Find the growth loop

MEMO

To: Sam Okoro, Head of Growth From: Product Management Date: Current Subject: Engineering Allocation for Next Quarter: Doubling Down on Our Primary Growth Loop

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Executive Summary

Our primary growth engine is our product-led viral loop (forms $\to$ respondents $\to$ badge clicks $\to$ creators $\to$ new forms). While powerful, it is currently amplifying, not self-compounding ($K < 1.0$).

Both engineers should be dedicated to Idea 4 (“Make a form like this”). The pilot proved a 143% lift in publishing creators from our highest-volume, highest-retention channel. Conversely, Paid Search is deeply unprofitable, SEO templates are editorial rather than engineering work, and referrals solve an acquisition problem we can address organically for free.

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1. Our Primary Growth Loop & Why It’s Not Yet Compounding

Our primary growth loop is driven by the form badge:

$$\text{Active Creators} \longrightarrow \text{Published Forms} \longrightarrow \text{Respondents} \longrightarrow \text{Badge Clicks} \longrightarrow \text{Sign-ups} \longrightarrow \text{Publishing Creators}$$

Current Monthly Metrics (Badge Loop): * 4.8M respondents ($40\text{k forms} \times 120\text{ respondents}$) * 43,200 clicks ($0.9\%$) $\to$ 4,752 sign-ups ($11\%$) $\to$ 1,806 new publishing creators ($38\%$) * Retention: Badge creators have our highest month-two retention (85%, vs. 71% for SEO and 64% for Paid).

Is it compounding? No—not in the runaway sense. * Each active creator publishes $\approx 2.22$ forms, reaching 267 respondents. * At baseline conversion rates, one publishing creator generates only 0.10 new publishing creators per cycle ($267 \times 0.009 \times 0.11 \times 0.38$). Even accounting for creator lifetime retention, the viral factor ($K$) remains well below $1.0$. * The loop is an amplifier of other top-of-funnel acquisition, but it cannot sustain compounding growth on its own without steady top-of-funnel inputs. To move closer to a true compounding state, we must dramatically increase loop velocity and cycle conversion.

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2. Evaluation of the Four Ideas

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3. Engineering Allocation: 100% to Idea 4

We should allocate both engineers to productionize and optimize “Make a form like this.”

This is an architectural and UX challenge, not a copy change: 1. Sanitized Form Duplication: Automatically clone questions, logic, and layout while stripping respondent data, webhooks, and private settings. 2. Instant Preview & Onboarding Editor: Drop users directly into a pre-populated editor session before forcing account creation to preserve the pilot's 52% activation rate.

Expected Impact: * Monthly badge publishing creators will increase from 1,806 to 4,393 (+143%). * Revenue impact: 2,587 incremental publishers $\times 9\%$ Pro conversion $\times \$280\text{ LTV} =$ \$65,190 in incremental LTV added per month ($\approx \$780\text{k annualized}$), with zero marginal ad spend. * It raises our loop factor ($K$) from $\approx 0.10$ to $\approx 0.24$ per cycle, dramatically accelerating organic compounding.

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4. How We'll Know It Worked

We will run a 50/50 randomized split test across all active forms.

#### Primary Success Metric * New 30-Day Publishing Creators generated per 100,000 respondents (Baseline: 37.6 $\to$ Target: $\ge 91.5$).

#### Guardrail & Funnel Metrics * Badge Click-Through Rate: Maintain pilot performance at $\ge 1.6\%$. * Sign-up Conversion: Maintain baseline at $\ge 11\%$. * 30-Day Publish Rate: Maintain pilot performance at $\ge 52\%$. * Form Quality Guardrail: Ensure month-two retention for cloned-form creators matches or exceeds the 85% badge baseline. * Pro Conversion Rate: Confirm downstream Pro upgrade rate stays constant at $\approx 9\%$.

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 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.