In the early days, when I was just polishing off the manuscript of Launch Tomorrow, I gave it to a friend who also lived and breathed startups. I specifically requested that he keep it quiet and just asked for feedback. Professionally, he was a marketer but in this case I was hoping to get some honest “tough love” from him. To make sure the book would be good.
After speaking with him in person, I dropped a pdf into gmail, and forwarded it on to him. Coincidentally, I also happened to have an early trial version of Streak installed on my gmail account, which is an app which measures email opens, now primarily used by salespeople.
Over the next week or so, it turned out 37 people had opened that email 56 times in different locations around London and Europe. This simple indicator was enough to convince me that the manuscript is definitely at least a minimum viable product. If not a bit more. There were a lot of tweaks I wanted to make, but clearly my idea audience was enjoying and using it. Even though this viral spread was accidental, ultimately I was pleased that my friend had effectively proven to me that my product was ready.
This was a special case of someone who knew me well, the fact that he forwarded it without my consent and that it was re-forwarded so many times implied that my soon-to-be released product will be able to generate word of mouth referrals when I do launch. This was particularly poignant, given that this was a B2C product. Like most impulse buys, books (on their own) tend to be low $ value products. There is little margin for error with a high customer acquisition cost, yet you need to be great at generating awareness and discoverability. So you can only use channels that have a fixed cost up front but little additional variable cost of reaching another person.
Going Viral
While virality seems “free” from a financial point of view, it’s expensive in terms of your time. The idea is to create enough product (content in my case) which people naturally want to share. Once you have their attention, you include some kind of call to action which then turns into a conversion , like a sale. Or at least a micro conversion, like getting an email subscriber.
Your riskiest assumptions are probably related to your prospects and customers. Establish empathy quickly with your target prospect, figure out what's valuable, and get your innovation into the market.
Once people hear about your idea or your product, then they decide whether to buy it or not, and also whether to share it or not. Nowadays, it paradoxically seems easier to convince people to buy an inexpensive product than it does to get them to share it (at least for me). ????
Why virality can be an engine of growth
Matthew Lieberman, author of “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect” and professor of psychology says:
We always seem to be on the lookout for who else will find this helpful, amusing or interesting, and our brain data are showing evidence of that. At the first encounter with information, people are already using the brain network involved in thinking about how this can be interesting to other people. We’re wired to want to share information with other people. I think that is a profound statement about the social nature of our minds.
The main reason viral growth can be a massive growth engine is the fact that once you get beyond a certain tipping point, the sharing be comes so extreme that it reaches disproportionately many people. Numerically, if you see it as a coefficient, it will be multiplied with each person (or step), and that number can quickly get disproportionately large.
My high school math teacher had a good example of this compounding effect. Would you prefer to get $1 mln today, or one penny today, two pennies tomorrow, continuing to double that amount for the entire month? This is, of course a trick question, designed to put teenagers in their place. The compounding penny option ends up being a much larger amount than the initial million.
This metric of 37:1 was my viral transmission ratio on this particular event. Basically anything above 1:1 will lead to geometric growth, if it sustains at that rate. At a rate of 2:1 on a daily basis, you’d be at 2147483648 within 31 days. It’s just raw arithmetic: 2^31. So if the true long term viral transmission rate settled at 2:1 that would still mean the book had a captive audience with high latent demand-and that I needed to get it out there.
The good thing about a viral growth engine is that it’s costless growth. As you don’t spend any money on building initial awareness, any revenues you do make are fully yours. If you do have financial constraints initially this can be a good place to start.
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The main drawback of viral growth is that results tend to be highly unpredictable and difficult to manufacture deliberately. Depending on how effectively you make your content unique and engaging, people will be more or less willing to share it. More often than not, all it takes is one share from someone with a large audience, and it will give you a big spike in traffic. It’s just that it’s difficult to get those initial share, particularly if no one knows who you are.
