Your Startup Doesn’t Just Need Growth Tactics — It Needs a Growth System Architect

Before optimizers. Before scalers. Architects of scalable growth systems.

“Growth” has become one of the hottest titles in tech. Every startup wants a Head of Growth, a VP Growth, or a Growth Lead.

But here’s the truth: almost nobody has repeatedly designed a company’s first scalable growth engine.

Plenty of people have done it once — often by timing or circumstance. But the list of people who have done it multiple times, across different companies is surprisingly small.

That role — what I call a Growth System Architect — is incredibly rare. And it’s rare for good reason.

There are only a handful of people who’ve played this role more than once at unicorn scale:

• Casey Winters at Grubhub and Pinterest.

• Elliot Shmukler at LinkedIn, Wealthfront and Instacart.

• Whitney Wolfe Herd at Tinder and Bumble.

• Myself at Uproar, LogMeIn, Dropbox, and Lookout. I also joined others, such as Eventbrite and Bounce, relatively early, but key parts of the growth engine were already in place when I arrived. My role at these companies was more about optimization and building scalable processes around growth rather than architecting the first engine.

This is the missing step in most startups: architecting the growth system before trying to scale.

What a Growth System Architect Really Does

A Growth System Architect steps in after product/market fit, when the product clearly creates value but the path to breakout scale isn’t obvious. Generally the PMF validation and early traction will be established doing things that don’t scale, as recommended in Paul Graham’s famous article. The Growth System Architect is usually that of an individual contributor, but one who must collaborate closely across product, marketing, and engineering to stitch the system together.

While there’s overlap with general growth skills — experimentation, data analysis, messaging, and funnel optimization — the Growth System Architect is a sub-specialization within the broader growth discipline. The difference is in the mandate: to design the entire growth system, know where to go deep, and make creative bets that transform a product from traction into breakout scale.

This also requires being highly dynamic, since most companies at this stage can’t afford a full team to tackle the challenge. In many cases, significant funding only unlocks after the right growth system has been architected.

Just as important, a Growth System Architect knows where to go really deep.

• At Dropbox, for example, we invested heavily in referrals because it was clear they tapped into both our unique product advantage and the existing behavior of early beta users. That depth of focus is what made the referral loop explosive.

• At Grubhub, Casey Winters architected a scalable market expansion playbook. By creating SEO-driven landing pages for every cuisine and neighborhood, Grubhub turned long-tail Google searches into a repeatable engine that carried them to IPO.

• At Pinterest, Casey again found the unlock: building an SEO + activation system that transformed buzz into sustainable, compounding growth.

• At LinkedIn, Elliot Shmukler designed systems like address book import and profile SEO — converting every user into a distribution node.

• At Instacart, Elliot tuned acquisition and referral loops around grocery-buying behavior, making a low-margin category scalable.

• At Tinder, Whitney Wolfe Herd spearheaded the college-campus viral launch strategy — igniting the engine that made the app a household name.

• At Bumble, she flipped the dating dynamic (“women make the first move”) into a product-driven growth system that fueled viral adoption and cultural resonance.

• At Uproar, we implemented a widget strategy where people could start playing on other websites, then finish the game on ours. That single creative leap turned into viral distribution across 40,000 websites, amplified by affiliate incentives.

• At LogMeIn, we pioneered one of the first true freemium models — creating a scalable engine that powered massive adoption.

Each of these engines looks obvious in hindsight. But at the time, they required creativity, systems thinking, and dozens of experiments to validate.

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Why Growth Architects Are So Rare

Looking at the careers of growth leaders, very few have done this more than once. Why?

• The opportunity is rare. You need to be there during the narrow window right after PMF but before scaling — when the growth system is still undefined, yet the product has enough traction to validate ideas quickly.

• The work is messy and creative. Architecting requires hypothesis-driven systems thinking, not just optimization.

• The skillset is unique. You need to blend systems thinking, curiosity, and experiment discipline across product, marketing, and monetization. Most people specialize instead of combining all three.

• The role is short-term. It usually takes 3–12 months to design and validate the engine. Careers reward multi-year leadership roles, not repeat short-term cycles.

• Success creates golden handcuffs. At Facebook, for example, the original growth team architected one of the most powerful engines in history. But their equity became so valuable that they never left to do it again. One of the key figures in that effort was Naomi Gleit, who remains at Meta today.

• Supply and demand are misaligned. People rarely stay in this specialty, opting instead to become founders, join later-stage companies, or move into investing. At the same time, most founders don’t think to hire for this expertise because they’re unaware of how critical it is. The result is a persistent shortage of Growth System Architects, even though the need is widespread.

