@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes Presents Andrew Chen on Growth #GrowthDeck Entrepreneur, Advisor & Investor

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@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes Question:

1) Thinking that growth consists
of silver bullet hacks, rather than a systematic approach that requires careful thought. 2) Not having product/market fit, and thus no growth, but thinking that the problem is that the product hasn't been optimized enough. 3) People getting all their knowledge about growth from reading blogs, rather than actually doing the work, running the experiments, and building great products. #GrowthMistakes @AndrewChen

@NipunFSingh Question: What are some
recommendations you have to a college student or person early in their career that wants to get into growth hacking or growth engineering? #GrowthCareer

“Move to the Bay Area
and work for one of the tech companies here that has a formal growth team” #GrowthCareer @AndrewChen

● Barring that, move to
SF and get a job as a PM or PMM. Here's some great advice I'd also refer you to: HunterWalk Best First Job ● Ultimately, I think being in SF is a huge huge deal and if you want to learn from the best people, I'd get out here ASAP. One of the biggest regrets of my early career was waiting until 25 to move to SF rather than doing it right away. #GrowthCareer @AndrewChen

@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? @melvinssalas Question: How do you know when to focus on retention and when to focus on growth? #GrowthFocus

“The only proper answer to
this is: “it depends”  #GrowthFocus @AndrewChen

● Early days: Product is
relatively unoptimized & you tend to go for the easy stuff since it’s deterministic. ● Longer term: The easy stuff has already been done & you have to do the bigger projects with bigger payoffs & deeper user value. ● For a company with a lot of resources, you do all of the above and try to build a portfolio of projects. #GrowthFocus @AndrewChen

@ArvinSahakian Question: Can you name
one of your favorite social media channels and the best practices for leveraging this channel? #SocialMedia

So you have lots of
experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes “For consumers, the only social media channel that matters is Facebook. Maybe add YouTube, Instagram, and a few others into the mix” #SocialMedia @AndrewChen

So you have lots of
experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes How to engage with those Social Media networks: • Clearly you have to build really great content that spreads. • Look at what's already getting traction that people love. • Figure out how to do your own twist on it “I don't think it makes sense to talk about ‘best practices’ or ‘favorite social media’ without really customizing it for your product and situation.” #SocialMedia @AndrewChen

@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes @StevenPesavento Question: What factors lead to success for companies that leverage conference & training programs (paid & free) as a growth lever? #EventMarketing

“ Events/conferences/etc are clearly an
amazing lever for B2B companies” # EventMarketing @AndrewChen

1.Most importantly, the approach needs
to fit your product and target a smaller group of people. 2.The actual content of the events work best when it's really adding value to the ecosystem: so bring together a great group of people and have them discuss super valuable topics that people want to hear about. 3.Think about how to leverage live event/conference content afterwards in an online format. For example, check out how CreativeLIVE does that. # EventMarketing @AndrewChen

@sockcymbal Question: Given the Law
of Shitty Clickthroughs (current channels oversaturated): What do you think might replace existing ways to gain mobile traction? #MobileTraction

“I don't think of ‘mobile
traction’as getting saturated, but instead, think of the specific channels as getting saturated” #MobileTraction @AndrewChen

● Mobile install ads on
Facebook were much cheaper before & are now expensive as gaming companies are bidding it up. ● It's still early for platforms like Pinterest, YouTube, and a lot of mobile advertising, actually. ● Plenty of opportunities out there if you have a strong product that monetizes and can fund paid ad campaigns. #MobileTraction @AndrewChen

@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes @cbenkendorf Question: What are your thoughts on crossing the chasm for a hardware startup? #HardwareStartup

“The good news is there's
basically been no better time in decades to build a hardware company.” #HardwareStartup @AndrewChen

● Step 1 - Hustle:
Do a bunch of hustle work before you even talk about how to scale the growth over time. ○ Building a landing page ○ Doing a kickstarter ○ Building a social media following ○ Partnering with blogs/YouTubers/etc. ○ Luckily, you don't have to reinvent the wheel on this ● Step 2 - Scale: Through retail partnerships, paid customer acquisition, etc. #HardwareStartup @AndrewChen

@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes @SeanEllis Question: How can CEOs & even investors use the insight of “control the inputs" to prevent surprises when it comes to growth rather than waiting for the lagging indicator of actual results? #ControlInputs

This is an important problem
because board discussions tend to happen at the level of aggregate statistics - which we've gotten smarter about as an industry (MAU, churn rates, etc.).But inputs imply that you also have to convey the model for how growth happens, and these inputs will be hard to compare to other industry benchmarks that are readily available. So ultimately, it seems like you still have to talk through the stuff where people can talk about comparison, but also break that down into a small number of inputs so that the team knows what to focus on. Hard problem when investors can have ADHD and just want to talk about the big easy numbers. #ControlInputs @AndrewChen

@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes @ChrisTan2cool4u Scenario: My team is working on a local classified app like Craigslist for an education and coaching niche. One problem we see with an idea like this is user retention. Once a transaction has been made, if students successfully find a teacher or coach, it may be some time before either use our product again. Do you have any insight or advice for a product like this? #Marketplace

There's a few ways to
resolve this: 1) Make enough money on each transaction that it doesn't matter. • For example, Airbnb: people don't travel often, but when they do, Airbnb makes so much money the whole marketplace works. 2) Build in more workflow and try to become more useful in the day to day. • There's a new category of products called "Market Networks" that's worth looking at, which keeps people engaged as they use the product over time. • In your case, for example, actually helping people do the coaching, not just acquiring the customer. #Marketplace @AndrewChen

@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes @nthNidhi Question: Can you share a technique on how an app developer can ensure he is closing the viral loop for his mobile app? #MobileApp

1. Wireframe all the steps
in your viral loop 2. Put it on a spreadsheet 3. Measure the real numbers 4. Fix the holes 5. And repeat #MobileApp @AndrewChen

@_alexgu So you have lots
of experience on growth, what are the most common mistakes startups make on growth? #GrowthMistakes Come join the conversation and find more great AMA’s like Andrew’s on: https://growthhackers.com/amas #GrowthDeck @GrowthHackers Growth Hackers