How to Build Champion Users at Scale

Zoelle Egner

Founding Marketer & Growth,
Airtable

GROWTH EXPERT

The Insight

Champion-Driven Growth: The Airtable Playbook

"The people who are using Airtable as a content calendar can go to their UX research friends and say, 'Hey, let me help you build a system.' They become heroes internally. That's how we scaled without having to understand every single use case."

Horizontal platforms can't succeed via generic messaging alone
Build within-company virality through individual champions
Champions evangelize because it makes them look brilliant internally
They do your sales job without you having to understand their use case

The Strategy

Psychographic Targeting at Scale

∞

possible use cases

tinkerer persona

The problem: Airtable's horizontal platform makes vertical-specific ads inefficient
The persona: "Tinkerers", people who love building tools, across any industry or title
The approach: Target by interest clusters, not job title (podcasts they listen to, content they read)
The look-alike: Once you find a tinkerer, scale via Facebook lookalike audiences

Why tinkerers become champions

They don't just adopt Airtable, they evangelize it. They build systems that help colleagues in completely different departments, creating internal network effects.

The vintage Facebook era

This worked brilliantly in 2018–2020. It no longer works post-iOS 14 privacy changes. The lesson: find your psychographic, not just your job title.

The Mechanics

How Airtable Found & Activated Champions

Early signal system: Slack integration pulled in signup data (title, company, etc.), auto-surfaced high-intent users for immediate outreach
First-moment personalization: Onboard with use-case specific examples, not generic docs
Build within-company virality: Make it easy for one user to show another user a different (better) use case
Industry-specific cultivation: Go deep on 1–2 industries at a time, surface champions, amplify their voice in their communities
The CEO as repeater: Relentlessly reinforce "this is a tinkerer's tool" 5,000 times across all channels

The network effect unlock

10 → 1,000 users per year within companies. The real multiplier isn't product features; it's champions turning into internal salespeople.

Messaging paradox

"Build your own software" fails. "You're a tinkerer, build systems that make you a hero" wins. Same platform, completely different appeal.

Playbook

Champion Growth Model

Find the psychographic, not the vertical, who are the people most likely to evangelize this to others?
Make early users internal heroes, give them knowledge they can share with colleagues in other departments
Create signals for high-intent users, proactively reach out, customize their first experience
Build in-company network effects, not just user acquisition, 1,000 users in a company is better than 100 in each of 10 companies
Repeat your core message constantly, in many formats, even leaders underestimate how many times they need to say it

The Zoelle insightSmall acts of personalization, industry-specific examples in sample data, a photo that looks intentional, a message that signals "we thought about you", change how someone perceives risk in choosing an unknown tool.

Contrarian

Growth Myths Zoelle Rejects

✗Speed over craft in early marketingINSTEAD →✓ Reread your emails. Invest in decent photos. Make sample data specific to your customer's industry. People notice.

✗Generic messaging works for horizontal productsINSTEAD →✓ Find the psychographic, not the vertical. Tinkerers span every role; target the mentality, not the title.

✗More features unlock viralityINSTEAD →✓ Virality comes from champions who look brilliant internally. Focus on making one user's system teachable to colleagues in different departments.

✗Leadership gets bored repeating the same messageINSTEAD →✓ Most people never listen as much as you think. Say your core message 5,000 times. It's still under-heard.

Based on Zoelle Egner's episode on Lenny's Podcast. All ideas on this page are from the episode.Watch on YouTube Follow @zoelle on X

GO DEEPER IN THE EPISODE

05:00 Zoelle’s lessons from her time at VaccinateCA 18:04 How Zoelle broke into the tech industry 19:01 Flocking patterns 24:21 What Block Party does 24:32 Zoelle’s storytelling 29:15 Tactics for punching above your weight as a small startup 31:30 The importance of having a highly detail-oriented person on staff 33:33 Why Airtable used billboards 36:43 Growth and marketing strategies at Airtable 42:29 Using data provided by your customers to build features that help future customers 50:59 Why customer success and marketing should be one team 52:56 Things to avoid in marketing 58:04 The power of templates 1:00:58 Why Airtable did not prioritize templates for top-of-funnel revenue 1:02:04 Why just getting PR to “get PR” is not a good strategy 1:04:57 The importance of getting customer feedback and investing in customer success 1:05:51 Simple strategies for getting customer feedback 1:07:53 Lightning round

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