Archie Abrams

Short-term experiment results are often misleading; true growth impact must be validated through long-term holdouts and cohort monitoring over 12+ months.

"We constantly will relook at an experiment a year later, see that the way the GMV curve for the distribution was different than we might've originally thought. And that'll actually change what we do f..."

Causal incrementality testing is superior to multi-touch attribution for understanding the true driver of growth outcomes.

"What we really care about is incrementality. So incrementality is kind of the gold standards... Incrementality test is basically don't show ads on meta for certain number of people. Show it to the oth..."

Reducing early monetary friction (like trial costs) can causally improve user success by extending their 'runway' to find value in the product.

"When you can lower the barriers to monetary friction in some form... you can actually causally change your ability to become successful, because I've given you a little bit more time to try that idea..."

Discounting serves an emotional 'job to be done' by signaling high quality through a list price while providing an accessible entry point.

"What discounting has a really powerful effect on is it can signal value with a high list price, but then bring something down to an affordable price. ... You could signal very high, signal quality thr..."

High churn can be an acceptable byproduct of a mission to lower barriers to entry, provided the monetization model captures massive value from the few successful 'winners.'

"The way we think about churn is really going back to Shopify as a kind of our mission and what we want to do, which is to increase the amount of entrepreneurship on the internet. And so as a business,..."

Optimizing for local conversion rates often creates perverse incentives for teams to restrict the top of the funnel to ensure only high-intent users pass through.

"The simplest way to increase my signup to activated thing is just make it harder to sign up. Nuts and bolts, that will always happen is when you have teams on that local conversion rates, you get all..."

A centralized 'okay-to' approval process ensures a consistent bar for quality and taste across a large, decentralized organization.

"Every single project that goes out has a few minute video with Figmas and everything, and everything that shipped. Needs to be okay-toed, so approved by the group lead. There's nothing that can ship w..."

Healthy tension between Growth (speed/metrics) and Core Product (quality/vision) is a structural advantage if built on a foundation of mutual trust.

"It's intentionally meant to be almost at odds, and that's part of the structure of how we want to work. ... It might be, 'Hey, we're going to move the button. Hey let's run the test,' but see the shor..."

Technical architecture is a primary driver of long-term strategy; the 'how' is as important as the 'what' for maintaining future optionality.

"The technical architecture determines strategy in a technology company even more than the what and who we're building for. If you build the right technical how and set yourself up to have a platform t..."

Ratios and percentages are dangerous metrics because they can be 'gamed' by reducing the denominator; absolute numbers are more robust for growth teams.

"When you have teams naturally break up the world into different funnel stages or different points in the journey, it gets very seductive to look at my part of the funnel, and what's my conversion rate..."

Banning traditional KPIs and OKRs in core product teams can prevent short-termism and allow for more ambitious, vision-led development.

"We ran against KPIs are basically banned as OKRs or banned and all that. And so certainly, in growth you have metrics, but they take a different form. And then in core, it truly is, do we have convict..."

Successful PLG-to-Enterprise transitions require 'hybrid journeys' where users can move fluidly between self-service and sales-led motions.

"We shouldn't force the merchant to choose, do you want to talk to sales? You want to do self-service? Should give them the options, whatever path that they want to go on. And so a lot of that has been..."