We found 6 startups that are growing way faster than everyone else.

We figured out their unconventional growth tactics.

This thread walks you through how to repeat them for yourself.

THREAD: How to improve your startup's conversion rate through A/B testing.

We've consolidated learnings from running 1000s of A/B tests for companies like Segment, Microsoft, and Tovala.

A/B testing = the science of testing changes to see if they improve conversion.

This thread covers:

1. Deciding what to A/B test
2. Prioritizing valuable tests
3. Tracking and recording your results

Testing makes or breaks growth.

We've worked with companies that were failing to convert their traffic.

But after three months of landing page A/B testing, they got traction.

The key: They continuously made their messaging more clear and their offer more compelling

Every day of the year, a test should be running—or you're letting traffic go to waste.

A/B testing isn't about striving for perfection with each variant. It's about iteration.

The A/B testing process

1. Decide on and prioritize high-leverage changes
2. Show some % of your visitors the change
3. Run it until you reach a statistically significant sample size
4. Implement changes that improve conversion
5. Log design/results to inform future tests

THREAD: 10 significant lies you've been told about marketing:

On email marketing, ads, and referrals.

"Send a welcome email immediately after signup"

Don't. People will reflexively discard it as spam.

Instead, delay your welcome email by 15-45 mins.

The delay removes the subscriber's mental connection between signup —> your email, bypassing the reflex to ignore.

More opens.

"Only highlight your best product reviews"

Imperfect reviews can generate MORE sales than 5-star ones.

When a review weighs cons versus pros yet concludes the product was worth purchasing anyway, people see it's authentic & REAL.

So don't bury slightly negative reviews.

"You have to send a newsletter every week"

Most newsletters shouldn't be sent weekly.

High cadences force newsletter writers to rush and publish lower quality information.

Instead, consider only sending when you truly have value to add.

"Your startup needs a great referral program"

The referral programs that grew Airbnb & Dropbox don't work for most companies.

Instead, find your *social loop*:

E.g. An eCom pet store should get dog owners to post photos of their dogs on IG w/ you tagged.

THREAD: How to make ads that get clicks.

(For Facebook and Instagram)

You'll learn:

• How to write ads for your audience
• Frameworks for messaging
• How to design ads

Copy & creative.

Copy = Text that is carefully crafted for a specific outcome.

Creative = Term for multimedia, such as images and videos.

Together, they determine the click-through rate (CTR) of your ads—a 25% difference in CTR can make or break paid acquisition.

Know your audience before creating ads.

The Ladder of Product Awareness (LPA) illustrates how aware and in-need an audience is for your product.

Focus on writing appealing copy to those higher up on the ladder, since it requires less time and energy to convert these people.

Steps to writing ad copy:

1. Identify the product's benefits and your audience's concerns.
2. Write a pitch addressing each.
3. Make the pitch compelling.
4. Make it concise.

Here's an example of an ad that checks all of the boxes.

You can use one of these copywriting frameworks to write purposeful ads:

1. Articulate the problem, solution, and benefit
2. Highlight your differentiation
3. Ask a pressing question
4. Match value props to audiences

One tweet on each 👇

THREAD: How to get users to use your app 👇

Most SaaS apps lose 95% of new users within 90 days. That's insane.

They tend to lose those users during onboarding—when a first impression is made.

Here's how to avoid this.

After reading this thread, you'll know how to welcome users into your product in a way that motivates them into being lifelong customers.

Here's the 80/20 on onboarding:

Start by visualizing your user's journey toward experiencing value from your product—this is the reason users sought you out.

Then:

• Identify the obstacles that come up along the way
• Address those obstacles in your onboarding flow

How to identify obstacles:

Some obstacles will be known to you. They're onboarding steps that:

• Require a lot of work
• Are boring

Record these.

Other obstacles are hidden. To find them, observe users using your product:

• For SaaS apps: Record users' in-app activity using Hotjar
• For physical goods: Run a study. Watch customers use your product

User behavior reveals the NONobvious broken paths taken in onboarding

Here’s how to double conversion on your startup’s homepage.

(From rewriting over 1,000 websites.)

A thread 👇

1/ Your "above the fold" (ATF) section is the part of your site that's immediately visible before scrolling.

When visitors see this, they decide to either keep scrolling or bounce.

In seconds, they attempt to assess:

• What you do.
• Whether you're a fit for them.

2/ If your ATF is confusing or uninteresting, visitors bounce.

This happens because of:

1. Weak messaging: Your product's purpose is unclear, uninteresting, or irrelevant.

2. Weak design: Your design is unprofessional or outdated.

3/ There are 3 things you can change on your ATF.

1. Header
2. Subheader
3. Design

Let's dive into each.

4/ Headers need to:

1. Identify how users get value from your product.

2. Include a hook—to get them to keep reading.

3. Speak directly to your customer personas.

At Udemy, we were 3 first-time entrepreneurs trying to raise seed capital. We made every mistake in the book.

We got 200+ no’s and wasted 12 months fundraising.

We eventually pulled through, just barely. 😅

This thread shares our mistakes as lessons for founders.

**Read On**

We built an impressive product, but we were nobodies.

We thought: we need money to build our vision, so let’s go talk to some investors.

WRONG.

Nobody gave a fuck that we needed money. We needed to prove we deserved their money.

We met some associates and intermediaries who might introduce us to investors.

Few decision-makers wanted to meet with us.

We should’ve stopped there.

If getting meetings is hard, it will take you forever to raise.

Instead, spend your time building product + getting traction.

I was frustrated with investors: treated them as adversaries who asked dumb questions. My derision turned them off.

Learn to understand and appreciate investors. Follow them on Twitter, listen to podcasts from @HarryStebbings or @eriktorenberg.

An investor's job isn't easy.

They kiss a ton of frogs just to find one deal that may make them money 10 years from now.

They only win if you become a billion dollar company.

Don’t kid yourself - if you aren’t the right fit, bootstrap.

Risk-adjusted, bootstrapping can make you happier and more successful.

How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.

Subtle real advantage nobody talks about: if founders can access deeper pools of capital early/quickly, they can get bigger faster without spawning lots of competitors.

If your startup is real, pitching Sand Hill is sometimes like giving away copies of your treasure map

This advice is seldom given because most of the time and for most founders, you are still better off talking about your idea as much as possible to better understand where the dead ends are in the idea maze. Can’t do that in isolation.

Asking investors what is hot is usually less useful than asking what has worked, and what didn’t work and why? That’s how you can skip ahead and avoid death.

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.” —Munger