Lessons from Alex Schultz of Meta

Alex Schultz, the Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Analytics at Meta, is a towering figure in the world of digital growth and marketing. His data-driven yet pragmatic approach, honed over years of scaling Facebook to billions of users, has become a foundational playbook for startups and established companies alike. From the critical importance of user retention to the nuances of building a growth-oriented culture, Schultz's insights have shaped the modern marketing landscape.

On Growth and Retention: The Bedrock of Success

The cornerstone of Schultz's philosophy is an unwavering focus on retention. He argues that true growth is impossible without a product that users stick with.

"Retention is the single most important thing for growth." [1] This is perhaps Schultz's most famous and repeated mantra, emphasizing that acquiring users who don't stick around is a futile effort.
"If you don't have a great product, there's no point executing well on growing it because it won't grow." [2]
"If you end up with a retention curve that asymptotes to a line parallel to the x-axis, you have a viable business." [2] This provides a clear, visual benchmark for product-market fit.
"The #1 problem I've seen for the startups I've advised has been they don't actually have product/market fit when they think they do." [3]
"Don't go and do growth tactics, don't go and do virality, don't hire a growth hacker. Focus on getting product market fit." [1]
"Growth accounting... helps you focus on How do I stop people churning, how do I get people to come back to my service who are not coming back to my service right now."
"The resurrected and churn numbers for pretty much every product I've ever seen dominate the new user count once you reach a sensible point of growth." [1]
"We hadn't realized how big a lever reducing churn and resurrecting people to the site was and it totally changed our perspective from acquisition virality at all costs to a focus on retention."
"Number of registrations plus number of resurrections minus the number of people who churn equals your net growth." [4] This simple formula reframes the understanding of growth beyond just new users.
"Different verticals need different terminal retention rates for them to have successful businesses." Schultz clarifies that "good" retention is context-dependent. For example, "If you're in social media and your first batch of people signing up to your product are not like 80% retained, you're not going to have a massive social media site." [1]

On the "Magic Moment" and User Experience

Identifying and optimizing the initial user experience is a critical component of driving long-term retention.

"Think about what the magic moment is for your product and get people connected to it as fast as possible." This "magic moment" is the point at which a user truly understands the value of the product.
For Facebook, the "magic moment" was getting a user to 10 friends in 14 days. [1] This specific, measurable goal became a key focus for the growth team.
For Airbnb, it's finding a great place to stay. If you're a host, it's the first time that you're paid. For a company like eBay, it's the first time you buy (or sell) an item.
"How do you find them? Well you can find them in the non-scalable way which is... you can ask your first users... 'what is the thing that makes you happy to use my product?'"
"Building an incredible product is definitely about optimizing for people who use your product the most... but when you want to drive growth, you need to focus on the marginal user." [3] These are the less active users who need a nudge to experience the "magic moment."
"People who are already using your product all the time are not the ones you have to worry about." [3]

On Strategy, Data, and Metrics

A data-informed strategy, centered around a single "north star" metric, is crucial for aligning a company towards growth.

"I spend my time a lot on strategy. That's what the data is useful for. We understand what's going on, we look at the big trends and we make sure we're responding to them." [5]
"You need someone to set a north star for you about where the company wants to go." [1] This aligns the entire organization.
"Every different company when it thinks about growth, needs a different north star." This metric should be tailored to the specific business and its goals.
"Mark [Zuckerberg] put out monthly active users as the number both internally he held everyone to... and it was also the number he published externally." [1] This created accountability and a clear focus.
"The second you have more than one person working on anything you cannot control what everyone else is doing... it's all influence." [1] A north star metric helps to guide independent action.
"It's not clear to everybody what the most important thing is for a company." [1] A leader must define this.
"Data helps understand user behaviour and needs."
"The role of analytics leaders is to provide clear explanations of data without overwhelming with caveats." [4]
"Building a learning function within a company requires analytics that accurately predict outcomes and are trusted by product leaders." [4]

On Marketing: Performance, Brand, and Creative

Schultz has a nuanced view of marketing, arguing against the simplistic division of "brand" and "performance."

"All marketing can perform... the vast majority of marketing does not perform." [6] The difficulty lies in execution.
"Marketing is a very, very hard craft." [6]
"It's hard to do great creative. It's hard to show the right ad to the right person at the right time." [6]
"I don't think the funnel was ever real in that it was linear." [6] The customer journey is complex and non-linear.
"I don't like media mix modeling but it is the right thing to do." [6] It's the best available method for understanding the impact of different channels at scale.
"I think all these founder CEOs are actually quite good at marketing natively." [6]
"Product is where marketing starts." [6]
"I have grown up in online marketing and believe deeply in the economic empowerment it can bring, its ability to show people more tailored, relevant, less annoying ads."
"We have to category make. We have to bring the metaverse concept to global awareness and to be in people's minds and have them asking what this is." [7] This quote highlights the challenge of marketing a new category.
"Brand names have to represent something. And I think a lot of those [rebrands] didn't necessarily represent something substantive and so even some were mocked." [7]

On Leadership, Team Structure, and Culture

Schultz's views on leadership emphasize delegation, focus, and creating the right environment for growth.

"Balancing responsibilities is easy. I've got a great team of people working for me, so I'm just lucky I can delegate a lot of stuff to them." [5]
"If you're a startup, you shouldn't have a growth team. The whole company should be the growth team, the CEO should be the head of growth." [1]
"My day is high-level strategy and detailed marketing execution." [5]
"I'm really proud of the people who work for me, and I have a great team. They enable me to have the time to stay on top of what's happening with the company, so I don't get too much into the day-to-day." [5]
"If you can run more experiments than the next guy... if you can fight and die for every extra user and you stay up late at night to get those extra users... you will grow faster." [3]
"We just worked really hard. It's not like we're crazy smart... We just worked really really hard, and we executed fast." [3]
"Growth is optional." [3] It requires deliberate effort and focus.
"Loyalty is the one word Alex would choose for his tombstone, emphasizing its importance to him." [4]
"I think long term kind, doing the right thing, if you believe it's the right thing, even if people are annoyed at you or it's really hard to do it, that is something I've learned from both of my parents."
"Small wins really really matter and aggregate to a big thing." [8]

On International Growth and Tactics

Schultz's experience at Facebook provided him with a unique perspective on global expansion.

"Building for where the world is today is an easy mistake to make... we built a scalable translation infrastructure that actually enabled us to attack all of the languages so we could be ready for where the future is going to be." [9]
On SEO: "The single most important thing is to get valuable links from high authority websites, for you to rank in Google."
On email marketing: "Optimize for marginal users not power users."
"The more you hit someone with the same message, the less they convert is fundamental across every online marketing channel."
"We're not trying to run away from anything. This isn't that kind of a rebrand." [10] Speaking on the transition from Facebook to Meta, emphasizing that the change was about future vision, not escaping past issues.

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