Growwwth Guide #0000
This is Growwwth Guide #0000.
WTF is a Growwwth Guide?
A 5-10 minute read of bite-sized stories on how awesome companies are growing their businesses.
I love reading/hearing about how other companies have found success! And I
figured there were lots of other people who felt the same way.
Hopefully this can give you some ideas on how to grow your business.
Let's jump in!
*This particular guide is about how a few well-known companies first started
growing their business.
Entry 0001: Facebook
Facebook, Inc. is an American social media and technology company
🌱Growwwth Strategy: Word of mouth and personal invites
🔍Details:
When Facebook launched, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin started inviting their own friends, along with inviting the members of The Phoenix, a famous fraternity at Harvard that Eduardo recently joined.
Friends soon started telling other friends about “The Facebook” and word spread around the Harvard campus. Within a month, almost half of the attending students signed up for Facebook.
It gradually reached most universities in the United States and Canada.
Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005.
By September 2006, Facebook was open to everyone aged 13 and older with a
valid email address.
There are now 2.6 billion active Facebook users.
📝Takeaways:
-If people like your product they will sell it for you for free. Make something
worth talking about.
Entry 0002: Zoom
The leader in modern enterprise video communications
🌱Growwwth Strategy: Billboards
🔍Details:
When Zoom launched in 2013, they needed to figure out a way to stand out in a
saturated market with a product that “worked much simpler than other available products”. And they needed to reach their target audience in the right way at the right time and at the right location.
Zoom's founder, Eric, decided he would start advertising by renting a billboard in the center of San Fransisco on Route 101.
The billboard was nothing but Zoom's domain name and a single sentence “Video Conferencing That Doesn’t Suck”. People ended up going to Zoom's website and signing up as early adapters all because of the billboard.
These early adopters were satisfied with how Zoom worked and ended up telling people around them about Zoom.
📝Takeaways:
-There are offline opportunities to grow your online business. Think outside the
internet.
Entry 0003: Instagram
Photo and video-sharing social networking service
🌱Growwwth Strategy: Removing the unneeded
🔍Details:
Before Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger made Instagram there was Burbn.
A location sharing app that allowed users to “check-in at particular locations,
make plans for future check-ins, earn points for hanging out with friends, and
post pictures of the meet-ups”.
Burbn started as an app to be Foursquare's competition.
But once they realized their users were really only using the photo-sharing feature of the app, they decide to pivot. They reduce the app to nothing but photo-sharing and renamed it to 'Instagram'.
Within a week of Instagram launching, they got 100,000 users and sold it for $1
billion less than two years later.
📝Takeaways:
-Sometimes less is more.
Entry 0004: Trillo
A web-based Kanban-style list-making application
🌱Growwwth Strategy: Freemium, partnerships, and Referrals
🔍Details:
In 2011, under Fog Creek Software, Micheal Pryor and Joel Spolsky created the first prototype of the product, now known as Trello, and called it Trellis.
After searching for a suitable domain name, Micheal came across a pop-up ad
with the domain name trello.
The team like it, so they went with that.
Trello launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2011 and the app took off
from there.
But how?
Freemium subscription:
Trello's core product is free, forever. Anyone, regardless of location and
industry, can use Trello to power their days. They do offer three paid
subscription tiers: Trello Gold, Business Class, and Enterprise.
Word of mouth and referral strategies:
Trello has a referral program that incentivizes users to refer the app to
their networks called Trello Gold. Trello Gold gives users a taste of the
business class features for one month. This strategy rewards their superfans for organically inviting more users and gives them a chance to
uncover the benefits of a paid subscription, without having to make a
commitment right away.
Strong Partnerships:
To make Trello more efficient as a collaborative tool they offer 'Power-Ups'.
Power-Ups are advanced features and integrations with other applications
that turns a user’s boards into a powerhouse of productivity. Trello also
allows companies to create their own private, custom Power-Ups to serve
their unique needs, such as integrating with Slack, Google Drive, Wistia,
Zendesk, InVision, and Jira.
📝Takeaways:
-Connecting with other businesses can take you further.
-Paying customers brings paying customers.
-Free tiers can build a foundation for success
Growwwth Tip 0001: Build in Public (transparency)
Humans are visual creatures by nature. So building your product in public is a great way to leverage social proof.
Since your viewers can see your failures and successes first hand, it makes them more engaged with the product and builds trust.
You can build a following and get live feedback before you even launch.
It's starting to become the new norm and in my opinion one of the best ways to
launch a product.
Growwwth Reads:
Growth Hacking for 2019 ⚡🤓: 42 simple, must-use digital marketing tactics
to power your business by Jeff Deutsch
How I Drove 1,000 Organic Visits Per Month to My Site by Lim How Wei
How my Reddit post drove 5,000 people to my site in 18 hours before being
deleted by Clayton Rannard
How we got 11.3 million pageviews without the growth hacking bullshit by
Ali Mese
This is the “growth hack” that got my whole company started by Julien Smith
The Product Designer’s Guide to Growth by May Wang
🙏Thanks for checking out Growwwth Guide #0000.
All Feedback is appreciated.
What should I add?
What should I take out?
What did you like/hate about it?
Should I make another one?
If you have a short story on your company's growth, I'd love to add it to the next Growwwth Guide. Let me know!
Also follow me on Twitter!