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.

To: Sam Okoro, Head of Growth From: [PM], Pollen Subject: Growth loop and where the two engineers go next quarter

Recommendation

Put both engineers on replacing the badge with "Make a form like this" and rolling it out to every form, with a holdout to measure it. Paid search and template pages don't need engineers. Referrals should wait until we have badge results.

Our primary loop

Creators publish forms. Respondents see the badge. Some click and sign up. Some of those sign-ups publish, and their forms bring in more respondents. Last month the badge drove about 4,750 sign-ups (4.8M respondents × 0.9% click rate × 11% sign-up rate) and about 1,800 new publishers. It has the best publish rate (38%) and next-month retention (85%) of any channel.

Is it compounding?

Not yet. Compounding requires each cohort to bring in more new creators than churn removes. Last month:

• New publishers: about 1,800 from the badge, 840 from template pages, and 440 from paid search, roughly 3,100 in total.
• Churn: 22% of 18,000 active creators, roughly 4,000.

At current rates the base shrinks about 5% a month, and paid and template pages are what keep it from falling faster. The badge is our best channel but a leaky one. It returns about 0.1 new publishers per active creator per month, against 22% churn.

Paid search is expensive. At $38 per sign-up and 21% publishing, a new publisher costs about $180. The average publisher is worth about $25 in Pro revenue (9% upgrade × $20 × 14 months). It only pays back if those publishers' forms keep feeding the badge. Finance has approved the budget, so it needs no engineering, but we should treat it as paid acquisition, not growth.

What the pilot changes

The copy-form badge raised clicks from 0.9% to 1.6% and publish rate from 38% to 52%. Applied to all forms, that's about 4,400 badge-driven publishers a month instead of 1,800. Total inflow would be about 5,700 against roughly 4,000 churn. That moves us from shrinking to growing, which is the difference that matters for this quarter.

The caveat is sample size. The pilot covered 500 forms: about 960 clicks and around 55 publishers. That's too small to bank on, which is why the rollout needs a holdout.

Where the engineers go

• Engineer 1: ship the badge replacement to all forms. This covers the copy-to-editor flow, production hardening, instrumentation, and a 10% holdout of forms that keep the old badge.
• Engineer 2: shorten the time from copy to publish. This means pre-filled editors, easy save-and-share, and prompts to publish the copy within the first week. Publish rate is the conversion step most worth improving in this loop.

Not engineering priorities this quarter

• Doubling paid search: Finance-approved and needs no build. Watch cost per publisher closely, given the Pro economics above.
• 200 template pages: This is content work for our team. Template sign-ups publish at 14%, the lowest of the three channels, but search traffic compounds over time. Start once the badge result is in, if capacity allows.
• Referral programme: The $10 credit could become a real loop, but we have no data on referrals per user, and it carries fraud risk. Revisit in Q2 with a small test cohort.

How we'll know it worked

Measured against the holdout after eight weeks:

1. Click rate: at least 1.6% of respondents on treated forms, against about 0.9% on control.
2. Publish rate: at least 50% of copy-form sign-ups publish within 30 days, against 38% today.
3. Net growth: new publishers exceed churn (about 4,000 at today's base), so the active base grows month over month.
4. Quality: copy-form publishers retain at 85% or better into the following month, so they aren't one-off users.
5. Revenue: Pro upgrade rate among new publishers is at least 9%.

Revert if the click lift against holdout is not clear, or publish rate falls below 38%, the old baseline.

MEMO

To: Sam Okoro, Head of Growth From: Product Management Date: May 24, 2024 Subject: Q3 Growth Engineering Allocation & Loop Analysis

Sam,

Ahead of Q3 planning, I analyzed our acquisition data to determine where we should allocate our two growth engineers.

The short answer: Both engineers should be dedicated to Idea #4 (the "Make a form like this" badge upgrade). It is the only option that pushes our primary viral loop past its tipping point into true compounding growth.

Here is the math behind where we stand today and why this is our highest-leverage move.

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1. Our Primary Growth Loop (and Why It Isn’t Compounding Yet)

Our primary growth engine is our viral badge loop: Active Creators $\rightarrow$ Publish Forms $\rightarrow$ Collect Responses $\rightarrow$ Respondents Click Badge $\rightarrow$ Sign Up $\rightarrow$ Publish Forms.

