Users solve their own problems

Users will solve their own problems. And it's important to listen.

The iconic "We Accept Paypal" was an idea shared by a user for their eBay store, before the Paypal team was even familiar with eBay.

In this case, the user was trying to improve conversion on their store. The Paypal team saw this as an opportunity to drive new users and transactions.

This brings some interesting learnings for growth teams:

• Good ideas are everywhere. Expand your horizons and see how people are interacting with your product or brand.
• Users will solve their own problems. It may not be elegant, but it's there.
• Experiment, at speed. This means starting with quick and dirty MVPs to test your insights and hypotheses.

A smart growth program pays close attention to what users are doing. It then takes these ideas, and runs experiments with them.

Here's what the process might look like:

1. 💡Ideas or user insights
2. 🤔 Hypothesis
3. 👩‍🔬 Experiment / MVP
4. 🔁 Iterate, scale, or abandon

In Paypal's case:

1. 💡 User-generated "We Accept Paypal" button
2. 🤔 It will improve consumer awareness & transactions
3. 👩‍🔬 A seller's kit
4. 🔁 Success! Scale and productize

Thanks for checking this out! If you have questions or are curious to learn more, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter. 👋

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