I hired this role in the Fall of 2021. We had grown 20X that year. The growth and marketing team was tiny - me and two others. Total company size was 75 people. 

I was originally looking for a junior person but then realized that given the growth we could get a lot of return on someone at the lead level which I explain more below.

Scorecards don’t capture everything. For example, I remember a candidate in this process that was doing well on the scorecard but my spidey sense was triggered the entire time. We were getting the feeling that despite the candidate being solid, that they weren’t that excited about us. There was a lack of momentum on their side moving through the process. They were very slow to respond. I think it is really hard, but important to listen to your intuition.

We had spent the last year standing up the core infrastructure for a growth team. We brought in lifecycle marketing, fixed our ads, adjusted our conversion funnel. I was doing it hands on or with agency partners. 

At the time I was running some small growth experiments. From those experiments, I saw the opportunity and how much juice there was to squeeze in our core flow. I just didn’t have the bandwidth to drive meaningful impact. 

This was a clear case that if someone can come in and get even close to delivering on this scorecard, then it’s a very high return player. 

We wanted a person who would come in a put a disciplined process into place to drive a healthy backlog of experiment ideas and execution.

This was our acquisition funnel. I had already decided that this was the area that I wanted the person to come in and work on immediately. I set these goals as ambitious but achievable based on the experiments we had run.

I knew that after the acquisition funnel I wanted this person to then hire and start to focus on retention. So we set this goal with a longer time frame of 18 months.

The common mistakes are hiring too early or too late. This was an example where I made the mistake of hiring too late. I originally had a junior version of this that was more conversion rate optimization focused vs growth product. 

This was my first direct to consumer ecommerce product so I was learning a lot about how you would build out a team for this type of product. 

So it delayed time to hiring as I spent time looking at the right kind of candidates and then once we realized the right profile, the impact they could drive was so clear that the hire was urgent and transformational.

When hiring for any new role in the org I do a lot of phone screens myself to calibrate both the recruiter and me.

For these we give each person 2-3 of the outcomes, competencies, or values. The interviewer typically starts by asking for situations/examples that show case this specific attribute, and then they really need to dig. 

Everyone gives an A, B, C, or D grade for each attribute. 

A = Great examples, clearly demonstrated, high confidence they can do this at Mindbloom. 

B= Some good examples, likely they can drive the outcomes. 

D = I don’t think this person can do this at all or had terrible examples. 

Afterwards we’ll discuss any discrepancies or differences in peoples grades. We’ll ask questions like: 

as sometimes a different interviewer can offer a counterpoint.

In this exercise I’m looking for creativity and breadth of ideas. If people suggest some short initiatives and can’t expand on them then that is a bad sign. Additionally, I want to see ideas across the lifecycle of the product and not just one single aspect like the home page.

I use similar type of question for anyone coming into a leadership role where they are going to own a function and might hire a team. 

I’m looking for them to demonstrate that they can really think at that level and lay out a process. I want to see they’re bringing in systems that they’ve learned and can lay out how they are going to implement a structured process. 

Mindbloom is also a writing based culture so I’m also seeing if they can write out these systems because if they can’t then they won’t be successful at Mindbloom.

The objective with the exercise is to assess: 

3. Ability to present the patterns/finding back in writing. 

I don’t think it is the perfect exercise. It is a log of excel data about a “widget company.” It would probably be better to develop a more robust case using Mindbloom's business data for us to get a better read.

Adam von Reyn

I used this interview plan when hiring a new Growth Product Lead at Mindbloom.

Mindbloom’s mission is to transform lives to transform the world. Our strategy is to make at-home psychedelic therapy with ketamine mainstream, radically increase access to treatment, and create superior clinical outcomes and transformational client experiences.

The Growth PM will lead Mindbloom’s first growth squad to rapidly improve conversion in Mindbloom’s acquisition funnel, helping us radically increase access to treatment.

Establish the processes and systems to run high velocity, data-driven growth experiments within 3 months that the Head of Growth scores an A.

Double our lead to client conversion rate within 6 months, by running ICE-scored experiments within the acquisition funnel.

Lead a high impact squad of engineers and creatives to rapidly deploy growth experiments.

: Within three months, establish Mindbloom’s growth system and infrastructure (e.g. experiment docs, testing tools, reporting) that Head of Growth scores an A.

Conversion: Leverage the Reforge method to prioritize and execute growth experiments across the customer journey, improving Mindbloom’s 

start survey to purchase rate by 50% within 6 months and 100% within 12 months

LTV: Prioritize and run experiments to drive increased 

upsells and repurchases, increasing LTV by 50% within 18 months

Channel Optimization: Work with channel owners (e.g. Performance, SEO, Influencers) to improve their Growth processes, implement channel attribution and identify optimization opportunities.

