Find the growth loop

To: Sam Okoro, Head of Growth From: [PM], Growth Re: Our growth loop, and where the two engineers should go next quarter

Summary: Our primary loop is the badge. Today it does not compound, and the active creator base is shrinking. The "Make a form like this" pilot is the only one of the four ideas that could make it compound. Both engineers should ship it properly, with a holdout. We should not double paid search.

1. The loop

Creators publish forms → respondents see the badge → some respondents become creators → they publish forms.

Last month the loop worked like this: - 40,000 forms × 120 respondents = 4.8M respondents - 0.9% clicked the badge = 43,200 clicks - 11% of clicks signed up = 4,752 sign-ups - 38% of sign-ups published = 1,806 new publishing creators

The badge is our largest source of creators. Templates produced 840 publishers and paid search 441. Badge creators also retain best: 85% are active the next month, against 71% for templates and 64% for paid.

2. Is it compounding? Not yet.

Each active creator produces about 267 respondents a month, which yields 0.10 new publishers per creator per month. With 78% monthly retention, a creator stays about 4.5 months. Over that lifetime, each creator brings in about 0.46 new creators.

A loop compounds only when this number exceeds 1. At 0.46, the badge amplifies our other channels by about 1.8×, but it cannot sustain itself.

The overall picture is worse: - We keep 14,040 of last month's 18,000 active creators. - We add about 3,100 new publishers. - That gives about 17,100 active creators, a 5% monthly decline. - At current rates the base settles at roughly 10,700 creators.

This assumes the 78% retention figure covers the whole base, which is how I read the data.

3. The four ideas

Double paid search: no. - Each sign-up costs $38. Only 21% publish, so each publishing creator costs about $181. - Each publisher is worth about $25 in revenue (9% upgrade × $20 × 14 months). - Adding the loop's downstream creators raises that to only about $46. - Doubling spend would add about 440 publishers a month for an extra $80k a month, and cost per sign-up usually rises with spend. - This idea doesn't need engineers. I'd ask Finance to hold the budget rather than spend it because it's approved.

200 more template pages: not now. - This is not a loop, because new creators don't create more pages. Our team writes them, so output grows only as fast as we write. - We don't know how many pages produce today's 6,000 sign-ups, so we can't estimate the yield. - Templates publish at only 14%. - This is mainly content work, not engineering work.

Referral credit: no. - It rewards sign-ups, not publishing, which invites low-quality and fake sign-ups. - $10 of Pro credit means nothing to the 91% of creators who never upgrade.

"Make a form like this": yes. The pilot changed every stage of the loop:

At network scale, that would mean about 4,400 badge publishers a month instead of 1,800. Each creator's lifetime yield would rise from 0.46 to about 1.1, so the loop would start to compound. Next month's active base would be about 19,700 instead of 17,100.

The margin is thin. The loop reaches the break-even of 1.0 at 0.83 publishers per 1,000 respondents. The pilot beat that by only about 10%. We also need to treat the pilot result with caution: - It covered 500 forms, which may not be representative. - It ran for two weeks, so check whether the 30-day publish window had fully elapsed. - We have no next-month retention data for these creators. People who copy a form may be less committed than people who build one.

4. What the engineers build

1. Staged rollout with a 20% holdout of forms on the old badge, randomised by form and run for at least 8 weeks so we see 30-day publishing and next-month retention. 2. Creator controls and safety: - Copies take the form structure only, never responses. - Creators can turn off copying for sensitive forms. 3. Instrumentation for each stage: click, sign-up, publish, next-month activity, and Pro upgrade. Results should be split by form type so we learn which forms spread best.

5. How we'll know it worked

Primary metric: new publishing creators per 1,000 respondents, treatment vs holdout. - Ship to 100% if it stays at or above 0.83, the level needed for the loop to compound. - Below about 0.6, the change is still positive but the loop won't compound. We would keep it and look for other levers.

Quality checks: - Next-month retention of copy sign-ups should be at least 70%. If it falls much lower, the extra volume won't last. - The upgrade rate of these creators to Pro should be close to 9%.

Guardrails: - Form completion rate is unchanged. - Creator complaints and copy opt-outs are low. - Pro upgrade rate across the base is unchanged.

Business outcome: the active creator base grows month on month by the end of the quarter, instead of falling about 5%.

