Growth Sprints & Experiments

Understanding the Purpose of Growth Sprints

Growth sprints are short, focused periods where a startup aims to drive significant growth in a specific area. The core objective is to produce measurable improvements and validate learnings rapidly. As a growth coach, you will assist founders in delineating and managing these sprints, ensuring alignment with Volta’s value of accelerating startup progress through impactful support.

Core Components of a Volta Growth Sprint

Objective Setting: Begin by identifying the growth target with the founder. This could be user acquisition, revenue increase, conversion rate optimization, or other KPIs crucial to the startup's current phase.

Duration Identification: Define the length of the sprint. Typically, this ranges from one to four weeks, allowing enough time to execute experiments and gather data without stalling other progress.

Experiment Definition: Based on the growth objective, brainstorm with the founder to outline potential growth experiments. Aim for ideas that are innovative yet feasible within the sprint's timeframe.

Designing Growth Experiments

As a Volta Growth Coach, your role is to guide founders in transforming growth sprint ideas into structured experiments. Each experiment should include the following:

Hypothesis: Formulate a clear, testable hypothesis. It should predict the outcome of the experiment based on changes made. For example, "If we introduce an in-app tutorial, then user engagement will increase by 20% within two weeks."

Variables: Determine the independent variable(s) you will change and the dependent variable(s) you will measure.

Methodology: Outline the actions to be taken. What will be changed, and how will the effect be measured? Ensure that the method is robust and eliminates as much bias as possible.

Success Metrics: Define what success looks like. Establish KPIs prior to executing the experiment to measure against your hypothesis.

Documentation and Analysis: Ensure thorough documentation of the experiment’s setup, execution, and outcomes. Analyze the results and derive insights once the experiment is complete.

Collaborative Experimentation with Founders

Meet with founders to:

Explain the growth experiment process and its importance.

Brainstorm experiments collaboratively.

Evaluate proposed experiments for alignment with objectives and feasibility.

Select and prioritize experiments based on potential impact and resources required.

Running the Growth Experiment

During the Growth Sprint, coaches assist founders in following through with their experiments:

Track progress against KPIs and support founders in making adjustments when necessary.

Encourage adherence to the timeline and focus on the planned activities.

Promote an agile mindset, preparing founders to pivot based on the data obtained.

Post-Sprint Debrief

After the sprint concludes, meet with founders to:

Review results against hypotheses and success metrics.

Extract learnings and develop actionable insights.

Determine whether to scale, iterate, or abandon based on the outcomes of the experiments.

Remember, our founder-centric model means we put the learning and capacity building of the founder at the forefront of all activities. Your role as a Volta Growth Coach is to be an enabler, advisor, and catalyst for this learner-led growth. Engage in Volta “Tough Love” to provide honest feedback that helps founders build better products and businesses.

With this approach, you will empower founders to build a growth engine that sustains beyond the scope of Volta's direct involvement, fostering sustainable success to which both founders and the Volta community can aspire.

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.