Growth hacks for entrepreneurs

In the first lecture I will show you what you can learn in this lecture. 

In this course I will show the most useful business hacks, tactics and tricks that have been used by well-known companies as well others, not that famous but very innovative. The course is based on my 12 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting companies and owner of small consulting company (the last 7 years). I have been also CEO, Board Member responsible for strategy, improvement and turn-arounds in biggest companies from FMCG, SMG, and B2B in Poland so I know the implications of what I will be talking about inside-out.

As a preparation, we have gone through 200 case studies of companies – some of them well known, others less popular yet very interesting from tactics and strategy point of view.  I tried to get the best most useful things and grouped them into section for easier consumption. In this course you will definitely find inspiration how to crush it with your own business.

I do not like to over-complicate things, so in every lecture I will be quite straightforward. Most lectures will have also a lot of additional resources: links to important lectures, detailed data, examples.  Every lecture is a separate example of how to use a specific tactic / hack in real life. I will show how specific company has used this hack in practice. The idea is to have everything that you need for creative thinking in one place. If you don’t find something that you need let me know - I will try to prepare something and I will added to the course

A few words about me

Here I will show you what to do if a blurry image appears

Here I will show you how to find additional resources attached to the coruse like Excel files, presentations, links etc.

Here I will explain you the basics about Pirate Metrics (AARRR approach) that we will use in the course to show what the metric influences

Here I will show you the first group of hacks the so  called hacks based on the behavioural contracts

In this lecture I will show you how Dropbox is using behavior contract in referral programs as well as customer on-boarding. Dropbox was also offering additional space if you performed actions that increase his reach and help Word of Mouth. It had its referral program – you could get up to 1  for referring your friend. They have also defined tasks that made you more likely to stay with them and that they were showing you how to use the product

Bobby Burger is a chain of slow burgers that has used behavioral contract to grow their chain rapidly. Bobby Burger was giving discounts and rewards for actions: Contest on facebook, Discount for check-ins, Discount for events organized at their site, Free products for first customers in new place

In the third section I will discuss the details of low cost model and when it makes sense. I will also show you execution of this model in airlines and retail.

IKEA has been very successful in implementing low cost model in furniture. I will show you all main elements were they were very successful: “big box” model built outside the city center, design, consistent message, diversified revenue streams, operational excellence, business scale

Raynair is an example of a great execution of the low cost model in airlines. They have used 1 type of aircrafts and increased their capacity, hhey do only point-to-point and use cheap airports. Raynair is also master of operational excellence and has been also very creative on the revenue streams

Biedronka is a very good execution of low cost model in retail. Biedronka  keeps it simple on the operational side and they went deep into product management. I will show you how they managed to become a leader in Poland

Here I will show you how low cost works for Fitness clubs

Here I show how the low cost model works for hotels

Here I will show you the logic behind the profitability of low cost models. In next lecture you will see an example in Excel with real numbers

Here I will show you how to estimate the cost advantage and the revenue capacity for low cost models

Next section will show you how, in innovative way, you can promote your business without spending much on advertising

I show how Spotify was creating non-standard advertising space. In 2011 Spotify has struck I deal with Facebook that enabled them to grow via referrals and Word of Mouth

Here we will show what Piktochart did to promote themselves using their own product and the freemium users

Kekemeke is a SaaS software for managing brand loyalty programs (based on collecting stamps) for restaurants. Kekemeke  has bee using its partners to promote its programs. I will explain you how they achieved this

PowToon is a freemium SaaS for creating animation movie that was very creative in putting their logo in front of the potential customers

Udemy is using every opportunity to cross-sell courses: course langing pages, emails, purchasing process. I will show you how it works in practice

In fifth section you will learn how to leverage 3-rd party platforms to get fast and cheap access to crucial resources (i.e. market)

Airbnb has written a script that was uploading automatically to Craigslist profiles of the available rent I will show you want was the impact of this on the business.

