Growth Isn’t Complicated. So Why Do So Many Teams Struggle With It?

The four most common causes of growth struggles and how to overcome each one.

After more than two decades working on growth at companies like Uproar, LogMeIn, Dropbox, and dozens of startups, I’ve come to a simple conclusion:

The core principles of growth aren’t complicated. But doing them well is rare.

Most of the time, the playbook is clear: build something people truly want, measure what matters, test relentlessly, and keep the team aligned. Yet even with those basics in place, growth often stalls or never gets going in the first place.

In my experience, the real blockers usually fall into one of four categories.

1. No Product-Market Fit: The False Start Trap

This is the most common issue, and it’s not even a growth problem. If your product doesn’t solve a meaningful problem for a specific group of people, nothing else matters.

I’ve been guilty of this myself. We built an experimentation workflow tool at GrowthHackers that had strong early traction. Thousands of teams signed up for the beta, and usage looked promising. But we hadn’t asked them to pay. Once we did, we realized most teams didn’t have enough testing throughput to really benefit from the tool. The value just wasn’t there. We had PMF with free, motivated users, but not with the paying market.

What to do:
Don’t rely on gut feel or shallow usage metrics. Use surveys and interviews to understand whether your product is a “must-have” for a meaningful segment and why. If not, deepen the value before you try to scale.

2. Lack of Discipline: Half-Stepping the Process

A lot of teams know what to do. They just don’t do it consistently.

I’ve hired plenty of smart, experienced people to run growth. But I’ve learned that success doesn’t come from bursts of inspiration. It comes from discipline week in and week out. Without that consistency, testing slows down, learning stops, and momentum dies.

And when growth inevitably flattens, it’s too late to rebuild the muscle.

What to do:
Set up a simple but consistent rhythm. Weekly growth meetings. Prioritized backlogs. Clear ownership. Track how many tests you’re shipping each week and what you’re learning from them. Focus on throughput and insight, not just outcomes.

3. Creatively Stuck: Can’t See the Angles

Some teams have PMF and decent discipline, but still stall out. They’ve optimized the landing page, tightened onboarding, and tuned their ads. But growth is flat, and they don’t know what else to try.

I’ve seen this happen most often when teams stop being curious. When they’re no longer talking to customers, digging into data, or exploring behavioral patterns, they lose sight of what’s really going on.

Curiosity is the unlock. Talking to customers and prospects. Reading open-ended survey responses. Watching people use the product. That’s where the next idea usually shows up.

What to do:
Get close to the experience again. Watch new users onboard. Talk to people who churned. Ask people why they almost didn’t sign up or why they did. Insight creates creativity.

4. Misaligned Teams: Growth Gets Smothered by Silos

In larger companies, the biggest barrier isn’t effort. It’s inertia.

Product, marketing, and engineering all have their own goals, roadmaps, and incentives. When something spans teams, it gets bogged down or deprioritized. So teams default to top-of-funnel work because it’s easier to launch a new ad than to change onboarding or pricing.

But here’s the problem: top-of-funnel is crowded. It’s expensive. And if your product isn’t built to convert, engage, retain, and monetize well, you’re just pouring water into a leaky bucket.

What actually works is the opposite. Start deep in the funnel. Get users to the “aha moment” faster. Increase activation, retention, referrals, and monetization. Then take those gains back to the channels and watch performance improve.

Focusing on acquisition because the rest feels too hard is a trap.

What to do:
Get aligned around one success metric. Build shared rituals. Make testing a cross-functional effort. And ensure leadership isn’t just nodding at growth. They need to actively clear the path for it.

Final Thought

If you’ve “tried growth” and it didn’t work, don’t give up. Ask yourself:

• Did we truly have product-market fit?

• Were we consistent in how we approached growth?

• Were we grounded in curiosity and real user insight?

• Was the full team aligned or working at cross-purposes?

Figure out what broke, and fix it. Growth is learnable, but only if you’re willing to show up and do the work.

I’ve spent the last several years helping teams build that muscle.

If you're looking to build the right skills, the growth courses at GoPractice are a great place to start. If you're trying to get your team working better together around growth, that’s exactly what I cover in my workshops. Feel free to reach out if you have questions about either.

Or if you want my direct input on what might be holding back your growth, let’s have a chat on Intro.co/seanellis.