Team-Based Activation

Define activation around teams forming habits, not individual user actions

Ben Williams
How Snyk built a product-led growth juggernaut

Team-Based Activation

"The reason I say team instead of user is... ultimately security is a team sport. That team might be one person, in which case a user is equivalent to team, but often a team is multiple people and we actually expect different people to fulfill different parts of the team activation journey." - Ben Williams

What It Is

A framework for defining activation metrics around teams rather than individual users, particularly for B2B products where value is delivered collectively. Rather than tracking whether an individual user performed a specific action, you track whether a team has formed a habit around deriving core value from your product.

This approach recognizes that in team-oriented products:

  1. Different people fulfill different parts of the activation journey
  2. Some value-creating activity happens off-platform
  3. A single "activated" user may enable dozens of team members to benefit

How It Works

Three Moments in the Activation Journey

Setup Moments: Team creates account, connects integrations, configures settings. May be completed by a single "champion" user.

Aha Moments: Team experiences core value for the first time. Might be distributed across multiple team members.

Habit Moments: Team forms a habit around deriving core value repeatedly. This is activation.

Snyk's Example

  • Core value: Fixing vulnerabilities (not just finding them, not just logging in)
  • Activation metric: Team fixes a vulnerability within 30 days of team creation
  • Why 30 days: Strong correlation with 3-month retention
  • Retention metric: Team is still fixing vulnerabilities at 3+ months

Why Teams, Not Users

  1. Security is a team sport - Multiple roles contribute to the journey
  2. Off-platform activity - Some value (like fixing code) happens outside the product
  3. One setup, many beneficiaries - One person connecting repos enables many developers to benefit

How to Apply It

  1. Identify your core personas - Who are the different users involved in team activation? What roles do they play?

  2. Define your core value action - What action represents actually deriving value? (Not setup, not awareness—the real value)

  3. Collect baseline data - Build instrumentation to track team-level behaviors over time

  4. Find the habit moment - Use ML models and qualitative research to find which early team behaviors correlate with long-term retention

  5. Work backward - Once you find the habit moment, identify the aha and setup moments that lead to it

  6. Map user behaviors to team outcomes - Identify which individual user actions influence team-level activation

When to Use It

  • For B2B products where value is delivered to teams, not individuals
  • When a single user's setup enables many others to benefit
  • When key value-creating actions happen off-platform
  • When different personas play different roles in the activation journey
  • When individual user activation metrics don't correlate with retention

Source

  • Guest: Ben Williams
  • Episode: "How Snyk built a product-led growth juggernaut"
  • Key Discussion: (01:19:28) - Detailed explanation of team-based activation at Snyk
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

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