Growth & Product-Led Growth

In PLG, the product is your best salesperson. This skill helps you design growth into your product — with concrete tactics and prompts you can hand to Claude Code.

Core Principles

• Growth is a system, not a hack. Build loops, not one-time campaigns.
• Activation is the most important metric. A user who never experiences value is already lost.
• Virality is engineered, not accidental. Design sharing into the product.
• Retention is the foundation. Growing on top of a leaky bucket is a losing game.
• For a solo founder: pick ONE growth lever, make it work, then add the next.

The PLG Funnel

Acquisition → Activation → Retention → Revenue → Referral

The most common mistake: Founders focus on Acquisition first. Focus on Activation and Retention first — there's no point driving signups into a leaky bucket.

Activation (Start Here)

Define Your Aha Moment

The specific action where users first experience core value:

Your aha moment: [Action that makes users say "I get it, this is useful"]

Drive Users to Aha Fast

Every screen between signup and the aha moment is a drop-off risk.

Tell AI:

Design the onboarding flow to get users to [your aha moment] in under 3 minutes:
1. After signup, skip the "check your email" screen — go directly to the product
2. Show a setup wizard (3-5 steps max) that collects only what's needed to deliver value
3. Pre-populate with sample data or templates so the product looks useful immediately
4. Add a progress checklist: "Complete your setup: ☑ Create [X] ☐ [Next step] ☐ [Final step]"
5. Show an empty state with a clear CTA on every empty page ("Create your first [X]")

Activation Emails

Tell AI:

Create an activation email sequence triggered by signup:

Email 1 (immediate): Welcome + direct link to start [aha action]. No fluff.
Email 2 (Day 1, if not activated): "Here's how [similar user] got started in 2 minutes" + link
Email 3 (Day 3, if not activated): "Need help? Here are 3 templates to get started" + link
Email 4 (Day 5, if not activated): "What's holding you back?" — reply to this email for help
Email 5 (Day 7, if not activated): Last chance: "Your account is ready. Here's what you're missing."

Stop sequence as soon as user completes [aha action].

Acquisition Strategies

Pick ONE that matches your product. Don't spread across all of them.

Tell AI:

Build a [free tool / template gallery / calculator] that:
- Solves a specific problem our ICP has (related to our product)
- Requires no signup to use
- Shows a teaser of our full product's value
- Includes a CTA: "Want more? [Product name] does this automatically."
- Is SEO-optimized so it attracts organic traffic

Viral Loop Design

A viral loop has 4 parts: User gets value → Has reason to share → New user sees value → Converts → Loop repeats.

Viral Mechanics for SaaS

Tell AI:

Add a sharing/invite mechanic to our product:
- After a user completes [key action], prompt: "Share this with your team" or "Invite a collaborator"
- Make shared links show a preview of the output (not just a signup page)
- Add "Made with [Product]" branding on shared/public outputs with a link to our homepage
- Track invite sends, invite accepts, and invite-to-signup conversion

Retention Mechanics

Build Habit Loops

Tell AI:

Build retention mechanics into the product:
1. Weekly email digest: summarize what happened this week + one insight or action item
2. Activity notifications: "[Name] commented on your [item]" — not time-based ("It's been 3 days")
3. Progress indicators: Show users their cumulative value ("You've saved 14 hours this month")
4. Data investment: The more they use it, the more valuable their data becomes (history, reports, trends)

Feature Drips

Don't show everything on day 1. Reveal features as users are ready:

Tell AI:

Implement progressive feature disclosure:
- Week 1: Show only core features (the ones needed for the aha moment)
- Week 2: Surface advanced feature with a tooltip: "Now that you've [done X], try [advanced feature]"
- Week 3+: Unlock remaining features with brief explanations
- Gate premium features with a gentle upgrade prompt at the moment of need

Metrics to Track

Set these up in your analytics tool (see analytics-instrumentation skill):

Tell AI:

Set up growth tracking:
- Track signup events with source attribution (organic, paid, referral, direct)
- Track [aha moment action] completion with timestamp
- Calculate time-to-activate for each user
- Build a daily dashboard showing: signups, activations, D7 retention, free-to-paid conversion
- Alert me if activation rate drops below [X]% or D7 retention drops below [Y]%

Growth Experiments

When you want to improve a metric:

1. Hypothesis: "If we [change], then [metric] will [improve] because [reason]."
2. Metric: What specifically will you measure?
3. Duration: Run for 1-2 weeks minimum, or until 100+ users have been through the flow.
4. Decide: Did the metric improve? Ship it or revert.
5. Document: Write down what you learned, even (especially) from failures.

Tell AI:

Set up a simple A/B test:
- Variant A (control): [current experience]
- Variant B (test): [proposed change]
- Success metric: [metric to improve]
- Split traffic 50/50
- Show me results after [100 users / 2 weeks]
Use a simple feature flag, not a complex testing framework.

Common Mistakes