Courte présentation interne pour Axial Dev sur les startups et quelques stratégies pour acquérir les premiers utilisateurs.

1. Startup = Growth
Page 1

2. Startup?
A startup is a company designed to grow fast.
Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup.
Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology
http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
Page 2

3. Croissance
The best thing to measure the growth rate of is revenue.
The next best, for startups that aren't charging initially, is active users.
Page 3

4. Croissance exponentielle
Une startup qui génère 1 000$ / mois atteindra …
Page 4
Taux de croissance hebdo. Valeur dans 4 ans
1 % 7 900 $ / mois
5 % 25 millions $ / mois

5. Page 5

6. Page 6
One day [in 2005] I took Mark into a conference room and told him I had a genius idea.
We needed to make money at Facebook to be a “real” business ...
Mark pushed back. On a whiteboard he wrote the word, “GROWTH.”
He proclaimed he would not entertain ANY idea
unless it helped Facebook grow by total number of “users.”
http://www.fastcompany.com/3033427/hit-the-ground-running/what-happens-after-you-
get-shot-down-by-mark-zuckerberg

7. Page 7
Facebook ... started off with a maximum user base of 10,000 Ivy League students.
After growing like wildfire, it opened up registration to all universities, then to high school
students, then to the world.
http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/09/how-peter-thiel-teaches-stanford-students-to-create-
billion-dollar-monopolies-in-3-quotes/

8. Page 8

9. Page 9
On Quora, the founders simply answered and asked lots of questions
under their own profiles.
But the reddit approach was a bit more interesting. Instead of just using their own accounts, the
founders would create fake users to make it look like there were multiple people submitting links.
Their 'submit link' form featured a third slot: "Username".
...it took several months until they didn’t have to submit content themselves
to fill up the front page.
http://learn.onevest.com/tutorial/4019487832455251569/how-dropbox-airbnb-and-others-
acquired-their-first-users

10. Page 10
They also focused on keeping everybody in the same place in the beginning.
reddit had no subreddits, and Quora was mostly focused on technology. Instead of having users
spread out, everyone was in the same place- making the community feel bigger than it was.
http://learn.onevest.com/tutorial/4019487832455251569/how-dropbox-airbnb-and-others-
acquired-their-first-users

11. Page 11

12. Pour obtenir du financement, ils ont acheté une tonne de boites de céréales qu’ils vendaient 40$
Page 12
durant les élections. Ils ont ramassé 30 000$.
http://growthhackers.com/companies/airbnb/

13. Page 13
Spammer Craigslist pour acquérir les premiers utilisateurs:
I am emailing you because you have one of the nicest listings in
Craigslist in the Tahoe area, and I want to recommend you feature it
to one of the largest vacation rental marketplaces on the web, Airbnb.
The site already has 3,000,000 page views a month!
Check it out here: http://www.airbnb.com
-Dill J.
http://learn.onevest.com/tutorial/4019487832455251569/how-dropbox-airbnb-and-others-
acquired-their-first-users

14. Page 14
Airbnb was able to build a bot to visit Craigslist, snag a unique URL, input the listing info, and
forward the URL to the user for publishing
http://growthhackers.com/companies/airbnb/

15. Page 15
Quand ils faisaient 200$ / mois, il se sont rendus compte que
les 40 propriétés sur le site avaient de mauvaises photos.
The founders grabbed a camera and flew to New York, and began replacing
the early photographs with great, detailed ones.
Ils ont doublé leurs revenus en moins d’une semaine.
Ils prennaient aussi des appels de clients toute la journée.
http://kirjonen.me/the-story-behind-airbnbs-success/

16. Page 16

17. Page 17

18. Page 18
The app did a great job at taking the tired concept of dating online and re-doing it completely.
Instead of directories of people and search, you simply have a person's image appear, and you
swipe left or right.
The double opt-in feature helped with the problem that lots of users have on traditional dating
websites: if you are an attractive female, you're swamped with messages. If you're a guy who isn't
having a lot of luck on the website, most of your messages go unanswered.
http://learn.onevest.com/tutorial/4019487832455251569/how-dropbox-airbnb-and-others-
acquired-their-first-users

19. Page 19
Tinder also started locally.
Having 50 users in a small space is a lot better for this kind of app than having 5000 spread out
users.
Tinder threw exclusive parties at USC. To enter, you had to install Tinder on your phone.

20. Page 20

21. Page 21

22. Page 22

23. The most significant contributor to WhatsApp’s impressive growth curve is the fact that the app is
Page 23
an exponentially more affordable alternative to SMS and MMS messaging.
From the very beginning they worked hard to ensure that WhatsApp worked for as many people
as possible, which meant making the app work across platforms and available on a wide range of
devices—even very old, so-called “dumb” ones—and operating systems.
http://growthhackers.com/companies/whatsapp/

24. In Singapore, for example, some users were limited to just 100 texts per month, while the Indian
government restricted texts to just 10 a day during certain holidays. WhatsApp not only helped
Page 24
users to work around these restrictions, but to do so at a much lower cost.
Group chat in particular was huge among younger users ... these group features amplified viral
growth, going beyond 1-to-1 connections of typical texting to one-to-many.

25. Page 25

26. Dropbox a essayé la publicité mais rien ne fonctionnait jusqu’à ce que le fondateur crée un vidéo
de démo, destiné à la communauté Digg. “It was full of inside jokes, and quickly got voted to the
Page 26
top of Digg. By the next day, they had 70,000 new signups.”
Dropbox ran an extensive campaign during which you could share the service on Facebook
and Twitter for an additional 128MB of space ... and lead to 2.8 million invitations
being sent during the first 30 days.
http://learn.onevest.com/tutorial/4019487832455251569/how-dropbox-airbnb-and-others-
acquired-their-first-users

27. Page 27

28. Page 28
Uber set out to reimagine the entire experience to make it seamless and enjoyable across the
board... from mobile hailing, seamless payments, better cars, to no tips and driver ratings.
Event sponsorship. Uber was highly active at local-area tech and venture capital events and
provided free rides to attendees.
Uber knew that these attendees were well connected and highly likely to share their experiences
with friends, tech press, and social media audiences after trying Uber.
http://growthhackers.com/companies/uber/

29. Page 29

30. Autres exemples
Page 30

31. Page 31
PayPal a acheté des items sur eBay en demandant au vendeur s’il acceptait PayPal.
Groupon ont commencé aussi petit que possible. Leur première campagne a été d’offrir la pizza
du restaurant de leur édifice à 50% de rabais aux personnes travaillant dans l’édifice. Leurs 500
premiers utilisateurs viennent de là!
LinkedIn a commencé à Sillicon Valley et une série de stratégies lui a permis de croitre
rapidement: People you may know, présentation des connexions des connexions, …

32. Page 32
Evernote, Frank & Oak, Google Inbox ont commencé avec un modèle sur invitation.
“We never thought of the closed beta as a marketing exercise. We were frankly terrified that
everything would crash all the time.” -Evernote
Yelp While earlier review sites sat and waited for anonymous reviews to come in, Yelp focused on
building a network of reviewers with profiles, friends, and accolades.

33. Conclusions
• Créer quelque chose que les gens veulent = word of mouth!
• Commencer petit et local
• Les entreprises qui servent deux clientèles doivent créer un « inventaire » initial
• Fake it till you make it
• Do things that don’t scale
• Focus sur la qualité
Page 33

34. Page 34
Lunch and Learn du 6 novembre
@bquimper