Lesson tag: Growth Hacking

Spotify is a truly remarkable growth story. In just six years the company is valued at more than $10 billion and has more than 50 million users, 12.5 million of which pay for the service. But how did the company get to where it is today and what is its growth engine? We dive deep into Spotify’s story to uncover the key elements that helped them grow to incredible heights.

If you’re just starting out on Instagram it can be a daunting task to catch up to brands and competitors that have built a loyal following over the last 5 years.

I recently caught up with fellow Melburnian – Nathan Chan who cofounded an online magazine for entrepreneurs called Foundr.
We chatted for a few hours on various growth strategies, until a particular topic really piqued my interest.

Developers love Stripe, and so do venture capitalists who continue to pour money into the payments startup to the tune of a $3.5 billion valuation. But how does something as unsexy as a payments company get so much love, hype and growth in a market dominated by incumbents like Google and PayPal? In this growth study we break down just how Stripe has found growth.

A year ago I made the decision to focus full-time on ConvertKit—which at the time was a failing product with only $1,337/month in revenue.

HubSpot invented the term Inbound Marketing, and has lived it’s mantra, driving their business from an idea in 2004 to a $50M+ run rate in 2012 in the competitive marketing tools and services category. But is the story that simple? A deeper dive reveals that a deep belief in metrics, an organizational focus on growth, and a commitment to sales excellence has fueled their explosive rise.

Most high-growth businesses stare down periods when growth unexpectedly slows down or stops altogether. At some point, that stomach-churning moment has visited the leadership of most of the companies I’ve advised. We also faced it at OpenTable, eBay, and Reel.com when I was managing them. And it has reputedly happened to a number of today’s mightiest internet businesses as well, including the likes of Amazon and Facebook.

Marketing’s not a technical field, right?

Think again. As growth hacking has proven repeatedly over the last few years, a data-driven approach to marketing achieves stronger, more reliable results than traditional marketing.

In 2002, Reid Hoffman gathered a team of old SocialNet and PayPal colleagues to work on a new idea—a network that allowed professionals to find and connect with one another.

Brian Balfour, VP of Growth at HubSpot and author of the Coelevate blog, talks with us in-depth about his process for building a growth machine. He walks us through each step of their experiments and how they determine what to focus on. He talks about the key differences between being iterative vs. incremental. This was an incredibly enlightening interview.

Reporting is part of every marketer’s job and—according to the experts—is an integral step in creating and maintaining a culture of growth. Yet most marketers don’t have a formal process or spend any significant amount of time compiling and sharing results with their teams.