Inc
thank you all for
companies that not a nice afternoon and can we talk about growth
I'm I put hacks in quotes because I think
this term growth hacking answer this concept is like you can really drive an
accurate address we come
really popular over the last few years up
but I don't really think it's a hacking at all it's really about figuring out
step by step
how to engage people in your product how to track people your product that are
really
get them using it in a really meaningful way and so as unintelligible stories and
you know calling them
hacks an order going to help you think about growth in a different way and
and think about I can use data and how you can use the way people are really
using your product
to kinda forgot Grosso on read a great job to introducing me
in seeing I fart in my home my whole career internal our price: ever gonna
really been about building networks and you connect people through networks and
kind amazing things can happen and so
everything I've done in my career has been really networking with either just
great people to companies I've got to work at
or read other people through industry like when we're launching other Facebook
connect platform with Facebook on the kind of keep
connect making these connections and then making of things happen top it's
not going to work
you know really early at RealNetworks Twitter Facebook LinkedIn
and Sasso and through all those things I haven't just collected kinda
know some great experiences into savings but really
a great set a people that when I have check on questions account is now I
really go to
both for you know how should things work better what kinda companies are people
interested in
and really trying to make the same connections at new company so
everything I think about now is kinda within people networks and connecting
them
so they talk about these kinda growth tax I really want to think about
what does it mean that kinda get more people connecting around your service
to engage me get them using its all talk to three different stories on the double
viral loop which is
I really key way that we help LinkedIn grow in the early days
to learn flow which is a key change in their key concept about the Twitter
really helps with Twitter grow end-user accounting which is a realization that
we're also good with our company's
tracking how much money we're getting into how much money we're spending and
tracking our cost in
and I revenue but we don't necessarily track our users and our usage
and whether we think they retain in the same way I'm so also with the double
viral loop
and Sophie think about virology like probably everybody here thinks are out
how I make my apt more viral how to make my
website more by rope I'm it works like this you have one person and they get so
sad about something a share with three people
and each other three people shares with another three or six people
number so you have this like incredibly spiraling fire 0
equation and it started with just one person using our product now you have
your hundreds thousands or tens of thousands up
so LinkedIn this is how we grew in the early days we were trying to be viral
and we actually spend a ton in time on the product trying to tweak it
and improve it so that when you signed up would say hey who lost you know the
should be in your network
and and kinda make it go viral from there as we did a lot of testing
when these you see on the screen is that we have this this form had like four
boxes
to enter names any you note first name last name an email address
men can enter a message and we default we defaulted the message
what you're not throwing our testing forms like the optimal number to make
this more borrow
if we only if we had one or two people on two boxes
he would sometimes feel nothing out of it for one or two we put up to four
they'd fill
anywhere from nothing 24 a pretty much the same rating so anytime you can get
more people to do it
once we started putting like six boxes there it actually started going down
because
people kinda daunted by seeing six boxes so we ended up on just four that was
it is is this isn't like you should do for this is Mormon example a bike
we did all this testing and learning to try to make it more bar on we got to
that
that sorta happy medium with this part of the experience and then we actually
did a lotta testing on the message may be surprised how much
testing and tweaking the kinda message especially when things are spreading
really matters
us if you read this message it says so I found you I was looking around the
network let's connect directly
and happy to help US request in for things incoming reply make both our
networks bigger
on a card that last sentence it'll probably make both have our networks
bigger
people often think on you know suffered as kinda throw away our sound silly
but it turned out when we actually had that message in there people were more
likely
when they signed up for LinkedIn to go and invite other people and
we to go back to our colleague inception which is you wanna kinda
in Sep people with the idea a wire products can be useful meaningful
to them and what they should be doing with it before they even get started so
when I would get this invitation from a friend
are we thinking about making my network bigger min ago sign up for LinkedIn
it was a pay for who should you go and invite up
you like oh I need to have a bigger network so you're more likely to go and
invite
so is really important that we we treat the message we treat at your number
forms on the field and we got to this pretty good for a place to buy brody
on in your we did all this math every year for me with the K factor
when you're going viral math on you know the key factors basically how you
I decide if you borrow you the if you're worried about what it means for every
one user you're getting more than one new user in the system
