Florida Investment Network


Recent Blogs


Pitching Help Desk


Testimonials

"Joined, submitted, we're moving forward. Excellent site, thanks again... "
Steve Smith - EquipmentFX


 BLOG >> Recent

Early Startup Growth [Entrepreneurship
Posted on October 23, 2014 @ 10:48:00 AM by Paul Meagher

I've been recommending that anyone involved in a startup, especially a software-based startup, should be watching the lectures for the online course, How to Start a Startup, now being offerred by Y-Combinator to students at Standford. I recently had a chance to watch the 4th lecture by Adora Cheung, founder of Homejoy, who discusses ideas and strategies for early startup growth.

What I liked about this video was that she counters the myth that successful startups always add users quickly right out of the gate. Oftentimes early growth has much less ambitious goals and perhaps rightly so because if you are expecting to add large numbers of users every week then a) you might be very disappointed or disillusioned with your early progress, and b) you might be using the wrong marketing techniques to get started.

Adora talks about her goals for starting up as doubling her users every week starting with 1 user in week 1, two users in week 2, 4 users in week 3 and so on. When your growth goals are this modest early on, they seem doable and can be accomplished using low-cost localized techniques to encourage users to join. It gives you a chance to learn what works and what doesn't in your messaging and gives you a chance to personally interact with your users to better understand their motivations and desires and how they are using your product or service.

Some startups hold off on engaging in these modest attempts to gain users because they assume that a startup campaign requires a large infusion of money to get the marketing engine started. That can be a mistake when you are seeking funding because it helps to have at least a few users on board with some trickling in on a regular basis when you ask for funding for marketing/advertising. At least you have 1) established that your product or service has a real market, 2) learned something about what promotional messaging is best to use, and 3) whether your feature set is viable so that injecting money into marketing/advertising is more likely to be a worthwhile endeavor.

There are other lessons to be learned from Adora's lecture. My main take home, however, was to have modest expectations for early growth. It does not require a large marketing budget initially to get your product or service in the hands of users. Once you get to the stage where you need to start spending money to add larger numbers of users to achieve your growth targets you will have hopefully learned many useful things about how customers think about and use your product or service and this knowledge should help to ensure that advertising dollars are well spent. If your product is sufficiently good, you may not have to spend too much on advertising if you are getting positive word of mouth. I didn't get the sense that Adora was spending too much on advertising but I could be wrong.

Permalink 

 Archive 
 

Archive


 November 2023 [1]
 June 2023 [1]
 May 2023 [1]
 April 2023 [1]
 March 2023 [6]
 February 2023 [1]
 November 2022 [2]
 October 2022 [2]
 August 2022 [2]
 May 2022 [2]
 April 2022 [4]
 March 2022 [1]
 February 2022 [1]
 January 2022 [2]
 December 2021 [1]
 November 2021 [2]
 October 2021 [1]
 July 2021 [1]
 June 2021 [1]
 May 2021 [3]
 April 2021 [3]
 March 2021 [4]
 February 2021 [1]
 January 2021 [1]
 December 2020 [2]
 November 2020 [1]
 August 2020 [1]
 June 2020 [4]
 May 2020 [1]
 April 2020 [2]
 March 2020 [2]
 February 2020 [1]
 January 2020 [2]
 December 2019 [1]
 November 2019 [2]
 October 2019 [2]
 September 2019 [1]
 July 2019 [1]
 June 2019 [2]
 May 2019 [3]
 April 2019 [5]
 March 2019 [4]
 February 2019 [3]
 January 2019 [3]
 December 2018 [4]
 November 2018 [2]
 September 2018 [2]
 August 2018 [1]
 July 2018 [1]
 June 2018 [1]
 May 2018 [5]
 April 2018 [4]
 March 2018 [2]
 February 2018 [4]
 January 2018 [4]
 December 2017 [2]
 November 2017 [6]
 October 2017 [6]
 September 2017 [6]
 August 2017 [2]
 July 2017 [2]
 June 2017 [5]
 May 2017 [7]
 April 2017 [6]
 March 2017 [8]
 February 2017 [7]
 January 2017 [9]
 December 2016 [7]
 November 2016 [7]
 October 2016 [5]
 September 2016 [5]
 August 2016 [4]
 July 2016 [6]
 June 2016 [5]
 May 2016 [10]
 April 2016 [12]
 March 2016 [10]
 February 2016 [11]
 January 2016 [12]
 December 2015 [6]
 November 2015 [8]
 October 2015 [12]
 September 2015 [10]
 August 2015 [14]
 July 2015 [9]
 June 2015 [9]
 May 2015 [10]
 April 2015 [9]
 March 2015 [8]
 February 2015 [8]
 January 2015 [5]
 December 2014 [11]
 November 2014 [10]
 October 2014 [10]
 September 2014 [8]
 August 2014 [7]
 July 2014 [5]
 June 2014 [7]
 May 2014 [6]
 April 2014 [3]
 March 2014 [8]
 February 2014 [6]
 January 2014 [5]
 December 2013 [5]
 November 2013 [3]
 October 2013 [4]
 September 2013 [11]
 August 2013 [4]
 July 2013 [8]
 June 2013 [10]
 May 2013 [14]
 April 2013 [12]
 March 2013 [11]
 February 2013 [19]
 January 2013 [20]
 December 2012 [5]
 November 2012 [1]
 October 2012 [3]
 September 2012 [1]
 August 2012 [1]
 July 2012 [1]
 June 2012 [2]


Categories


 Agriculture [77]
 Bayesian Inference [14]
 Books [18]
 Business Models [24]
 Causal Inference [2]
 Creativity [7]
 Decision Making [17]
 Decision Trees [8]
 Definitions [1]
 Design [38]
 Eco-Green [4]
 Economics [14]
 Education [10]
 Energy [0]
 Entrepreneurship [74]
 Events [7]
 Farming [21]
 Finance [30]
 Future [15]
 Growth [19]
 Investing [25]
 Lean Startup [10]
 Leisure [5]
 Lens Model [9]
 Making [1]
 Management [12]
 Motivation [3]
 Nature [22]
 Patents & Trademarks [1]
 Permaculture [36]
 Psychology [2]
 Real Estate [5]
 Robots [1]
 Selling [12]
 Site News [17]
 Startups [12]
 Statistics [3]
 Systems Thinking [3]
 Trends [11]
 Useful Links [3]
 Valuation [1]
 Venture Capital [5]
 Video [2]
 Writing [2]