Dear readers,

Over the last few years, I’ve worked closely with Brian Balfour (formerly VP Growth at HubSpot, now CEO at Reforge) to develop and host the Reforge programs.  

These are growth programs where 3,000+ people from Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, Amazon, Airbnb, SoundCloud, Nike, IBM, HubSpot, Drift, Coursera, Segment, and many more, have attended and brought the learnings back to their companies. 

All the Reforge programs are part-time (no need to take time off work) and specifically designed for experienced Product Managers, Marketers, Engineers, Data Analysts, and UX/Designers in both B2B and B2C companies.

Today, I'm excited to announce the three upcoming programs:

1) Advanced Growth Strategy, our newest program that helps practitioners build growth loops, translate them into growth models, and determine a winning strategy

2) The Retention + Engagement Deep Dive program, which looks at every aspect of retention including activation, engagement, resurrection, and churn

3) The Growth Series program, a comprehensive overview of the key topics in growth to tackle today's growth challenges

Apply to Reforge (Takes ~5 minutes)

Each Reforge program runs from April 10th through May 23rd, and like the last time, I expect seats to fill up fast. I'm always thrilled to be involved. I worked with Brian on building the program content, and this Spring I'll be speaking, doing Q&A with guests, and co-hosting the events.

Also hosting the programs are Casey Winters (former Growth Lead at Pinterest and atGrubhub), Shaun Clowes (VP Growth at Metromile, former Head of Growth at Atlassian), and Kevin Kwok (former investor at Greylock).

About the Reforge Programs
The programs are all invite-only, part-time programs that last 6 weeks. Each program requires a time commitment of 4 - 8 hours per week. They're designed for Product Managers, Marketers, Engineers, Data Analysts, and UX/Designers in both B2B and B2C companies looking to accelerate growth in their companies and in their careers by developing a systematic approach to think about, act on, and solve growth problems.

In addition to the robust course material, we'll also hear from leaders in the industry through interviews, and live talks, and workshops. In past programs leaders included:

• Fareed Mosavat, Growth at Slack
• Ken Rudin, Head of Growth, Search at Google
• Frost Li, Head of Growth at Wish
• Brian Rothenberg, VP Growth and Marketing at Eventbrite
• Ravi Mehta, Product Director at Facebook
• Mike Duboe, formerly Head of Growth at Stitch Fix
• Barbra Gago, CMO at Realtimeboard
• Josh Lu, Sr. Director, PM at Zynga
• Merci Victoria Grace, formerly Head of Growth at Slack
• Guillaume Cabane, VP Growth at Drift
• Matt Plotke, Head of Growth at Stripe
• Joanna Lord, CMO at ClassPass
• Gina Gotthilf, ex-Growth Lead at Duolingo
• Elena Verna, SVP Growth at MalwareBytes
• Kieran Flanagan, VP Growth/Marketing at HubSpot
• Nick Soman, CEO at Decent
• Nate Moch, VP Growth at Zillow
• Simon Tisminezky, Head of Growth at Ipsy
• Steve Dupree, Former VP Marketing at SoFi
• Georgina Hill, VP Growth Ecommerce at Square
• See the full list here

You'll find more details about each program below:

About Advanced Growth Strategy
The newest program, Advanced Growth Strategy, focuses on how to build a deep qualitative and quantitative knowledge of how your product grows today and how to unlock future growth. You will analyze your existing growth strategies, systematically construct additional loops for your product, test the returns and costs of your strategies, and then prioritize initiatives to form a cohesive strategy.

