Growth

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.

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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.

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Activation (Start Here)

Define Your Aha Moment

The specific action where users first experience core value:

| Product Type | Example Aha Moment | |-------------|-------------------| | Project management | Created first project + added a task | | Email tool | Sent first campaign | | Analytics | Saw first dashboard with real data | | Design tool | Exported first design | | Scheduling | Booked first meeting through the tool |

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

Pair your in-product onboarding with a 5-email welcome sequence that nudges unactivated users. See the email skill for the full welcome sequence template with ready-to-paste copy for each email.

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Acquisition Strategies

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

| Strategy | Best For | Effort | Time to Results | |----------|----------|--------|-----------------| | Free tool / calculator | Products that solve measurable problems | Medium | 1-3 months | | Template gallery | Products with customizable outputs | Medium | 2-4 months | | Content-as-product | Products in information-heavy spaces | High | 3-6 months | | Community-driven | Products with passionate niche users | High | 3-6 months | | Integrations | Products that connect to other tools | Medium | 1-2 months per integration | | Freemium | Products where free use drives word-of-mouth | Low | Immediate (but slow growth) |

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

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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

| Mechanic | How It Works | Example | |----------|-------------|---------| | Collaboration invites | Product requires multiple users | "Invite your team to edit this" | | Shared outputs | User creates something shareable | Reports, links, dashboards with "Made with [Product]" | | Referral rewards | Incentivized invitations | "Give $20, get $20" | | Public pages | User content is SEO-indexable | Public profiles, portfolios, pages | | Embeds | Widget on user's site links back | Badges, chat widgets, forms |

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

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Retention Mechanics

Build Habit Loops

| Component | What It Is | Example | |-----------|-----------|---------| | Trigger | What brings them back | Email digest, notification, calendar event | | Action | What they do in the product | Check dashboard, respond to comment, update status | | Reward | Value they get | New insight, progress indicator, completed task | | Investment | What makes leaving harder | More data, more connections, more history |

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

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Metrics to Track

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

| Stage | Key Metric | How to Calculate | |-------|-----------|-----------------| | Acquisition | Signup rate | Visitors → Signups | | Activation | Activation rate | Signups → Completed aha moment | | Activation | Time to aha | Average hours/days from signup to key action | | Retention | D1/D7/D30 | % of users returning on day 1, 7, 30 | | Revenue | Free-to-paid | Free users → Paying users | | Referral | Viral coefficient | Invites sent × invite conversion rate |

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]%

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Growth Experiments

When you want to improve a metric, frame it as a hypothesis:

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.

For A/B test setup, implementation, and reading results, see the conversion skill's A/B testing section.

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Common Mistakes

| Mistake | Fix | |---------|-----| | Focusing on acquisition before activation | Fix activation first — no point driving users into a broken onboarding | | Building viral features nobody uses | Viral loops must be part of the core workflow, not a sidebar feature | | Measuring vanity metrics (signups) | Track activation rate and retention, not just signups | | Trying all channels at once | Pick ONE, make it work, then add another | | Complex A/B testing infrastructure | Use simple feature flags. You don't need Optimizely at 100 users |

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Related Skills

• conversion — Funnel optimization, A/B testing, and signup flow CRO
• email — Welcome sequences and lifecycle emails that drive activation
• analytics — Set up the tracking that powers growth metrics
• retention — Deep-dive on churn prevention and win-back
• pricing — Pricing tiers and expansion revenue mechanics

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: whawkinsiv
• Source: whawkinsiv/solo-founder-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.