20Growth: Five Signs of Top Growth Talent and How to Detect Them, How to Structure and Conduct the Most Efficient Customer Discovery Process & The Framework to Determine Your North Star and When To Change it with Darius Contractor, Former VP Growth @ Airt

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Darius Contractor is one of the pre-eminent growth leaders of the last decade. As a growth OG, he has been VP Growth @ Airtable, where he led the growth, engineering, and product teams. Before Airtable, Darius was Head of Product Growth @ Facebook Messenger and finally, before Facebook, Darius spent 4 years as Head of Growth Engineering at Dropbox; here, Darius helped drive Dropbox to $100M in net new revenue through Dropbox Business. If that was not enough, Darius is also an active angel and fund investor with a portfolio including Calm, Airtable, Clubhouse, Census and LP checks in Maven Ventures and Long Journey Ventures.

In Today’s Episode with Darius Contractor You Will Learn:

1.) Darius Contractor: Entry into Growth:

How did Darius make his way into the world of growth? What was that first entry position?
What are 1-2 of the biggest takeaways for Darius from his time at Airtable, Dropbox and Facebook?
What 1-2 pieces of advice would Darius give to a growth leader starting a new role today?

2.) When is the Right Time:

What does the term"growth" really mean to Darius? How do so many confuse it?
When is the right time to make your first growth hire as a startup?
Should this hire be a junior growth person or a growth leader?
Should this initial growth team be placed inside an existing team or as a standalone team?
Where do so many startups make mistakes when making this first hire?

3.) Who To Hire:

How does one structure the process for your first growth hire? What are the stages?
What are the qualities that we are looking to uncover in these first hires?
What are the 4 interview stages to go through to test for these qualities?
How should founders use case studies and practicals as a way to test for these qualities?

4.) Onboarding and Integration:

What does the optimal onboarding process for new growth hires look like?
What do the best growth hires do in the first 30/60/90 days?
What are some early red flags that a new hire is a mis-hire?
How can leaders encourage cross-functional communication between growth and the rest of the org?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back. This is 20 Growth with me, Harry Stebbings. As a reminder, 20 Growth takes you inside
0:04.8	the minds of the world's best growth leaders to reveal their tips, tactics and strategies when it
0:09.7	comes to starting, scaling and maintaining growth teams. Today, I'm so thrilled to be joined by an
0:14.8	OG of growth, Darius Contractor, one of the preeminent growth leaders of the last decade,
0:19.4	having been VP of Growth at Airtable, where he led the growth engineering and product teams. Before Airtable, Darius was
0:25.2	head of product growth at Facebook Messenger. And finally, before Facebook, Darius spent an
0:29.5	incredible four years as head of growth engineering at Dropbox. Here, Darius helped drive Dropbox
0:34.6	to $100 million in net new revenue through Dropbox business.
0:38.5	And if that wasn't enough, Darius is also an incredible angel investor and fund investor with a
0:43.0	portfolio including calm, air table, clubhouse, census and then LP checks in Maven Ventures
0:48.9	and Long Journey Ventures. I also want to say huge thank you to Stan Chudnovsky, Brian Kimmel,
0:53.8	James Currier,
0:54.6	Planned CTO, Jean Dennis for some amazing questions today. And then, of course, a wonderful
0:59.1	Casey Winters for a fantastic introduction. But before we dive into the show today, if you've
1:03.8	been listening to 20 VC, you've probably heard of Brex, the first corporate card for startups,
1:08.1	with no personal guarantee or credit check up to 20 times higher
1:12.0	credit limits than traditional cards plus rewards like 3x on eligible apple products and 7x points
1:18.3	on tools like zoom and slack brackes has helped thousands of companies scale faster to reach their
1:23.9	full potential this month they're extending their special offer to our listeners.
1:28.0	Apply for the Brex card with the code 20VC, all spelled out to receive a $500 credit after spending
1:34.0	$1,000. Even better, you can also apply for Brex Cash, a bank account alternative with unlimited
1:40.2	free wire and ACH transfers with no minimum balance required to create an account.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.