#GrowthDeck - Andrew Chen AMA by GrowthHackers

@_alexgu
So you have lots of experience on
growth, what are the most common
mistakes startups make on growth?
#GrowthMistakes
Presents
Andrew Chen on Growth
#GrowthDeck
Entrepreneur, Advisor & Investor

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Andrew Chen to answer your growth questions

@_alexgu
#GrowthMistakes
Question:

1) Thinking that growth consists of silver bullet hacks, rather
than a systematic approach that requires careful thought.
2) Not having product/market fit, and thus no growth, but
thinking that the problem is that the product hasn't been
optimized enough.
3) People getting all their knowledge about growth from reading
blogs, rather than actually doing the work, running the
experiments, and building great products.
#GrowthMistakes
@AndrewChen

@NipunFSingh
Question:
What are some recommendations you
have to a college student or person early
in their career that wants to get into
growth hacking or growth engineering?
#GrowthCareer

“Move to the Bay Area and work for one of the tech
companies here that has a formal growth team”
#GrowthCareer
@AndrewChen

● Barring that, move to SF and get a job as a PM or PMM. Here's
some great advice I'd also refer you to: HunterWalk Best First Job
● Ultimately, I think being in SF is a huge huge deal and if you want
to learn from the best people, I'd get out here ASAP. One of the
biggest regrets of my early career was waiting until 25 to move to
SF rather than doing it right away.
#GrowthCareer
@AndrewChen

@_alexgu
@melvinssalas
Question:
How do you know when to focus on
retention and when to focus on growth?
#GrowthFocus

“The only proper answer to this is: “it depends” 
#GrowthFocus
@AndrewChen

● Early days: Product is relatively unoptimized & you tend to go for
the easy stuff since it’s deterministic.
● Longer term: The easy stuff has already been done & you have to
do the bigger projects with bigger payoffs & deeper user value.
● For a company with a lot of resources, you do all of the above
and try to build a portfolio of projects.
#GrowthFocus
@AndrewChen

@ArvinSahakian
Question:
Can you name one of your favorite social
media channels and the best practices for
leveraging this channel?
#SocialMedia

#GrowthMistakes
“For consumers, the only social media channel that
matters is Facebook. Maybe add YouTube,
Instagram, and a few others into the mix”
#SocialMedia
@AndrewChen

#GrowthMistakes
How to engage with those Social Media networks:
• Clearly you have to build really great content that spreads.
• Look at what's already getting traction that people love.
• Figure out how to do your own twist on it
“I don't think it makes sense to talk about ‘best practices’ or
‘favorite social media’ without really customizing it for your
product and situation.”
#SocialMedia
@AndrewChen

@_alexgu
#GrowthMistakes
@StevenPesavento
Question:
What factors lead to success for companies
that leverage conference & training
programs (paid & free) as a growth lever?
#EventMarketing

“ Events/conferences/etc are clearly an amazing lever
for B2B companies”
# EventMarketing
@AndrewChen

1.Most importantly, the approach needs to fit your product and
target a smaller group of people.
2.The actual content of the events work best when it's really
adding value to the ecosystem: so bring together a great group
of people and have them discuss super valuable topics that
people want to hear about.
3.Think about how to leverage live event/conference content
afterwards in an online format. For example, check out how
CreativeLIVE does that.
# EventMarketing
@AndrewChen

@sockcymbal
Question:
Given the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs
(current channels oversaturated):
What do you think might replace existing
ways to gain mobile traction?
#MobileTraction

“I don't think of ‘mobile traction’as getting saturated, but
instead, think of the specific channels as getting
saturated”
#MobileTraction
@AndrewChen

● Mobile install ads on Facebook were much cheaper before & are
now expensive as gaming companies are bidding it up.
● It's still early for platforms like Pinterest, YouTube, and a lot of
mobile advertising, actually.
● Plenty of opportunities out there if you have a strong product that
monetizes and can fund paid ad campaigns.
#MobileTraction
@AndrewChen

@_alexgu
#GrowthMistakes
@cbenkendorf
Question:
What are your thoughts on crossing the
chasm for a hardware startup?
#HardwareStartup

“The good news is there's basically been no better
time in decades to build a hardware company.”
#HardwareStartup
@AndrewChen

● Step 1 - Hustle: Do a bunch of hustle work before you even talk
about how to scale the growth over time.
○ Building a landing page
○ Doing a kickstarter
○ Building a social media following
○ Partnering with blogs/YouTubers/etc.
○ Luckily, you don't have to reinvent the wheel on this
● Step 2 - Scale: Through retail partnerships, paid customer
acquisition, etc.
#HardwareStartup
@AndrewChen

@_alexgu
#GrowthMistakes
@SeanEllis
Question:
How can CEOs & even investors use the
insight of “control the inputs" to prevent
surprises when it comes to growth rather
than waiting for the lagging indicator of
actual results?
#ControlInputs

This is an important problem because board discussions tend to
happen at the level of aggregate statistics - which we've gotten
smarter about as an industry (MAU, churn rates, etc.).But inputs
imply that you also have to convey the model for how growth
happens, and these inputs will be hard to compare to other industry
benchmarks that are readily available.
So ultimately, it seems like you still have to talk through the stuff
where people can talk about comparison, but also break that down
into a small number of inputs so that the team knows what to focus
on. Hard problem when investors can have ADHD and just want to
talk about the big easy numbers.
#ControlInputs
@AndrewChen

@_alexgu
#GrowthMistakes
@ChrisTan2cool4u
Scenario:
My team is working on a local classified app like Craigslist for
an education and coaching niche. One problem we see with an
idea like this is user retention.
Once a transaction has been made, if students successfully
find a teacher or coach, it may be some time before either use
our product again.
Do you have any insight or advice for a product like this?
#Marketplace

There's a few ways to resolve this:
1) Make enough money on each transaction that it doesn't matter.
• For example, Airbnb: people don't travel often, but when they do,
Airbnb makes so much money the whole marketplace works.
2) Build in more workflow and try to become more useful in the day to day.
• There's a new category of products called "Market Networks" that's
worth looking at, which keeps people engaged as they use the
product over time.
• In your case, for example, actually helping people do the coaching,
not just acquiring the customer.
#Marketplace
@AndrewChen

@_alexgu
#GrowthMistakes
@nthNidhi
Question:
Can you share a technique on how an
app developer can ensure he is closing
the viral loop for his mobile app?
#MobileApp

1. Wireframe all the steps in your viral loop
2. Put it on a spreadsheet
3. Measure the real numbers
4. Fix the holes
5. And repeat
#MobileApp
@AndrewChen

@_alexgu
#GrowthMistakes
Come join the conversation and find more
great AMA’s like Andrew’s on:
https://growthhackers.com/amas
#GrowthDeck
@GrowthHackers
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#GrowthDeck - Andrew Chen AMA by GrowthHackers

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