Startups

The 4 stages of working data-driven in a startup

Joni Lindgren Founder & Growth PM 1 min read

In this episode of Datadrivet, Joni Lindgren and Jasmin Yaya talk with Carl Lager from ArK Kapital. The topic is how working data-driven changes as a startup grows. Carl has led growth at tech companies including Spotify, Soundtrack Your Brand and Hedvig. He frames the journey as four stages.

  1. Pre stage. The idea exists and launch is coming soon.
  2. Launch stage. You launch and find your first customers or users.
  3. Traction stage. The product has taken shape and starts getting traction in a market.
  4. Growth stage. Exponential growth, and you broaden channels and verticals.

In the early stages you get close to people instead of building dashboards. Hedvig hosted pizza nights with early customers in its pre stage. The nights surfaced things a survey never would, including skepticism about downloading an app. Hedvig built a web signup instead.

At Soundtrack Your Brand, users said in conversation that they wanted Sonos integration.

At the traction stage you define the moments that matter: the set-up moment and the aha moment. Then you start running cohort analysis. Carl says cohort analysis is extremely valuable and still underused by a lot of teams.

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet for Carl’s breakdown of each stage.

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Joni Lindgren
Founder & Growth PM · DM on LinkedIn
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