This program goes deep into the growth strategy fueling the world's fastest growing companies. You will:

• Learn how the fastest growing products actually grow (hint: the answer isn't funnels)
• Dissect how the fastest growing products like Uber, Slack, Dropbox, Stripe, Airtable, Instagram, Fortnite, Tinder, and others grow using growth loops
• Learn detailed components of 20+ growth loops
• Systematically construct growth loops your product can use after analyzing the three qualitative properties of every growth loop
• Assess gaps and uncover opportunities for growth by identifying, measuring, and analyzing your products existing growth loops
• Combine and sequence different loop types to drive sustained and defensible growth
• Complete a step-by-step walkthrough to build your quantitative model for both a single loop and your entire product
• Communicate actionable insights from your growth model to obtain buy-in from leadership and across teams
• And more…

Advanced Growth Strategy is designed for growth professionals with an advanced understanding of growth fundamentals, or are in a leadership role. The program covers Different Types of Loops, Measuring + Analyzing Your Loops, How to Improve Your Loops, Macro Loops + Sequencing, Building a Product Growth Model, and more. The program is especially useful for growth leaders looking to influence leadership, set a team's direction, and rally colleagues using growth models.

Apply for the Advanced Growth Strategy program

About the Retention + Engagement Deep Dive
We're also running Retention + Engagement Deep Dive, a program that zooms in on one of the most important sub-topics of growth. Retention and engagement separates those companies in the top 1% of their category. Every improvement in retention improves acquisition, monetization, and virality. However, moving the needle on retention is hard.

This program takes a microscope to every aspect of retention. You will:

• Properly define, measure, segment, and analyze your retention
• Find and quantify the three moments every new user goes through to create a long-term retained user
• Construct a high performing activation flow from the ground up using detailed strategies across product, notifications, incentives, and more
• Layer your engagement strategies to build a compounding growth machine at your company
• Articulating retention and engagement initiatives across teams, as well as influencing how leaders think about retention in your company
• Walk step-by-step through of lessons applied to dozens of examples from companies like Instagram, Zoom, Spotify, Everlane, Airbnb, Turbotax, Jira, Credit Karma, Blue Bottle
• And more...

The Retention + Engagement Deep Dive is designed for growth professionals who are looking to zoom in on retention, either because their job is focused on retention, or because they already have an advanced working understanding of the quant and qual fundamentals of growth and are looking to build additional competency in retention and engagement. The program covers Retention, Activation, Engagement, Resurrection, and detailed, applicable strategies at every phase.

Apply for the Retention + Engagement Deep Dive
 

About the Growth Series
The Growth Series is a comprehensive overview of the key topics in growth. The program is designed to help you accelerate growth of your product, company and your career by creating a prioritized list of retention strategies, building your quantitative growth model, and more.

During the Growth Series, you will:

• Go from understanding one or two pieces of your growth model to understanding how the entire system works together
• Evaluate the key components of growth (acquisition, retention, monetization) and how they feed one another
• Construct a holistic growth model, bringing together all the components of the funnel
• Deeply understand and evaluate the user motivations behind the levers in your growth model
• Run a continual, self-reinforcing experimentation process to execute against your growth model and user psychology
• Learn how to properly call, dissect, and analyze an experiment, plus implement the results across your team
• And more…

The Growth Series is designed for practitioners who already know the basics of growth and are figuring out how to take the next step. Participants are assumed to have knowledge about A/B testing, ad buying, and other fundamental tactics, and are ready to take on the bigger challenge of thinking about the entire picture of growth and forming a coherent and compelling strategy.

Apply to the Growth Series

Quick Summary

• Three concurrent, invite-only programs that run for 6 weeks from April 10 - May 23
• Advanced Growth Strategy focuses on analyzing, building, and combining loops, translating loops into models, and forming a winning strategy
• Retention + Engagement Deep Dive zooms in on retention and its subtopics, including onboarding, activation, resurrection
• Growth Series is an overview of major topics in growth, including acquisition, monetization, quantitative models
• Deep, relevant, and Reforge exclusive coursework you'll apply directly to your own products
• Video, audio, and in-person interviews with top growth leaders from Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, Zillow, Dropbox, SurveyMonkey, and more
• Weekly events to build a network of other top peers in growth

How to Apply
Every application is manually reviewed to make sure each participant is a good fit for their program. The application process is simple, and should only take a few minutes. The deadline to apply is Friday, March 8th.

Apply to Reforge (Takes ~5 minutes)

If you'd like more details, you can find out more about Advanced Growth Strategy here, the Retention + Engagement Deep Dive here, the Growth Series here, or email hello@reforge.com with any questions.

Hope to see you in the program.

Andrew