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.
Packaging the Monolith - PHP Tek 2024 (Breaking it down one bite at a time)
Growth Hacking Workshop: AAU
1. Growth Hacking Roadmap
Maximize the Growth of Your Most Valuable Customers
Anglo-American University
Mark Andersen
August 22, 2015
2. CZECH STRENGTHS & SILICON
VALLEY:AN OVERVIEW
• Unique creativity & technical expertise: Zlate Ceske ruce
• More advantages of being in Czech Republic: easier and less expensive to hire
developers, slower "burn rate",
• Advantages of being in or part of SiliconValley: massive startup ecosystem, know
how, access to capital; cons: cost of living, difficulty in hiring engineers, group think
(clean tech, mobile apps, MOOCs, Google Glass, Internet ofThings..)
• SiliconValley mindset: anything is possible; huge expectations; success is
celebrated, but failure isn't stigmatized--it's a test & learning experience
• Gregor Mendel's 29,000 pea experiments
3. ROMAN HORACEK:
CZECH INVEST
• Czech startups are very strong technically & can improve on the business side. Most of the startups
I have seen have technology far better than their competitors, however, they don’t execute/sell as
well.
• Often the projects are being built on local assumptions and once the company wants to scale, it
realizes that their existing business model is not viable / their assumptions are not valid for new/
different markets (product/market fit).
• We don’t have enough role models and people with global entrepreneurial experience thus this is
something we must work on.We can do that by sending the companies overseas and exposing
them to more developed startup ecosystems such as SiliconValley.
• The good thing is that Czech founders tend to be strongly motivated and they can generally run
the company with much lower costs = lower burn rate.Additionally Czech are experts in inventing
simple nonorthodox/innovative solutions and using a lot of common sense.
4. Growth Hacking Roadmap for tech startups
Create Your
Business
Model
Product /
Market Fit
Most Valuable
Customers
Early Behavior
of Most
Valuable
Customers
Wow! Moment
Virality
Optimize
Conversion
Funnel
Content
Marketing &
Social Media
User & Social
Networks /
App Stores
Online / Mobile
Advertising
6. Product Market Fit: Are you
indispensable for users?
Step 2
• "Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market": Marc
Andreessen
• "Make something people want": Paul Graham (Y Combinator)
• "Make insanely great products": Steve Jobs
• "A great brand is a promise of benefit that's persuasive and unique": David Ogilvy
How do you know if you have it?
• Would at least 40% of your customers say they'd be "very disappointed" without your product (Survey.io)
• Clearing Net Promoter Score (NPS), retention and lifetime net value hurdles
• Word of mouth is one of your biggest acquisition channels; virality (K value > 1)
7. Product / Market Fit
• AirBnB: after 1 year in business: $200 / week in
revenue--"do things that don't scale"
• PayPal: eBay power users
• Twitter didn't start to become what it is
Step 2
Success stories
8. Product / Market Fit"How to lose $170 million in VC funding"
• AllAdvantage after 18 months: 13 million members,
Top 20 site, $170 million from VCs, 3 weeks from IPO
• Why did it fail? Too much focus on acquisition & not
enough on retention, never achieved p/m fit
Step 2
9. Most Valuable CustomersUsing Lifetime Net Value Across Acquisition Channels
Step 3
0
25
50
75
100
Email Blog Retarg SEO Blog FB eBooks SEM Affiliate
10. CUSTOMER LIFETIME NETVALUE:
MONTHLY MARGIN & RETENTION ARE
2 MOST IMPORTANT DRIVERS
• Monthly margin: How much does the customer give us
each month?
• Retention: How long does the customer stay with us?
• Customer Lifetime NetValue:The lifetime value of a
customer
• Equation: Monthly margin X retention = Lifetime net value
11. CALCULATING LIFETIME NET
VALUE
• $10 per month for an average retention of 5 months = $50 in lifetime
revenue
• -$6 in hosting & streaming fees / customer for 10 months
• -$8 in customer support / customer for 10 months
• = Gross lifetime value: $36
• -$19: Cost of acquisition (CAC), I.e., SEM, Facebook ads...
