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The mechanics of growth with ex-Gmail product manager Itamar Gilad

Exponential growth is what most startups are searching for, and something most entrepreneurs never experience.

Itamar Gilad has spent seven years at Google managing products at Youtube and Gmail and have in both cases experienced what most entrepreneurs are dreaming about: seeing growth in the hundreds of millions of users that genuinely love your product (you’re probably one of them).

This is not an in-depth post on growth, so if you feel you got the basics covered, I suggest you book a private lesson with Itamar. But if that’s not you, please continue reading.

The one metric that matters

The first things Itamar suggests is that you pick one metric to grow.

One of the biggest mistakes companies does, is not choosing exactly what to grow. You have to find the one metric that matter.

Facebook uses MAU’s, Gmail has WAU’s, Whatsapp measures “sent messages”, Airbnb “nights booked”, etc. Find your own metric, and choose it wisely. But make sure that the metric you’re measuring is connected to how much value you’re providing to the users.

1st, 2nd and 3rd tier metrics

When you’ve found the one metric that matter to you and learned how to properly measure it, you should try to discover your KPI’s and your proxy metrics.

The KPI’s (2nd tier metric) include measuring CLV, MRR, CTR, etc. The 3rd tier metric is tougher because it’s very company specific.

As you probably can imagine, it’s a bit tough to ask a team of developers: improve monthly active users, you need to figure out what smaller things are driving growth for your product?

All successful companies have these pivotal moments when they discover a proxy metric that ends up driving much more growth than they anticipated.

The only way to find these magic elements is by deep diving into your product, into what you call a discovery phase, and when you find your product market fit, you hopefully know the most effective triggers to your growth.

Find and start your growth engine

So how does this loop of positive feedback from your users look like? And how do you start your growth engine?

First, you got (1.) retention: People that goes through your acquisition funnel, becoming active users and coming back for more. This means that people are finding value in your product.

Then you got (2.) referrals: People that like your product so much that they’ll recommend it to other people in their network. This, word of mouth, is very powerful.

The third one is (3.) revenue: Everything from subscriptions to in-product purchases, etc. That you can sell to your users. The important factor here is that each user generates more revenue than what it costs to get that person through the acquisition funnel.

The only good way to start this engine and get it to run fast is by producing a product that instantly gives value to your users.

Itamar Gilad has worked with products at Gmail, Youtube, Microsoft and several other tech companies.

A fourth part of the virtues loop is something very few companies manage to really utilize, which is (4.) learning: While the engine is running, you use data from your users and your qualitative insights to learn how people go through the funnel, and how to optimize it to make more people slide through your funnel in a better way.

Template for growth

  • Choose one metric that matters to you and your team — let it be your north star.
  • Identify proxy metrics and build a growth model
  • Picture right growth engines (like above: retention+referrals+revenue)
  • Optimize for your OMTM with research and experiments
  • Focus on (demonstrable) value to user

REMEMBER: This was a brief rundown of Itamar’s talk, full talk here.

Continue reading startup stories?

https://blog.itnig.net/how-a-small-group-of-in-house-product-designers-killed-cabifys-corporate-brand-and-made-it-purple-cb5c5ddf0fb0

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How To Make A Startup Community Grow And Become More Inclusive

There’s tons of events in the Barcelona startup ecosystem, you can find all the itnig events here.

Everyone that works in startups desire a strong, growing and inclusive community. It’s something everyone benefit from, founders, VC’s, developers, marketers, the list goes on.

How you perceive a community often depend on if you’re a local or not. In Barcelona the startup community is a good mix of both Spanish people and expats from all over the world, which is a great thing.

I’ve been a member of the startup community in the city for well over a year now, and I’ve been impressed by how inclusive and fast-growing it is. To help me analyze why and how the ecosystem has been growing, I spoke to a local expert.

Want to go fast or far?

Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit is the CEO and founder of MarsBased, director of Startup Grind Barcelona, and the man behind the Slack group StartupBCN. As a local, he’s seen the community grow fast for the last years, and have recognized a clear difference between certain companies:

Some companies fail to understand that an ecosystem is a perfect sum of the actors that contribute. Go alone if you want to go fast, go accompanied if you want to go far, as the African proverb says.

Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit at Startupgrind’s two year anniversary in Barcelona this year.

Even though tech startups is dependent and built by developers, it’s important that all events isn’t exclusively for this group. Bacardit says entry-level events are key in building and growing a community:

Events provided by new startups or even public administration, where you get free non-technical content, not using acronyms or tech-jargon so people can start soaking the startup vibe and culture without feeling lost.

Too many “rockstars”

As Brad Feld wrote in the well-known book “Startup communities”, inclusion doesn’t just mean to invite as many of the people you think will fit into the community, it actually means everyone, according to Feld:

“Welcome everyone to the startup community. Everyone should have the perspective that having more people engaged is good for the startup community.”

Wise, experienced startup founders are essential in all communities that want to grow, but it’s important to not forget the youngest group of the ecosystem.

Young people who’s hungry for experience with their whole life ahead of them, and with“nothing to lose”, can be an incredible resource to a growing (or a stagnant) community. They’re often not limited by the same things as older, more experienced members of the ecosystem can be. Limited time, money, pride, are things young people more rarely have, and make them more free to be active and engaged.

Bacardit explains that even though the Barcelona ecosystem is getting better every year, there’s still too many older “rockstars”.

There is an established “startup mafia” which is everywhere, pulling the strings of the community. If you’re not friends with them, you won’t make it. The biggest pitfall is the conquer-all attitude of some companies that try to gain foothold within the community without caring about other companies.

The founder believes giving before getting, is the key to growth.

An inclusive startup community is where being a competitor does not matter. At this level, companies should partner more often than not, even if they’re competitors.

He continues:

If even Microsoft and Google or Apple partner from time to time, why shouldn’t startups?

Build something that lasts

In Barcelona we’re very lucky to have an extremely strong city brand, but not all cities have the world’s best football team, and millions of people coming to visit every year. If you don’t have a strong identity, it’s easy to start drawing lines to other places that have fostered world-famous entrepreneurs.

You often hear that cities brand themselves as the Silicon Valley of this or that, but if you want your startup community to develop in a healthy way and be a reference to other communities, I think it’s important to stay true to who you are.

For instance to call Barcelona the Silicon Valley of southern Europe would look good as a title in news articles, and create a bit of buzz, but to base your brand on your own talent and success is something that will last much longer, even though it takes more time and effort.

So if you’re part of a startup or a tech company you now know some of the things you should, and shouldn’t do. And Bacardit has one last encouragement to you:

I believe most companies should host an event or two a year just to learn what it can bring them, and how difficult it is. It’s a nice way to pay the community back.

……

This post was written by Sindre Hopland, media manager at itnig.