I broke down my first 8 Growth Threads

Here are the top 5 growth strategies you can apply to your startup for major growth

A thread:

1) After breaking down the strategies and tactics of 8 successful startups (Airbnb, Shopify, Stripe, Groupon, Dropbox, HubSpot, The Morning Brew, and Slack), these are the most widely used growth strategies.

Here are the top 5 growth themes

2) #1: Referrals
Definitely the most effective strategy, fuelling massive growth for Airbnb, Shopify, Groupon, Dropbox, Morning Brew, and Slack

Key components were using 2-sided referrals, appealing and increasing rewards, clear ways to track progress, and ease of shareability

3) Referral stats: 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, and when referred people are 4x more likely to make a purchase. Referred customers LTV is 16% higher and has a retention rate of 37%.

Overall the most popular strategy used amongst the 8 startups

4) Important to note that all startups had product market fit before they implemented a referral program.

Only when people shared their product on their own without expecting anything in return, was when they were ready to implement a referral program

5) #2: Product Led Growth
The core of growth for many companies was led by a product that solved a key problem really well. To the point that people couldn’t help but share it with others.

This fuelled word of mouth and strengthened all other grow strategies/tactics

6) Stripe grew largely because it solved such a painful problem for developers

The Morning Brew created amazing content solving problems for a younger audience

Shopify made it so much easier to create an online store

Slack created the first all in one communication experience

7) #3: SEO
Many companies created free tools under subdomains to solve problems for their target customers.

Shopify created a variety of free tools (Burst, Exchange) and HubSpot as well (Website and Twitter Grader).

These ranked high on Google, driving HUGE organic reach

8) Not only tools, but offering free value in the form of Webinars, and Inbound marketing (Hubspot).

Slack also created subdomains for their early app integrations, helping Slack appear in Google searches related to all integrated apps.

9) The common theme of providing value without expecting anything immediately in return, has led to consistent long term growth.

Resulting in brand awareness, positioning themselves as an authority in the market, boosting SEO, creating an organic pipeline of traffic.

10 It’s the things that don’t seem to scale that actually scale. As Paul Graham has said...

11) #4: Engineered Word of Mouth
Strategies to spark word of mouth were used frequently

Shopify’s viral build a business competition, Stripe's hackathons and swag sent to customers, Slack’s Wall of Love on Twitter, Hubspot’s Inbound conference, and Groupon's massive FOMO deals

12) These methods helped startups build passionate cult-like communities, becoming brands people loved to be associated with.

Press was also commonly used to boost word of mouth and strengthen viral loops.

13) #5: Clever hacks
Most startups used clever hacks that lead to rapid growth. Airbnb used a biggypacking strategy with a posting bot to leverage Craigslist’s user base. Stripe leveraged YC’s community, Slack leveraged friends at other companies, and Dropbox's clever email loop

14) Key factor: Timing
The right place, at the right time...

Groupon helped people save money in 2008 after the financial crisis, Slack started when there was no real market for communication tools, Shopify when there was no easy solution to set up online stores.

15) The point is, for every startup I’ve broken down so far, the element of timing was in their favour.

Timing is the single biggest reason why startups succeed or fail. It's the factor most highly correlated to success

16) I hope you've been enjoying my growth threads and find them valuable!

I also hope you realize that you can apply these same methods to rapidly grow your own startup!

17) Subscribe to my Substack for more in depths breakdowns of all my growth threads
https://thegrowthplaybook.substack.com/welcome 

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