and in the math is pretty simple it's one user times a percentage who invite
at least one user times the number the average number of invites sent
times the open tray to the invites had the click-through rate I'm sorry
stationary
you all this math and you hope to god that it's about one
and you know it it LinkedIn we're alike marginally
above or below one but it was kinda growing pretty slowly
something so you know less than 25 percent people actually typing the email
address
most people still only had one connection in the network is there
accepted but they would actually go and even invite anybody else
as opposed to getting them accepted so you know a LinkedIn we
give us think even invented a few years earlier about contact importing
hey give us your email address and your password it will go through and find a
whole buncha people you might invites you don't even have to manually type in
invites like everybody's familiar with these now but trust me back in those
days into this is
2004 era it was hard to get people that
even just type in the email address and password more so than even have contacts
in the webmail
so we actually had built an Outlook plugin that you she added install
Internet Explorer
with ActiveX actually go in mind your outlook in
you be surprised like a lot of people did it now ways we are you know even
like 78 percent at times
waxing go through this formal process to get the Outlook plugin
and upload their address book and the meeting was because you then getting off
a letter smuggled I do want to make people
it didn't take that many people to invite the whole address book to raise
the total number of invites for invited to be above thirty
and I was like a really good thing but we have this other interesting data
point which is
it took several emails to a person before
they would actually signed up for LinkedIn whoever's about 3.2 an early
days
and so we were sing on the spam cuz not you know enough people would upload
their whole address book an invite everybody
that they would no end up with with you with a comma got everybody spamming each
other so we fix that but
that number 3.2 was actually really really important that's how many
emails you need to get before you sign up and so we we kept the email importer
and it still works but
but it LinkedIn still wasn't by Barack is it a couple people spamming and
everybody else
not really inviting but when you signed up for LinkedIn we asked you a very
important question
what's your current company and what you type and so
over ninety percent of people who said if a link to this one had fill this out
so we came up with this idea how can we use that information that we had in
spades
to help people connect to come to speed up our whole growth process
so this is what we came up with we cut the reconnect flow
and so when you signed up for LinkedIn you already entered your title in your
company
the very first thing would say is here's a bunch of other people who are Rd
signed up for LinkedIn
at your same company which are those do you know me go through and you pick them
and then we got greedy and we were like why don't we try to get the rest your
company soon keep matching and so we go through and say where it is used to work
and he would fill this out to anything was actually ended up on their profile
so we were just getting it is kinda invite closer to getting you to fill out
your profile
would say okay great who do you know what those companies to so now
you have gone through and said oh I know like 10 or 12 other people who are
already on LinkedIn that's really cool
and then we go group
and then we'd say awesome now go try to import your address book
and the amazing thing was this is now several steps later in the flow than it
used to be
but the same percentage people did it so you say some people might have
had a couple Sep 24 so they're less likely but a lot of people
were more likely to do this now that actually gone through a couple stepped
down people they are you know on 0800 I should go and invite
these extra people into add more so even though we put this several steps later
in the process
didn't hurt things the top and then what was really am
important about this whole flow is let's see just signed up and used to work in
eBay founder friend Bob who also worked even
are getting email that says josh is now on LinkedIn once you come in connect
with a man except this connection
so bob would come he'd see this screen he'd sign in
and we and it's a great you and Josh are now connected Bob Bob why don't you go
and invite more people
what was amazing was the people who got that message we're already on LinkedIn
were much more likely to invite when they ended up here so now just because I
just signed up for LinkedIn
and tag like 10 people that I knew Rd in the network each one of them got a
message
many then came back to Lincoln accepted it and then were prompted invite
so this was incredible on the stats that we saw this was just like II family side
but I made a week after we launched this feature there was a car pages on the
site were up 41 percent
within a week a launching this feature I are searches route 33 percent through
his bring so many people back to the product
the number of positions getting out in the profile was up 38 percent which was
like
loser big numbers for like one little feature
is a back in again a middle 2004 but even better like a number limitations
going out were up 15 per set
even though we put all these steps before the new user thinkers were
totally depending on
the new user single by rowdy we're getting this extra wave invites going
out to the system by the way that number
spiked up much much more and get invitations
you know really drove up because what I call the double viral K Factor
which is you talk to the first one is the new person to sign up how many
people can get them to invite
