3 Ways to Drive Huge Growth

"Hockey-stick growth" rarely just happens. It's triggered by something-and with the right strategy, you can make it happen yourself.

- By Lenny Rachitsky

We've all seen those charts showing "hockey-stick growth." They are the envy of entrepreneurs who haven't found it, and among the most important moments in a company's history for those who have. Hockey-stick growth tells a story: A company was slowly finding its way, and then-rocket ship. The rest is history.

But hockey-stick growth didn't just happen. Something triggered it. There was an inflection point. What was it?

I was a founder and longtime product lead at Airbnb, and now I write a newsletter about product growth that's the No. 1 business newsletter on Substack. (Find it at lennysnewsletter.com.) And I wanted to answer this question: What precedes an inflection in growth? To find out, I spent weeks researching inflection points and chatting with leaders at two dozen of today's most successful companies-including founders and early employees at Figma, DoorDash, Tinder, YouTube, Snap, Airbnb, and others.

FROM THAT, I CAME TO THREE CONCLUSIONS:

1/ The majority of growth inflections sprang from a specific product improvement.

2/ Many of the most durable inflections came from the company doubling down on their primary growth engine (like SEO or virality).

3/A surprising number of growth inflections came from an unexpected external event, without the product changing at all.