From Zero to a Million Users - Dropbox and Xobni lessons learned

Because of nothing much to do - we read 2 105 publications and articles. Result? The most comprehensive growth hacking list up to date. All the growth hacks divided in easy to view AARRR sections - for pirates and growth hackers.

This document discusses metrics for early-stage startups. It notes that early-stage metrics are different than later-stage metrics because the product may not be ready or have enough usable data. It recommends focusing on customer acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue using cohorts to segment users. Metrics should validate customer feedback and internal assumptions. The document provides examples for a mobile app and emphasizes understanding customer intent through interviews over relying solely on metrics.

30 Marketing growth hack cards taken from the recent blog posts of the smartest cookies in the industry. Crazy, sneaky, happy and weird marketing hacks.

Slides to the growth hacking workshop I recently gave for AAU students in Prague. We covered the Lean Canvas, getting to product-market fit, Wow! moment, growth marketing, and the analytics you should be focused on.

The document discusses metrics for startups, focusing on the AARRR framework of Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue. It provides examples and recommendations for measuring key metrics at each stage, including number of visitors, time on site, page views, and conversions. The document emphasizes testing marketing channels and optimizing for user experience and conversion rates through iteration and A/B testing.

The document provides 29 tips for growth hacking and quick wins that companies should be testing, but often aren't. Some of the key tips include measuring customer happiness with Net Promoter Score, creating more targeted landing pages, using paid ads to test headlines and images, removing distracting links from landing pages, and testing different calls to action copy. It encourages testing unconventional approaches to improve conversions and growth.

Part of finding product/market fit is turning early wins into repeatable, scalable, and profitable sales. In this talk given as part of the Heavybit speaker series, I discuss how to shorten the time to customer conversion from trials, freemium and open source products.

slides for my talk on Startup Metrics for Pirates (AARRR!) at the FounderX conf (Mountain View, May 2016)

The growth hacking roadmap that summarizes how startups can maximize the growth of their most valuable customers. It also summarizes the actionable analytics growth hackers should be using including cohort analysis, user testing and key performance indicators.

LinkedIn's Head of Growth, Aatif Awan discusses how to think about Growth from first principles instead of worrying about Growth Hacking. He shares insights from growing LinkedIn to 380 million professionals that can help you create the right Growth culture, team and processes. Visit: http://tractionconf.io

This is a 5-step model for creating a metrics framework for your business & customers, and how to apply it to your product & marketing efforts. The "pirate" part comes from the 5 steps: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, & Revenue (AARRR!)

Growth Hacking and Full Stack Marketing for Startups Here are the slides for the growth hacking and full stack marketing events that Patrick Vlaskovits and I hosted across Europe: - Wayra (Madrid) - NDRC (Ireland) - Rainmaking Loft (London) - Rockstart (Amsterdam) - Hub:raum (Berlin) - Werk1 (Munich) - Sektor5 (Vienna) - Design Terminal (Budapest) - Beta-i (Lisbon) We broke the events into the following 6 sections: - What is growth hacking vs. marketing? And why is that important? - Psychology - Partnerships - Search Engine Optimization - Paid Marketing - Growth Hacking Examples A majority of our examples throughout the day came from personal experiences that we had not written about nor spoke about prior. If you have any questions, please contact me (@CaseyA) or Patrick (@Pv).

The document provides tips for pitching venture capitalists (VCs) to obtain funding. It outlines 10 essential elements to include in a pitch, such as an elevator pitch, problem description, solution, market size, business model, proprietary technology, competition, marketing plan, team, and funding needs/milestones. It emphasizes making the pitch memorable, obvious, and fun while demonstrating an unfair advantage, large market opportunity, and achievable milestones that will increase company value. Graphics, customer testimonials, and working demos or screenshots are highly recommended to capture attention and showcase the product or solution.

"SPEED: The Ultimate Startup Weapon", presented by Mike Cassidy to Startup2Startup entrepreneur dinner (May 2008)

Learn more about Mobile Growth: http://mozza.io Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adrienm These are the slides of a talk I gave at Le Camping, the most renowned French startup accelerator based in Paris.

Dave McClure gave a talk about reinventing venture capital through 500 Startups' model of making many small investments. He discussed how technology has lowered the costs of starting companies and how platforms provide access to large customer bases. 500 Startups makes over 100 investments per year and aims to have a portfolio size of over 100 companies to increase chances of finding unicorns. Their strategy is to make many small "bets" and double down on the most promising companies. McClure also proposed training 500 new VCs through programs with Stanford to expand access to startup funding.

