Career frameworks, A/B testing mistakes, counterintuitive onboarding tips, selling to developers | Laura Schaffer (VP of Growth at Amplitude)

**Laura Schaffer** (0:00)
Like the, you know, dead of the night, and by that, I mean like, you know, 7 p.m. or something on, I think it was pretty sure it was a Friday. We just asked for forgiveness and kind of put these questions into the sign-up flow and ran as Navy test with a small group.
And, you know, I'm fully expecting, okay, this is going to like hurt our numbers, but maybe it won't be so bad, you know? And I'm going to be prepared to advocate the power of this data that we're getting. And I was totally, I'm thinking about like written, started to write like the framework for how I wanted to surface this. And we start to get the data for this thing. I'm not kidding, an improved conversion. Like, there's no personalization, nothing past it, just the questions, an improved conversion by like 5%. Like, just improved signups.
And it's one of those like, what? Like, okay, this, like, what is going on here?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:50)
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences, building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Laura Schaffer. The week we recorded this chat turned out to be Laura's first week in a new gig as Head of Growth for Amplitude, taking over for a previous legendary guest, Elena Verna. Prior to Amplitude, Laura was VP of Product and Growth at a company called Rapid. Before that, she spent over seven years at Twilio as Head of Growth and PM Lead of the Growth Platform and the Experimentation Platform at Twilio. In our conversation, we dig into Laura's career growth framework and the importance of carving your own path versus waiting for one to be carved for you. We also get into a bunch of tactical and surprising advice around running experiments, making decisions on gut versus data, developing your growth strategy, and how to sell your product to developers. Laura has a wealth of wisdom and I learned a lot from our conversation. With that, I bring you Laura Schaffer after a short word from our wonderful sponsors.
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Laura, welcome to the podcast.

**Laura Schaffer** (4:18)
Some thanks Lenny. It is so great to be here. Thanks for having me.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:21)
It's great to have you. So I asked Elena, Elena, Elena. I'm not even sure how to pronounce your name. Maybe you know.
Elena, okay, okay. I think I've said it wrong all the time, all this time. Okay, Elena. So I asked Elena, Verna, who's a popular guest on this podcast, who I should have on this podcast, and you were the first person that immediately came to mind.