• = Lifetime net value: $17
12. Early Behavior of
Most Valuable Customers
Step 4
• Facebook: connect with 7 friends within first 10
days
• Dropbox: upload your first file
• Location Labs: check an early confirmation email
13. Wow! MomentWhatsApp's 10 step Onboarding process + 16 minutes to my Wow! Moment
Step 5
App Store download
Permission to get contacts
Permission to send push notifications
Enter phone number
Connecting my number
Receive the verification code and enter it
Validate the code
Prompted to fill out my profile.
Approve the Facebook permission.
Automatically shows favorites
15. ViralityLocation Labs
Step 6
Single greatest driver of word-of-mouth: a great product
DriveSmart: "hey, I'm driving, DriveSmart is keeping me safe..."
16. Optimize Conversion FunnelYour fastest way to increase Lifetime Net Value
• Start by improving existing opportunities, not new traffic
• Learn about people who don't visit key conversion pages
• Find the points where people abandon your site: ask them via exit
survey: "Is there something preventing you from checking out?"
• Test & measure pages, flows & cohorts
• Testing speed is critical. A/B only tells us "what." We have to do
user testing to figure out "why."
Step 7
17. Optimize Conversion FunnelTools to increase conversion rates, retention & LTV
• Analytics: SQL, Google Analytics, KISSMetrics, Mixpanel
• A/B testing tools: Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer
• Testing a lot of landing pages: Unbounce
• Identify the "why" in friction points: Qualaroo,
UserTesting.com
Step 7
18. Content Marketing & Social Media
Online petitions: CREDO Mobile's 275,000 Likes on FB
Step 8
• Clif Bar & Mint: 170,000 Likes
20. Content Marketing &
Social Media
Video content that drives results
Step 8
• Wren's "First Kiss" (clothing label in LA): 80 million views, sales
in their online store increased13,600% vs week before First Kiss
was released: youtube.com/watch?v=IpbDHxCV29A
• Red Bull's jump from space: 35 million views, youtube.com/
watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I
• GoPro's "Pelican learns to fly": 3 million views: youtube.com/
watch?v=_YEyzvtMx3s
21. User & Social Networks /
App Stores
API integrations enable invitations, notifications & sharing of activity
• B2B open APIs: LinkedIn, AppExchange, Yammer
Step 9
22. Online / Mobile AdvertisingLendingTree & Netflix
Step 10
Total
Customer
Value
23. Analytics
• Net Promoter Score
• Retention
• Lifetime net value
Growth Metrics (ignore total registrations)
• active users
• activity levels: DAU/MAU, D1, D7
• cohort retention
• revenue
24. Actionable Analytics & Research
KPIs
4/7/2014 4/14/2014
First Time Visitors
Total Visitors
Conversion Rate
% New Customers
Retention Rate
Num Orders
Average Order Size
Total Sales $20,000
$125
160
3.35%
18.06%
3.92%
3,955
1,986
$26,040
$210
124
2.89%
15.32%
3.01%
4,123
1,822
Apr 2 Apr 4 Apr 6 Apr 8 Apr 10 Apr 12 Apr 14
14 Day Trend
25. USERTESTING
• Most valuable user testing is asking what problems
they have: don't start by showing your product &
asking what they think
• Live is best, phone/skype is fine
• Y Combinator: two most valuable things startup
founders should be doing: talking to users & building
product
26. SummaryIf you takeaway nothing else...
• Product/market fit is most critical: user testing, user testing, user testing...
• Don't accelerate your acquisition spend until you've achieved p/m fit,
optimized your funnel & positive Lifetime NetValue
• Setup your analytics asap
• Cohorting & most valuable customers critical
• Common mistake is focusing too much on acquisition & virality and not
enough on retention
27. Resources
• "How to start a startup":Y Combinator's class onYouTube
• Paul Graham's essays
• Steve Blank: "Four steps to the epiphany" & videos
• Dave McClure
• More resources on the bottom of my infographic
28. Contact info
• VP of Marketing & Growth: eCorinth.com
• MarkDAndersen@gmail.com
• www.linkedin.com/in/markandersen
• @MarkAndersen