Conference Presentation, Webinar, Lecture, Other
Gustaf Alstromer - How to Get Users and Grow
- The course class is scheduled to extend two weeks beyond the final lecture to facilitate ten updates, with eight of these nine updates serving as an absolute requirement for eligibility for a $10,000 grant.
- Weekly updates are due by 11:59 p.m. every Sunday Pacific Standard Time.
- Facebook users were forecast to reach approximately 700 million in 2010–2011 before a major smartphone shift occurred, while 2015 projections estimated 400 million; the platform currently operates with 2.1 to 2.2 billion users, significantly exceeding these initial forecasts.
- Facebook's growth re-accelerated following the implementation of an automatic translation platform, and the company initiated the "internet.org" program to increase global connectivity by collaborating with carriers to offer free Facebook access.
- Natural product adoption will inevitably slow without intentional growth efforts, and startups that apply growth tactics prior to establishing product-market fit often experience rapid initial expansion followed by a sharp decline.
- Startups that have not found product-market fit frequently waste cycles on non-essential activities, whereas measuring retention and repeat usage is required to determine if product-market fit has been achieved.
- Brand marketing is identified as the most difficult type to measure and is advised against for startups in their early stages.
- Startups should only engage in paid acquisition if they are charging for their products, possess a high enough Lifetime Value to cover Customer Acquisition Cost, and can achieve a payback period of roughly two months or less.
- Paid growth is limited to four channels at scale: Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube, though organic reach is declining as platforms monetize their spaces and paid access to the Facebook newsfeed becomes increasingly difficult without expenditure.
- Technical capabilities differ between platforms; Google can view JavaScript easily but cannot view images on a website, a factor that influenced Airbnb's strategy to employ a 20-person SEO team comprising 12 to 13 engineers.
- A typical growth team comprises engineers, data scientists, designers, product managers, and user researchers, and organizations with significant traffic must invest in infrastructure to utilize data and run experiments.
- Airbnb implemented an "experiment review" system where the growth team convenes every two to three weeks to evaluate features, resulting in specific design changes such as a 40% increase in shares from a new experiment share sheet, a 14% rise in sign-ups from label modifications, and square and round buttons outperforming controls.
- Companies capable of measuring medium to small changes within a two to three-week window are positioned to begin A-B testing.
- Growth principles remain consistent across high-barrier entry markets like health insurance, though automation and technology can be applied to sales outreach, and incentives can be scaled through automated channels like email or Messenger rather than manual recruitment.
- Growth strategies do not resolve risk challenges, legal issues, or major market problems, but they do accelerate the reach to potential buyers, whereas manual non-scalable tactics eventually fail to provide high ROI compared to scalable channels.