but then you get to layer in this entire second wave
everything on on person that they touch so how many them going at all users
how many of them actually get all users to send it on
to send this message to all users how is all users are coming back to system
inviting to you
so you can really start to think about your viral flow not is just
hey welcome to the site please go find your friends in please add your friends
but welcome to the site go connect with people who are here
get those people to try to invite more and keep adding to the network
you can really kinda changing my rowdy in a min LinkedIn I me when I started
there I think we had
under a hundred thousand users and now it's over 200 million people have signed
up for LinkedIn
resolved through really careful thinking about our flows
lotsa testing and tweaking but really companies kinda product insights and
stories
and that we could do like the double viral loop such as one story from
LinkedIn and
try it on more rights in every like it's really easy to find your own double loop
Lake
find the simplest thing you connect people around ask people is really
simple questions
like we just got lucky that we're asking everybody for their current timeline
company
you want to enable all your new users take a touch those existing users
but such a meaningful way it's not that useful when you like
hey your friend just signed up for the service because they haven't actually
done anything to tell you in years getting have the stamina
vacations but it's really useful if the person said I'd like to connect with you
because I now hear and then when those new users to come back to the service
JMM hard like those are the ones you need to get to really do a lot of the
inviting cuz they already know the value of the service
so it does not cover story from LinkedIn now I'll talk about the learned flow
and learn flows are really a way that we really rethought signing up for Twitter
& changing that experience
and when I joined Twitter was about the Fallen 2009 the companies were eighty
people
and Twitter how'd you know been like massive awareness in the press much you
want her to Twitter
you asking me okay you've heard it where do you use it and mostly would say no I
don't know what it's for
I got nothing to say and so it is really was really interesting issue
and and we spent a lot of time trying to figure it out so soccer star this
framework
when so many signs up for your service there's a there's a bunch of things
going on their head
none of which are like I'm so excited to finally have the service they know
exactly what it's for
this never true but year ago I heard this is cool I keep hearing that in the
presser I kept
seen on TV here frank it tell me about it and said she loves it she says I need
to try it
or or oh my god everyone using a fake on the last one I still don't get it
or hey look I got a free trial all give it a shot but none of these statements
are like
oh my god I'm so glad that I'm signing up for service tax because I'm
I know what it's for and yet most services try to make this short
most services like awesome I'm going to sign up for like is painless as possible
just jump you read in the product
and my kids a terrible idea like this is your moment you have more attention than
you ever will have
again from that user to try to teach them what your product is really about
to really help them
learn the product in a meaningful way I'm so when I joined Twitter
this was what pace set up for Twitter on the the big
home page said you know share discover what's happening right now anywhere in
the world so like
first iShares like the primary word which most people
like I don't really have more to share I don't want to talk about it and then
there's a big nice box at the Twitter search box
has ever hear searched on Twitter up and
so is certainly raise your hand if you think searching on Twitter is like the
most
intuitive easy to understand think got no hands up
a man's think it's urgent orders are the worst thing you can do to a new user
the day they might have heard about whether they heard like and a Justin
Bieber talks all the time to search for Justin Bieber
the tweets that you see for Justin Bieber are so on correlated with what
Twitter's gonna actually about it's like is lil bit embarrassing
knows enough you also click the Sign Up Now button anyclip that you on the
screen that's okay
now go import your address book which are to talk about a LinkedIn like
the very first things what exactly do is like go in for your address book
go find people on Twitter which is like it's a pretty heavy ask
you just sending over to give no idea what it's for I N a good old go get read
his book
the next thing we do is make awesome well here's twenty people UniStar
following them have been pre-selected
to visit finish you like randomly following 20 people
on if you look at these people like they really were intuitive like why I should
be following what you do with them
and so a lot of people skip this step because they didn't know what the hell
is going on
never the Twitter stream it look like this which is like totally awesome
because
is like that the blank screen of death and any
ship and you really cannot get started getting any value out whether this way
or you know maybe you go to a page that looks like this: need a fallen twenty
people in the southern African idea what's going on
is a big box at the top it's like account it is about 20 percent the
screen real say the very top
was devoted to getting you to tweet and almost one year in this state which is
like I've got nothing to say
and see all these random stuff here about that most people truly
it when I joined Twitter up falling 0.1% following 20
where like such a huge percentage of our total registered users that point
and most people were nice the girl I barely 14 even came back once
a month after they'd signed up and
