Building

How to grow

Growth is either a loop that feeds itself or a bill you pay every month. It’s worth knowing which one you have.

1. Find the loop, then feed it.

   A loop is when using the product creates the next user, a shared result, an invite, a public artefact. Everything else is a funnel you have to keep refilling by hand.

2. Referral works when both sides win.

   Dropbox gave storage to the referrer and the person invited. Double-sided is what turned it from a coupon into a loop, and referrals went on to drive a large share of daily sign-ups.

3. Rank every channel, then kill all but one.

   The Bullseye idea from Traction: list every plausible channel, cheaply test the promising few, then concentrate everything on the one that works. Founders usually run three channels badly instead.

4. Make the shareable artefact worth looking at.

   Spotify Wrapped is an annual growth loop dressed as a gift. The design of the thing being shared matters more than the prompt asking people to share it.

5. Search compounds; feeds don’t.

   A post is worth a day. A page that answers a question people type every month is worth years. App-store search is the same bargain, the listing keeps working while you sleep.

6. Write the thing your user searched for on the way to you.

   Not marketing copy about the product. The guide they needed anyway, which is roughly why this page exists.

7. Paid is a test, not a strategy.

   Until you know payback period and How to keep people coming back by cohort, advertising is a way of buying an answer to a question, not a way of growing. Budget it as research.

8. A waitlist with a visible position is itself a loop.

   Robinhood built a queue where sharing moved you up it, and had roughly a million people waiting before launch. The mechanic did the marketing.

9. Know the ceiling of your niche before you hit it.

   1,741 clubs is a real market and also a finite one. Niches are the right place to start and a bad place to be surprised by.

10. Growth without retention is a bucket with a hole.

    Every pound spent filling a leaky product leaves at the same rate. Retention isn’t a later-stage concern; it’s the multiplier on everything upstream of it.