Manufacturing Engagement
The hard part is writing content good enough that people want to share it with their friends. To some extent, you can pre-test this by using what Andrew Chen’s twitter technique. He writes potential headlines as tweets, and then sees if anyone interacts with it. Once the idea is proven, via a favorite or a retweet, he uses that as a basis to write a longer piece on that topic. As a result, his growth hacking essays tend be highly focussed on his target audience’s needs. As a result of forwards, he effectively “clones” his existing audience. The content people forward tends to attract other interested in the same type of content.
Create an explainer video for your complicated new product.
Make sure your audience understands it, without being overwhelmed by technical details.
Another approach is to repurpose a backlog management service like uservoice or a kanban tool like trello combined with audience interaction. You can create a backlog of writing ideas, and then have your existing audience vote on them. This way you are naturally spending your time writing things which is attractive for them. It’s effectively a vetting and prioritization system for content, similar to prioritizing features in agile software development.
If you’d like more ideas of how to experiment with growth, take a look at Your First startup experiment my book on getting you to that first experiment. De-risk your startup idea and figure out how to grow, grow, grow with Your First Startup Experiment.
Key Takeaways
Virality can be an engine of growth because it rapidly raises awareness at a low per-user cost
The key is that you have each person refer more than one person to your product
While the best way to get and keep this effect is to build a great product that addresses a market need, you can experiment with some tools to help engineer in virality
When I was close to finishing a degree in economics, I was still a bit unclear about what actually causes economic growth after 4 years of study. Economists have a complicated and sophisticated set of models to understand how economies work, on both a theoretical and empirical level.
When it came to the topic of growth, if I remember correctly, the key factor underlying economic growth was productivity. And the primary driver of productivity were external technology shocks. Which can’t be modelled. They’re just assumed to happen. So basically, the economics department at PENN pulled an intellectual bait-and-switch on me. And I ended up going into software anyway.
Ultimately improvements in technology drove productivity and economic growth of countries. This was true of both developed and emerging economies, with the latter often benefiting from imported technologies, rather than creating their own.
Is entrepreneurship a job growth engine?
This blog doesn’t cover politics. That said, I thought it might be worth drawing your attention to a half-truth that often comes up among politicians (and that’s often repeated as conventional wisdom):
Entrepreneurship is an engine of growth.
Your riskiest assumptions are probably related to your prospects and customers. Establish empathy quickly with your target prospect, figure out what's valuable, and get your innovation into the market.
Unfortunately, it’s not really true if you look at the data. It is true the primary engine of growth are…high growth startups. These tend to be high technology startups or highly innovative ones. These are most likely to be hitting growth rankings like the INC 5000. In the US, these consistently make up a whopping 3% of all new businesses, according to Scott Shane in The Illusions of Entrepreneurship:
“In fact, only about 7 percent of new companies in the United States are started in industries that the government defines as high technology, and only about 3% of business founders consider their new businesses to be technologically sophisticated.”
Industry breakdowns of high growth companies also reflect this insight. For example, on the INC 5000 for 2019, there are:
Source: inc.com
The 3% of technologically sophisticated startups made up around 30% of the INC 5000 in 2019. Thus as the startups grew, they are likely to be hiring rapidly. And creating jobs.
Conversely, 97% of new businesses fall into the category of a new hairdresser’s, convenience store, or a new pizza joint around the corner. Necessary everywhere. But not particularly likely to grow rapidly. And hire rapidly. And that’s totally fine. Most of these are sole proprietorships; the founder created his or her own job.
To be clear, growth is not an end to itself. Not every business should be designed to be high growth business. If this is the ambition of the founding team, then great. But just because it’s a convenient soundbite for a handful of tech VCs and politicians, it doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for entrepreneurs. There are many potential measures of success and self-accountability. Growth, including job growth, is only one of them.
Keep your ears peeled during the upcoming elections, as this convenient half-truth is repeated by politicians all over the spectrum. It is, however, more in the category of “what voters want to hear”, rather than actually being true.
About to start a greenfield project?
Have Launch Tomorrow run an in-house "riskiest assumption workshop". Remote delivery options also available. Discover where to prioritize your validation efforts, to get to market fast.
