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Defining A Growth Hacker: Growth Is Not A Marketing Strategy
Oct 21, 5:00AM
In this series titled "Defining a growth hacker," I will be exploring the meaning and practical application of growth hacking through a number of interviews with prominent growth hackers. This is the third post of the series on product. You can find the first post on common characteristics here and growth hacking's impact on marketing here. "Viral marketing is not a marketing strategy," Andrew Chen wrote back in 2007. "Successful viral products don't have viral marketing bolted on once the product has been developed. It's not a marketing strategy. Instead, it's designed into the product from the very beginning as part of the fundamental architecture of the experience." While growth hacking has changed the worldview of many great marketers, growth hackers are also rethinking and redesigning the way products are developed and analyzed. Today, successful growth implementation starts at the product level because growth hacking at its core is a product-based role. A growth hacker is a product-based role for four reasons: growth hacking is a sub-specialty of both marketing and product, engagement is central to growth hackers, growth is a form of product "R&D," and growth hackers are empowered in a product role. Growth as a sub-specialty Growth is a blend of both marketing and product. While both specialties contain a partial growth perspective, growth hacking is a sub-specialty with the sole focus on pushing metrics and designing outcomes around growth. Matt Humphrey, co-founder of HomeRun, explained that growth hacking is not a new role that fits within marketing. "It's an entire product and business level understanding of what drives users to the product, back to the product, and into their wallets," said Humphrey. Growth hackers have a much deeper technical understanding of product as it relates to marketing. This technical and scientific perspective on marketing pushes for a different attitude towards distribution and getting in front of customers. "Growth hacking is definitely more than direct marketing, quantitative analysis, and engineering," said Jesse Farmer, co-founder of Everlane. "For example, Tumblr just updated their API to permit user-to-user following via HTTP POST. That sentence is a Bat Signal for any growth hacker but probably means nothing to the average marketer." On product, growth hackers zero in on the distribution and engagement side of product. Growth hackers are "syncing with product teams to ensure the product is built around distribution or core features are put in place with distribution as aA Quarter Of Japanese eCommerce Giant Rakuten's $5B/Year Revenue Is Mobile, And It's Growing 3-400% Y/Y
Oct 21, 2:14AM
Today, at Y Combinator's Startup School at Stanford University, Rakuten Founder and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani took the stage to talk about the company's culture, acquisitions and its crazy growth over the last year. Mikitani said that Rakuten was currently seeing about $5 billion/year in revenues and that 25 percent of that revenue was coming from mobile mobile phones, both feature and smartphones. Forty percent of those transactions emanated from feature phones (yes, you heard that right), with 60 percent coming from smartphones.Soft Core: Why Do Sex Toy Makers Have Such Horrible Videos?
Oct 21, 2:00AM
We wrote about Vibease back in early September and I called it the long-distance relationship you've always wanted. Since, LovePalz (with his and her's toys) has launched, along with quite a few other players in the general mobile... sexual... hardware segment(?). Anyways, Vibease originally launched the Android app before having an accompanying Bluetooth vibrator to launch along with it. But today the company has opened up pre-orders with a video. It's ridiculous. The commercial part in the beginning, at the very least.Facebook's EMEA Head Joanna Shields Is Leaving To Become CEO Of London's Tech City 'Silicon Valley' Effort
Oct 20, 10:59PM
Surprising news for a Saturday evening in London, and another post-IPO executive departure for Facebook, this time on the international front. Joanna Shields, the vice president and managing director of Facebook's Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, is leaving to become the chief executive of the Tech City Investment Organisation, a David Cameron/Conservative government initiative to develop a technology hub in the East End of London to rival that of Silicon Valley and other major tech centers.If The Health Care Industry Married Silicon Valley, They'd Have Babies Named "Cure"
Oct 20, 10:32PM
I just got back to San Francisco from the 15-year celebration of LIVESTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It was an interesting time to be in Austin, as most of the world is still shell-shocked from Armstrong stepping down as the Chairman due to outside pressure from his doping scandal. However, most people had a positive attitude when it comes to the direction that LIVESTRONG is going in, but there's definitely room for improvement. Cancer is just one of the diseases that needs better treatment and a cure. While I was in Austin, I thought a lot about my smart friends back in Silicon Valley and all of the hard problems that they're solving in their daily jobs at startups or companies like Facebook and Google. Those thoughts led me to wonder what would happen if you put all of those brilliant people into a room together to "hack a cure."Language Learning Platform Busuu Raises €3.5M Series A Round, Moves to London To Scale Up