Bottom line: paid search and templates rent growth one sign-up at a time. The copy-this-form change is our one realistic chance to make growth compound, and a proper rollout will tell us within a quarter whether it does.

MEMORANDUM

TO: Sam Okoro, Head of Growth FROM: Product Manager, Pollen DATE: March 30, 2026 SUBJECT: Growth Analysis & Q3 Engineering Allocation

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1. Our Primary Growth Loop and Compounding Status

Pollen’s primary growth loop is the Viral Product-Led Growth (PLG) Badge Loop.

Here is how it functions: 1. Creation: A creator builds and publishes a form on Pollen. 2. Distribution: Creators send their forms out, generating an average of 120 respondents per form (40,000 forms $\times$ 120 = 4.8 million monthly respondent impressions). 3. Acquisition: 0.9% of those respondents click the "Made with Pollen" badge, and 11% of those clickers sign up. This currently yields approximately 4,752 sign-ups per month at zero media cost. 4. Activation & Retention: 38% of those sign-ups publish a form within 30 days, and 85% of those active creators retain into the following month, immediately re-feeding the top of the loop.

Is it compounding? Yes, it is structurally a compounding loop, but its current compounding velocity is fragile. Because our monthly creator retention is strong (78% overall, and 85% for badge cohorts), every cohort of users added to the system continually outputs thousands of new forms, generating millions of new respondent impressions month after month.

However, the loop’s current conversion efficiency means it is barely breaking even with natural churn. To accelerate compounding, we need to increase the velocity of respondents turning into active creators. That brings us to our Q2 engineering allocation.

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2. Where the Two Engineers Should Go

We have four ideas on the table. We should allocate both engineers to Idea 4: Replace the badge with 'Make a form like this' (Cloning Loop).

Here is why we must reject the other three: * Idea 1 (Double Paid Search): Generates 2,100 sign-ups at $38/ea ($79.8k/month additional spend). While profitable over a 14-month Pro lifespan (9% conversion $\times$ $20/mo $\times$ 14 mos = $25.20 LTV vs. $38 CAC—wait, our LTV is actually around $252, making CAC look fine on paper), paid search yields lower activation (21%) and worse retention (64%) than organic loops. It is linear growth, not compounding. * Idea 2 (200 SEO Template Pages): Good, but it relies on static editorial content. It lacks a viral coefficient and has a lower activation rate (14%) and month-2 retention (71%) than the badge loop. * Idea 3 (Referral Programme): A $10 Pro credit is structurally misaligned for a product where 91% of our base is on a free tier. Free users cannot easily utilize Pro credits, rendering this incentive largely inert for the vast majority of our creators.

Why Idea 4 is the clear winner: The pilot data for "Make a form like this" is exceptional. By reducing friction and showing respondents a working replica of the exact form they just successfully interacted with, we saw: * Badge clicks nearly doubled: From 0.9% to 1.6%. * Sign-up rate held steady: 11% conversion. * Activation surged: 52% of sign-ups published within 30 days (up from 38% on the old badge).

This isn't just an incremental tweak; it transforms our passive watermark into an active, high-intent replication engine. It directly attacks the weakest link in our primary loop (activation) while supercharging top-of-funnel discovery.

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3. How We Will Know It Worked (Success Metrics)

We will roll this out to 100% of published forms on day one of the quarter. We will measure success across three core KPIs over a 60-day post-launch window:

1. Primary Metric (Loop Velocity): Monthly Free-to-Published Creator conversion from badge traffic. Target: A sustained lift in 30-day activation from the baseline 38% toward the pilot’s 52% benchmark.
2. Secondary Metric (Top-of-Funnel Conversion): Respondent-to-sign-up volume. Target: Maintain or exceed the pilot's 1.6% click-through rate across our full 4.8M monthly respondent pool, yielding ~8,400 sign-ups/month from the badge alone (nearly double current output).
3. Downstream Revenue Impact: Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) added via Pro upgrades from this specific acquisition channel. Target: Since 9% of publishing creators upgrade to Pro ($20/mo), the uplift in activated creators from this loop must translate directly to an accelerated net-new Pro ARR growth rate compared to Q1.

Put both engineers on Idea 4. Let's compound the loop.

To: Sam Okoro From: PM, Growth Re: Where the two engineers go next quarter

Recommendation

Put both engineers on the badge loop (idea 4, "Make a form like this"). None of the other three ideas needs engineers, and two of them I'd decline outright.

