Laura Schaffer

Laura Schaffer is a growth and product leader who built Twilio’s first growth team and later joined Amplitude as Head of Growth (at the time of this recording, she was in her first days in the role). She has worked across PLG companies with developer-oriented products and is known for rigorous growth experimentation practice and her thinking on developer psychology.

In the wiki

• Laura Schaffer on Growth at Amplitude, Developer Psychology, and Good Friction — creating your own path, bad vs good friction, developer psychology in PLG, the Twilio phone number experiment, high experiment fail rates as healthy

Key concepts

• Good friction: friction that signals competence or creates relevant commitment, contrasted with bad friction that merely adds steps
• Developer psychology: developers experience product decisions as accountable choices, distrust sales, and respond to product-first rather than sales-first motions
• Customer insight as currency: those who accumulate the most customer knowledge define the widest scope of influence