ALEX LE - TO BUILD GREAT PRODUCTS, BUILD THIS STRONG, SCALABLE SYSTEM FIRST

1. BUILD YOUR GROWTH SYSTEM
Alex Le
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2. BUILD YOUR GROWTH SYSTEM
Alex Le
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ADAPT

3. WORKING AT REDDIT, I USUALLY GET
ONE OF TWO RESPONSES
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4. “OMG I Love Reddit! I am a part of this
community that does amazing things!”
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5. Passionate communities organize to drive
change via Reddit.
➔ A single comment on Reddit launched
600 Earth Day Marches on
r/MarchForScience
➔ $1.25M raised for Bernie Sanders on
r/SandersForPresident
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Movements start on Reddit

6. Reddit leverages communities of experts to answer the
world’s questions. Answers rise to the top with our unique
voting and scoring system.
➔ 200M monthly visits to questions pages
➔ 50% of all SEO visits go to questions
➔ Our biggest community, r/askreddit, is Q&A focused
➔ 78,000+ AMAs in 2016
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The World’s questions get answered

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Fandoms unite in real-time
From local soccer teams to the major eSports,
fandoms cheer and clash in real-time on Reddit
➔ 60K+ concurrents for World Series Live
Threads
From Coachella to ComicCon to colleges to
cities, millennials connect via location based
communities

8. Redditors organize up to the minute
information for breaking stories.
➔ 180K Concurrents: Election-2016
➔ 160K: Turkish Coup
➔ 48K: Hurricane Harvey
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Real Breaking News

9. Reddit has a community for every interest in
the world. For any given topic, the world’s
best conversations live on Reddit.
● 50k Daily Active Communities
● Evergreen topics large and small grow
organically
● Trending communities capture the
global zeitgeist
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The Interest Graph is here

10. It all happens globally
Reddit is surpassed only by Facebook,
Youtube, and Google in the US
according to Alexa.com traffic rankings.
Global rank is 7th, despite no active
work towards i18n.
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4th
US Rank
7th
Global Rank

11. Reddit is home to the most passionate
communities on the planet
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12. THE OTHER RESPONSE I GET IS...
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13. 2005

14. 2009

15. 2013

16. 2017

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BLACKOUT
2015

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Reddit is home to the most passionate
communities on the planet

22. YES, THIS IS OUR COMMUNITY.
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23. Growth Team
/groTH tem/ n.
A group within the company that rapidly iterates on the
product experience to create more DAU.
I joined in 2015 to work on growth...
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ABOUT ME
➔ Products I’ve created have reached
100M+ MAU
➔ Learned growth at Zynga
➔ VP of Product @ Netflix is my guru
➔ Two companies founded and
acquired

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I have a system…
Experiment Continuously. Iterate Rapidly.

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27. OUR COMMUNITY’S PASSION WAS
IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND...
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28. ...BUT IT WAS SLOWING US DOWN
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29. HOW DO WE ITERATE QUICKLY WITH
A VOLATILE COMMUNITY?
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30. WE HAD TO BUILD A NEW SYSTEM
FOR GROWTH
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31. 1UNDERSTAND YOUR GROWTH ENGINE
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32. WHEN DID REDDIT RUN
IT’S FIRST A/B TEST?
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33. 11 YEARS AFTER IT STARTED
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34. JANUARY 2016
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Hypothesis Driven Product Management
Experiment Continuously. Iterate Rapidly.

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Hypothesis Driven Product Management
Experiment Continuously. Iterate Rapidly.

37. QUARTERLY OKR:
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RUN 20 EXPERIMENTS

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Control Top 3 Posts Top Post Banner CarouselTop Post Layover
Top PostsControl Engaging Subs Related Subs

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We launched a lot since the last meeting!
M.compact View Test
Default Design Test
Media Preview Test
New Tab Test
Hidden Thumbnails Test
More Links Test
Cookie Based Frontpage Test
Fake Velocity Test
Top Level Comments
Preview all Images
Default Subreddit Test
11 Experiments!

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Related subreddit improve MPVS by 4% for SEO Traffic

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...but DAU remained flat...

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Reddit is home to the most passionate
communities on the planet

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Control Top 3 Posts Top Post Banner CarouselTop Post Layover
Top PostsControl Engaging Subs Related Subs
A LOT of experiments, very few learnings

44. R/ATBGE
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49. The Reddit Growth Engine
➔ Discovery helps redditors find what they love.
➔ The same tools help creators, brands, pubs,
and advertisers build their audience.
➔ Redditors share content and drive growth.
➔ Search engines index Reddit UGC.
➔ Publishers mine Reddit for stories.
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50. ➔ Visitors from all of our funnel sources
become engaged Redditors.
➔ Through discovery, Redditors find new
verticals to contribute content and new
communities form, starting the cycle anew.
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The Reddit Growth Engine

51. Gaming
News & Politics
Communities
Q&A
Learning
Sports
Fitness & Health
TV & Movies
Images & GIFs
The engine increases the breadth and depth of our communities
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52. Reddit is home to the most passionate
communities on the planet
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Hypothesis Driven Product Management
Experiment Continuously. Iterate Rapidly.

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TAKEAWAYS
➔ Take time to understand YOUR
engine
➔ Do research. Look at historicals. Talk
to people.
➔ Don’t experiment before you’re
ready. It’s expensive!

55. 2BOIL THE FROG
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56. WHEN DID REDDIT LAUNCH IT’S
OFFICIAL MOBILE APPS?
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57. 11 YEARS AFTER IT STARTED
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58. APRIL 2016
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Reddit is home to the most passionate
communities on the planet

67. R/STARTLEDCATS
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71. Reddit Video Rollout
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10% of users 30% of users 100% of users
Painted
Door
Full FeatureGA
ALPHA BETA

72. Reddit Video Rollout
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10% of users 30% of users 100% of users
Painted
Door
Full FeatureGA
ALPHA BETA

73. OUTRAGE IS A NETWORK EFFECT
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74. Reddit Video Rollout
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Invite only
10 Subs
Open Signup
300 Subs
Everyone
All Subs
Painted
Door
Full FeatureGA
ALPHA BETA

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77. Reddit is home to the most passionate
communities on the planet
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TAKEAWAYS
➔ Change is hard. Don’t startle people
➔ Learn to do it the right way for your
ecosystem.

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OVERALL
➔ Growth systems are good.
➔ But you need to tailor them to your problem space.

80. Reddit is home to the most passionate
communities on the planet
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Thank you!