Good OKRs, Bad OKRs: A Conversation with Agata Krzysztofik

Agata Krzysztofik is a growth powerhouse with over a decade of experience across Google, Piktochart, SimScale, DemoDesk, Groove, and several high-growth startups. She spent nearly seven years at Google shaping community and scaling global support, then moved into startups where she rebuilt marketing organizations, doubled sales performance, and drove radical conversion improvements. She is also a longtime mentor to CEOs and marketing leaders, and the founder of Growth 52, where she helps subscription businesses scale profitably with Google Ads.

What makes Agata worth listening to is a rare mix of strategic clarity and hands-on execution across three very different worlds: big tech, VP-of-growth roles at startups, and now running her own agency. This conversation moves from her disciplined 90-day process to a genuine masterclass on OKRs, the real difference between PLG and sales-led growth, and the burnout that pushed her out of leadership and into her own business.

Results in 90 days

Agata helps clients hit a healthy ROAS and LTV-to-CAC ratio in about ninety days, and the reason it moves fast is a disciplined process, not a channel obsession. She does not start with the channel. She starts with data, intent, and the revenue model, spending the first weeks on a deep audit of three things. First, true conversion economics, not cost per lead but historical lead-to-pipeline and pipeline-to-deal conversion, sales cycle length, and average contract value, pulled straight from the CRM so she can see which keywords actually drove closed-won deals. Second, full-funnel leakage, where the friction, the search-intent gaps, the landing-page mismatches, and the frequently broken conversion tracking live. Third, the company's moat, competition, and messaging, gathered from a client brief and, ideally, real sales-call insights.

Once she understands the business, she already knows what to kill, fix, and scale. Then she executes in fast loops: fix tracking so the data is trustworthy, consolidate diluted campaigns, and tighten the creative and landing-page narrative so the experience matches the keyword. It is a whole go-to-market engine, not just ad management, and it is why Growth 52 focuses specifically on subscription businesses. She lived the other side of the table, hiring agencies that pitched with a senior person then handed the account to a junior, and refusing to own lead quality. B2B SaaS is harder for Google Ads because 90-day sales cycles starve the algorithm of feedback, which is exactly the gap she chose to fill.

Good OKRs versus bullshit OKRs

Most companies say they use OKRs, but they are really just KPIs with fancy names, and Agata is precise about the difference. When she introduced OKRs at startups, people would say they tried it and it did not work, usually because they quit after one quarter. It takes trial and error and whole-company alignment, so one quarter is never enough. The most common failure is that the founder read a book and rolled it out without ever having worked with the framework, so goals end up vague, unmeasurable, and disconnected. Her recommendation is to get a champion, ideally someone external who has run OKRs successfully and has no emotional attachment.

The real power of OKRs is transparency and alignment, and that is why they must start at the executive level. Leadership agrees on three to five quarterly company objectives, the North Star, then cascades them down: company OKRs inform department OKRs, which inform individual OKRs, so a person owning SEO can see exactly how their work ladders up to the company goal. The classic mistake is the CEO announcing "everyone set your OKRs," producing a pile of disconnected personal KPIs. And key results have to be measurable deliverables with a timeline, not activities like "optimizing the website." Without that, teams end up doing busy work and fighting fires instead of making collective progress on what matters.

PLG versus sales-led growth

Agata has run both PLG companies and sales-led ones, and she treats them as genuinely different engines, while noting many companies are hybrids. In PLG, the product is the salesperson, so you win by reducing time to value to near zero, optimizing activation and habit loops, and feeding a low-friction self-serve funnel. Your biggest levers are product-usage data, onboarding, and pricing and packaging, which means working shoulder to shoulder with product management. In sales-led growth, the human is the engine, so you win by building and capturing demand, prioritizing high-intent segments, shortening the cycle through education and trust, and tightening the loop between paid, content, SDRs, and AEs. Your levers there are ICP clarity, lifecycle operations, and deal velocity.

The mistake she sees constantly is companies declaring themselves PLG because they added a free trial. But if your product is too complex to deliver its aha moment on a self-serve trial, you are not ready for PLG, and you may need to start sales-led. She points to Userpilot, which is all about PLG yet still runs a demo at signup because the product is too rich to fully grasp alone. If your product does not deliver value in the first ten minutes, you need a human to explain it, and first impressions are the whole ballgame.

Leadership is part therapy

The difference between a marketer and a VP of growth, Agata says, is not seniority but responsibility for people. Having done every marketing discipline herself made her a better leader, because she genuinely understood what her team was talking about and could help them grow. But the new weight is human. People do not leave their problems at home, and she found herself needing to be part therapist, learning to listen and support team members through personal struggles that surfaced in meetings. She wishes leaders got psychological training, because nothing prepared her for the rounds of layoffs, which were terrible for someone as empathetic as she is. Every time, she used her network to help the people she let go find their next role.