Stop spending thousands of dollars on paid advertising and start implementing viral growth mechanisms within your product to acquire more users. Here are some good examples :) - Slides from a talk given at Station F

This document summarizes a presentation about agile product development methods like Lean Startup. It discusses concepts like minimum viable products, iterative development, rapid prototyping and testing with users. The presentation advocates developing products through a process of continual learning and adapting based on what is validated with users rather than following a traditional linear development process.

The document discusses how the Lean Startup methodology is changing user experience (UX) design. It argues that Lean Startup's focus on getting customer feedback early in the development process through prototypes and minimum viable products provides opportunities for UX designers to have more impact. However, it also demands that UX work be done faster and with less time spent on upfront design work. The document suggests that UX designers can help Lean Startups by bringing experience with UX methods to help validate ideas with customers quickly and reduce waste.

The document provides an overview of startup metrics presented by Dave McClure. It discusses the AARRR pirate model for evaluating acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue metrics. It emphasizes measuring key conversion events like clicks, emails, usage to optimize the product, marketing and determine what customers value most.

This document discusses why achieving true viral growth is difficult for SaaS products. It provides examples showing that even with high user engagement rates, the viral factor (new users signed up per existing user) is typically around 0.01 or less, far below the levels needed for exponential growth. It emphasizes that going viral requires a product that people use frequently in a way that naturally encourages sharing, not just one-time actions like invites or tweets. Product-market fit, daily usage, and high retention are more important factors for growth.

This Leadership Mashup features sage advice straight from the experiences of an innovative and successful entrepreneur, G.L. Hoffman, CEO at JobDig. Hope you enjoy!

This is a presentation I've given at Steve Blank's Berkeley MBA class as well as the Lean Startup session at web 2.0 expo 2010

This document discusses the differences between startups and small businesses, and outlines the customer development process that startups should follow to search for a viable business model. It notes that most startups fail due to a lack of customers, not due to product failures, and that founders are often wrong in their assumptions about what customers want. It advocates getting out of the building to test hypotheses with real customers from the beginning, rather than following a traditional product development model and then hiring marketing to create demand.

Rashmi Sinha summarizes tips for running a scrappy startup with limited funding. Some key points include keeping costs low by having remote teams and outsourcing non-essential functions, bringing in outside experts as advisors rather than employees, focusing on building a great product before pursuing business deals, emphasizing speed in development and launches, and continually trying to double user traffic through experimentation and product improvements. The overall message is that with the right strategies, a startup can achieve growth and success even while operating frugally.

See the video of this here: http://youtu.be/spy6NmD6iPI Startup life and culture is super sexy and all sorts of founders are appearing in their jeans and t-shirts and boyish/girlish grins on the covers of magazines and newspapers across North America. Seems that millions of dollars of money is being thrown left right and center at anyone with a dream and the gumption to pursue it. There has been no better time to quit your day job and pursue this. It costs next to nothing to build stuff on the web, right? Only it isn't *exactly* like that and we're only hearing a small portion of the stories. Sure, Tara Hunt would encourage everyone with an awesome idea to pursue their dream, but in this presentation, she lays down what being a startup founder is REALLY like. She also plans to share all the tips and tricks she is learning from (continually) making a whole bunch of mistakes...because nobody is talking about this stuff. By the end of her talk, you'll either hand in your notice and go for it or shelve those dreams forever. Bring it!

These slides were used to facilitate a discussion of entrepreneurial MIT alums, mainly from the MIT Sloan business school. My intention was to introduce many of the newer, leaner concepts of early stage start-up development to a group that often sees "technology first" businesses. This presentation centers on the concept of Product / Market Fit: what it is, why it's important, and how to achieve it. I propose my "Product Market Fit Matrix" that helps to characterize the issues of the start-up and presents various frameworks that can help guide development. In a sense the Product / Market Fit Matrix is a meta-framework. For more information please visit: http://www.rishidean.com

[Updated May 5, 2017] "Successful startups are all alike; every unsuccessful startup is unsuccessful in its own way." These are my personal observations on a few traits that make startups successful. You can find a video of the talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_D9oXCK2lM and the book at http://www.hello-startup.net/.

Boost the success chances of your start-up by understanding Business Model Generation and Customer Development. You won't regret!

1) Shop safety requires closed-toe shoes, no loose clothing, and safety glasses. Basic rules prohibit horseplay, running, and overcrowding machines. 2) General machine safety includes cleaning machines before and after, unplugging for blade changes, and reporting injuries. Work areas must be cleaned after use. 3) Specific machine safety summaries are provided for band saws, table saws, dado saws, drills, drill presses, palm sanders, planers, jointers, and chop saws. Safety procedures address blade speeds, guards, push sticks, clamping, and instructor assistance.

