Growth Techniques for Startups

Alex Schultz, VP of Growth at Facebook presents strategies and tactics used to contribute to Facebook’s tremendous growth.

Notes

02m25s – What matters most for growth, retention
06m20s – if retention drops make sure have product/market fit before trying growth hacks
09m21s – different verticals need different retention rates to have successful businesses
09m55s – retention most important for growth, comes from great product
11m00s – startups should not have growth teams (whole company should be growth team)
11m30s – number active users not just registered users, sends number, nights booked, different north star
15m00s – affiliate marketing
17m00s – magic moment (facebook – see your friends, feel love and joy) find what makes people stick to your site
19m30s – marginal users
21m20s – what is that metric to grow your company, what is deepest, have a north star, know magic moment, think about marginal users
22m22s – Tactics, see above, internationalization, vitality, seo, espy, sem, affiliates/referral
28m00s – virality: payload (how many people), frequency (how many times), coversion rate
31m00s – hotmail (low payload, high freq, high cr), paypal (low payload, low freq, high cr)
36m11s – K factor: user-import contacts-send-how many read – how many click-how many sign up – repeat; K factor over 1 leads to growth (after good retention)
38m40s – seo: what do people search for it, how many people, how many sites optimize for it (google keywords); get links from high value, internally linking
41m30s – Q&A
41m31s – email not great for young people, be high class citizen, don’t spam push notifications, don’t do newsletters (everyone getting same message), notifications most effective (filter based on volume), trigger based email

Additional Reading

• How we put Facebook on the path to 1 billion users – Chamath Palihapitiya; (user-provided transcript)
• Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death? by Joel Spolsky
• A Recipe for Growth – Adding Layers to the Cake by Jeff Jordan
• Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s Early Days by Mike Isaac
• The Secret Behind Pinterest’s Growth Was Marketing, Not Engineering by Liz Gannes
• Growth Accounting & Triangle Heatmap Explanation by Danny Ferante
• Startup = Growth by Paul Graham
• Chasing Facebook’s Next Billion Users by Douglas MacMillan
• Ready to Grow Breakout Session at f8
• Transcript

Series

• Next: How to Build Products Users Love part 1
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