Brand24 is a software for social listening (you can check who and what was talking about you in social media). Brand24 has been leveraging small communities

 You can grow your customer base or increase retention of current ones by removing barriers between you and the customer. I will show you on examples how you can remove those barriers

Uber has been consistently removing barriers on the supply and demand side. I will show you details of how they did it

Fitness clubs and dance schools use nice tricks to convince people to join them. I will show you in this lecture what they were doing this

Dropbox has used the freemium method. They are offering 2 GB of free space on the cloud

Audioteka is software offered as a SaaS that enables you to listen to audiobooks. Their model is similar to Audibles and they are strong in Easter Europe and Latin America

One of the most important things is to create barriers between your customer and potential competitors. I will show you with examples how to do that

I will show you in this lecture how Facebook is protecting it s territory from competitors

Apple has created many barriers to protect its products from any competition

In this section we will talk about how you can change your business by changing the model in which you claim the money from the customer. The choice of revenue streams also defines the selling model

In this lecture on the example of milk based business I will show you how your business model may differ depending what revenue streams you will choose

Here I show when you should use the specific revenue streams. Different revenue streams are perfect for different businesses . By introducing  new revenue streams  you can totally disrupt your industry

Here I show when you should use the specific revenue streams. Different revenue streams are perfect for different businesses . By introducing  new revenue streams  you can totally disrupt your industry

Raynair has been also very creative on the revenue side. Here I will show you what revenue streams they have

Here we show what made Sandwich Video so successful as a producer of ads for startup

Legimi is a e-book reader bit similar to Kindle. They have been very innovative in the way they generate revenue streams

DollarShaveClub is a provider of razor in a subscription model. They have managed t disrupt the whole industry dominated by Gillette by introducing different revenue streams

Canva is software offered as a SaaS that has been very innovative in selling an charging. They use freemium model and sell per piece and not in subscription

Most businesses that are successful start in a small niche where they can in peace work on product-market fit and on their business models. I will show you examples of very successful companies that have applied this hack in practice 

Tesla had a well thought and quite well executed master plan where the end-game is self-sustainable system of electric self-driving cars fueled by clean electric energy from renewable sources

Uber has started as limousine rides provider in San Francisco. The end game is the whole  short run transportation market

Square started as a credit card processing software. Square wanted to take a piece of the payment and cash till market. It started from small independent restaurants and now has moved into being integrated POS system

Yelp has started as a service only concentrated on restaurant in San Francisco. It has grown is business to include other cities and businesses

Twitch started very broad but then tried to pick the most promising niche and concentrate on it  - gaming. Once they mastered the niche they went deep and global with it

Postmates has intentionally neglected some of its customers (restaurants) to deliver the right customer experience to other group

Zappos has decided to join Amazon not to be crushed but also to get access to strategic resources

Here I show How Dropbox has leverage strategic partners to grow their business

Showroom is a marketplace for independent fashion brands. They are present in Poland and Germany and were acquired by Burda

10x the standard can help you build a drastically growing business

Uber has started as limousine rides provider in San Francisco. The end game is the whole  short run transportation market

I will show you here how Udemy created much higher standards for both teachers and students and how this worked for them

Tinder has changed totally the customer experience in dating: mobile first & local; easy intuitive to use product; introduced gamification; used Freemium model. User experience was also drastically improved: All important information visible at first glance. The have also used true identity fed from Facebook and Instagram

We have a separate section on community and its role for business. In many business models (esp. on-line business) customer come for the product but they stay for the community. 

In this lecture I will show you how Yelp created a community supporting their business by introducing: Real identity of reviewer, Elite Squad, Growing city by city, Spam and false reviews management

Reddit is a community based comment and link sharing platform. Reddit has created subgroups (sub-reddits), they take care of super users, they apply clear policies and rules and use gamification elements

Etsy has been successful in nurturing and monetizing on their community. At the beginning fans were using the Etsy to exchange handmade goods. Their actions like: low fees, off-line events, coordinated on-line activities, added services are supporting the growth of community

BlaBlaCar is a French ridesharing operator that managed to scale its business thanks to creating a community.  Their actions like: Real  identity of drivers and the travelers, Feedback both ways, Emphasize the social aspect of the travel, right wording (savings instead of earnings) are supporting the growth of community

Udemy has put a lot of effort into creating a community of teachers to support the marketplace

There are 3 main components that you have to consistently deliver on. Most start with Production or Product development. But actually it makes more sense to start with sales (before the product is developed. I will show you general rules how to do that

Benefit System wanted to deliver employee benefits via a cafeteria system. They discovered that there was huge interest in fitness services and first sold the membership card and only after that started signing the fitness clubs

Content creators are very good at first creating audience and only after reaching the threshold creating a product. I will show you 2 examples how other do it

I will show you how you can make money by selling things that you do not use / you are not able to sale.

Cinema City has used number of techniques to sell the unused space: lower price in the low season, group events, new needs, getting the heavy users to visit more

In many cases, your demand is limited by something that you cannot control directly. In such cases, you may be interested in enabling investments

Enabling investment can be done in different places depending on where the bottleneck is

• Demand-side

• Supply-side

• Distribution side

Let’s have a look at how a retail chain for kids’ products can do enabling investments to support the sales of its products and in Tesla