When she inherits a team, she looks at the data but then invests heavily in getting to know people, running a personal development plan with each member to understand their strengths, gaps, and passions. Sometimes that reveals someone doing work they are not passionate about, and she has guided people toward a better-fit role elsewhere. Building trust early, through one-on-ones and integrating activities, is non-negotiable, because a team without trust does not work well together no matter how good the strategy.

Listen before it screams

Agata left VP-of-growth life for one reason: burnout. The wave of post-COVID layoffs hit, marketing is always first to go because it is seen as pure cost, and on top of it her father was seriously ill. She kept pushing, changed startups, and it happened again, until her body started giving signals, back problems and constant migraines. That is when she finally listened, made herself a promise to commit to the agency for one full year no matter what, and stuck to it. Within that year she found clients, a niche, and a genuine love for building the business, and she never looked back.

Her framing is one worth keeping: the body whispers before it screams, so it is better to course-correct while it is still whispering. On AI replacing what she does, she is measured. The tools help and she uses them, but they are not good enough yet, they cannot take sensitive customer data, and Google's own AI suggestions are tuned for e-commerce and fall apart for B2B SaaS. Her husband works on AI tools at Google and told her it will still take time. AI has no "I don't know," so it hallucinates, and on a ten-thousand-dollar campaign that is not a risk worth taking. It is not about the knock of the hammer, it is knowing where to knock.

Key takeaways

A few things worth keeping.

Start with economics, not channels. Audit true conversion data, funnel leakage, and messaging before touching a campaign. Then fix tracking, consolidate, and tighten the narrative in fast loops.

Real OKRs cascade from the top. They are not personal KPIs with a new label. Leadership sets three to five company objectives, then everyone can see how their measurable results ladder up.

Match the motion to the product. A free trial does not make you PLG. If the product cannot deliver its aha moment self-serve, start sales-led until it can.

Leadership carries human weight. Managing people is part therapy. Build trust early, understand each person's strengths, and be willing to guide someone to a better-fit role.

The body whispers before it screams. Course-correct on the early signals of burnout rather than pushing until it forces a full stop.

Frameworks worth stealing

The 90-day audit

Before optimizing any channel, audit three things: true conversion economics from the CRM (lead-to-pipeline, pipeline-to-deal, cycle length, contract value), full-funnel leakage and tracking, and the company's moat, competition, and messaging. Then execute in fast loops, fixing tracking first so every later decision rests on trustworthy data.

OKRs that actually align

Set three to five company objectives at the executive level, cascade them into department and individual OKRs so everyone sees the line to the North Star, and write key results as measurable deliverables with timelines, not activities. Give it more than one quarter, and bring in an external champion who has run the framework before.

PLG versus sales-led diagnosis

Match your growth engine to your product's complexity. If the product delivers value self-serve in minutes, run PLG on time-to-value, activation, and packaging. If it needs a human to reach the aha moment, run sales-led on ICP clarity, demand capture, and deal velocity, and do not mistake a free trial for product-led growth.

Blended CAC across channels

Prevent CAC inflation by finding your sweet spot rather than scaling one channel until costs balloon. Segment what you are willing to pay by lead value, run multiple channels so a cheaper one lowers your blended CAC, and collaborate across specialists rather than forcing every lead through the most expensive path.

Quotes worth keeping

The lines I wrote down.

A free trial doesn't make you PLG.

Real OKRs start at the executive level, then cascade down.

AI has no "I don't know." It has to find an answer, and it hallucinates.

And the line about burnout that everyone should hear.

The body whispers before it screams.

Rapid fire round

Same questions every guest. No prep, no warning. Here is how Agata handled it.

Best advice you've ever received? Learn to listen.

Advice you ignored or wish you had listened to? She rarely ignores advice, and could not name one she regrets.

What would you tell your younger self? Try out different things. When you are young it is hard to know what you will be passionate about, so get out of your comfort zone and explore rather than sticking to one area just because you are good at it.

Ongoing challenge that keeps you up at night? Not applicable in the classic sense, but the recruitment process being a gamble is a recurring frustration for her.

Favorite spot? The Tricity area on the Polish coast, where she is from, though the best restaurants keep changing.

Tool you can't live without? ChatGPT, which she leans on hardest for the admin she hates, like drafting official letters to the tax office.

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Agata Krzysztofik is the founder of Growth 52, where she helps subscription businesses scale profitably with Google Ads, after six years at Google and VP-of-growth roles across SaaS startups. She is a longtime mentor to CEOs and marketers. Find her on LinkedIn or at growth52.com.