Jordan Schlip - Partner at Founder Centric - gave a workshop about Growth Hacking at Startupbootcamp Alumni CEO Summit on 27 & 28 June '14 in Berlin. Jordan Schlipf twitter: https://twitter.com/jordups Jordan Schlipf linkedin: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/jordan-schlipf/74/551/b8 Founder Centric: http://www.foundercentric.com/ Startupbootcamp: www.startupbootcamp.org

1. Growth
Building
into companies.

2. hello@foundercentric.com
foundercentric.com
@foundercentric
!
Mailing list: fnc.io/founderlove

3. hello@foundercentric.com
foundercentric.com
@foundercentric
!
Mailing list: fnc.io/founderlove
@jordups

4. Today —
• The three engines of
growth
• Growth hacking &
hacks

5. question —
Where does “traction”
come from?

6. “Comment on every blog
post in your industry!”

7. “Always be tweeting. Building
your followers. Engage with
them!”

8. “Hack online ads. Target
everyone!”

9. Sanity Check —
“Do more of everything”
is not a growth strategy.

10. It is wild flailing from
well-intentioned folks
who don’t know what
you should actually do.

11. – Startup Founder
“We tried Facebook ads… I didn’t work.”

12. – Shawn Carolan Menlo Ventures
“Startups don’t starve; they drown.”

13. What we need —
1. Clear goal & targets

14. What we need —
1. Clear goal & targets
2. Simple daily process

15. What we need —
1. Clear goal & targets
2. Simple daily process
3. Measurable results

16. the engines
(from the Eric Ries’ Lean Startup)

17. 3 ways to grow —
1. Paid — buy users for less

18. 3 ways to grow —
1. Paid — buy users for less
2. Viral — a user brings more
users

19. 3 ways to grow —
1. Paid — buy users for less
2. Viral — a user bring more
users
3. Sticky — users never leave

20. PAID
Expensive,
but proven
Viral
Slow, but huge
growth potential
Sticky
Product / channel
centric. Can be
cheap & fast.

21. paid

22. Paid Growth —
Buy a user for less than you
make from them.
!
Proven, but usually needs
scale.

23. Paid Growth —
— Sales people
— Physical stores
— Search, display ads
— PR and marketing

24. discussion —
Q: Which companies
have employed paid
growth as a core
strategy?

25. discussion —
A: Like, everything single
one pre-1998.

27. Premature scale is the
#1 killer of startups.
paid Caveat —

28. Viral

29. Viral Growth —
Each customer you get
brings at least one more
with them.
!
This is a product strategy.

30. Viral Growth —
1. You must have design & tech on the
founding team
2. You must prioritize growth over
everything (even revenue)
3. Virality must be core to your product
4. Metrics are king

31. Viral Growth —
5. Word of mouth is not a
viral strategy

32. Viral Growth —
6. Twitter / FB /
Pinterest is not a viral
strategy

33. golden rule of viral —
Nobody cares about your
product as much as you do.
If they’re going to share it, the
act of sharing must add value.

34. question —
A viral product that
reached massive scale
before the internet?

37. Sales Rep

42. question —
What products are viral
today?

44. improving viral —
k = referrals • click through • conversion

45. improving viral —
k = referrals • click through • conversion
Viral Coefficient
Amount of leads
your users create
% of those leads
bring that result
in someone arriving
Amount that become
users

46. improving viral —
k = referrals • click through • conversion
1. Improve k at all costs
2. Reduce sharing time

48. The Viral Loop
Invited % Redeem % Re-Gift # Re-Gifts Σ
Do not
redeem
Redee
m
x 2
x 2
0.16
0.60
0.76
100% 40%
60% 50%
20%
• A potential
user
receives a
gift
• Target: >60%
redemption
rate
• Target: >50%
redeemers
re-gift
• Average # of
separate re-
gifts
• Target: > 2

49. In our humble opinion —
Sticky is the right option
for 90% of new companies.

50. Sticky
Let’s talk some more about

51. Sticky Growth —
Once a customer shows up,
they never leave.
!
Focus on retaining existing
users rather than finding a
repeatable way to get new ones

52. Sticky Growth —
Sticky
Product
Sticky
Channel
vs

53. Sticky Product —
The more a customer uses
your product, the harder it
is to switch.

54. Sticky Product —
1. Retention is everything

55. Sticky Product —
1. Retention is everything
2. Current customers trump
new leads

56. question —
What products are
sticky?

58. What about channel?

59. – Jason Cohen!
(on starting another company when he already has an audience of 50,000)
“Absolutely true, it’s a completely unfair
advantage, and it’s why so many people
harp on folks to start things like blogs and
mailing lists.
!
When you want to do things like sell a book
or a new startup you have a running start!”

60. Sticky Channel —
1. Traffic shows up (we’ll learn from where)
2. You give away free gift & create value
3. Exchange larger gift for permission to contact
4. Stay in touch, over-deliver value
5. Convert subscribers to paid customers of
core product
6. Retain, up-sell, get referrals

61. Sticky Channel —
1. Traffic shows up (we’ll learn from where)
2. You give away free gift & create value
3. Exchange larger gift for permission to contact
4. Stay in touch, over-deliver value
5. Convert subscribers to paid customers of core
product
6. Retain, up-sell, get referrals

62. Educate
Inform
Amuse
Inspire
Sticky channel Gifts —

63. Sticky channel Gifts —
Educate
Inform
Amuse
Inspire
= Content

64. Sticky tip —
Your content shouldn’t do exactly the same
thing as your product. Rather, it should be
interesting for the sort of person who might
also want your product.
!
For example, if your product is healthy snack
food, your content could be about helping busy
parents create a healthy home and happy kid.

