
Building your growth team: who should be in it?
Who’s in your growth team really depends on what you’re focusing on. It’s easy to get caught up in who should be involved, but ultimately your growth team is fluid.
Think of the Avengers — technically, they ended up with 17 members, even though they started with just six. Now, 17 is definitely too many for a growth team (I’d aim for four–eight people depending on your company size and growth focus), but the point stands: your team will evolve as your focus shifts. You’ll get a Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch, or Ant-Man of your own.
You might kick things off focusing on retention, only to later pivot to activation or monetization, which requires a different mix of skills and people. It also depends on who’s already on your team and how you like to work.
To help, I’ve outlined some example team setups based on different focus areas. But first, let’s start with who’s leading the team.
Who leads your growth team?
Your first growth hire or growth lead is important. They set the tone for the team’s approach, mindset, and overall culture. They’ll lead the key meetings, drive the strategy to hit the growth goal, and ensure the team sticks to the process.
On a week-to-week basis, their responsibilities typically include:
- Ensuring every experiment starts with a clear, strong hypothesis
- Prioritizing experiments based on impact and effort
- Extracting learnings from each experiment and sharing them
- Maintaining and updating the experiment backlog
- Bringing the wider organization into the growth process, both for ideas and support
What should you look for in a growth lead?
I recommend finding someone who is:
- Structured: Especially early on, when they’ll be building out the foundations of your growth process
- Flexible: Able to adapt quickly when priorities or circumstances shift
- Strategic, yet execution-focused: They need to define the big picture and keep the team moving forward day to day
- A strong leader: Even if they’re not the team’s direct line manager, they should be capable of leading, motivating, and aligning the group
Ideally, they’ll also have experience with the specific growth lever you’re focusing on. For example, if your growth goal is acquisition, it might make sense for a marketing lead to take charge. If it’s retention, someone from product may be better suited.
Learn more
Read this blog for a breakdown on when to make your first growth hire, and who to look for
Now, onto those different potential setups.
1. Monetization growth team
This team’s work usually centers on pricing experiments and optimizing the early customer journey — such as packages, paywall experience, and trial flow.
Key metrics may include:
- Optimizing paywall conversion rates
- Improving trial-to-paid conversions
- Increasing ARPU
Typical team members include:
- [Growth] product manager
- UX/UI designer
- Software engineer (often backend, given pricing changes)
- Analytics support (data analyst or data scientist), since pricing experiments can be tricky to measure
- CRO specialist (depending on the product manager’s skillset and company size)
- (Potentially) finance or RevOps for internal approval on pricing changes
Because monetization is closely linked to activation (especially the trial journey), you may also involve a CRM or lifecycle marketer.
Note that I haven’t split out Android vs. iOS developers because that depends entirely on your testing approach. Some teams test on Android first (smaller user base, lower risk); others go with iOS (main monetization channel or larger audience). Some test on both. There’s no right or wrong here; it just influences who you bring into the team.
2. Activation growth team
Here the focus is on the early user journey: activating new users and retaining them through their first month.
Key metrics may include:
- Day one activation
- Onboarding completion
- Percentage of users completing key actions
Typical team members include the same base setup as monetization, plus:
- Front-end engineering support
- A copywriter, especially if you’re focused on onboarding emails, push notifications, or in-app messaging
Brand team involvement is common when bigger flow or experience changes are needed. A marketer may also be involved in optimizing pre-app touchpoints — what users see before they even open the app matters for activation.
3. Retention growth team
You’re successfully activating users but need to keep them long-term. Enter a vital but often overlooked hero: customer care.
They’re frequently the voice of your customers, providing insight beyond app store reviews or metrics. Direct user research — via customer support or a dedicated user researcher or product manager — is critical.
Typical team members include:
- [Growth] product manager
- Lifecycle/CRM marketer
- Designer
- Data analyst
- Customer care or user researcher
4. Referral growth team
If word-of-mouth drives your growth, putting resources into a referral program-focused growth team can be most important.
Key metrics may include:
- Percentage of users who refer
- Referral-driven signups
This team often closely resembles the retention team setup, but other typical team members include:
- Growth or product manager — specifically to oversee referrals
- Design support
- Engineering
- CRM manager
Depending on size, you might have a dedicated referral specialist, but most subscription apps have a combination of the above team members supporting this effort as a collective.
5. Acquisition growth team
Finally, if your primary aim is acquiring new users or showing lifetime value, you’re looking at an acquisition growth team. Usually, growth team structures support short-term channels rather than longer-term awareness channels (like influencer marketing), which take longer to show results and don’t always fit the classic growth process.
