Maya built a polished MVP, real-time, collaborative, technically sound. But adoption lagged.
She wasn’t alone. Many of us, technical founders, assume clean architecture and useful features should speak for themselves. But growth often needs to be engineered with the same intent as the system itself.
What helped Maya move forward wasn’t more features. It was reframing the problem.
Instead of just fixing bugs or shipping enhancements, she started designing behaviors: onboarding nudges, sharing flows, and lightweight collaboration mechanics. All of it quietly embedded in the product.
Drawing from OrbiQ’s PLG framework, here’s what she focused on:
- Better instrumentation, early — Maya implemented Mixpanel, Firebase, and Amplitude to see where users dropped off, not just in funnels, but in collaboration loops.
- Viral mechanics built into UX — Things like pre-filled invites, live presence badges, and auto-created collab rooms at signup made it easier for users to bring teammates in without being asked.
- Systems over spurts — No big campaigns, just small, recurring loops: feature unlocks tied to sharing, automatic stakeholder prompts, and behavior-based triggers.
The result? Her activation rate nearly doubled. A viral coefficient above 1.1. But more importantly, sustainable, compounding growth, all without a dedicated marketing team.
Takeaway:
You don’t have to become a growth hacker. But if you’re comfortable with systems thinking, growth engineering might be the most natural next step. It’s not about chasing virality, it’s about making collaboration easy, meaningful, and repeatable.
If you’re quietly building and wondering how to scale, you’re not alone. Happy to share what I’ve seen work.