65. Simple Daily process —
1. Make things
2. Tell people
3. Repeat

66. Best practices —
1. Front-load the
creative burden
2. Removing friction
from creation

67. Best practices —
1. Front-load the
creative burden
2. Removing friction
from creation
Batching
!
Outsourcing
!
Tools

68. Twitter important to you?
!
Use bufferapp.com and
ifttt.com to automate.
Best practices —

69. Spending forever perfecting your blog
posts?
!
Write outlines and then pay
a grad student £10 to edit.
Best practices —

70. Wasting time on fancy graphs?
!
Use tools like infogr.am
to trivialize the process.
Best practices —

72. Two startups with the same product;
one used their blog strategically.

73. PAID
Expensive,
but proven
Viral
Slow, but huge
growth potential
Sticky
Product / channel
centric. Can be
cheap & fast.

74. Break

75. Marketing is work (not inspiration)
Community growth: 2 years of writing when
inspiration struck vs. 3 months of writing
daily
(from roughly 0 to 250,000 monthly visitors)

76. The community funnel process
1.Traffic shows up
2.You give away free gift & create value
3.Exchange larger gift for permission to
contact
4.Stay in touch, over-deliver value
5.Convert subscribers to paid customers
of core product
6.Retain, up-sell, get referrals

77. Daniel Priestly
If you only have the core
product and not the full
model, you don’t have
enough flow and are tempted
to incorrectly drop the price

78. Rand Fishkin
Content is the keystone of
inbound marketing. Without
content, there’s no SEO, no
social media, no community,
and no revenue.

79. Content is great
1.Fast & cheap to produce
2.Free & instant to distribute
3.Measurable
4.Lets you begin building audience
before product is finalized
5.Repeatable

80. Your startup has a mission
Startups are designed
to either create joy
or remove pain

81. Your content has a mission too.
What do they get for their time?
This is all about
helping ____________
learn/be/do __________.

82. That’s the
value proposition
of your gifts
and content marketing

83. Workshop: design your funnel products
1. Free gift
2. Product for prospects
3. Stay-in-touch content
4. Core product (£)
5. Follow-on product (£££)

84. Example: tools for writers
This is all about helping
new authors get their first
book finished
!
1.Daily inspirational mini-posts
2.Helpful weekly newsletter

85. Example: tools for writers
1.Daily inspirational mini-posts
on pinterest
2.Helpful weekly newsletter of
an author interview
talking about writer’s
block

86. Remember
Don’t make a decision every day
if you can just make it once!
!
(but of course, be ready to make a
new decision if this one isn’t working)

87. WORKSHOP
90 seconds per trigger question
!
Come up with as many ideas as you can,
one idea per card. Don’t self-censor.
!
Remember who you are trying to help!

88. You
“It is absurd that…”
!
What’s wrong with your industry?
With the world? Pick a fight!

89. You
“Always/never do X”
!
Nothing like a good ultimatum. Take a
stand. What are the non-negotiables?

90. You
What are the must-read books
and authors for your visitors?
!
Making recommendations for other good content
is easy and valuable. Why do you like these
sources?

91. You
Mistakes were made!
!
What are the most common blunders people
fall for when trying to accomplish this? Bonus
points if you can share personal failure tales.

92. You
What’s the most common
bad advice?
!
Who gave that moron a microphone!? What’s the
most popular advice in this area that you totally
disagree with?

93. You
What are the recent
questions you’ve been asked?
!
Get into the habit of writing down the questions
customers ask you about the industry - every
answer is a bit of content marketing in disguise!

94. Titles
Working in pairs, help each other turn
as many ideas as possible into strong
titles that make a bold claim.
!
Once you have the title, creating the
rest of the content is easy.

95. Gabe Weinberg’s startup is one
of the dumbest ideas possible
!
He is competing directly with
Google on search

97. And yet,
he is succeeding

99. How?

100. These are the top 5
mistakes he’s seen
other founders make

101. Mistake #1
They don’t pursue
traction in parallel with
product development

102. Why is it useful to explore early?
1.Initial customer development
informs your product roadmap
2.Launch with a nice base of
initial users
3.Test messaging and
distribution channels

103. Mistake #2
They didn’t spend
enough time
pursuing traction

104. How much time is it really worth?
1. Distribution is equally
important as product
2. You should be spending
50% of your time on it
3. For tech people, you should
probably bias it to 75%

105. Mistake #3
They didn’t take
advantage of micro-
opportunities

106. Micro-opportunities
Micro-opportunities are little chances to
grow which appear unexpectedly and
temporarily.
!
E.g. responding to a story in the press or
trying a newly created advertising platform.

107. Each of the letters was a successful
micro-opportunity for growth

109. This week, for example, Instagram is
launching their new ad platform

110. Gabriel Weinberg
You have to be watching, flexible
and creative.
!
So you need to be spending
enough time on it.

111. Mistake #4
They were biased
toward or away from
certain traction verticals

112. Traction comfort zones
Every startup relies on blogging, twitter,
and Adwords. They can’t be the
solution for everyone.
What about billboards? PR? Publicity
stunts? Direct sales? Lead generation?
Snail mail?
Sometimes the weird stuff works.

113. Mistake #5
They didn’t take a
systematic approach
to getting traction

114. Gabriel Weinberg
The usual approach is to build
the product, then frantically try
to figure out how to promote
things, then haphazardly
attempt the obvious stuff

115. Break

121. Collect & inspect

123. Let’s hack
together
@jordups

124. hello@foundercentric.com
foundercentric.com
@foundercentric
!
Mailing list: fnc.io/founderlove