This book would not have been possible without the friendship and insights of Beth Comstock, who fueled the creation of Bionic and ignited what became the Growth OS. Our deepest gratitude to Anne Berkowitch, cofounder of Bionic, sparring partner of David, and editor extraordinaire of early drafts of this book. Another early reader, Janice Fraser, gave excellent feedback on flow and punctuation alike, along with being a major content contributor to the later chapters on people and teams. And Susan Green made (and continues to make) everything happen—masterfully crafting David’s schedule and ensuring we could squeeze in interviews and writing time between his work of running Bionic and being a dad and husband.
Thank you to the Bionic entrepreneurs, venture partners, product managers, ethnographers, analysts, and account managers past and present who contributed content from their experiences inside the Growth OS: Godfrey Bakuli, Leslie Bradshaw, Margot Brassil, Greg Brody, Katie Chanpong, Owen Davis, Maxine Friedman, John Geraci, Viv Goldstein (who first started working with us during her GE days building FastWorks), Danielle Hildebrandt, Hanny Hindi, Caroline Hribar, Emma Imber, Dennis Jones, Lyndsay Katz, Juliette LaMontagne, Abigail Rogers-Berner, Stephanie Schott, Kevin Schroeder, Kimberly Skelton, Graham Smith, Janice Semper, Rick Smith, Ariel Steinlauf, and Katie Tilson. Thanks as well to the Bionic Labs team for incredible design and web development support: Zayne Abraham, Tess Dennison, Eric Freitag, Jordan Kerzee, Bronson McKinley, and KJ Zeitlian.
We also need to thank our partners for going on this journey with us, and a few, in particular, who have made incredible contributions to the development of the Growth OS: Lindsey Argalas, Nina Barton, Chip Bergh, Chris Boeckerman, Debbie Brackeen, Carlos Brito, Ana Botin, Terri Bresenham, Vanessa Colella, Mike Corbat, Christopher Crane, Pedro Earp, Kathy Fish, Eric Gebhardt, John Gerspach, John Hart, Tim Hockey, Brian Hoff, Debby Hopkins, Kate Johnson, Hannah Jones, Carey Kolaja, Jud Linville, Robert Locke, Tim Noonan, George Oliver, Patrick O’Riordan, Mark Parker, Julie Setser, Lorenzo Simonelli, David Taylor, and Jack Thayer.
Thank you to our advisors, who consistently push our thinking and help us level up as we grow: Sunny Bates, Randall Beard, Mark Bonchek (the man who originally coined the phrase “New to Big”), Bruce Brown, Pauline Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Lyne, Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Ret.), Gautam Mukunda, Wendy Murphy, Eric Ries, Jim Stengel, and Jeff Walker.
Nick Beim, Tim Chang, Chris Dixon, Roger Ehrenberg, Brad Feld, Chris Fralic, David Hirsch, Rick Heitzmann, Reid Hoffman, James Joaquin, Eric Paley, Chris Sacca, David Tisch, and Albert Wenger all were generous with their time and hard-won learnings as veteran investors, providing interviews and follow-up material throughout the research process. And finally, an immense debt of gratitude to Christina’s writing partner and research assistant, Sally McGraw. (If you’re writing a business book, you’d be smart to hire her assistance.)
Thanks to our partners at Currency, Roger Scholl and Tina Constable, plus their fabulous teams. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t give a special thanks to Joy Tutela at the David Black Agency. Joy is the kind of agent a writer dreams of. Thanks for going on this crazy journey yet again.
Wherever the book falls short, we offer our apologies in advance. And wherever you highlighted insights or took notes in the margins on learnings to share, it is likely the result of the collective wisdom and work of the people on these pages.
Finally, we owe a huge thank-you to our families for putting up with the many disruptions to family life and supporting us through this endeavor. To Johanna Zeilstra, and Jack, Stephen, and Lucas Kidder, thank you for creating the space and grace to discover who we are all becoming, for granting the permission to live out a purpose, at the expense of moments of belonging together. (I love you all so profoundly.) And to Chas Carey and our plants Odo de Carelace and Wort, Christina loves you more than she ever thought possible.