Evernote has never been sexy, almost ran out of money, and doesn’t benefit from the network effects that drive many of today’s successful companies.
Via Mounia RKHA
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The idea of having a growth engine is essential to startups. Yet, I often see entrepreneurs thinking they can only rely on a great product - or sometimes not even as much: a great idea. Value for startups only come from growth and some great product will simply not make it because they lack a growth engine.
There are various types of growth engines, including:
- virality (your current users' actions bring your next users)
- stickiness / increased value over time (your users don't do much beyond simple word-of-mouth but as they never leave this ends up in growing usage)
- ad-funded user acquisition (you make enough advertising/premium money from current users to acquire the next users through advertising)
- sales-funded revenue (you make enough sales from current customers to recruit more sales people or fund distribution channels to get the next customers).
What's not a growth engine?
- word-of-mouth
- PR
These are typically not enough to get accelerating growth/traction.
In short, if you don't have a growth engine, you don't have a startup.