This is where it all begins, 101.
Your job's not done when you've built a functioning product or have written thousands of lines of code. If you want to put your product in front of the customer, you will need marketing resources. If you want to do a good job at that, you must know all about growth essentials for startups. Without marketing, no one will see what you've created.
Startup Growth is different
Startup Growth is different from traditional marketing because:
- A startup is different from a traditional business because its core goal is fast-paced growth.
- Startups are usually bootstrapped. They don't have the budget to compete with big companies on marketing spend and person-hours.
Based on that, I've put together a list of the essentials you need to know to acquire customers for your startup.
Startup Growth Essentials
Full-fledged Guides & Resources
- Growth Guide by YCombinator
- Analytics Academy by Segment
- Marc Andreesen's Blog Archive
- Rational Growth by Andrew Chen
- How to become a Customer Acquisition Expert by Brian Balfour
- Growth 101 by 500 Startups
- Building a Growth Machine by Brian Balfour
- Peter Thiel's Stanford Class Notes by Blake Masters
Concepts & Frameworks to know thoroughly:
- Growth Process
- Product Market Fit
- AHA Moment
- Growth Model & Equation
- Traction Channels
Things to think about when pursuing growth:
1. Measure & Iterate towards Product Market Fit
- The Never-Ending Road to Product/Market Fit
- 12 things about Product/Market Fit
- When has a Consumer Startup hit Product Market Fit?
2. Test Traction Channels
- 5 Steps To Choose Your Customer Acquisition Channel
- Traction Book or its summary by Zapier
- Strategise, Test & Measure - The Bull's Eye Framework
3. Build a Startup Growth Model
- Indispensable Growth Frameworks from My Years at Facebook, Twitter and Wealthfront by Andy Johns
- How to Build a Growth Model for your Startup
- Predictive Growth Model v1.0
4. Understand Growth Metrics for your startup
- Understanding Customer Acquisition Costs
- Diligence at Social Capital: Account for User Growth & Revenue Growth
5. Understand all the Growth Frameworks deeply
- Growth Vs Marketing Vs Product
- Unit of Value™: A Framework for Scaling by Jerry Chen
- Why Onboarding is the Most Important Part of your Growth Strategy by Casey Winters
- Frameworks and Models for Startup Marketing
6. Learn about User Acquisition Channels
- How to become a Customer Acquisition Expert by Brian Balfour
- The Five Types of Virality by Josh Elman
- Retention/Virality Trade-off Visualizer
- How to Model Viral Growth
- Lessons Learned - Viral Marketing
7. Learn how to talk to Users continuously (& User Research)
- How to Run a User Interview
- What is User Research?
8. Build a Growth Experimentation Process
- Using Your Growth Model to Drive Smarter High Tempo Testing by Sean Ellis
- The Advantages and Challenges of High Tempo Testing by Sean Ellis
- The Scientific Method: How to Design & Track Viral Growth Experiments by Brian Balfour
- How to Run Better Growth Experiments
- Building a Growth Machine
9. Define & measure your marketing funnel
- The Only Metric that Matters by Josh Elman
- Choosing Metrics that Matter
- Startup Metrics for Pirates (AARRR)
- The Hierarchy of Engagement and its expanded version
- Why Too Much Acquisition will kill your Startup
- Minimum Viable Analytics
- What is Cohort Analysis?
- How to Use Cohort Analysis to Reduce Churn?
10. Learn to Code
SQL
- SQL Tutorial by Modeanalytics
- SQL Tutorial for Marketers
- SQL for Marketers
- Intro to SQL - Querying and Managing Data
11. Build a Growth Team, Run a Growth Meeting
- Casey Winters on How to Build a Growth Team
- Casey Winters on Starting and Scaling Your Growth Team
- Growth Roles - When to Say "Yes" or "No"
People to Follow
- Brian Balfour
- Casey Winters
- Alex Schultz
- Andrew Chen
- Andy Johns
Blogs to follow
You can suggest more resources if you think they need to be up here by letting me know.