As I previously announced last week, I'm co-hosting this year's Reforge programs with Brian Balfour and many other leaders in Growth. These are the part-time programs designed specifically for experienced growth practitioners.

Thanks so much for the awesome response to the announcement about the Reforge Retention + Engagement Deep Dive, Advanced Growth Strategy,and Growth programs. So far, Reforge has had awesome applicants from places like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Credit Karma, LinkedIn, Amazon, and a bunch of other high quality companies — it's shaping up to be a great group. I'll be at events speaking, doing Q&A, and co-hosting, and I'm really excited to meet everyone!

I always get a ton of questions about the programs, so here are a few more details to address them.

First: you don't have to be in the Bay Area to participate. All the lecture material is online, accessible from anywhere, and the weekly events have both offline (in person) and live online versions (via Zoom). Both events are structured exactly the same.

You'll find more details around the program experience, the content, expensing the program, etc., below.

PS. Here's the link to apply to the program (takes ~5 min)

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Will this program be worth it?

This is a good question. A lot of educational programs make big promises and then under deliver.

Reforge programs are the only career development programs built and led by actual growth leaders. That includes myself, Brian Balfour (formerly VP Growth at HubSpot), Casey Winters (formerly at Pinterest, Grubhub), Shaun Clowes (VP Product at Metromile), and Kevin Kwok (former Investor at Greylock). As well as featured growth leaders from companies including Google, Instagram, Slack, Stripe, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Atlassian, Eventbrite, SurveyMonkey, Zillow, Patreon, Credit Karma, ClassPass, Duolingo, SoFi, and many more.

Today Reforge counts 3,000+ growth practitioners as alumni, who've gone on to accelerate growth at companies like Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, Amazon, Airbnb, Evernote, SoundCloud, Nike, IBM, HubSpot, Drift, Coursera, Segment, and many more.

The reason that Reforge alumni are so successful is that they focus on application, not memorization. Reforge alumni say being able to put the lessons to use and drive impact is what they love most about the programs (the average alumni rating is a 9 out of 10).

Here's what Stacy French, Growth Marketing Lead at YouTube said about the Retention + Engagement Deep Dive:

"The frameworks learned in the Reforge Retention + Engagement program, as well as the networking with other growth professionals was invaluable to my team and me. We have since implemented many of the processes and learnings into our team's culture.

I would highly recommend this program even to those whose companies are sophisticated when it comes to growth -- the Reforge Retention program is now part of onboarding for anyone who joins my team."

To see what alumni have to say about their Reforge experience, you can read more reviews here.

2. I'm not located in the San Francisco Bay Area, can I attend the program?

Yes, the programs were designed to accommodate participants in any location. 40% to 50% of previous program participants have attended from locations outside of the SF Bay Area (London, Sydney, São Paulo, Bangalore, Mexico City, lots more).

All of the program material is online (access anytime) and our live weekly events have both an online version and an in-person version. The online and in-person versions are both structured exactly the same, including interactive small group breakouts and meet-and-greet time.

3. What's the time commitment? Do I need to take time off work?

All Reforge programs are part-time, and they're built for busy practitioners to finish at their own pace.

I estimate the weekly time commitment to be around 4-8 hours. That breaks down to 2 - 4 hours for the core course material and weekly exercise, plus 1.5 hrs for each weekly event. You don't need to attend all of the events, but I encourage you to try for at least 2 over the course of the 6 weeks — and you can definitely join all of them if you want to and are able.

Each program also includes access to group discussions (via the community forums), plus bonus materials, hence the 4 - 8 hour range.

4. Can I do multiple programs at the same time?

All programs happen at the same time and have an overlapping schedule, so you can only join one program at a time. There will be future iterations of each program, and the best way to find out about those is from our emails like this one.

5. Do I focus on Retention, Advanced Growth Strategy, or Growth?

If you're focusing on any retention initiatives, including activation, engagement, churn or resurrection, I recommend the Retention + Engagement Deep Dive. You'll cover everything needed to properly define, measure, segment, and analyze your retention, then dive into strategies to improve activation, engagement, and resurrection.

If you have an advanced understanding of growth fundamentals or already finished the Growth Series and want to better understand the loops and systems that drive growth for your product or company, join Advanced Growth Strategy.

If you want a comprehensive and foundational course on Growth, join the Growth Series. The program includes topics such as Acquisition Strategy, Retention + Engagement, Monetization, User Psychology, Growth Models, Experimentation, and Defensibility.

6. How advanced is the material?

These programs are not for beginners. The programs are focused on practitioners who already know the ropes and are figuring out how to take the next step.

Specifically, the content is intermediate to advanced, meaning participants are assumed to be knowledgeable about A/B testing, ad buying, etc., and the real challenge is thinking about the entire picture of growth and forming a coherent and compelling strategy.

Reforge does not cover tips, tricks, hacks, or tactics. Instead, Reforge programs provide strategies and frameworks that enable you to solve growth challenges specific to your situation.

Advanced Growth Strategy applicants should have 5+ years of professional experience as a product manager, marketer, designer, engineer or other professional. Retention Deep Dive and Growth Series applicants should have 3+ years of professional experience.