Last month, this loop generated 59% of all new active creators (1,806 published creators via the badge, compared to 840 from SEO templates and 441 from paid search). Badge-acquired creators also have our highest activation rate (38%) and highest next-month retention (85%).

However, this loop is currently sub-critical (not compounding).

To compound, our net growth rate must exceed our monthly creator churn. Here is the math on last month’s performance: * Free Creators: Of our 18,000 active creators, 9% (1,620) upgraded to Pro, removing the badge. That leaves 16,380 free creators driving the loop. * Impressions: At an average of 2.22 forms per creator (40k / 18k) and 120 respondents per form, each free creator generates 266.7 badge impressions. (4.37M total impressions across the free base). * Conversions: 4.37M impressions $\times$ 0.9% CTR = 39,312 clicks $\times$ 11% signup rate = 4,324 signups $\times$ 38% publish rate = 1,643 new active creators. (Note: Even if Pro forms carried badges last month to yield 1,806 new creators, the per-creator math remains the same). * The Viral Factor ($K$): 1,643 new creators / 16,380 free creators = 0.10 new creators per active free creator per month.

The Churn Problem: We lose 22% of our active creators each month (78% retention), and another ~9% upgrade to Pro and exit the viral loop. Because our viral generation rate (+10%) is lower than our loop attrition (-22% to -31%), the loop is decaying on its own. Right now, our total creator base is only growing because we prop it up with linear channels (SEO and Paid Search).

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2. Evaluating the Four Ideas

1. Double Paid Search Budget (Pass — Negative ROI) * We pay $38 per signup, and 21% publish. That is a $181 CAC per active creator. * Only 9% of active creators upgrade to Pro ($20/mo for 14 months = $280 LTV). That means our expected LTV per active creator is only $25.20 ($280 $\times$ 9%). * Verdict: We are losing ~$155 on every active creator we buy. Not only does this not require engineering, we should actually talk to Finance about cutting this spend, not doubling it.

2. "Build our SEO Loop" with 200 Template Pages (Pass — Not a Loop) * Because our team writes these pages rather than our users, this is a linear content marketing funnel, not a compounding loop. * Furthermore, template signups have our worst activation rate (14% publish vs. 38% for the badge) and mostly calls on content/design resources, not engineering.

3. Referral Programme for $10 Pro Credit (Pass — Low Leverage) * Only 9% of creators care about Pro features enough to pay for them; for the other 91% on our free tier, $10 in Pro credit is an weak incentive. Building a referral ledger and billing integration will easily eat two engineers' quarter for an unproven, likely tiny audience.

4. "Make a form like this" Badge (WIN — Pushes Loop to Compounding) * By dropping respondents straight into an editor with a cloned template, our 500-form pilot radically improved the funnel: CTR jumped from 0.9% to 1.6% (+78%), and the publish rate jumped from 38% to 52% (+37%). * New Loop Math: 266.7 impressions per creator $\times$ 1.6% CTR $\times$ 11% signup $\times$ 52% publish = 0.244 new active creators per free creator each month. * Even accounting for the 9% of creators who upgrade to Pro and remove the badge, every active creator now generates 0.222 new creators/month. Combined with the higher retention of badge cohorts (85%, or only 15% churn), our viral inflow (+22.2%) finally outpaces cohort churn (-15%). This makes Pollen self-sustaining and genuinely compounding. * Rolling this out across 40,000 forms next month will take our monthly badge-driven active creators from ~1,800 to ~4,390 (+2,590 net new creators/month), adding ~$65,000 in new LTV every single month from Month 1.

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3. Recommendation & Success Metrics

Put both engineers on Idea #4 to build the form-cloning architecture, handle privacy/sanitization (ensuring respondent data isn't copied over with the form structure), and ship the new badge UI to 100% of free forms.

How we’ll know it worked (Success Metrics for Q3): 1. Badge CTR: Sustains at $\ge 1.5\%$ across all free forms (up from 0.9%). 2. Signup-to-Publish Rate: Sustains at $\ge 50\%$ within 30 days for badge signups (up from 38%), without cannibalizing the 11% click-to-signup rate. 3. Guardrail Metric: Creator complaint/churn rate remains flat (verifying that original creators don't mind having their form structures cloned). 4. North Star Impact: Monthly new published creators from the badge increases from ~1,800 to >4,000/month within 30 days of full rollout.