Growth Hacking for Startups

Ciprian Borodescu, CEO Appticles.com

Play by their rules and you won’t stand a chance

1M2M

12M

The first growth hack in history

July, 1996 November, 1997July, 1997

AirBnB & Craiglist

Fake landing pages

We have millions of page views

Our plugin/theme has been downloaded 700,000 times

We’ve reached 100,000 likes

10,000 users subscribed to our mailing list

vanity metrics

actionable metrics

• AUDITABLE

• ACTIONABLE

• ACCESSIBLE

Metrics should be

We have 10,000 subscribers on our mailing list

45% of our subscribers have never opened an e-mail

vs.

Pirate Metrics

http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version

• Direct• Social• E-mail• SEO• Affiliates

• Happy 1st visit• Signed up• Subscribed to newsletter

• 3+ visits in the first weeks• Signed up user that returns• Subscriber that frequently opens e-mails

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9100% 78% 74% 72% 69% 68% 65% 63% 61%

% Active in months after signup

What would be the impact on the retention rate if we introduce a new feature:

?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

JAN 100% 78% 74% 72% 69% 68% 65% 63% 61%

FEB 100% 85% 81% 77% 75% 74% 71% 67%

MAR 100% 87% 82% 79% 78% 75% 73%

APR 100% 90% 85% 81% 77% 75%

MAY 100% 92% 87% 85% 80%

JUN 100% 94% 85% 83%

JUL 100% 95% 84%

AUG 100% 93%

% Active in months after signup

↓Signups

78% of the users that signed up in March were still active in their 5th month (July)

Cohort Analysis

What would be the impact on the retention rate if we introduce a new feature:

?

none

• Purchased your product• Paid for your premium service• Clicked on Ads

• Share• Tweet• Forward e-mail

Pirate metrics dashboard

Jan-15 Feb-15 Mar-15 Apr-15 May-15 Jun-15 Jul-15 Aug-15 Sep-15 Oct-15 Nov-15 Dec-15

AcquisitionUnique visitors 1,000 985 907 1,025 1,500

ActivationNew signups 75 73 65 70 85Visitors - Signups Conversion (%) 7.50% 7.41% 7.17% 6.83% 5.67%

RevenuePaying users 3 5 1 6 9

% 4.00% 6.85% 1.54% 8.57% 10.59%

ReferralsE-mail 0 0 1 0 1Facebook 3 0 0 2 3Twitter 1 2 0 2 5

Tools

• A/B test everything

• Channels with high volume, high conversion & low cost

• Focus on max. 2 KPIs at once

Best Practice

Resources

https://growthhackers.com/

Thank you!

ciprian@appticles.com

Questions?

@cborodescu