Aatif Awan   Growth @ LinkedIn

Growth Hacking is Dead. Long live Growth.

 Early 2011

Growth at LinkedIn

•  10 people on Growth team

•  100 Million LinkedIn members

•  Acquisition

 Today

110 people

380 Million

Acquisition, Onboarding, Connections, Retention & Resurrection, Comms

Popular Growth Tactics

+

“Get your free email at Hotmail” at the bottom of each email.

12 Million users in 18 months.

Jumpstarted growth by cross-posting to Craigslist without an available API.

 Why not use these tactics to grow your product?

 Using these examples to drive growth for a startup is like using Penicillin’s accidental discovery to develop the next antibiotic.

 Growth Hacking  A hyped-up collection of anecdotes, tactics and theories.

Pixie Dust Theory You can sprinkle growth tactics on your product and make it grow.

Wizard of Oz Theory You can hire a growth hacker who will make your product grow.

Jack and the Beanstalk Theory Just do something. You never know what might magically grow your product.

 Growth  A scientific approach to growing a product’s usage.

Reasoning from First Principles

 “I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing a thing because it’s like something else that was done by other people. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason up from there.” — Elon Musk

Startup success = Product + Growth + Revenue

Product

Make something people want

Growth

Get lots of people to use the product

Revenue

Get someone to pay for the product or for access to its

users

Good Product Comes First, Growth Second

•  Investing in growth before you have a good product is a waste of resources.

•  It might seem to work

initially, but reality catches up eventually.

DAUs for Viddy

Good Product Leads to Good Retention

•  Retention curve for good products flattens out after a few months.

•  If your retention isn’t good, nothing else matters.

Good retention

Bad retention

You can Improve Retention by…

•  Getting feedback from existing users to understand what’s working and what’s not.

•  Finding a segment of users for whom your product has good retention.

•  Getting users to experience core value (A-ha moment) sooner.

 Once you have good retention, it’s time to grow.

Picking Your Top Metric

•  Define one primary metric that

•  is aligned with the success of your business

•  measures value for users

•  is summable

 User Behavior

Identifying Growth Channels

•  Do existing users share your product via word of mouth?

•  Are people using search to find a solution?

•  Do users have a high LTV?

 Channels to explore

Virality, referrals

SEO, SEM

Paid acquisition

•  Does having more users improve the experience? Virality

•  Are your target users already on another platform? Partnership, Integration

Prioritize channels

and levers

Brainstorm hypotheses and ideas

Assess impact on primary metric

Prioritize based on impact,

likelihood and effort

Build, A/B test and measure

Growth Requires Continuous Prioritization and Feedback

Hiring for Growth

•  Analytical

•  Get shit done

•  Curious – Ask why?

•  Find new ways to do things – Ask why not?

•  Prior growth experience is optional

LinkedIn Growth Team

SEO Network Growth

þ Onboarding Comms

SEO, Conversion optimization, Public profile

PYMK, Virality, Connections

Onboarding, Activation, Intent discovery

Engagement through Email/Push, Resurrection

Culture

•  Set ambitious goals •  Move fast

•  Data trumps opinions •  Continuously learn •  Celebrate wins

 Thank you!

 www.linkedin.com/in/aatifawan

 aatif_awan