CJ, Kyle, and Ben sit down with product-growth leader Leah Tharin to unpack why “growth” is the connective tissue between marketing traffic and product revenue, how a new middle segment of visitors just wants product information (not onboarding), and why interactive demos and ICP-focused metrics beat vanity signups. They get into AI-era realities—LLMs ingesting messy web data, SEO-style gaming creeping into AI search, and why you must structure content for machines without drowning it in noise. Leah shares practical playbooks for segmenting dashboards by ICP, qualifying intent before trials, and building moats through workflow depth and integrations. They close with Business Blunders (cloud outages stranding smart beds), a “potentially reliable at 2 a.m.” wealth thought experiment, and Pricing in the Real World (when shrinking markets get more profitable and why LEGO’s premium strategy still

Timestamps:

00:00 Preview and Intro

01:00 Theme and Show Intro by Ben

01:23 Welcome and Guest Intro: Leah Tharin joins Mostly Growth

02:58 Halloween banter and European vs. US traditions

04:03 Europe’s AI/startup scene and data protection realities

07:34 Why founders move HQs to the US; SF gravity for AI startups

08:15 EU hubs, language barriers, and multilingual products

09:45 What’s working in growth right now? Setting definitions

10:07 “Growth is just marketing, right?” — Leah’s framework

12:54 Trials vs. info-seekers; fix onboarding for two intents

16:06 Prompt-box homepages and brand vs. explanation debt

Why ‘Growth’ Isn’t Just a Fancy Word for Marketing (with Leah Tharin)

Mostly Growth