gentleman named Alexis out of Toronto joins us. To say that I’m old enough to be their father might be stretching it. But depending on where their mothers were (((47×12) / 2) – 9) months ago….
Everyone trickles into the main theater. The first speaker of the morning is the founder Sean Ellis. His lecture is “Busting the Myth of Growth Hacking.” Terms like “leverage rate conversions” are bandied about. Sean explains that calling his baby a cross between marketing and coding is not accurate but has some truth. Coding is not a required skill. But it’s assumed that your company already has a programmer. Product market fit (P.M.F.) is emphasized as crucial to maximizing the return on your marketing investment. Everything must be tested over and over with a clear hypothesis. Using this cycle of development and verification, companies mine every scrap of value out of each detail. The North Star metric is mentioned in conjunction with this. It measures the value that you deliver to your customers.
As I listen, some elements remind me of Jim Collin’s book Built to Last. Before that fad, it was The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People (which seemed to me like soft-pedaled Mormonism phrased as a business paradigm). However, neither of those books required so much programming and math. Everyone around me seems much more tech savvy. People nod knowingly when statistical and coding examples are given. Scientific method got an engineer pregnant and they had a baby called Growth Hacking.
The next speech is by Jamie Siminoff of Ring. Dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, he talks about how his company turned the doorbell into a security camera. He calls them “doorbots” and how their mission is Disruption (I guess like what email did to faxes). Jamie started Ring because their office was in the back of his house. He got tired of walking all the way up to the front door every time someone rang the doorbell. The way he carries himself conveys an entrepreneur’s “hey, hey, hey that is my money and sweat you’re risking” mentality. Mr. Siminoff is frank, saying that NPS (Net Promoter Scores – measure of customer’s willingness to recommend your product) are bullshit. A lot of success just comes down to luck. You can see that this is someone who’s tried and failed and tried again. Those with big egos and the bliss of ignorant youth freely lecture on how much they could do. But it is with the luxury of age that we crash and burn and learn. If Icarus had he survived his first fuck-up, imagine how many doorbots he could’ve invented?
Jamie is followed with “Growth for Good” by Gina Gotthilf of Duolingo. Looking sharp in a business casual suit, she has a youthful yet controlled enthusiasm. Her speech is much better than most. Turns out that “freemium” software is now available for learning languages online. The distribution cost of freeware is minimal. So, giving it away turns your taste into a gateway drug for additional paid services. Ok, this sounds great, but so did shipping 50 lb bags of pet food by FedEx overnight. Wow, what a great online price on dog food, wait, what do you mean shipping isn’t included?? :O
Ms. Gotthilf gives a little bit of backstory about Duolingo. It was founded by Luis Von Ahn. He’s the guy who’s annoyed hundreds of millions of people with the invention of CAPTCHA. If you’ve ever been online and asked to look at an image and type letters to confirm you’re not a robot, that’s CAPTCHA.