One of the really “hard things” about the startup game is getting on a growth trajectory that grows exponentially. VCs debate how fast you should be growing on a weekly basis. But one thing about growth is clear. Instead of having the occasional bump in sales or growth, high growth startups are systematic in how they pursue their results. In particular, the heavy focus in this deep dive is on channel testing.
Strategyzer’s Business Model Canvas: channel testing
The following is based on a discussion with Nemo Cerovac (@ncerovac), the cofounding team member responsible for the explosive growth of FishingBooker, a site that has been dubbed the AirBnB of fishing charters.
Nemo Cerovac
Meeting customers where they already are–at first
In our first year, we spent a lot of time on the captains’ side. Finding things that worked for us. We realized that initially we could do 10% growth weekly by sending emails to captains.
Targeting captains in the harbour
We tried to target a couple of Captains in the same Harbor, call them up, talk with them. Initially, reactions were mixed. “Why would I sign up on the platform that is getting a commission from this? Why would I register there? You didn’t exist? I don’t know who you are.”
What started happening eventually was they heard from potential customers and previous customers. We were heavily targeting consumers with ads.
Your riskiest assumptions are probably related to your prospects and customers. Establish empathy quickly with your target prospect, figure out what's valuable, and get your innovation into the market.
Once we got one or two captains from the Harbor, and we were killing it with Google ads, they start saying, “Oh, I got like two clients from this FishingBooker this month.” Moreover, the same Captains who were skeptical initially came back. They’re like, “Hey, you know you contacted me like three, four months ago. Let’s talk again.” It was a roller coaster.
Going and meeting everyone in person helped a lot. When we went to Florida, we were going from Harbor to Harbor. Just meeting people there. Just talking with them, showing them the platform, and just meeting every notable potential user.
In the end, I think it was the user drive that got us the captains. At first, it’s also no harm. You’re showing captains the approach: “Hey, this looks professional. You don’t need to do anything. If we get you some bookings, then we earn something from it.”
Growing the user base
There were a lot of chicken and egg problems. To be honest, Vukan’s mindset helped a lot. Vukan, the CEO, was super focussed. We were really pushing hardcore. We were figuring out each channel. For users, we figured out that the best channel for consumers at the start was paid advertising: Google ads. Finding them where they are, not where you want them to be.
Basically, most people search for “fishing charters in Maldives” when they’re preparing for the trip. Or they just reserved a hotel, and now they want to plan their activities. That’s the moment of strongest intent. The easiest moment to convert.
Once we figured that out, we then just focused on adding money. To convert as many as possible. We were trying to stick to this ratio where 30% of the revenue goes to paid advertising. We were pushing hard.
About to start a greenfield project?
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Every Monday, we would have this white board in front of us. We listed our golden numbers. Golden numbers are the metrics that are the most important for your product–to make it or break it, at that stage. [Ed note: check out this KPI checklist to choose golden metrics for your team].
In our early days, our golden numbers were:
Create an explainer video for your complicated new product.
Make sure your audience understands it, without being overwhelmed by technical details.
number of captains that finished their profile or uploaded at least one of their boats there
number of people that booked this week or this month
the number of bookings started but not completed
Every Monday we would look at our numbers from the previous week. We would compare them to our targets from the previous week. Our goal was 10% growth per week. Especially in the start, we had a heavy focus on testing. As fast as possible. Find what’s working, and what’s not working.
Let’s say we wanted to have 10 Captains registered that week, and we hit seven. We then discussed why this happened, and tried to analyze why. Was it something that we can influence? or something that we can’t? So, sometimes it would be like, “Oh, I was sad. I was sick. Or I wasn’t focused.”
If it was a problem in our control, and a channel was getting lower and lower results week on week for 4 weeks. We then decided we should try something else, since there was a clear pattern over time.
These numbers and discussions forced us to think about immediate results. You want to act upon things that give immediate results first. You don’t have time to think about, “Oh, what would happen if we did this or that?” Should we go do a road show? a conference or not?
A failed channel experiment
After going to conferences, we realized it’s a waste of time. For us. At that time. We didn’t get anything. If you’re building the right thing, you don’t need the conference to continue building things.