Oct 20, 9:00PM
Busuu - the language learning community offering largely free audio-visual online courses - has been playing has been boostrapping away relentlessly for a few years and only last year raised an Angel round from FON-founder and serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky. So while US-based Livemocha spent $14 million in VC getting to around 12 million members, Busuu stuck to its knitting with its free to access platform. It now claims to have more than 25 million users in over 200 countries and says it's growing at a rate of 40,000 new members per day. That strategy appears to have paid off, as it's now closed a Series A investment round of €3.5 million from PROfounders Capital and private investors. PROfounders Capital investment partner Brent Hoberman – lastminute.com co-founder and serial entrepreneur – joins the start-up's board of advisers.Twitter Spring
Oct 20, 8:00PM
I read the news today oh boy. Well actually, I didn't. In a realtime Twitter world where everything looks like news, none of it is. The Steve Jobs anniversary stories are just one measure of this logjam, but something deeper than his tragic demise is troubling the technology business. What news is and why we crave it are being disrespected by Twitter's recent moves, and the result may be a Twitter spring with unintended consequences.Is Your Game Crowd-Ready?
Oct 20, 8:00PM
Several people have contacted me and asked whether such-and-such a game would work with crowdfunding, or whole sectors. Could educational games benefit from crowdfunding, for example. Or what about game-like projects, or gaming hardware innovations? The answers to these questions have little to do with the product itself. They are driven by what I call marketing stories.Facebook's First Server Cost $85/Month
Oct 20, 7:59PM
At Startup School today in the Memorial Auditorium at Stanford University, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to Y Combinator founder Paul Graham about the early days of Facebook. He revealed that, early on, the team did not intend for the TheFacebook.com (as it was called) to become a business. In fact, being at Harvard and all, Facebook had no cash to run the business and operated it for the first few months for $85/month, which was the cost of renting one server. Facebook's first server.Zuck's Advice To Startups: Explore Before You Commit, Listen, Build Something Fundamental, Don't Copy
Oct 20, 7:56PM
Facebook didn't guess that users wanted to share photos. It learned it, Mark Zuckerberg explained in his talk at Y Combinator Startup School. "We really listened to what our users wanted, both qualitatively listening to the words they say, and quantitatively looking at behavior that they take." Users didn't necessarily say they wanted photos, but were uploading new profile pics every day.Zuckerberg: Facebook Started Out As A 'Hobby' And A 'Project,' Not A Company
Oct 20, 7:51PM
Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at Y Combinator's annual Startup School event this morning for a one-on-one conversation with Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham. It was his second major sit-down, on-stage interview since taking Facebook public earlier this year, and he spoke to a packed house at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium about the early days of Facebook and his personal entrepreneurial path. Being that Startup School is an event aimed at giving programmers the tools and motivation to take the leap into starting their own companies, it was interesting that Zuckerberg reiterated again and again the fact that in the beginning, he didn't intend for Facebook to be the massive business it is today. Initially it was not a company at all, he said -- it was "a project."How to Make It in America – 7 Tips To Help Your Startup Enter The U.S. Market
Oct 20, 7:00PM
Editor's note: Steli Efti is the Co-Founder/Chief Hustler of ElasticSales and an advisor to several startups and entrepreneurs. You can follow Steli on Twitter here. Selling to the U.S. market can be a significant milestone in the life of an international technology startup. The U.S. is the largest market in the world, and a successful foothold here can mean dramatic growth as well as further credibility of your company. But selling to U.S. businesses can be difficult especially if you're based overseas. Having successfully introduced international technology companies to the U.S. market, we've learned several lessons, listed below, to help companies abroad sell in the U.S. Find markets that are not yet saturated by your competitors. U.S. competitors will have a geographic advantage, so pick an industry vertical, or regional market, where you can introduce your product and gain rapid traction. Identify Early Market Signals. Track early signals