• Re-architecting is sometimes needed. In some cases, a Growth System Architect may step in later — not to design the very first engine, but to re-architect a system that seems to be falling short of its potential — even if already growing quickly. At that point, the company usually has significant traction and momentum thanks to strong product/market fit and a “good enough” early growth engine. But to reach the next level, they need someone who can step back, rethink the system holistically, and design a stronger engine for scale.

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Who Else Has Done It?

Every successful company has had a Growth System Architect at some point. Someone had to design the engine that carried them from product/market fit to breakout scale.

But in most cases, those individuals only did it once. That’s why repeat examples like Casey Winters, Elliot Shmukler, Whitney Wolfe Herd, and myself are so rare.

I deliberately set out to specialize in this stage after leading the full growth cycle from founding to IPO at two companies. That experience showed me how critical the architecting phase was — and how rusty my skills had become after several years as a scaler/optimizer.

In some cases, the role was collaborative. At LinkedIn, for example, Elliot Shmukler worked closely with Reid Hoffman on growth systems like address book imports and profile SEO. And at Facebook, an early team including Naomi Gleit architected the engine that took the company to billions of users.

Others — Elena Verna, Brian Balfour, Andrew Chen, Andy Johns, Josh Elman, Anne Raimondi, and Hila Qu — have made huge contributions as optimizers/scalers, or even re-architecting systems. Many have since become prominent CEOs, executives, or venture capitalists, extending their impact in different ways. But to the best of my knowledge, none have carved out a focus on architecting the first growth engine.

I probably missed some — but I searched high and low and couldn’t come up with another repeat name. If you know someone who has repeatedly architected unicorn-level growth systems, please share them in the comments.

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Founders as Growth Architects

It’s also worth noting that some repeat founders have served this role, even if they’re better known as visionary CEOs than growth architects.

• Reid Hoffman helped design viral money transfer incentives at PayPal and later worked with Elliot Shmukler at LinkedIn to architect growth loops like address book imports and profile SEO.

• Travis Kalanick at Uber was deeply involved in shaping driver/passenger referral loops and the city-by-city expansion playbook.

• Daniel Ek at Spotify built a freemium system powered by playlists, referrals, and distribution partnerships with Facebook and telcos.

• Stewart Butterfield, collaborating with Merci Grace, drove a viral team-collaboration loop at Slack where new users pulled entire groups in with them.

These founders were Growth System Architects, but history tends to remember them for their visionary leadership, not their growth-engine design. That’s part of why the role itself remains under-recognized. And of course, Whitney Wolfe Herd belongs in this category now.

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From Growth Hacker to Growth System Architect

Over a decade ago, I coined the term “growth hacker” to describe the scrappy, experiment-driven specialist who could unlock early traction — and eventually scalable growth — through a relentless process of experimentation. The term caught on because it named a missing skillset that startups desperately needed at the time.

Today, the missing role isn’t just someone who can hack channels or run experiments. It’s someone who can architect an entire growth system — designing the compounding engine that carries a company from product/market fit to breakout scale.

That’s the role of a Growth System Architect.

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What You Should Do Next

For growth experts: If you want to provide incredible value, build skills and specialize in this area. Becoming a Growth System Architect is one of the rarest and most impactful specialties in tech. Your compensation should be a hybrid of cash and equity — and this equity has the potential for the fastest appreciation of any stage in a startup. It’s past the biggest risk (PMF) but before a scalable growth engine has been implemented. The equity generally gets a big markup once the scalable growth engine is validated.

For founders: Either hire someone experienced in this area with a very clear action plan for architecting your growth system, or look to build it yourself. Don’t expect that you can just hire a marketer and they’ll figure things out. Acquisition marketing can be an important component of the growth engine, but acquisition marketers rarely have the skills to effectively architect the whole system.

I personally have very limited capacity to work hands-on with startups at this stage because it requires going extremely deep. I never take on more than one of these roles at a time. But I do advise founders and team members through the process — helping them uncover the right insights and build hypotheses for their growth system. Often, I can provide a lot of value in just one to three 45-minute calls.

👉 If that would be helpful, you can book time with me here: https://intro.co/seanellis

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Why It Matters

If you’re a founder post-PMF, you don’t just need growth tactics — you need a growth system that compounds. Without one, your trajectory flattens. With one, you create the engine that powers breakout scale.

That’s why the Growth System Architect matters. Not as a buzzword, but as a recognition of a distinct, creative, and incredibly rare skillset.

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💡 TL;DR:
Growth System Architects don’t just optimize funnels. They invent engines. And the number of people who have done it repeatedly at unicorn scale is surprisingly small.