Continuous deployment is a a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. Pascal-Louis Perez will describe how to use continuous deployment to iterate so fast that you run circles around the competition. He will cover the high level concepts as well as the nitty gritty details including examples from the continuous deployment system that he and his team developed at KaChing. Pascal-Louis is the VP of Engineering and CTO at KaChing, where he practices continuous deployment continuously. He previously worked at Google and holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Matt Brezina outlines Xobni's journey from 50 users in stealth mode to 3 million downloads over 3.5 years. Key steps included leveraging early adopters through a badge program (Nerd Scarcity), user invites converting nearly 100% of clicks (Invite Beta), preparing for a public beta with PR help, and eventually needing to spend on marketing (Paid Drivers) to scale predictably after relying on press and word-of-mouth. Brezina provides tips for getting press attention, including tying your startup to bigger trends, meeting journalists in person, engaging heavily with users, helping journalists be lazy with your content, and being a source of industry data.

The document provides an overview of product management for startups. It discusses what product management is, understanding customer needs, and prioritizing features to maximize return on engineering resources. The key aspects covered include translating business objectives and customer needs into product requirements, defining and tracking metrics, and identifying and planning high-impact product ideas. Understanding customer problems and priorities is emphasized as critical for developing successful products.

Drew Houston, founder and CEO of Dropbox, discusses the challenges of scaling the company from 20 employees and 5 million users to over 55 employees and 25 million users. Some key points are: hiring fewer but better engineers to reduce coordination needs; keeping engineering teams small and loosely coupled; focusing on building the right things instead of moving fast; and using metrics and processes like OKRs to increase predictability as the company grows.

Technology has transformed the world of events. Mobile and social engagement systems are now an integral part of an event strategy during each phase of the event life cycle. In this session, DoubleDutch co-founder and C.E.O. Lawrence Coburn will discuss the importance of using these systems to enhance your event. From attendee engagement to event analytics, discover how it takes more than just an app to ensure a winning mobile strategy for events.

The document discusses an organization called Entrepreneurs Foundation that works with emerging companies to establish corporate citizenship and philanthropic programs. The organization helps companies engage in community involvement, corporate giving, employee volunteerism and other activities to strengthen both companies and communities. It provides examples of how participating companies support causes like education, health and hunger through donations, fundraising and employee engagement.

The document discusses lessons from design thinking for effective brainstorming. It describes different iterations of brainstorming, including establishing ground rules and using techniques like "energy stokes" to encourage idea generation. The final section discusses how design thinking approaches brainstorming as part of a process that moves from framing opportunities to defining viable, feasible, and desirable solutions through techniques like observing users and defining extreme users. The overall document provides an overview of best practices and techniques from design thinking that can improve brainstorming outcomes.

1) The document discusses lessons learned by Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, about how they applied lean startup principles and grew Dropbox from 100,000 users to millions without traditional marketing. 2) Early on, Dropbox got feedback directly from users through a screencast and beta launch video which helped them learn. Their public launch focused on making users happy rather than traditional marketing plans. 3) Experiments with paid search and ads failed, but Dropbox continued growing through word-of-mouth as they encouraged sharing and referrals, not by trying to create new demand. They focused on the product experience above all.

This document summarizes the key steps and lessons from the early days of Dropbox. It describes how Dropbox initially struggled with paid marketing strategies that did not work. Dropbox then had an "epiphany" to focus on viral growth through referrals, which led to exponential growth. The document emphasizes the importance of understanding customers, validating ideas through experiments and metrics, and making decisions based on what customers actually want and use.

In this deck, we discuss an approach to validate the business merits of ideas. Presented to the HackUCI club on 02/02/2017 as part of a Cylance sponsored event.

User Experience is not just about the user interface, it's about understanding customer needs and creating a solution that addresses their needs. Software product managers have a huge, and often understated role, in the creation of a great user experience for customers. At the heart of User Experience is the ability to creatively solve customer problems, which is a key responsibility of a product manager.

User Experience is not just about the user interface, it's about understanding customer needs and creating a solution that addresses their needs. Software product managers have a huge, and often understated role, in the creation of a great user experience for customers. At the heart of User Experience is the ability to creatively solve customer problems, which is a key responsibility of a product manager.

These are my notes from last week's Content Marketing World Conference. An awesome event providing valuable information for associations and nonprofits.

- Dropbox was founded in 2007 and launched in 2008 with the goal of making it easy to share files across computers and with other people. - They applied lean startup principles, launching with a minimum viable product and getting feedback early, which helped them avoid mistakes as they grew rapidly from 100,000 to millions of users in 18 months. - Early experiments with paid marketing like AdWords failed because the costs were too high for acquiring users. But organic growth from word-of-mouth and a viral referral program worked very well as the product solved real user problems.

A Deck by Drew Houston from Dropbox explaining how Dropbox incorporated Lean Startup Principles in building their company. A great primer on how dropbox executed their startup.