Assignments

For deeper practice, the module includes two practical assignments:

Assignment 1: Growth Lever Audit & Strategy Presentation

Objective: Perform a comprehensive growth lever audit for a SaaS company of your choice and recommend a focused growth strategy.

Tasks: Select a SaaS product (it could be your company, a well-documented public SaaS, or even a fictional one with realistic assumptions). Conduct an analysis covering:

• Current state: Briefly describe the product, business model (PLG or sales-led, etc.), and any available metrics (traffic, conversion, churn, etc.). Identify what seems to be the current primary growth lever(s) for this business and how well they're doing (e.g. "Company X relies heavily on content marketing for acquisition, getting ~100k visits/mo").
• Lever mapping: Using the Growth Lever Mapping framework, list out potential levers in Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Monetization, and identify at least one major bottleneck or opportunity in the funnel. Support with evidence or logical reasoning (e.g., "Activation is only 20%, indicating a lot of users don't experience value – a big opportunity to improve onboarding").
• Competitor/market insight: Include one slide or section on how competitors approach growth. Note any lever your company isn't using that competitors are (for instance, if competitors have a free tier and you don't, or they leverage partnerships). Also note market trends (e.g. rising demand in a segment) that suggest new levers (perhaps new product features or channels).
• Recommendation: Based on the above, choose 2–3 key growth levers you recommend prioritizing for the next 6-12 months. For each, describe the strategy and specific actions. For example, "1) Improve activation via a redesigned onboarding flow and checklist – goal to raise activation to 50%. 2) Drive expansion revenue by introducing a premium tier with advanced permissions – goal to increase NRR to 120%. 3) Launch an affiliate program (marketing-led acquisition) to reach new SMB customers at lower CAC." Justify why these levers matter most (tie to metrics/bottlenecks and potential ROI).
• Projected impact: Outline how these efforts could impact key metrics (e.g. "If successful, we estimate these initiatives will add $X ARR in next year by increasing conversion and upsells," or "could improve LTV:CAC from 2.5 to 3.5 by reducing churn and sales costs" – you can make reasonable projections).

Deliverable: A slide deck or report (5-10 slides/pages) summarizing your findings and plan. Imagine you are presenting to the executive team to convince them where to invest resources for growth. Clarity and data are important. Use charts or tables for funnel metrics or ICE scoring if applicable.

Assignment 2: Growth Experiment Design & Analysis

Objective: Design, run (or simulate), and analyze two growth experiments focused on specific levers.

Tasks: Identify two distinct growth levers from your strategy (could be from Assignment 1's recommendations or new ones). For each lever, go through the process:

• Hypothesis: Clearly state what you aim to test. Example: "Improving email onboarding will increase Day 7 retention from 30% to 40%" or "Adding social proof to the signup page will increase conversion rate by 2 percentage points."
• Experiment design: Describe how you will test it. This should include the type of test (A/B test, cohort comparison, pilot program, etc.), the segment or user group, duration, and what variant changes you will make. Be specific: e.g., "We will A/B test the signup page: Variant A (current), Variant B (with testimonials and trust badges). We'll run it for 2 weeks or until ~1,000 visitors per variant. Success metric: sign-up conversion rate." If it's not an A/B test, maybe it's a before/after with a control group if possible.
• Metrics & Data Collection: Define the primary metric and any secondary metrics. Also mention how you'll collect data (analytics tool, database query, surveys, etc.). For our examples: primary = conversion rate (%), secondary might be quality of signups (do they activate at similar rates?). Ensure you consider significance – e.g., "We need a sample size of N for significance, we expect to detect an uplift of Y%."
• Execute (or Simulate): If you have the ability/time, you could carry out the experiment (especially if using a demo environment or a simplified simulation). If not, simulate results: e.g., "Assume we ran it and Variant B saw 12% conversion vs. 10% for control – a relative 20% lift, p<0.05." It's fine to fabricate plausible data for the sake of the assignment, but be consistent and analyze it as if real.
• Analysis: Present the results (actual or assumed) in a clear format (table or chart). State whether the hypothesis was supported. For instance, "In Experiment 1, the new onboarding emails led to 38% Day 7 retention vs 30% in control – a significant improvement, confirming our hypothesis." Or "The new signup page did not significantly change conversion (10.5% vs 10%, not statistically significant), indicating that lever might not be as impactful or needs a different approach."
• Learnings & Next Steps: Based on each result, what would you do next? If successful, how will you implement or scale it? If not, will you iterate on the experiment (tweak the idea and try again) or pivot to a different lever? Also note any surprising insights or qualitative feedback gathered.

Deliverable: A short report (could be a Notion page or document, ~2-4 pages) for each experiment, or one combined report, detailing the above steps. Include screenshots or mock-ups if you created test variants, and charts for results. Essentially, someone reading should learn your thought process in improving a lever, how you tested it, and what the outcome tells you.

These assignments reinforce a full cycle: strategy -> execution -> analysis. By completing them, you practice the analytical rigor and creative thinking that growth professionals use in real scenarios.