#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

#Growthdeck by GrowthHackers

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AMA: Ask Me Anything

host weekly Q&A sessions with experts like 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

http://hunterwalk.com/2014/03/08/new-grads-midstage-startups-are-your-best-first-job-in-tech/

@_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

focuson. 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 loop2. Put it on a spreadsheet3. Measure the real numbers4. Fix the holes5. And repeat

#MobileApp

@AndrewChen

@_alexgu


#GrowthMistakes

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