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Melissa Tan

Episode #207

Former Head of Growth at Webflow & Dropbox

Webflow / Dropbox / Advisor

👥Team & Culture🚀Career & Leadership⚡Execution

📝Full Transcript

14,916 words
Melissa Tan (00:00:00): My aha moment of the value of first principles thinking was when I was at Dropbox. We would hire a ton of really smart people that had never done sales and had them do sales. There are a lot of disadvantages to that, but I do think it led to a ton of innovation. That's how we got our very innovative go-to market motions because a lot of those people then moved into different functions at the company. They had all this context on who the user was. They had talked to so many different users at that point. If you take people that are just super smart, they've never done it before, one advantage of that is they can innovate because I think they come in with, I don't know anything. Let me just figure this out. Lenny (00:00:38): Welcome to Lenny's podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard one experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Melissa Tan. Melissa was the longtime head of growth for Dropbox's B2B business. She's also their first growth product manager. Then she went on to do full-time advising for companies like Canva, Grammarly, Miro, and Ro, helping them with their growth strategy and helping them build their growth teams. (00:01:03): For the past two and a half years, she's been leading growth at Webflow. But hot off the presses as Melissa shares at the top of this podcast, she's going back to full-time advising life. So if you're looking for help with go-to market plans, growth strategy, building your growth team, aligning your sales, marketing and growth efforts, she's about to become available, so definitely reach out. In our conversation, we get deep into what it takes to build a high performing team and also how to build a high performing growth team, specifically. (00:01:30): Melissa shares advice for becoming a leader that people will follow from company to company, how to best develop your people to become the best versions of th...

💡 Key Takeaways

  • 1Hire for 'First Principles Thinking' rather than just experience to drive innovation.
  • 2Use a 'Flying Formation' (DACI + Operating Rhythms) to align Growth with Product and Marketing.
  • 3Test candidates' coachability by giving them feedback *before* their final interview presentation.
  • 4Start investing in Sales when customers demand enterprise features like SSO and security, even in PLG models.
  • 5High-performing teams require clear goals, a results-oriented culture, and an ownership mentality.
  • 6Don't copy growth experiments from other companies blindly; execute based on your specific user data.
  • 7The first growth hire should often be a 'portfolio manager' who can test multiple channels, not just a specialist.

📚Methodologies (3)

👥 Team & Culture

A structured approach to cross-functional alignment that combines clear role definitions (DACI), specific metric ownership splits, and rigorous operating rhythms to ensure teams move in unison.

Core Principles

  • 1.Define the DACI: Clearly identify the Driver, Accountable, Contributor, and Informed roles for every initiative.
  • 2.Split Metric Ownership: Example - Growth Marketing owns Signups/CAC; Product Growth owns activation and downstream revenue.
  • 3.Establish Operating Rhythms: Implement weekly metric reviews and quarterly planning sessions where teams sync on shared initiatives.

"Growth shouldn't feel like a layer on top of product. The best way to execute is to have growth infused into how you think about product development."

#'flying#formation'#operating
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🚀 Career & Leadership

A unique interview step where the hiring manager holds a 'prep call' with the candidate a week before their final presentation to give feedback and context, testing if they incorporate it.

Core Principles

  • 1.Live Problem Solving: Assign a prompt related to a current, real company problem (e.g., 'How would you price this product?').
  • 2.The Prep Call: Schedule a coaching session before the final panel to review their draft and give direct feedback.
  • 3.Assess Incorporations: The hire decision is heavily based on whether they adjusted their final presentation based on the prep call feedback.

"I actually will give feedback on the presentation [before the interview]... Sometimes it's the biggest signal to what it's going to be like to work with this person."

#collaborative#feedback#interview
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⚡ Execution

Focuses on hiring individuals who build their own mental models by asking 'Why?' and 'How?' rather than relying on past experience or industry best practices.

Core Principles

  • 1.Ignore Standard Experience: Be willing to hire smart people who haven't done the specific role before (e.g., sales) if they are innovators.
  • 2.Live Deconstruction: Ask candidates to pull up your product/website and deconstruct it on the spot.
  • 3.The 'I Don't Know' Advantage: Value candidates who admit ignorance but demonstrate a logical path to finding the answer.

"If you take people that are just super smart, they've never done it before... they can innovate because I think they come in with, 'I don't know anything. Let me just figure this out.'"

#first#principles#hiring
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