Startup founders love growth hacks. A/B test everything. Scale from day one. Build an MVP, get users, then tweak: feature A lifts retention X%, feature B boosts conversion Y%. It looks like methodical progress.
But is it? Especially before Product-Market Fit? This rush to optimize might be a dangerous distraction.
The truth? Growth hacks usually fail before PMF. And even after PMF, your real job is the user experience. This isn’t fluffy advice. It’s how companies like Airbnb started—by doing things that don’t scale.
The Illusion of Premature Optimization
Before PMF, you barely know your users or their real problem. So what are you optimizing? Growth hacking then is like polishing a car with no engine. It looks busy but goes nowhere.
Three bad assumptions lead startups astray:
- Small, data-backed tweaks are always best.
- “Data-driven” automatically means scientific.
- Scalability is a day-one requirement.
Airbnb proved these wrong. They focused on user experience, not premature optimization, and found a higher ceiling.
Do Things That Don’t Scale
Paul Graham said: “Do things that don’t scale.” Many quote it; few grasp it. Early on, unscalable work isn’t a detour; it’s the main road. Talk to users. Onboard them by hand. Be a concierge. Why?
- Learn your market: Get raw feedback. See their pain, their “aha!” moments. Dashboards don’t show this.
- Win a niche with service: Startups can offer an “insanely great experience” big companies can’t. Tim Cook won’t send a handwritten note; you can. This over-the-top, personal service helps you deeply understand and capture a niche. You build fierce loyalty, not just collect feedback.
- Create evangelists: A fantastic early experience, even for a few, makes users your sales force.
This isn’t anti-data. It’s about the right kind of learning before PMF.
Airbnb’s Masterclass: From 10-Star Dreams to Scalable Reality
Airbnb didn’t A/B test button colors. They obsessed over the user’s journey. Brian Chesky pushed for a “10-star experience.”
1. Designing “10-Star Experience”
What’s a 10-star experience? Chesky made his team imagine:
- 5-star: Arrive, host lets you in. As described. (Expected)
- 7-star: Host welcomes you. Favorite snacks in fridge, surfboard ready. (Delightful)
- 10-star: Beatles-style airport arrival. 5,000 fans. (Absurd, but expands thought)
- 11-star: Elon Musk flies you to space. (Beyond Absurd)
The goal wasn’t literal 11-stars. It was to break “good enough” thinking. Find what makes users rave. Dream big, then work back to a 6, 7, or 8-star version that’s amazing and doable.
2. “Snow White Storyboards”: Scripting the Perfect Journey
To make this real, Airbnb hired a Pixar animator. They storyboarded the entire journey—guest, host, employee—in 45 frames. Each showed context, emotion, motivation.
This “Snow White” method was powerful:
- It made everyone see the whole experience, not just features for PMs to A/B test.
- It pinpointed key emotional moments: check-in, first contact, trust. This is where you forge user love.
- It created a shared “movie” for the whole company to align expectations.
These storyboards showed where to aim for 10-star moments.
3. From Unscalable Craft to Scalable Systems
This is where “doing things that don’t scale” met the 10-star dream. Airbnb manually prototyped these perfect experiences for a few users. They had to prove they were worth scaling.
- Pro Photos (2009): NYC listings tanked. Bad photos? Gebbia and Chesky, armed with a rented camera, literally went door-to-door in New York, knocking on hosts’ doors and offering to take better pictures of their apartments. They weren’t professional photographers, but they knew good photos mattered. Totally unscalable. Result? NYC revenue doubled in a week. Proof: pro photos convert. Then they built a scalable photo program.
- Living with Hosts: Founders stayed in hosts’ homes. They took notes. This led to profiles and two-way reviews. No algorithm did this. Just deep, unscalable empathy.
- Ricardo’s Perfect Trip: The team gave one guest, Ricardo, a 10-star SF trip. Airport pickup, curated events. Ricardo cried with joy. Proof: “human connection” was huge. The scalable fix? Airbnb Experiences.
The pattern:
- Define the extreme.
- Storyboard it.
- Hand-craft it for a few users.
- See if it’s magic.
- If yes, find a way to scale the value, not the manual labor.
4. The Chesky “Critique” of A/B Testing
Chesky said, “A/B testing is moving the product decision responsibility to the user.” He wasn’t against all A/B tests. He was against misusing them for big decisions or getting stuck on tiny improvements while missing the big picture.
If Ford had A/B tested faster horses, he wouldn’t have invented the car.
Airbnb’s way:
- Start with a strong hypothesis (e.g., “pro photos build trust”).
- Test it qualitatively, unscalably.
- If it works, scale it. Measure with long-term metrics (retention, referrals).
- Then use A/B tests to tweak the scaled version (e.g., how to offer the photo service).
User Experience: The Unending Watch
The lesson: obsessing over user experience isn’t just for finding PMF. It’s forever. After PMF, growth hacks on a clunky experience won’t save you. Users know a patchwork from a real journey.
Airbnb, even as a giant, still cares about that 10-star ideal. Understand users. Strive for great moments. Keep the core experience solid. Always.
Real growth, especially early on, is often unscalable. It’s manual work, deep empathy, relentless delight. Do things that don’t scale to find what’s truly valuable. Only then do you have something worth scaling. That’s how you build more than a product. You build a phenomenon.