Our primary loop

A creator publishes a form, respondents see the badge, some click and sign up, some of those publish, and those forms carry the badge to more respondents.

Last month this produced about 1,800 new publishers: 40,000 forms × 120 respondents = 4.8M respondents → 43,200 clicks → 4,752 sign-ups → ~1,806 publishers. That is 58% of our ~3,090 new publishers (templates ~840, paid ~441). It is also our best-retained source: 85% active next month, versus 71% for templates and 64% for paid. Badge sign-ups look like only 37% of the total, but sign-ups aren't the number that matters.

Is it compounding? Not yet

Each active creator brings in about 0.10 new publishers a month (1,806 / 18,000). At 78% monthly retention a creator stays active ~4.5 months, so one creator produces ~0.45 successors over their life. Below 1.0, each cohort is smaller than the one it came from. Today the loop is a roughly 1.8× multiplier on what other channels bring in, not a self-sustaining engine.

The four ideas

A publisher is worth about $25 in subscription revenue (9% upgrade × $20 × 14 months).

1. Double paid search. About $80k more a month buys ~440 publishers at today's $38 sign-up cost, which will likely worsen at the margin. That is ~$181 per publisher against ~$25 of revenue, plus ~$11 of loop value. Even today's spend recovers only a fraction of its cost. It needs no engineers, so it isn't competing for them, but I wouldn't spend it just because Finance approved it.
2. 200 template pages. These are worth doing, but they are a funnel, not a loop: a visitor converts and nothing feeds back into more pages. The work is writing, not engineering. Fund it from content, and I need the per-page yield from today's pages before sizing it.
3. Referral. It duplicates what the badge already does, in a less natural place. A $10 credit per sign-up costs $26–$71 per publisher at the 14–38% publish rates we see, against $25 of value. Credit is also only useful to Pro customers, who are a small share of creators. We have no evidence it works.
4. Badge → clone. This is the only idea that acts on the loop itself.

Why idea 4

In the pilot, clicks rose from 0.9% to 1.6% of respondents, sign-up held at 11%, and publish rate went from 38% to 52%. Publishers per respondent rise 2.4× (0.0375% → 0.0915%). Applied to all forms, that is ~4,400 badge publishers a month instead of ~1,800, or about +2,600 a month, worth ~$65k of lifetime subscription revenue per monthly cohort. Loop gain per creator moves from 0.10 to ~0.24 a month, or ~1.1 over a creator's life. That is the edge of self-sustaining, and the first time we'd have a real chance of compounding.

Caveats: - The pilot was small. 500 forms gave about 106 sign-ups, so the 52% publish rate is roughly ±10 points. At the low end (43%), lifetime loop gain is ~0.9. At the high end it's ~1.3. So "compounding" is plausible, not proven. - A two-week pilot can't have a full 30-day publish window for late sign-ups. - We have no retention data on clone-sourced creators. The 85% may not hold. - I've assumed the badge appears on all forms. Pro forms don't show it, so the true per-badge rate may be higher.

How the engineers split

• Engineer 1: roll-out and safety. Ship the clone flow to all forms behind a randomised test. Make sure the copy carries structure only, never responses or anything private. Handle edge cases such as logic and integrations.
• Engineer 2: the leaks after the click. 89% of clickers don't sign up, and 48% of sign-ups don't publish. Test letting people edit the copy before a sign-up gate, plus a guided path to first publish. Also build the loop dashboard below.

How we'll know it worked

Test design: randomise at the form level, ~5,000 forms on the new badge and the rest as control, for 4 weeks. That yields ~1,000 sign-ups, enough to pin the publish rate to about ±3 points. Read the result at week 6, once the 30-day window closes.

Primary metric: badge-sourced new publishers per active creator per month. Baseline is 0.10, and the target is ≥0.20 by quarter end (the pilot implies 0.24). That is ~3,600+ badge publishers a month versus ~1,800 today.

Guardrails (full rollout only if all hold): - Click→sign-up ≥10%. - Publish within 30 days ≥45%. - Next-month retention of clone-sourced creators ≥75%. - Pro upgrade rate of the cohort ≥ today's 9%.

Kill or rework: publish rate below 42% or retention below 70% at week 6.

Quarter-end question: is lifetime loop gain ≥1.0? If it lands at 0.6–0.9, we've still roughly doubled a multiplier. We should then say plainly that the loop amplifies other channels rather than compounding, and invest accordingly.