Sarah Tavel
Partner at Benchmark, where she focuses on consumer and marketplace investments. Previously the first product manager at Pinterest, where she helped build and define the core growth model. Former Greylock partner.
Tavel is best known in product circles for articulating two interconnected frameworks — the Hierarchy of Engagement and the Hierarchy of Marketplaces — originally published as blog posts that became widely referenced in consumer product and growth practice.
Key positions
- Growth metrics that focus on top-of-funnel (MAUs, GMV) misdirect teams; the real question is whether the core action is compounding retention.
- Every consumer product must clear three levels: get users to the core action, create accruing benefits and mounting loss, then achieve self-perpetuating network effects.
- The right core action is the behaviour where: completing it proves the user understands the product, and doing it in a given week strongly predicts returning the following week.
- Not all GMV is created equal. Marketplace founders fixating on $1M GMV as a Series A signal are running the wrong race.
- Markets are currents, not bodies of water. A market with momentum — a structural force pulling participants forward — is categorically different from a static pool.
- Anonymity is a retention trap: without persistent identity, accruing benefits and mounting loss cannot accumulate.