Growth Operator
A growth operator is a senior growth professional who combines strategic thinking with hands-on execution. Unlike advisors who recommend strategies or agencies that run campaigns, a growth operator embeds with your team, builds the systems, and personally ensures they work — strategy and implementation in one person.
Why Growth Operator Matters for SaaS Companies
The gap between strategy and execution is where most growth initiatives die. A strategy deck that no one implements is worthless. An execution team without strategic direction wastes time on the wrong things. Growth operators bridge this gap. For Seed to Series B companies that cannot staff separate strategy and execution roles, the operator model delivers both in one engagement.
An Operator's Take
I call myself an operator because the word matters. Advisors advise. Consultants consult. Operators operate. When I say I built churn intervention systems at BatchService, I mean I personally configured the workflows, wrote the email sequences, set up the analytics, and measured the results. When I say I built SEO infrastructure at ZoomInfo, I mean I worked with engineering to implement the technical architecture. The distinction is not semantic — it determines whether anything actually ships.
Common Mistakes
What I see go wrong at Seed to Series B companies.
Hiring an advisor when you need an operator. If your team can execute but needs direction, an advisor works. If you need both strategy and execution, you need an operator.
Expecting an operator to only do strategy. The value of an operator is that they do both — do not limit them to meetings and slide decks.
Not giving operators the access and authority to execute. An operator who cannot touch the code, access the data, or make decisions is just an expensive advisor.
What to Do This Week
Concrete steps you can take right now.
Honestly assess your team's biggest gap: do you need strategic direction, execution capability, or both?
When evaluating growth hires (fractional or full-time), ask for specific examples of what they personally built — not what they recommended.
Use the Growth Diagnostic to identify whether your bottleneck is strategy (knowing what to do) or execution (doing it).
Related Resources
Related Terms
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Further Reading
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a growth operator and a growth consultant?
A growth consultant analyzes your situation and delivers recommendations — a strategy deck, a prioritized roadmap, a list of initiatives. A growth operator does all of that AND builds the systems, runs the experiments, and measures the results. The consultant tells you what to do. The operator does it with you.
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