4 ms·

Ways to scale user growth

70 points by _pius 12y ago

willphippshuman 12y ago
get a user.
willphippshuman 12y ago
success and money evades me yet i plugged in and evangelized this internet in 1983!!!!!!!! (can i have 0.1%)?
joslin01 12y ago
Hey Andrew!!! :) Nice article
tomblomfield 12y ago
A few core concepts could probably use a little more clarity; - Real "Virality" is very different from "Word of Mouth", and implies that users bring others users to the product in the process of using it, to some greater or lesser degree. Photosharing apps are a good example. Uber to a lesser extent - I first learned about the service when my friend ordered a black car. Zynga's games were notorious for trying to manufacture virality by rewarding facebook friend-invites with more coins/gold/whatever. - Inbound and outbound sales are very different beasts. The former is the result of SEO, PR, word-of-mouth, content marketing etc. Trying to "scale inbound sales" won't get you far. If you have a working outbound sales process, on the other hand, you can often ramp it up several-fold. - "Channel partnerships" can be extremely useful, especially when selling to SMBs. A recommendation for some accounting software from your bank manager is very persuasive.
- mandeepj 12y ago
  dropbox's referral case can also be mentioned here along with Zynga
  - mandeepj 12y ago
    > Trying to "scale inbound sales" won't get you far. Sorry, I do not agree with you on this. Could you please elaborate more? Lot of people do online search before buying anything so if you can rank hire in search results then that will automatically lead to more sales.
    - tomblomfield 12y ago
      Sure, and that's addressed in the article - "3. SEO" - which you can scale.
jfoster 12y ago
This article more or less is my understanding of user acquisition, but I've never understood where Atlassian fits in this model. I'm sure that today they have mostly switched to the "Sales" model. (despite claiming to not have "salespeople", I understand they just call the role something else) I don't think it's always been that way for Atlassian, though. They started out as just a few people and certainly earlier on it seems they didn't do much sales. I know that they blogged lots and were quite well-known for their blogging, but I can't imagine that being enough for them to grow the way that they did.
- dzink 12y ago
  I've seen one senior engineer at a large firm start using Atlassian in 08. He then recruited his team to use it, then the division (at 4k or so per year), then he made it his primary "chief developer" role to customize Atlassian products for the company, until he just left the company because he was making too much money building widgets for the Atlassian marketplace. It was impressive. As far as I know he wasn't compensated in the beginning - he just really liked their products and how well they integrated with each-other to make deployments safer and developers less likely to need supervision by him.
webmaven 12y ago
This article matches up fairly well with the lean startup 'engines of growth', except that the 'sticky' engine is missing. That said, I never really understood how 'sticky' was an engine of growth, it seems more like an 'engine of retention'.
- lbotos 12y ago
  I'm going to assume sticky is an engine of growth because if you aren't retaining users you need to bring on more to make up for the difference that aren't staying.
  - webmaven 12y ago
    Sure, but that's true of the other engines of growth, it isn't anything that is unique to sticky. IOW, the other EoGs are typified by how they acquire new users from the actions of existing ones. For 'viral' it is the user activity that causes new users to join, for 'paid' it is that revenues from existing users are used to purchase new users (typically through advertising), but 'sticky' doesn't say anything about getting new users from existing users at all, it only says you get new (or ongoing) revenue from existing users. While this means that if 'sticky' is your model you have to focus even more on lowering churn, it still doesn't say anything about how you grow.

70 points by _pius 12y ago

willphippshuman 12y ago

get a user.

willphippshuman 12y ago

success and money evades me yet i plugged in and evangelized this internet in 1983!!!!!!!! (can i have 0.1%)?

joslin01 12y ago

Hey Andrew!!! :) Nice article

tomblomfield 12y ago

A few core concepts could probably use a little more clarity; - Real "Virality" is very different from "Word of Mouth", and implies that users bring others users to the product in the process of using it, to some greater or lesser degree. Photosharing apps are a good example. Uber to a lesser extent - I first learned about the service when my friend ordered a black car. Zynga's games were notorious for trying to manufacture virality by rewarding facebook friend-invites with more coins/gold/whatever. - Inbound and outbound sales are very different beasts. The former is the result of SEO, PR, word-of-mouth, content marketing etc. Trying to "scale inbound sales" won't get you far. If you have a working outbound sales process, on the other hand, you can often ramp it up several-fold. - "Channel partnerships" can be extremely useful, especially when selling to SMBs. A recommendation for some accounting software from your bank manager is very persuasive.

mandeepj 12y ago
dropbox's referral case can also be mentioned here along with Zynga
- mandeepj 12y ago
  > Trying to "scale inbound sales" won't get you far. Sorry, I do not agree with you on this. Could you please elaborate more? Lot of people do online search before buying anything so if you can rank hire in search results then that will automatically lead to more sales.
  - tomblomfield 12y ago
    Sure, and that's addressed in the article - "3. SEO" - which you can scale.

jfoster 12y ago

This article more or less is my understanding of user acquisition, but I've never understood where Atlassian fits in this model. I'm sure that today they have mostly switched to the "Sales" model. (despite claiming to not have "salespeople", I understand they just call the role something else) I don't think it's always been that way for Atlassian, though. They started out as just a few people and certainly earlier on it seems they didn't do much sales. I know that they blogged lots and were quite well-known for their blogging, but I can't imagine that being enough for them to grow the way that they did.

dzink 12y ago
I've seen one senior engineer at a large firm start using Atlassian in 08. He then recruited his team to use it, then the division (at 4k or so per year), then he made it his primary "chief developer" role to customize Atlassian products for the company, until he just left the company because he was making too much money building widgets for the Atlassian marketplace. It was impressive. As far as I know he wasn't compensated in the beginning - he just really liked their products and how well they integrated with each-other to make deployments safer and developers less likely to need supervision by him.

webmaven 12y ago

This article matches up fairly well with the lean startup 'engines of growth', except that the 'sticky' engine is missing. That said, I never really understood how 'sticky' was an engine of growth, it seems more like an 'engine of retention'.

lbotos 12y ago
I'm going to assume sticky is an engine of growth because if you aren't retaining users you need to bring on more to make up for the difference that aren't staying.
- webmaven 12y ago
  Sure, but that's true of the other engines of growth, it isn't anything that is unique to sticky. IOW, the other EoGs are typified by how they acquire new users from the actions of existing ones. For 'viral' it is the user activity that causes new users to join, for 'paid' it is that revenues from existing users are used to purchase new users (typically through advertising), but 'sticky' doesn't say anything about getting new users from existing users at all, it only says you get new (or ongoing) revenue from existing users. While this means that if 'sticky' is your model you have to focus even more on lowering churn, it still doesn't say anything about how you grow.