Table of Contents
- My mistake: being impatient
- My learnings:
- #1 Do things that do not scale
- #2 Marketing and Product departments should work together
- #3 Growing a company is a long process, full of experimentation
- #4 Growth is different depending on the type of product and business
- #5 Free acquisition channels take time to develop
- Conclusion
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Do not index
This is article #8 in my series How not to build a business. I open up about all the mistakes I made building a software as a service and all the lessons I learnt in the process.
My mistake: being impatient
By the time I started iMenoo, I was well versed in startup lore, following tirelessly the stories of all the companies that were successful, trying to find patterns and ideas for inspiration. When browsing the media, I would see startups that seemed to be suddenly successful, becoming popular out of the blue. The exposure to those overnight successes together with my naive impatience, made me think that our growth would also be sudden; a genius marketing campaign or a killer feature would set off a flywheel that would make us unstoppable.
At iMenoo, we devised various initiatives directed towards growth: we created online forms to help restaurant owners upload their menus, so we could provide them with a digital menu in an almost frictionless manner. We called restaurants with pre-created digital menus. We included tons of features within the dashboard that restaurant owners could use, such as activating and deactivating dishes. We added a “by iMenoo” banner in all of our menus to attract possible clients. The list goes on.
Alas, that overnight success never came for us. Luckily for iMenoo, we did not have outside funding. I say we were lucky because, inspired by the great viral campaigns that we saw from companies such as Netflix, we would have probably spent an absurd amount of money on expensive paid campaigns. I remember doing a Udemy course about Google Ads, so the intention of mistakenly overspending on paid marketing existed. Fortunately for me, I never had the means to carry it out.
My learnings:
#1 Do things that do not scale
There is no way out of this. If you want to be successful, you have to be willing to recruit users manually. It does not matter that you are B2B or B2C. Sometimes, founders refrain from manual acquisition due to two factors: shyness or lazyness. You have to overcome both mental barriers and make an effort to locate your users. Look for them, wherever they may be: go to conferences, browse forums, do as many cold calls as you need, etc. Psychologically, this process is hard because it can be very frustrating to be rejected on a repeated basis. It makes you doubt about the viability of your idea. However, you have to focus on providing value and, if you do, people will eventually go with your idea. For a rule of hand, if 1 out of every 10 people you talk with say yes, you should be happy. Another mental barrier that prevents us from manual acquisition is that our brains are wired to think about scalability. It is common to think that manual processes do not scale, that you cannot possibly reach hundreds of thousands of users this way. That is true, but you will have to onboard the first couple of thousand users manually to get the ball rolling. This is what sets successful people apart from those that give up. Be patient and roll up your sleeves. Rinse and repeat, ad nauseam.
#2 Marketing and Product departments should work together
After some years of experience as a product manager, I have realised that Marketing and Product departments should never be separate silos. Since we were only two people at iMenoo, we did not suffer this problem, but I believe it is a healthy piece of advice. It is only too often that Product and Marketing teams work separately. As a result, Product does not know the channels that are being used to acquire users and Marketing has no idea of what is being built. Having noticed that, experienced company operators have made sure that both departments collaborate, baptising that amalgamated area of competences as “Growth”. The person in charge should try to promote initiatives that help drive growth, in any shape or form.
#3 Growing a company is a long process, full of experimentation
Similar to scientific processes, growth works following a hypothesis and successive experiments. Do not be fooled by articles that portray overnight successes. What news publications do not talk about is the constant grind, sometimes years long, that it takes for the company to arrive at that point at which the press decides it to be newsworthy. Akin to Edison having to find out 1000 ways of not creating a light bulb, you will have to find out 1000 ways not to make your company grow. Every initiative will move you one step further, so you must be relentless. The key is being constant during a long period of time without giving up.
#4 Growth is different depending on the type of product and business
When talking about growth, there is a phenomenon that almost everyone looks for: virality. This is a capricious rarity, which does not happen often. After thinking a lot about it, I have realised that for iMenoo, acquiring virality was very difficult. We were a B2B product that focused on a traditionally non-digital client: restaurants. Restaurant owners are not digitally proficient and, as a result, selling them my product was not simple. Furthermore, each sale was its own battle, not becoming easier with time. In contrast, some products have built-in virality. For instance, when we think about PayPal, the value of this product entails intrinsic growth because sending money involves two parties: a sender and a receptor. Therefore, if someone uses the product, he will potentially refer n users. Another good example are messaging products such as Whatsapp. Similarly to payments, conversations involve multiple people. When Whatsapp released the groups feature, you would miss out if you did not have the app.
#5 Free acquisition channels take time to develop
Provide value to users, do not do paid ads. There is nothing worse than spending time on big paid ad campaigns when you are starting out. It is probably the laziest decision that someone could make when trying to grow. Not only is the ad space over saturated, but it is a sunk cost that, once spent, does not provide any additional value for your company. In my mind, the best way to drive growth is to try to solve any problem that your users have. This can be in the form of content: a blog, infographics, market research papers, etc. In the same way, you may have to create product features that cannot be charged for. These are worthwhile because they act as lead magnets. For example, SEO products offer you free audits, in order to sell you paid tools that resolve all the problems that they just showed you.
An excellent example of a company that provides value for their users is Canva. Canva has an “Explore” initiative with tools that are useful for anyone that orbits the graphic design world. From font pairing to color wheels and palette generators, Canva provides free products for users that could eventually upgrade. They not only create value that persists in time, but they gain users in the process.
Conclusion
As you have seen, growth is more difficult in some lines of business. In my experience, having little money is sometimes a blessing because it forces you to be creative, pushing you to come up with ideas you may never have thought of with a bigger marketing budget.
Written by
"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious" Throughout my life I have lived in Hong Kong, France, England, Spain, United States and El Salvador. This has given me the opportunity to explore and learn from different cultures and societies, meeting wonderful people all around the world. I am a very proactive individual who works well in teams and with strong leadership skills. I love public speaking and hearing about projects and ideas.
