Breaking the rules of growth: Why Shopify bans KPIs, optimizes for churn, prioritizes intuition, and builds toward a 100-year vision | Archie Abrams (VP Product, Head of Growth at Shopify)

Listen to this episode from Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career on Spotify. Archie Abrams is the VP of Product and Head of Growth at Shopify, where he leads a 600+ person growth org across product, design, engineering, data, ops, and growth marketing. Shopify powers over 10% of e-commerce in the United States, with $235 billion in GMV in 2023 (roughly the size of Finland’s economy). He previously led Consumer product and growth at Lyft and was at Udemy for 8 years as SVP of Product having joined the company when it was 10 people. In our conversation, we discuss: • Why Shopify optimizes for churn • Why the core product team doesn’t use metrics-based goals • Why they keep multi-year experiment holdouts • How they structure their growth team • The benefits of not having a CMO • Lessons learned about integrating sales into a product-led growth model • The power of discounting as a growth lever • Much more — Brought to you by: • ⁠⁠Explo⁠⁠—Embed customer-facing analytics in your product • ⁠⁠Dovetail⁠⁠—The customer insights hub for product teams — Find the transcript at: ⁠https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/shopifys-growth-archie-abrams⁠ — Where to find Archie Abrams: • X: ⁠https://x.com/archieabrams⁠ • LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/archie-abrams-b6aa8b6/⁠ — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: ⁠https://www.lennysnewsletter.com⁠ • X: ⁠https://twitter.com/lennysan⁠ • LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/⁠ — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Archie’s background  (02:30) Shopify’s impressive growth (06:17) Shopify’s unique approach to churn and retention (08:43) Monetization model and success metrics (11:08) Long-term experimentation and metrics (23:00) Examples of big wins that Archie’s team has shipped (26:42) Monetary friction (27:14) Metrics (29:47) Shopify’s growth team structure (33:03) Goal setting and forecasting (37:10) Examples of long-term results within Shopify (41:36) Shipping neutral experiments (42:05) Building a hundred-year company (48:04) Why Shopify doesn’t use KPIs (51:30) Shopify’s “Get shit done” framework (54:30) Cross-team collaboration  (58:48) The importance of an opinionated founder  (01:01:12) Growth and sales integration (01:06:42) Shopify’s marketing structure (01:08:49) Insights on discounting from Udemy (01:11:09) Lightning round — Referenced: • Shopify: ⁠https://www.shopify.com/⁠ • Tobias Lütke on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobiaslutke⁠ • Gross Merchandise Value: Calculation and Best Practices: ⁠https://www.shopify.com/retail/gross-merchandise-value⁠ • Brian Chesky’s new playbook: ⁠https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach⁠ • Glen Coates on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/glcoates⁠ • Harley Finkelstein on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/harleyf⁠ • Udemy: ⁠https://www.udemy.com/⁠ • Scientific Advertising: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Advertising-Original-Claude-Hopkins/dp/1640954252⁠ • Four-Minute Mile: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Four-Minute-Mile-Roger-Bannister/dp/1493038753/⁠ • The Sopranos on HBO: ⁠https://www.hbo.com/the-sopranos⁠ • Suno: ⁠https://suno.com/⁠ — Production and marketing by ⁠https://penname.co/⁠. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email ⁠[email protected]⁠. — Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.