and and then we did a little check on Google were taken I don't get
and we were number two in Google suggests after I don't get drunk I get
awesome
here
we finally took over the number one spot for a while you're probably still to try
still up there in the top 10
but but it was a it was a really like just a good sign
like nobody understands what waters force with his big internal
up you know debated the company and when we come to give the same the lake
twittershare who wanna know what's happening in the world if you really
want to know what's going on the world
who is it not if you wanna tweener share breakfast if an appeal every breakfast
but like what's going on in the world and so we redid the whole user flow and
we we took a big step back to me said
how can we reinvent this missus this is now like two years later
after I joined this is kinda what we launched its order the combination of a
lot of these learnings
but but it was a very intuitive process to get here and
and and that's what is pretty clean it says you know mostly love her Twitter so
we get the luxury
having a blank home page is just a sign up actually don't encourage this for
most sites
early in their stages biggest most were coming site have no frickin clue
and then I'm just gonna sign up without some rationale I think
when you get as big as a Twitter Pinterest Facebook you get to like have
a home page like this cuz
people are going there cuz they already know they've heard a bit more to sign up
this we care for not to copy the people who were much much larger
on on sort of the homepage design but I think the recipes lessons are pretty
applicable
so you know it's got the new statement I know what's happening right now
with the people organizations you care about was a much cleaner message for
Twitter
and starting at their share but with this is what's really important is what
happened after that
and this is this is what I call I think this is like the magic if Twitter right
now
is a whitewater has really grown from you know under $10 million active users
when I joined
to over 200 million now over 120 fired or something like
or a hundred million daily on is because with weak
taught new Twitter you you had time
you're signing up you're giving Twitter your attention and
and so we wanted it to show you as I can intercept its okay to explain make slow
down like don't rush the user through anything
it so it is okay to explain a little bit in the very first screen on Twitter
is just this to the Twitter teacher it's my friend Ben
says this is a tweet teacher short messages have a 140 characters and idk
in contain links like this link it says get started click Next
we're still making you sound like it so get started in less than 60 seconds
but I can tell you that the metric show I was nobody gets to this flow in 60
seconds
that's intentional you feel like it's fast but it's not
but you don't wanna just explained so it is for screen is really important
because it gives you the pause the breath
I'm about to sign up for this thing to show me what it's about
okay now I'm ready but these two hours in like a center for any iPhone app
right now the first thing you do is a gives ok to restrain through
yes 3.2 the regular a guy who is your ex white bread through it many go back to
the product
hasn't actually even really spent time trying to digest it
because it only tells it doesn't actually engage you in any reactions
that matter so it's where we really invested in saying we want you to
understand what's what about chris' about following things you care about
people you're interested in
and you end up with the street on the right hand side what we call this
preview area
soap well we say build your time line and in
follow people to get their tweets like these words still may not make total
sense
but there's is this the people on the left hand side the hopefully is very
recognizable list is about algorithms are going to that
you start looking follow on the right hand side the people's names come up
and you see there you see tweets you only got I follow I get tweets and you
need to start to get the lake
Twitter's about following to try getting these tweets over time
so what you doing this now you want to really give context in framing for what
the products all about so the next thing we know it's water
is going to show you people follow any more and get a teaching in that
purchasing
there's categories of content here you may be interested in
if you scroll through this list there's no 20 or 30 categories like music sports
fashion
design entertainment travel politics gonna anything you would ever want to
look for in the news
you can find here on Twitter was a bunch a good examples in each category can to
drill in and out
answer is a go shopping cart you keep clicking follow follow follow in the end
up on the right hand side
units a trillion she experience where even if you don't follow anything even
if you
skipping you didn't find anything that was usual you now but had the context
like
Twitter's about news twitter is not just about like friends like what Facebook's
about but it's actually about his
and then we go can now we say it's also about friends
go try to bring your friends in it's really good to have friends on the
system
but but we wait and we really give you like to read about
tweets following news and friends
if you actually stop and think about it that's a great description a Twitter
will use the four steps to reduce party through so through through this flow
you've actually gone through it even if you didn't really process what's going
on cuz by the way most people don't and still really hard to do
you have this this framework for thinking about whether you have the key
words that matter you have this idea
like if I go through the steps to Twitter I've
look for tweets I follow some things are fine new sports entertainment