I’m still maybe a bit harsh on conferences. People who attend conferences usually want to chill in a half-work environment. Some people go to build up their ego.
The upside of conferences, though, is if there are potential clients or users attending. If somebody can benefit from what you’re doing is there–and it’s not just two people– then it might be worth it. Like ship captains, in our case. Or people that are interested in fishing. Then you can try to invest your time in it.
But even then, be careful. Let’s say you convert 10 Captains at a conference. That’s the same amount that we get from sending cold emails to Captains and calling them on the phone in one week. During that one week, you can sit in the office and work on this for 20% of your time. Then you are free to do other stuff with the rest of your time. During a conference, you’re running around. You are trying to meet people. And you need to prepare beforehand to know who’s attending. If you have time, you introduce yourself earlier. Basically, you need to measure and compare the benefits of using each channel.
Conferences do have a place. They help us to connect. They help us meet new and interesting people. So, I definitely recommend people attend conferences, as long as they have this perspective.
The 10x Game
Something I call the 10x game came from this idea of focusing on immediate results only. Often when you start, you start thinking about a lot of things. A lot of concerns. It’s easy to get distracted.
You even start thinking of problems that are not immediate problems. Or immediate tasks that you need to complete now. For example, you are trying to think of how to optimize the process for 1000 users, but you only have five. It’s just not the best use of your time at this moment.
Sure, you need to think about that in the future. But at the moment, park that idea. Put it aside. Because it sucks time from what matters now.
Here’s how the 10x Game works
1. Pull out a box of multicolored post its with your team
2. Calculate what order of magitude you want to start with. This sounds complicated but actually it’s really simple. Take the number of clients you currently have. And then figure out the next power of 10 from that number:
10^1=10
10^2=100
10^3=1000
10^4=10000
Let’s say you have 33 customers. Then 100 would be your next power of 10. If you have 0, just use 10 as a baseline.
3. Assuming that is your next milestone, what marketing channels do you think will help get you to that number? So if you don’t have any customers yet, how do you want to get your first 10 customers. Take your stack of post-its, choose a color and brainstorm at least 10 different ways you can reach your target customers.
4. Then, repeat for the next power of 10 using a different color, and repeat again.
5. Finally, loop back to your first set of ideas. Priortize them. You can do this using dot-voting or any other mechanism that works for you & your team.
This results in a lot of ideas, clearly prioritized in terms of what you need to do first. It give you the space to think big, but also helps you drill down into what needs to happen right now.
Same channel today, different results
When you have 10 Captains and you want to grow 10 more Captains next week, then maybe a conference is not the best way to go. Or a hundred Captains in the next two months. The conference was more useful for branding purposes. Just not relevant to the golden numbers at the time.
Now, FishingBooker goes to a lot of conferences as a brand. You want to position and build a strong brand. You want to be in people’s minds. Once you have a budget for that, it becomes an opportunity. I saw the team a couple of months ago. They were speaking at a Google conference about their experiences.
building the brand is a good use case for conferences at a later stage
FishingBooker is roughly a hundred people today. It’s still one of the top Google ads spenders in Eastern Europe.
Conferences were just one of the channels we tried. And as you can see, different channels are appropriate at different levels of a startup’s growth trajectory.
Stepping back
This is Luke again…
This same insight can be applied to pretty much any channel you might consider. Everything from cold outreach, PR stunts, or any other marketing tactic which you might dream up. The numbers give them context. They are a filter to help you focus on what matters right now.
On a small scale of the first 10 customers, it’s possible for the co-founders to do the majority of this work, possibly with some help. As the startup being growing, there will be different requirements to hit 100 customers. And 1,000. And so on.
Key Takeaways
Use Golden Numbers to drive team conversations about inputs, tasks, and alternatives needed to achieve results
Focus on factors under your control and take action on trends over time
Channels that might be inappropriate initially can be very appropriate later when the company is larger
If you enjoyed this post, and would like to try out the 10x Game with Luke’s help, there will be an upcoming online & free 10x Game workshop you can join. Get notified when this happens!
