15 bitter truths about Growth: how to scale without sacrificing quality

A short, practical list of what truly drives sustainable product growth — without breaking experience.

Hello everyone 👋 I’m Kate Syuma, and welcome to Growthmates.news — the newsletter where we explore growth stories to inspire your professional and personal growth. Join the community of 7,300+ Product, Design, and Growth people from companies like Amplitude, Intercom, Miro, Atlassian, Grammarly, Framer, and more.

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After leading Growth Product & Design at Miro, I’ve seen how easy it is for teams to over-optimise for metrics and under-invest in experience. And in the last months, after speaking with 200+ people at Autodesk and training 60+ growth practitioners at Monday.com, one thing became clear:

PLG doesn’t work without UX — and UX doesn’t scale without PLG thinking.

This merge (PLG + UX) has been at the core of my work for years. It’s also what I started translating through my early posts, including:

• High-quality principles for PLG;

• UX × PLG: How to multiply your value;

• 6 steps of holistic onboarding, etc.

Today, I want to share 15 bitter truths about growth — the ones that help you move fast, innovate boldly, and still keep product quality high.

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What you’ll learn today:

• Why PLG only works when UX is baked in from day one.

• How focusing on core value, loops, and holistic flows accelerates sustainable growth.

• The key principles that help teams move fast, experiment boldly, and still protect product quality.

Now, let’s dive into today’s story 👇

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15 bitter truths about growth.

Over the years, I’ve distilled hundreds of experiments, talks, and hands-on product work into 15 core truths. Here’s what actually moves the needle when growth and quality go hand in hand.

1️⃣ Data tells you WHAT, users tell you WHY.

Your dashboards highlight where the problem is, but they never reveal the underlying cause. Without qualitative checks, teams keep fixing symptoms, not mechanisms. Add short validation loops (5–7 moderated or unmoderated tests) after each major experiment — your insights will instantly become more actionable.

The only way to check the why is to do some user validation.

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2️⃣ User-centricity isn’t optional in PLG, it’s the core.