I find some friends I'm actually a good experience hearing end up on the screen
like this
and like one other thing I like to point out here's the compose but you know the
composed box to rate your tweet
is now much smaller on the left you know and in some point maybe just get buried
in the ice blue button on the upper right
because we've really change the way you think about by using
I'm using Twitter back to educating you with that that learning in a key
framework
as I think a a lot he was if you decide I signed up for so many products these
days
in kinda my new job in venture and and I'm just amazed at how little I know
about the product after signing up and I i so not really invest the time to go
to go play with it more Lumosity if you guys are from their philosophy is one
the best I love experiences
had recently I keep hearing likely lastly like makes your brain smarter
and if you actually go set up for next year ask you like 10 questions like do
what you bring to be smarter about this or this do what your brain to be smarter
about
this for this new star freaking out like I had no idea that my brain was like
falling apart all the things I wanna my brain to be smarter about like so many
different skills
but it's just amazing processed actually get you think about like
my god the mossy will really make my brain smarter on
to answer jittery it's one of the best examples I've seen after this learning
flow
I'm a long time so the last thing I talk about
is really get down to brass tacks a user accounting so
you know fundamentally like product in
in building on these things these are creative these are storytelling these
are having inside the house about the product
to and making the product and in making a product really is a craft
it were all craftsmen here and a and custer in and we're all trying to really
figure out how to
create these things that will engage people in their lives
everything else but we aren't 10 trillion
things that we get we have all these data to go
be crass went from and to use that data to kinda help us drive our instincts in
our insights
and figure out of her instincts are right for God for doing the right thing
it's a user counting is a framework to get up fundamentally
understand the lake you need to have regulars a need to track
not just these kinda fannie metres have a page views and registered users
but like honey her really doing everything to whenever I meet a new
entrepreneur
or her talking to me about growth I we start with like give regulars our
visitors
visitors are people who liked it in and out your product they use it once or
twice
may come via prompt like they found on SEO or
their shared a link on Facebook or something email them something and
they're a really remember the name your product they call that site that I dread
that sports article on or
all that place that I like went camera shopping but they can even articulate
like
your shopping dot com or Bleacher Report or whatever branded as
regulars have a habit you know near I think talk this morning I have it
the the use the product daily or monthly become directly because I like I gotta
go to Twitter to find out what's going on the road
your top of mind when it's like if I need to find a restaurant or something
nearby
I did go to yell because yelp is like the thing that I used to do that
evenimentol going up every day I use Yelp at least once a week
and the same thing with a movie sacramento is the movies every day
but every week or two you want to check to see what movies are out you go to
like that
you know specific movies advice Flixster so
a lot of people miss this really key insight on the side
which is the the blue line is the number registrations you have
in the room new people signing up as you get in people's how many total
registered
the Green Line is how many people are stopped using your products they signed
up to 30 days later the No
no longer coming back and if you're green line goes up
fast over time when people stop using your product
you actually get to this point where they cross the line negative growth
because
illness that we did the scale this charted like $400 million exit 49 users
at a really loud a user's in your facebook when I got there like have
these realizations
like we don't care how to get to a billion and people to stop using the
product
on and we're gonna we're gonna run out what's amazing is you can spend as much
time
not just worry about growing the top line but really reducing their bottom
and reduce the number of people who go inactive
but you can't do into you understand and soap
the the thing I would say is a you really as in who are really using your
product not just how many people are hitting it
or visiting on some occasional frequency but really fundamental using it so you
can have a four-step
way at which we actually figure this out on Twitter for what what made it useful
for us
and then we figure out how to go go engineer things like to learn flow and a
bunch the other gross stuff we did
step one is 1 o'clock or determine whose core
figure who your core your product are witty comeback on a monthly basis
once you you know and RR sorry come back at least the same
number times per month Sosa again another i chart but what i'm trying to
show here's
on the the bottom axis is the number of times you use the month use the product
in the first thirty day period is from from 1-2:30
and so to use did one-time in a in in you know January
how many times he's in February and so the
actually the y-axis is the percentage likelihood that you used it
at least that many times in the second month so again if used it
ten times in January you were ninety percent likely to use it ten times or
more in February
so as we turn it on this out a Twitter which one is great thing for us which
was
right around seven you had about ninety percent to use it at least seven times
