Ryan Holiday: Finding your growth hack

1. Target a few hundred or a thousand key people, not millions.

   1. e.g., Dropbox began with a fun demo video in the initial launch. People can register but in a waiting list to use it. Use something ==new and exciting== to attract users.
   2. e.g., eBay in 2012 partnered with Gogo to provide free wifi access to ebay.com during flights. The brilliant part is that it can track the data to see whether it is beneficial and thus they can continue the partnership.

2. Do not target all people - target the right people

   1. e.g., Uber offered free rides for Austin’s SXSW conference for several years, which attracts thousands of tech-obsessed, high-income young adults.

   2. Hacks

      • Pitch media websites to write about us.
      • Post in Hacker News, Quora, Reddit.
      • Write blogs.
      • Kickstarter.
      • www.helpareporter.com to connect to reporters.
      • Invite users for free or with some incentives.

   3. ==Stunts==

      • Create the aurora of exclusivity with “invite-only”
      • Create fake users to make it more actively than it is. (Reddit did this)
      • Catering to a single platform exclusively (PayPal and eBay)
      • Launching for users group by group (Facebook and colleges)
      • Bringing on influential people for their audience and fame
      • Sub-domain on the e-commerce site to donate (Amazon)

3. Focusing on new user sign-ups (acquisition) instead of awareness.

4. Growth Techniques = marketing + engineering

   1. e.g., Airbnb made tools to make cross-posts to Craigslist.
   2. Sean Ellis: “Focusing on customer acquisition over ‘awareness’ takes discipline… At a certain scale, awareness/brand building makes sense. However, for the first year or two it’s a total waste of money.”
   3. In-effective actions
      1. Big blowout launch
      2. Build it and they will come. (Aaron Swartz: users have to be pulled in.)