Experience: 5+ years as a growth PM of a high-growth DTC product, with a proven track record of driving exponential growth

Builder: You roll up your sleeves, collaborate with others and get scrappy to quickly build MVP growth experiments

Mission-Obsessed: You have a deep personal connection to altered states of consciousness

Remote-able: You excel in a remote-first, writing-based culture of freedom and responsibility

Practices Intellectual Honesty: You seek and speak the truth directly and possess high courage and low ego

Makes Exceptional Decisions: You use rigor, data, the right tools, and speed to make intentional decisions and measure the results

Cultivates Wholeness: You bring your authentic self to work and promote the wellbeing of team and peers

Reports to Adam von Reyn - Head of Growth

Alternatives to Hiring and Hiring Urgency

Alternatives include the status quo, which is me (AvR) doing a poor job of prioritizing the objectives for this role. I’ve retained an agency to help me run experiments in the survey, but it will be much more impactful to have a full time member of the team, who can coordinate closely with other members of the team, has a deep understanding of our clients and client journey and can think about and execute growth experiments all day, every day.

This is an urgent hire, given that even a small improvement in our conversion metrics has a significant impact on the business. An A+ Growth PM would be a transformational hire, meaningfully impacting enterprise value.

Interview Phone Screen (recruiter) - standard questions plus:

Screening question: What's one of the most impactful growth experiments that you've run? What was your hypothesis and what were the results?

Screening question: What’s one growth experiment that you were confident that would work, but didn’t? What did you learn?

Prepare a brief presentation of 2 - 3 growth experiments that you ran

Outcomes + Competencies + Values Interview 

Growth System: WIthin three months, establish Mindbloom’s growth system and infrastructure (e.g. experiment docs, testing tools, reporting) that Head of Growth scores an A.

Conversion: Leverage the Reforge method to prioritize and execute growth experiments across the customer journey, improving Mindbloom’s start survey to purchase rate by 50% within 6 months and 100% within 12 months.

LTV: Prioritize and run experiments to drive increased upsells and repurchases, increasing LTV by 50% within 18 months.

Cultivates Wholeness: You bring your authentic self to work and promote the wellbeing of team and peers.

There are three exercises in this assignment. I’ve provided time limits for each. While I completely appreciate that you could spend much more time on each section, the time limits are to protect your time. With that in mind, please don’t worry about formatting or polish. I’m more interested in seeing how you think.

You can share your work in any format that you prefer. A Google doc and / or pres is a good option. We may spend a few minutes reviewing your findings in a subsequent conversation, but since we do a lot of asynchronous work at Mindboom, this is a good opportunity to demonstrate how you communicate in that environment.

If any of the instructions aren’t clear, please comment me in this doc and I will respond as quickly as possible.

As part of the CSI, please be prepared to walk through 3 growth experiments that you ran. Why did you choose this experiment. How did you execute. What were the results? Please include a link/visual to help explain it.

Exercise 1 - Growth Initiatives - Time limit: 30 minutes

Brainstorm 10-20 growth initiatives that could rapidly accelerate Mindbloom’s growth. After you create your list, please rank the top 5.

Exercise 2 - Implementing a Growth Machine at Mindbloom - Time limit: 1 hour

As the first Growth PM at Mindbloom, you’ll establish the processes, frameworks and systems that form the foundation to run an exceptional growth machine at Mindbloom. Prepare a brief presentation that outlines how you would approach this challenge. Feel free to include any example frameworks or templates that might be relevant.

Exercise 3 - Case Study - Time limit: 2 hours (Optional based on CSI results)

This portion of the assignment is intended to take approximately two hours. Please do not spend more than three hours on the case... and please let me know if it does take that long! Lastly, in preparing this deliverable, please don’t feel pressure to have everything perfectly formatted – we’re far more interested in your analysis and recommendations than your formatting skills :)

🔗 Attachments: See the “Growth_Case_Data.xlsx” attachment

PdAcq tab: 31 days of hypothetical paid acquisition data, covering the entirety of WidgetCo’s media spend.

CRM tab: Hypothetical user-level data for a portion of respondent’s to WidgetCo’s survey. This data includes date of survey completion and widget purchase (if applicable) as well as each user’s answers to 3 survey questions: 

How much do you know about our widgets? [zilch, a little, a lot]

When are you looking to buy a widget? [now, tomorrow, in a bit, dunno]

iii. How badly do you want a widget? [why am I here, don’t want it, meh, (I want it) bad, (I want it) really bad]

WidgetCo is looking to scale its business through existing channels and conversion rate optimization. The company has noticed that acquisition costs have increased over the past month. Analyze the acquisition data to understand where WidgetCo should focus its efforts as it scales and improves acquisition costs.

Judging from the data, what seems like an opportunity?

Where specifically would you recommend WidgetCo focus its efforts?

WidgetCo features a survey as part of its acquisition funnel. The Company thinks it can leverage customer responses to create a hyper-personalized engagement experience, drive higher conversion from survey to purchase, and maximize return on ad-spend.

Assess WidgetCo’s performance in converting survey-takers to customers over-time.

Analyze user-level answers to survey questions. How would you segment WidgetCo’s users to better tailor post-survey communications?

Growth product lead interview plan at Mindbloom

Growth Product Lead Interview Plan

Role Proposal

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