in a month which meant like
about twice a week you were over ninety percent likely to use Twitter and the
seven times a second month
the third month in in the on that and and that's really kinda held two
overtimes actually
on gone down it shitty about
and I forget that these cars is to have them but it was
it was at seven and so that meant to us was the people who get Twitter
are now using at least twice a week and so what can we do what is special about
that
so once we figured out that we find out okay I i told you that you have these
core users you have
is casual users whose name is that lesson seven times if called users who
have not use it on the last 30 days
what's going on here how many people who are signing up for ending up in the core
bucket
and you're signing up for ending up in the casual bucket how do you are signing
up
are ending up not using in the second month and once you're in one of those
buckets what's the likelihood you stay in their bucket
from month to month transition so we really want to understand her
activations in transitions
to start to go where our problems is our problem that everybody signing up isn't
getting in but over time they are so they go
new to casual decor or is it that ago new decor or new dead and that's it
or doing you get more people to which one of these buckets so this really hope
to start to map like
actually for Twitter we decided we just need to get you from new to course fast
as possible
because once we lost you in the kinda using it less than a
lesson seven times in a month we thought we totally lost you
so we we did this big now says Rick what's special about those people
those people who get it that people who get the core what are they doing
differently and we found
tubing learnings that were really meaningful for us we visited a bunch of
love on correlation analyses on different rates
on up things we found it if you follow the least 30 accounts like a UN core
was way better especially if you started trending towards that your first month
and the second thing we found was very unique for Twitter the the healthiest
ratio Twitter
was to have it where up to all the people you followed about one-third to
them followed you back
to two-thirds were just one way I'm absorbing their information but about
one-third is where
I follow them they follow me which weaning back and forth
we're seeing what I'm saying so this was the israelis to inside then drove a lot
of the
discover the people you want to follow try to get people to follow a more in
the new user flow
training people to find their friends have their friends fall them back
through
you just got followed notifications it and other types the recommendations
and in the very last important part for user counting is to track this stuff
daily
is to really sit there and not just think okay well not going to sign ups
now gotta much people going an active but actually
understand on a daily basis what your post looks like
and so this is pretty normal you know for for revenue and cost I said this
pretty normal
he tricked the number new people than ever people have come back after 30 days
then we would have deleted their accounts and on the net you'd subtract
up and everybody going active
near here net change in even though is a look at this you are looking at twenty
thousand new people to sign up
with you at eleven thousand who disappeared are sorry eleven thousand
net
he's your kid 10,000 people we thought were active as a thirty days ago for no
longer active
and so as you start to work through this daily use your accounting
it really change the way you think about it we saw this the
my favorite example from this was in France with those amazing spike the
Twitter was mentioned on the prime-time show in France
it was at a and so in France with Nick
literally like 50,000 sign up for one day
but nobody really activated and and so we're looking at my car numbers right we
have over 50,000 active users in France for like a month
and then we looked like a month and a day later and we had like back to three
thousand active users and friends
into we really got the product localized in French and
you really got a bunch of French people are in a French celebrities on their
tweeting
and says it's great to have and now says that user can give us
otherwise he wouldn't have to they were you seen a spike in France and thought
we were
off to the races in France so come as I think about
this while talking is warm enough growth hacking I'd like
as was a couple things like is not hacking its
but really being a creative crass meant to go make your products better and help
those people
who should be getting your product like understand your product and get the
value
instead of just expect your gonna build such a great product they're gonna do it
so I i category for lessons what is be really creative
because you're never gonna go figure these things out if you try to look to
the data and see what to do
get a user data only to inform your creative decisions not
not to say okay what we did is a beat st. should go this way
build lotsa features people think growth is about like
tweaking buttons tweaking tax taking things but I do LinkedIn example shows
the tweet tweet about that stuff and it worked but then we built the contact
importing flown that made a huge difference
then we built this double viral open that made a huge difference on Twitter
we
rebuild this entire signed a flow rebuilt the way that we recommended and
suggested users
new experience for both entire recommendation system for getting you to
follow more people
and then ship stuff tested learn like if you don't
if you know bill the sinking ship them out you're getting where
cannot possibly testing am you're not learning
from your dad and forget what is and isn't working income get those insights
though the next
sup that's kinda a couple love thoughts on growth hacking
think