Key metrics may include:
- Cost of acquisition
- Paid signups
- LTV: CAC ratio
Lazer-focused on getting new users onto the app, this setup really depends on the channels you’re targeting most. Typical team members include:
- Growth marketing lead or paid ads specialist
- Creative strategist for visual ad campaigns
- Product manager to optimize the post-click user journey
- CRO specialist, designer, and developer (especially if there’s a web-to-app flow)
- Copywriter, graphic designer/video editor, data analyst (honorable mentions)
If ads perform poorly or generate negative feedback/refunds, bring customer care into the loop. Brand teams often stay involved here for alignment.
Overview of growth team roles
Below is a summary matrix of potential involvement, where green means very likely involved, yellow means optional, and white means unlikely:
As you can see, a lot depends on your specific situation. Use the above as a framework to get you thinking about your own organization — but don’t stress if your setup looks different, or if roles are merged or named differently. That’s 100% okay.
4 Rules for effective growth and product team collaboration
You’re probably sick of me saying that your growth team isn’t your product team, but when your product is an app, the lines can blur — and tensions can run high as a result.
While the best growth is product-led, the two teams can clash. Product usually focuses on long-term vision, stability, and building a solid foundation, while growth moves fast, experiments constantly, and pushes for quick wins. It’s a balancing act.
For your growth team to succeed, some ground rules are essential:
- Align on roadmap and goals so both teams have a shared vision, and can see how each one’s work fuels the other’s
- Agree on how you assign resources so growth planning isn’t overshadowed by product priorities (or vice versa)
- Ensure mutual respect for each other’s processes — they will differ, as will priorities, but both are equally important
- Focus on the end user with one North Star metric that unites both teams
Product should be a core part of the growth team in any structure, which helps minimize alignment issues. But if there are teething pains, just remember that at the end of the day, both teams share the same mission: serving the user and hitting shared goals.
Hiring the right people: don’t underestimate team fit
You can have the best structure in place and still fail if your team doesn’t have the right chemistry. Growth teams thrive on healthy tension: dreamers and pragmatists, risk-takers and risk-reducers. One of my favorite ways to think about this is the Planner vs. Explorer model.
The strongest growth teams aren’t perfectly harmonious with zero conflict — they argue (politely and constructively), and that’s a good thing. Those debates mean they’re thinking deeply, considering different sides of challenges. Under pressure to hit targets we’re often in full go-go-go mode. That’s when you need someone to say, “Wait a second. Let’s go back to our North Star. What about [new perspective]?”
I first learned this while building the growth team at Heights. I came in excited to just go, go, go…only to get pushback from the Head of Product and Product Manager. They asked tough questions, and I was like, “No time, gotta save the world/grow our brand!” But that pushback kept coming — it was often the product team raising critical questions or being more risk-averse, and ultimately they became my balance.
I understood this better when our founder introduced us to the concept of Planners vs. Explorers:
- Planners are risk-averse, like to think things through, and thrive under clear direction and KPIs. They focus on details, prefer perfecting what they work on, and are often deep specialists.
- Explorers are output- and impact-driven, always following the data. They’re hackers over crafters, broader skillsets, more T-shaped.
Of course, people rarely fall 100% into either category, and it varies by situation. (In growth work, I’m about 80–90% Explorer. Planning my wedding? Definitely 95% Planner. Classic bridezilla.)
We tend to think of growth folks as Explorers, but really, you need both. A team full of Explorers is chaos: a million experiments and ideas, zero structure or direction, constantly-shifting priorities, and trying to do too much at once. On the flip side, a team of just Planners moves too slowly, obsessing over perfecting experiments or optimizing what already exists.There are countless personality frameworks out there, most of which will help you build your growth team. This one works for me, but more importantly it highlights a key truth: you need balance in your team to get the most out of it.
Avengers, assemble!
Okay, that was a lot. Are you feeling ready to find your superheroes?
You have product-market fit. You’ve got the data and insights. You’re at the stage where building a growth team makes sense. But how you bring that team together matters too — sometimes more than who is actually in the team.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just take it step by step:
- Clarify the focus: What is the growth team solving for? What’s the biggest opportunity right now?
- Decide who leads: Based on your focus and the skills you need, who makes the most sense to drive this?
- Assemble the team: Who should be in the room to actually move the needle? Be intentional here.
- Check the team dynamic: Do you have a good balance of skills, mindsets, and personalities?
Once you’ve done that, it’s time to start. Follow the growth process, learn from what works (and what doesn’t), and keep iterating.It’s not about getting it perfect from day one; it’s about building a team that can learn fast, move smart, and grow from there.