What drives real product growth—launching new features, or helping existing ones land? In this episode of The Effortless Podcast, Dheeraj Pandey and Amit Prakash sit down with Ken Rudin, former Head of Growth at Google, Facebook, Zynga, and ThoughtSpot, to unpack 15 years of lessons at the intersection of analytics and product. Ken shares the story of how a simple nudge doubled Google Search engagement, why retention curves are the truest measure of product–market fit, and how startups should think about growth before and after finding PMF. Along the way, he introduces frameworks like ARIA (Analyze, Reduce, Introduce, Assist) and MUD (Meaningful, Unique, Defensible) to help founders systematize growth instead of chasing hacks. From cross-selling in corner-store SaaS to the surprising power of changing a Google Ads hyphen into a vertical bar, this conversation shows why growth is less about tricks and more about rigorous, creative experimentation.
What drives real product growth—launching new features, or helping existing ones land? In this episode of The Effortless Podcast, Dheeraj Pandey and Amit Prakash sit down with Ken Rudin, former Head of Growth at Google, Facebook, Zynga, and ThoughtSpot, to unpack 15 years of lessons at the intersection of analytics and product.
Ken shares the story of how a simple nudge doubled Google Search engagement, why retention curves are the truest measure of product–market fit, and how startups should think about growth before and after finding PMF. Along the way, he introduces frameworks like ARIA (Analyze, Reduce, Introduce, Assist) and MUD (Meaningful, Unique, Defensible) to help founders systematize growth instead of chasing hacks.
From cross-selling in corner-store SaaS to the surprising power of changing a Google Ads hyphen into a vertical bar, this conversation shows why growth is less about tricks and more about rigorous, creative experimentation.
00:00 – Introduction: Ken’s career journey across Zynga, Facebook, Google, and ThoughtSpot
02:00 – The Google “Sports Scores” story: Nudges that doubled engagement
08:00 – Launches vs. Landings: Why most features stall without growth focus
15:00 – When to invest in growth: Signals post-PMF and small-team leverage
22:00 – Corner-store SaaS case study: Cross-sell, pricing insights, and awareness gaps
27:00 – Counterintuitive nudges: Google Ads and the “– vs. |” experiment
32:00 – Growth as a scientific process: Hypotheses, experiments, and iteration
35:00 – Retention curves as PMF: Engagement as the strongest proxy
43:00 – Common traps: Acquisition obsession and vanity metrics
55:00 – Differentiation with MUD: Meaningful, Unique, Defensible advantages
01:03:00 – The ARIA framework: Analyze, Reduce, Introduce, Assist
01:10:00 – Fun Q&A: TED Talks, awkwardness, posture, and Peter Gabriel
Ken Rudin – Growth and analytics leader with senior roles at Google, Facebook, Zynga, and ThoughtSpot. Advisor to startups on scaling growth and building data-driven teams.
Amit Prakash – Co-founder and CTO at ThoughtSpot, former engineer at Google AdSense and Microsoft Bing.
Amit Prakash
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/amit-prakash-50719a2/
Twitter/X – https://x.com/amitp42
Ken Rudin
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenrudin/
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