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Welcome to this week's edition of the Breve - the only newsletter you need if you want to have product and growth insights plus exciting tech news in one place. I invite you to join our WhatsApp community here.
Growth is a vital function of every startup. Companies often commit a lot of resources to Growth. But, Growth without data is guesswork. Â
For instance, how do you know which user you should send a re-engagement email or notification to? Or how do you understand the relationship between email activity and web behaviour? How do you combine both offline and online customer interaction to get a complete picture?Â
The key to unlocking growth rest on the robustness of your data stack. There is a popular saying that data is the new oil. Yes, the volume of customer data has exploded in the last few decades.Â
But a lot of companies are still struggling to fully harness their data to make better decisions and improve customer experience. You need to set up or improve your data stack to be able to answer complex and critical questions about your users.Â
A Modern Data Stack (MDS) is a collection of tools and technologies used to gather, store, process, and analyze data in a scalable, efficient, and cost-effective way. It consists of the following:Â
Picture source: AltexSoft
Data sources: This is where data primarily originates from. It could be Mailchimp, Mixpanel, Stripe, Hubspot, product database, etc. These data sources produce massive amounts of raw, unorganized data that need to be extracted. Â
Extract and load tools: This helps you to extract data from different sources and load them into a centralized storage/compute layer. Here, tools like Airbyte, Fivetran and Supermetrics come into play.
Data warehouse: It helps you to eliminate data silos by ingesting data from different sources, like relational databases and transactional systems. Examples include: include Snowflake, Big Query, Redshift
Transformation tools: Transformation tools (like dbt, Dataform), helps you to transform your data in preparation for analytics. The transformation layer can be done at different points either before loading the data into a data warehouse or after.Â
Data orchestration tools: Tools like Airflow automates each step within the extract, transform, load process (ETL), and ensure that new data coming from your data sources are synced with minimal human intervention.Â
Visualisation and Analytics: This helps you to query your data, analyse it and draw insights from the data. Examples include Tableau, Power BI, Metabase, and Looker.Â
Now, you have an idea of what an MDS looks like. It is the foundation of your Growth function and you need to pay close attention to it. You donât have to build your entire data stack once.
If you are not sure where to start in your data maturity journey, you should start with the basic one like collecting data from your websites and apps and sending it to multiple downstream destinations (such as Amplitude, GA4 or Mixpanel).
As more complex questions arise, you will see the need to improve your data stack to support your Growth function.Â
đ Your Product & Growth BriefingÂ
Transition from project to product management. Transitioning from project management to product management offers companies numerous benefits, including enhanced outcomes, swift adaptation to market dynamics, and sustained competitiveness. So, where should you begin? Productboard
Continous discovery process in Jira. Continous discovery is an iterative process of identifying and validating opportunities through ongoing research and hypothesis/ assumptions testing in order to achieve the product goals. How do you set-up a continuous discovery process in Jira and align it with Agile methodology and Delivery process? Oksana Holubets
Virality & word of mouth. How can virality and word of mouth help with your SaaS growth? In this podcast, Gaurav Vohra, a member of the founding team at Superhuman talks about his experience. You'll learn why they decided to focus on a specific set of channels, the mechanics of virality, how you can measure it in the early stages, and more. Userlist
The what, why, and how of technical marketing. Technical marketing lies at the intersection of marketing operations (MOps) and marketing analytics. It is more holistic than traditional marketing as it adds a technical and analytical approach to the creative process. Marketers who miss out on effectively leveraging data fail to improve their marketing, sales, customer service, and overall product development. Revlitix
The âEdge Case Trapâ that product teams should watch out for. When building products, it is really hard to tell when something is âgood enough for launchâ. That sounds weird, but that is one of the biggest questions that Product teams face as the product starts taking shape. This is referred to as âEdge Case Trapâ. How can you manage it? Whiteboard
đ¤ What else is happening in tech?Â
Google has released a new meeting scheduling feature for Gmail with Google Calendar integration, pitching against tools like Calendly.Â
Metaâs Threads crosses 150million downloads globally.
South African digital banking platform TymeBank has raised USD 77.8 M in a pre-Series C round
Flutterwave, a leading payment solution in Africa launched Tuition, to help users pay for tuition fees in local currency.Â
WireMock raises $6.5 million in seed funding for its API developer productivity platform
Nigerian-based HR tech startup, Propel, raises $2.74 million in seed funding to scale its community platform.Â
Kahoot! (the Norwegian game-based learning platform) has been acquired by Goldman Sachs, General Atlantic, and others in $1.72 billion deal.
eBay acquires Milan-based Certiligo, an AI-powered authenticity verification service for products.
UK fintech funding slumps in the first half of 2023.
London fintech Monzo preparing merger deal with Nordic rival Lunar.
Thatâs all for today.Â
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