Best growth marketing experts to follow in 2026

The best growth marketing experts at a glance

I picked these 8 because each one has carried a number themselves and still writes about it in public. I care about that filter because I've carried the number too. I took an AI startup from zero to $600K ARR in 5 months, and at my current startup I took revenue from $800K to $1.4M in my first 3 months.

What is a growth marketing expert?

A growth marketing expert is someone who has owned a revenue or user number and moved it, then can explain which lever did the work. The job sits where product meets marketing, so the best ones talk about retention and pricing as much as about channels.

The title gets used loosely. Plenty of people call themselves one after running a few ad campaigns, and that's why every pick below comes with a fact you can check in one click (usually a team they led or a company they built). If you're looking for startup influencers with big follower counts, this isn't that list. Follower count tells you someone is good at posting, which is a different skill from growing a company.

8 growth marketing experts worth following in 2026

The order is loose. I've put the 2 weekly newsletters first because they're the easiest habit to start, then the investors, then the specialists.

Lenny Rachitsky

Lenny Rachitsky spent 7 years at Airbnb, much of the later part as the product leader on supply growth. He now runs Lenny's Newsletter and Podcast, which lists more than 1,000,000 subscribers. What makes it useful is how specific the guests get, because he keeps asking for the actual number and the actual experiment until he gets it. If you only follow one person on this page, start here.

Elena Verna

Elena Verna has more than 15 years in growth and has held leadership roles at Lovable, Miro, SurveyMonkey, Amplitude and Dropbox. Her newsletter, Elena's Growth Scoop, is where she writes up what she's seen work in product-led companies. She's the person I'd read if your product has a free tier and you can't figure out why it isn't turning into revenue.

Kyle Poyar

Kyle Poyar writes Growth Unhinged, which goes to more than 85,000 go-to-market leaders, founders and investors every Wednesday. Before that he was an operating partner at OpenView, where he led marketing and worked with portfolio founders scaling from $1M to $100M+ ARR, and before that he worked on pricing at Simon-Kucher. Pricing is his edge. Most growth writers skip it, and it's often the cheapest lever a startup has.

Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and led the rider growth teams at Uber before he joined. He wrote The Cold Start Problem, published by Harper Business, on how products with network effects get going and then scale. He's also written hundreds of essays on startups and user growth at andrewchen.com, so there's a back catalog to dig through before you even get to the book.

Harry Stebbings

Harry Stebbings started The Twenty Minute VC with $50 and no venture capital contacts, and the first episode came out in January 2015 when he was about 18. He launched the 20VC fund in May 2020 and raised $400 million for a third fund in October 2024. Follow him to hear how investors decide, which is the half of growth most first-time founders never get to see. The best venture capital podcasts page has more shows in the same lane.

Jason Lemkin

Jason Lemkin co-founded EchoSign and ran it as CEO until Adobe acquired it. At Adobe he oversaw EchoSign and Adobe Document Services as they grew to $100M+ ARR in 2013. He then founded SaaStr, and through the SaaStr Fund he has backed companies including Algolia, Talkdesk and Pipedrive. He's the clearest example on this page of a founder who built and sold a company and now gives the growth advice he once needed.

Brian Balfour

Brian Balfour is the founder and CEO of Reforge and was most recently VP of Growth at HubSpot. Before that he founded Boundless Learning, which Valore acquired, and Viximo, which Tapjoy acquired. His writing is about growth as a system a team runs every week, which is what you need once you're hiring your first growth people and can't do it all yourself.

Casey Winters

Casey Winters led the growth product team at Pinterest, joining when it had 40 million active users, and was Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. Earlier he started the marketing team at Grubhub, which went from 3 cities to 1,000+ and from a $1 million Series A to an IPO. He writes about scaling companies on his Substack, Casey Accidental, and he's especially good on marketplaces where supply and demand both have to grow at once.

Who to follow at each stage

You don't need all 8 at once. Pick the 2 or 3 who match the problem on your desk this quarter, and swap them out when the problem changes.

Before product-market fit, read Andrew Chen on getting a network started and Harry Stebbings on what investors want to see. The seed-stage growth guide covers what to do with that money once it lands. Between $1M and $10M ARR, Jason Lemkin and Kyle Poyar are the most practical, because that range is exactly where both of them have spent their careers. Once you're building a growth team, Brian Balfour and Elena Verna are better company, and the Series A growth guide lays out the thresholds that stage gets judged on.

If you'd rather listen than read, the best B2B marketing podcasts roundup and the best podcasts for startup founders list overlap with several people here. For a longer shelf, the best startup books page starts where this one stops. If you're booking someone for a stage rather than following them, the marketing keynote speakers page is the one to open. And the startup growth playbooks lay out each stage from pre-seed to Series C.

How to spot growth experts worth your time

There are thousands of people posting growth advice every day, and most of it is recycled from the same 20 essays. Before you add someone to your reading list, I'd ask 3 questions.

Did they own a number?

Look for a metric they were responsible for, at a company you can name. "Led growth at Pinterest from 40 million users" is a receipt, and "helped brands grow" isn't one. Everyone on this list passes that test in their own bio, which is why they're on it.

Do they show the experiment, or only the lesson?

The useful posts tell you what they tried, what broke and what the number did afterward. A lesson with no experiment behind it is an opinion. Opinions are cheap, and you can't run them on Monday.

Do they write for your stage?

Advice that worked at Uber scale can sink a 10-person company, because the channels and the budgets are different. Match the writer to where you are now, then move on to the next writer when you outgrow them.

Hear the investors explain it

If you want to know how the people who fund growth think about it, that's what I'm building Sell That S*it! around. Every season-one guest is a VC, and each episode breaks down how one of their companies got from one stage to the next. Season one is filming now and no episodes are out yet, so use the newsletter box at the bottom of this page to get them when they land.

FAQs about growth marketing experts

Who are the best people to follow for startup growth advice in 2026? Start with Lenny Rachitsky and Kyle Poyar for weekly tactical writing, then add an investor voice like Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin or Andrew Chen. Elena Verna, Brian Balfour and Casey Winters round it out for product-led growth, growth teams and marketplaces.

Which Heads of Growth share what actually worked when they scaled a startup's revenue? Elena Verna writes up what she saw in growth roles at Dropbox, Amplitude, Miro and Lovable. Casey Winters led growth product at Pinterest and started the marketing team at Grubhub. Brian Balfour was VP of Growth at HubSpot before founding Reforge.

Who are the best operators to learn from about growing a startup from $1M to $10M ARR? I'd start with Jason Lemkin, who oversaw EchoSign and Adobe Document Services as they passed $100M ARR, and Kyle Poyar, who worked with OpenView founders scaling from $1M to $100M+ ARR. Both write mostly for that exact range.

Who should a first-time founder follow to learn growth and fundraising? Follow Harry Stebbings to learn how investors decide, since 20VC is both a podcast and a fund. Pair him with Lenny Rachitsky for the growth side, and you'll hear both halves of the conversation.

Which founders built and sold companies and now share growth advice? Jason Lemkin co-founded EchoSign and sold it to Adobe before starting SaaStr. Brian Balfour founded Boundless Learning and Viximo, both acquired, before he ran growth at HubSpot and started Reforge.

Who should I follow if I like Lenny Rachitsky and Harry Stebbings? Kyle Poyar is the closest match to Lenny for tactical depth, and Andrew Chen is the closest to Harry for an investor's view of growth. Jason Lemkin sits between the two, because he's an operator who became an investor.

About the author

Part of the stage playbooks: what to do for growth at pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B and Series C. The glossary →