7. What's the cost and how can I get this expensed?

The tuition for each program is $3495 for an individual spot, and $2995 for a team spot (3+ people together).

The majority of Reforge participants are able to tap into a training and education budget at their workplace, and I strongly encourage you to do this if it applies to your role. The best way to do this is to show how the week-by-week schedule of material maps to your role and to highlight the opportunity areas for your product or company.

I've listed the schedules below for you to review.

8. Is this right for very early product teams seeking initial traction?

No. The best use of your time is to find product/market fit and build your initial business before you spend too much time on growth. If you are at or past product/market fit, then you will get a lot of value out of this program.

9. How much of the material is about SaaS/B2B versus B2C?

There is a balance of both SaaS and consumer. Many of the frameworks apply to both given that "consumerization of enterprise" is now real. On the other hand, there won't be direct material on enterprise sales or acquiring enterprise customers, although it may come up in Q&A.

10. What should I expect to get out of the program?

The program material is designed to be immediately applicable to your product or company. Here's what a few recent Reforge program participants have to say:

"The Growth Series got me thinking on a macro level about how a company functions and the different levers my team can impact to make a true difference.

I was able to network with people from many companies I admire, and I learned from their challenges (many of which were similar to my own).

Overall, it was hard but rewarding. It felt like being in a mini MBA program — the material came at us quickly but the discussions were lively and motivating. I'm going through the material over and over now that the course has ended!"

-- Jessica Webb, Product Marketing Manager, Growth at Trello

"I was very impressed with the depth and structure of the content and discussions. I left each session of the Growth Series with newfound knowledge, ideas, and real strategies I could begin working on the next morning.

The case studies, real-life examples and discussions with seasoned growth leaders rapidly took each week's content from theory to application. While the concepts are powerful in the abstract, actually applying them or hearing how others applied them takes the learning to a whole new level.

I was a bit worried it would be too much about virality and "hacking" growth, which most of us can't apply in our businesses (especially here at Google). To my surprise, the topics provided coverage of all aspects of growth — from business strategy and pricing, to user psychology, paid acquisition, activation, retention and more. None of this was 'hacky.'"

-- Casey Carey, Director of Platforms & Publisher Marketing at Google

"The content was excellent. Even though I work on a growth team at Facebook, I still learned new concepts that I implemented right away.

Beyond the content, I met so many growth people through the events - the Growth Series is a powerful growth network that I'm excited to be a part of."

– George Zeng, Product Manager at Facebook

Program Schedule

As promised, here's what you can expect on a week-by-week basis for each program:

Retention + Engagement Deep Dive Schedule

• Week 1: Retention. What are the three inputs to retention, and why moving these levers is the key to customers who retain.
• Week 2: Activation: Defining, Measuring, and Analyzing. Learn why activation is the highest impact area for any company looking to improve their retention rate, and how to analyze activation.
• Week 3: Activation Strategies. Build a holistic approach to activate users that combines the core product experience with supplemental strategies.
• Week 4: Engagement: Defining, Measuring and Analyzing. How engagement impacts your growth model and the 3 ways to define and measure engagement.
• Week 5: Engagement Strategies. What are the 4 different strategies to move a user from low to high engagement? How can we layer these strategies to build compounding growth?
• Week 6: Churn + Resurrection. Learn to define non-activated users vs. dormant users and tailor resurrection efforts appropriately.

Advanced Growth Strategy Schedule

• Week 1: Loop Properties. The three qualitative and quantitative metrics to evaluate for every loop and how to analyze every type of growth loop.
• Week 2: The Different Types of Loops. Detailed breakdown of 14 types of growth loops and how to evaluate the best loops for your product.
• Week 3: Measuring and Analyzing Your Loops. Build a micro loop quant model to help you identify the loops viability, maximum scope, and it's largest constraints.
• Week 4: Improving Your Loops. Identify the primary resource of your loop, maximum conversion rates, and the loop bottle necks. Then you'll optimize the different levers of your growth loops.
• Week 5: Macro Loops + Sequencing. Combine loops to decrease costs, increase returns of your growth model, and hit defensible points in the product.
• Week 6: Building A Product Growth Model. Translate your qualitative model into an end to end quantitative model.

Growth Series Schedule

• Week 1: Retention + Engagement. You'll learn the strategies to improve retention at the activation, engagement, and resurrection phases.
• Week 2: Acquisition Strategy. How to construct an overall balanced strategy that avoids saturation and local optimization.
• Week 3: Monetization. You'll measure and analyze your monetization strategy by working through the 3 levels of monetization.
• Week 4: Growth Models. You'll create and use your growth model as the foundation of your strategy, a blueprint for growth, and an internal and external communication tool.
• Week 5: User Psychology. How to apply user psych principles to drive your growth levers.
• Week 6: Experiments. The step-by-step process to prioritize growth initiatives, built on the growth model covered in Week 5.

You can apply to the programs here, until March 8th:

Apply to Reforge (Takes ~5 min)

You can also check out more details about the Retention + Engagement Deep Dive here, Advanced Growth Strategy here, and the Growth Series here, or email hello@reforge.com with any questions.

Thanks!

Andrew