The Super Dope Growth Framework (SDGF)
I got my MBA from the School of Hard Knocks–otherwise known as co-founding, running a company for 8 years, and then selling that same company twice. So, making 2x2 tables and calling them “frameworks” isn’t my first instinct. However, my beloved colleagues with real MBA’s have convinced me to give it a try. They also recommend using acronyms whenever possible. Thus, I present to ye the Super Dope Growth Framework, hereafter to be referenced by SDGF.
This simple framework, SDGF, examines where a growth tactic fits within the context of the product as well as who the tactic targets. Therefore, the x-axis places tactics that live within the core action to the right and tactics that are external or an add-ons to the left. The y-axis puts growth activities that are targeted toward the primary user on the top and those that are directed towards the primary user’s network on the bottom.
Not all quadrants are created equal and it is important to focus growth strategies at the most valuable opportunities first. I’ll also note that this is intended to describe the world of early-to-mid stage consumer tech startups.
Quadrant 1: Create a Killer Value Proposition
The very best way to create growth is to build a product that your users love and where the value proposition is attractive and obvious. Duh! Figuring this out should be the first step in any startup. Find your customer’s big pain and fix that problem. This means obsessing on the primary user and the core action (upper right quadrant). Extract value from that activity in a way that’s a win-win for both your business and the customer and much glory will follow.
Often, startups are too quick to leap into subsequent steps (below) as a path to growth. This is especially true when early growth stagnates. Resist that temptation. It’s lazy and problematic. Watch your organic growth, track your NPS, talk to your users. Do they love the product? Do they rave to their friends about it? Would they freak out if the product went away? Is your retention, repeat usage and engagement fantastic? Make sure the answers to these questions are yes, yes, and yes. If not, fix it. Only move on to the other quadrants when there’s no doubt here. As the ancient Greeks used to say, “nail it, then scale it.”
Quadrant 2: Social and Viral Loops that Increase Value to the Core Activity
How great would it be if you had social and viral loops incorporated into your product’s core action that made that core action even better? Whoa, hold on. Don’t answer. That’s a rhetorical question because, of course, it would be FREAKIN’ AMAZING!
In a perfect world, your product includes social and viral loops within or intimately supporting your primary use case. The more that your users invite friends and contacts, the more your users participate, the more value they get out of the product. Facebook shines as a brilliant example of this. Your own feed is better when you have a bunch of friends to follow. The more friends you have, the more content there is to interact with. Facebook added the news feed after the product was well established. That’s hard and fortuitous. It’s very rare that this type of engagement can be added on to an existing product in a way that truly honors the product and is not simply a patched-on growth hack (next section). So, try to figure out early how your product is going to solve a real problem and solve it even better by integrating others. This is what the cool kids call “network effects.”
Quadrant 3: Growth Hacks
There are probably many different definitions for the term “growth hacks,” but in this framework, growth hacks are tactics that are not part of the core use case that are intended to attract new users and usage. They are add-ons to the product. They are likely to be external. And they often (but not always) use the primary user’s network as the attack vector. Growth hacks tend to be temporary, low value for the user, and their efficacy varies greatly depending on the product. I consider search engine optimization (SEO) to be the mother of all growth hacks. In SEO you are doing things beyond your core use case and of low value to your current user base so that new users (in a mega-network) will find your site or product.
SEO done right is pretty useful and can be a great channel for growth. However, it is too frequent that growth hacks are not in the user’s best interest (nor their network’s). It’s annoying. For example, functionality for easily importing (then spamming) users’ address books, tricking users to post about the company on social media (often through clever devices such as personality quizzes), as well as opening up additional features to users only if they refer or share. The latest fad seems to be waiting lists. To create the impression of high demand and exclusivity, apps make you wait to get in, refer others to get in, or hustle an invite from someone you already know. Sometimes closed betas and waitlists are done as an honest gentle deployment strategy. Sometimes.
As you can tell I have mixed feelings about growth hacks. You think you have a silver bullet, you spend a lot of time on the project at the expense of the core use case, and in the end you’re left with fleeting if not totally disappointing results (and possibly a feeling of self disgust because you exploited your users). Additionally, new growth hacking strategies spread like wildfire only to quickly burn themselves out once every startup is employing it. That said, there are sustainable, successful growth teams out there. (Uber, Facebook and, humbly, TaskRabbit come to mind.) They do not brag about their latest win. They are publicly quiet and internally methodical. They follow the data and they care about their users. They’re a little bit marketing and a little bit engineering. They may sometimes have shaky relationships within the company because they suck in resources, but they earn respect because they deliver. They do grow and engage users.
Quadrant 4: Buy Growth
Now we move into the riskiest quadrant of the framework. Here we are focused on finding new users in an external (or add-on) fashion. This is usually marketing and PR. Antonio García Marquez writes in Chaos Monkeys that “marketing is like sex, only losers pay for it.” I believe that to be an overstatement, but the exaggeration does help to make a point. Startups should be wary of spending money on marketing too early or in an undisciplined manner. I’ll add my own marketing quote to the fray: Cash is the lifeblood of startups and marketing budgets are vampires.
With that PSA out of the way, I will say that creating a growth engine which includes marketing can be a powerful way to scale your business. If you are going to go down this path (and almost all successful companies will at some point), you’ll want to get really good at understanding your economics. You’ll need to be super honest and critical of how you attribute the success of your campaigns. CAC and LTV calculations will need to be studied and poked at from multiple angles. If you are up for the math and the frequent beatings, the tactics are pretty simple. Referral programs, promotions and discounts, and straight up advertising are the most common ways to go. PR also fits here but she’s a capricious lover. It’s great when you have it (and it’s good), but it can be a rough ride when you’re relying on PR for consistent monthly growth.
YMMV (Your Milage May Vary)
The meta point here is that for earlier stage startups there’s a right time and sequence for each quadrant of growth strategies. Occasionally, the order may vary. For example, you might need to growth hack early to get a critical mass in a marketplace. Or, a company might use marketing and PR to promote a new viral feature (e.g. Facebook Live) thus conflating a couple of my quadrants. In most cases for early stage startups, the recommended sequence is the order I list here. I know this post won’t stop you from charting your own course which is why I am starting a pre-seed marketing/PR firm. We currently have a waitlist for access to our services, but if you recommend or share this article you can skip to the front of the line.
Thanks to Luis and Rob for feedback on this article.
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