joanna lord: habits of high growth companies and other unicorn adventures - seattle interactive 2015

Habits of High Growth Companies…and other Unicorn adventures

@joannalord Marketer, blogger, builder of beautiful brands

we’ve become obsessed with growth

chasing something pretty magical

meh. magic.

Sources http://bit.ly/1jnwpig & http://tcrn.ch/1l6CUXn

There are 1,350,000 technology startups.

http://bit.ly/1jnwpig

http://tcrn.ch/1l6CUXn

Guess how many of those are unicorns?





Guess how many of those are unicorns?


142




Anatomy of a Unicorn

Source: http://tcrn.ch/1l6CUXn

Average # of years before a liquidity event

7

34Average age at

founding

SFTop city. NYC & LA are 2nd and 3rd.

3# of women founders

behind unicorns

2007Best year to start a

unicorn (27%).

4Number of unicorns

< 3 years old

8 of Top 10Are consumer companies,

(72% of overall list)

of co-founders have history together

85%


Not all 142 are created equal:

Source: http://tcrn.ch/1l6CUXn

Paper unicorns: Privately held companies valued north of $1B 61% of unicorns are paper (Up 200% YoY)

Super unicorns: Company valued north of $100 billion Facebook is the only one, born prior to 2005. There has been no new SU since 2005.

Decacorns: Companies valued north of $10 billion There are now 9 decacorns (Up 300% YoY). 5 of 9 are mobile.

Unicorns: Companies valued north of $1B There are 142 unicorns (Up 115% YoY)


unicorpses, unicorn hunting, oh my!

“As we enter the next phase of the Age of Unicorns, many highly valued companies will struggle to live up to their valuations, meeting harsh scrutiny

from the press, regulators, and future public market investors. Becoming a unicorn, it turns out, was the easy part.”

@eringriffith, fortune.com

http://fortune.com

$10 billion Dropbox is increasingly looking like a “feature," not a service

$9 billion Theranos is battling a wave of questions about its technology

$1 billion Evernote has experienced executive turnover as it prepares to go public

lets talk about something a little more relevant

Over 100,000,000 startups open every year.

Over 100,000,000 startups open every year.

Guess how many succeed?

Over 100,000,000 starts open every year.

Guess how many succeed?

1 out of 10

f&ck.** the & is a u. it spells fuck.

we should care about growth because we all want to be successful

and growth is harder than it used to be.

because so much has changed.

1

: marketing

evolution: ownership

1

: marketing

: product & marketingevolution: ownership

1

: marketing

: product & marketing

: product & marketing & engineering & data

evolution: ownership

PRODUCT MARKETING

ENGINEERING DATA

GROWTH

demands new organizational structure

Example: LinkedIn Growth Team

SEO

Onboarding

Network Growth

Comms

PYMK, Virality, Connections

Engagement through email/push, Resurrection

SEO, Conversionoptimization, Public profile

Onboarding, Activation, Intent discovery

2

: creative

evolution: skills

2

: creative

: creative & analyticalevolution: skills

2

: creative

: creative & analytical

: creative & analytical & intuition & technical

evolution: skills

demands new hires & investment

skills that fuel growth : t-shaped

skills that fuel growth : t-shaped hires

Technical : Analytical : Creative : Product : Design Theory : Paid : Inbound : CRO : Content : Statistics: Modeling : Database/SQL : Psychology

4

: hacks

evolution: platforms

4

: hacks

: toolsevolution: platforms

4

: hacks

: tools

: platforms

evolution: platforms

demands curiosity & accelerated adoption

demands new processes

tl;dr: Growth

advantages are shorter

lived.

EVOLUTION OF PLATFORMS

what do you need for growth to happen?

Pillars of a High Growth Company

Product Team Community X Factor

but how can we get it?

there are patterns.

build breakthrough value propositions

Here's a common way startups die. They make something moderately appealing and have decent

initial growth. They raise their first round fairly easily because the founders seem smart and the idea sounds plausible. But because

the product is only moderately appealing, growth is ok but not great. The founders convince themselves that hiring a bunch of

people is the way to boost growth. Their investors agree. But (because the product is only moderately appealing) the growth never comes. Now they're rapidly running out of runway. They hope further investment will save them. But because they have

high expenses and slow growth, they're now unappealing to investors. They're unable to raise more, and the company dies.

- Paul Graham

create a rally point worthy of their time

simplify, grow, everyday

give people the power to share

make the world your home

be less busy




be less busy

why do you wake up every morning?

the world wants more of that.




be less busy

focus on more than acquisition

Three ways to grow your company.

Acquisition Monetization Retention

Looked at 10,432 blog posts on growth.

snappity snap.

75%No wonder we’re so damn crazy about

acquisition.

acquisition isn’t the most effective channel for growth

if we improve each lever the same, which lever causes the most growth?

improving retention and monetization as 2 to 4X the growth impact of focusing on acquisition

participate fully in the ecosystem

invest in unscalable moments of delight

@scottedwards, Director of Growth at Simple

simply put growth is:

creating value

getting in front of as many people

as possible

as often as possible

& &

there are just a lot of distractions

don’t obsess over tactics other people say worked

don’t go looking for that one silver bullet

don’t forget revenue > growth

don’t abandon what got you here

we have a responsibility to grow our companies the right way.

product that offers value to this world. built by empowered teams. with and for communities. in authentic, innovative ways.

Thank You!@joannalord

Marketer, blogger, builder of beautiful brands

joanna lord: habits of high growth companies and other unicorn adventures - seattle interactive 2015

Marketing