that the U.S. market is even interested in your product or service. Do you have signups on your website or requests for information from U.S. customers already? Set up a U.S. page where customers can sign up to be on a waiting list and run a basic online marketing campaign to promote it. If you see interest in your product or service from the U.S. market, you know there's an opportunity to push further into the market. Experiment with pricing, but don't get caught up in a price war. International companies often differentiate themselves from U.S. competitors by offering similar technology at a lower price. However, cheaper doesn't always compute as better; many customers associate a lower price point with lower quality. So rather than racing your competitor to the lowest possible price point, pitch your product as providing a superior solution at a price that can actually support the growth of your company. Get introductions from your existing clients. Many of your customers may already operate in the U.S. and have industry contacts that could also benefit from your product or service. Ask them for introductions to new customers. Tell them you're entering a new market, and as a long term or successful client, you'd appreciate a connection with any industry contacts that would also benefit from your solution. Asking your existing customers is an easy way to find early adopters in new markets, but a tactic that many businesses simply fail to do. Leverage the brand of a notable customer.Book Review: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Oct 20, 6:30PM
Robin Sloan is the kind of guy who could write a book like this one. He's a writer and "media inventor" which seems to be a lofty term for "cool guy who gets the Internet and understands that discourse needs to be both intelligent and entertaining to effect any sort of meaningful social change." He also writes a damn good intellectual thriller, if you're into that sort of thing.Endearing "How's Your News?" Goes The ECommerce Route With $5 Downloads
Oct 20, 6:02PM
How's Your News began 15 years ago when a set of developmentally disabled adults hopped on a bus and travelled around the country interviewing folks on the street. The mixture of charm, astuteness, and fascination with the little things that these reporters exhibited has always been great fun and their work is a real tonic in this age of blowhards blowing hard at each other.PayPal Here Gets Its First U.S. Retail Deal; Now Sold At AT&T Stores
Oct 20, 5:27PM
On eBay's earnings call this past week, CEO John Donahoe revealed that the company's Square competitor, PayPal Here, had landed its first U.S. retail deal. PayPal Here is now being sold at 1,800 AT&T stores across the US. Previously, PayPal only had an international retail deal in Japan with Softbank.10 Reasons Why Windows 8 Will Do Just Fine In The Work World
Oct 20, 3:00PM
There are any number of good reasons why Windows 8 will do just fine in the work world. But in today's market, success is not guaranteed, especially as PC sales continue to slide. Gartner Research reports that third quarter shipments for PCs are down 8% compared to last year.The Second Billion Smartphone Users
Oct 20, 1:00PM
I speak with little fear of contradiction when I tell you this is the first TechCrunch article posted from Myanmar aka Burma. Only a few years ago the Internet here was both tightly censored and insanely slow. But now that this country is "on the path to democracy," according to Daw Aung Sun Suu Kyi herself, Free Wi-Fi signs are widespread, and its Internet is freewheeling and ... merely incredibly slow. So slow that it often reminds me of the 2400 baud modems of yore. Progress!Dublin Web Summit Picks SmartThings Out Of 100-Strong Startup Competition
Oct 20, 10:00AM
Well, many have travelled but few will make the end. SmartThings won the Dublin Web Summit startup competition this week beating off the other three finalists Vibease, Ovelin and Tictail and winning €100,000 in cash, as part of the Electric Ireland Spark of Genius competition. Over 1,000 entries to the competition were shortlisted to 100 which then pitched from two stages (social, mobile, consumer and enterprise) to over the two day international tech conference.Brewster: The Smart Contacts App That Wants To Rule Them All, Now Conquering Europe, Too
Oct 20, 5:00AM
Brewster, the relationship-centric iOS address book app that went live in the U.S. in July with some fanfare (and a little controversy for good measure), is picking up some more steam. On the heels of an app update earlier this month, this week it is launching across Europe, available for the first time in iOS App Stores across the region.Dissecting The Sony Nexus X, The Fake That Launched A Thousand Stories
Oct 20, 1:51AM
So hey, remember that Sony Nexus X image that made the rounds earlier this week? The one that more than a few commentors called a hoax after I ran a story about it? Well, the skeptics among you were right -- creator of the faux-Nexus came forward not long ago with a tell-all Tumblr spelling out what he did and (more importantly) how he did it.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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