TL;DR: Growth formulas that people in the startup scene push you to use did work in the past for some things, but won’t necessarily work now or for you.
In the startup scene, there is The Growth Formula and startups are expected to follow it. For the kind of product that we’re building (Cuddli, a dating app for geeks), there’s a specific Way That Things Are Done.
What does it look like? Well, you first get your product on Betalist. Of course, actually appearing on Betalist means that you need to pay money. Once you release an early version to your Betalist subscribers, you then go on Product Hunt. This will get you the next boost. Of course, for a social product, on Day 1 you shouldn’t launch with an empty app, right? So you fill the product up before you launch it with fake profiles and chat bots. Then with the money that you raise after gaining initial traction, you buy Facebook ads and Google traffic and do some Growth Hacking (“Embrace spamming, it works” said one purveyor) and just try to move ever faster on the user acquisition treadmill before the churn makes you tip over. You need Metrics and Landing Pages and A/B Testing and Interstitials and Newsletters and Content Marketing. This stuff can become all-consuming and the product underneath all of it can become almost secondary. There Is A Formula.
These are the Rules. You must Follow Them. If you don’t, you’re either crazy or stupid or some combination of the above. That is, of course, unless we’re the ones who are sane, and everyone else is crazy. Most of this stuff that is put on a pedestal as the be-all, end-all set-in-stone Way That Things Are Done didn’t even exist a few years ago. And yet, somehow, most products that launch and follow The Growth Formula don’t achieve long-term success. But they sure spend a lot of money on products and systems to follow The Growth Formula. If you have a problem with growth, there is a never-ending cacophony of strategies you can employ, nearly all of which cost money and few of which yield real, lasting results.
At Cuddli, our approach to growth is completely different. Part of the reason for this is that money spent on marketing comes out of our food budget, and we’re already eating free samples at Costco for lunch. But a more important part of this is that we think that the stuff that would get us growth — and to be clear, you can achieve growth by spending money — isn’t necessarily the stuff that will actually get us desirable growth. This is because at Cuddli, our community matters. We don’t just need to hit an artificial target number of downloads, we need people to love our brand and love our product. That’s how you actually make something “go viral” — you make something that people think is so unique and special that they truly want to share it with their friends.
At Cuddli, we’re not just doing “marketing.” We’re building an amazing community of comic fans, anime otaku, cosplayers, hackers, gamers, and everyone else who considers themselves a geek (or wants to meet one). It’s a place where you can be yourself, where nobody will judge you, and where you don’t have to meet an artificial definition of airbrushed Hollywood beauty. It’s incredibly unique and special, and ours is a community that deserves a unique and special approach to building it. So while we’re not completely rejecting every conventional approach to marketing, we’re doing some things a lot differently. Pictures are more than a thousand words, so here are some examples of what we’re up to:
Obviously, none of the above stuff (with the exception of our Cuddli Ambassador program) scales. And we will need to grow much more for Cuddli to become a sustainable business. However, we have built an astonishingly supportive fan base and have done so without any of the typical low-quality user acquisition techniques that startups use. We have also done so by spending very little money. By partnering with local businesses catering to our demographic (such as The Comic Bug and Meltdown Comics), focusing on print advertising rather than online, and getting out into the community to evangelize the product, we’re building a grassroots following.
Yes, taking this approach is a slow grind. It’s a ton of work. It’s a lot of hours. We have done two events this week and are all exhausted but there are still a million things to do to push the ball forward, so we keep showing up and doing it. Yesterday, I was dressed up in a bunny suit making an ass of myself on twitch.tv. If it works to get users, maybe it could eventually work on Sand Hill Road. But this isn’t our focus.
We created our team, built and launched our product, and have shown early success in a profitable demographic and we have never raised money. We have never compromised our values. We don’t do paid user acquisition, or pay for low quality online traffic. Instead, we go where our users are and have conversations with them. We are authentic and accessible. And by creating something special, we have attracted people who want to be a part of it. People around the world even give us their time for free and help us grow just because they love our product and community so much. Maybe one of them is you. Won’t you join?
About the author: I am the founder of Cuddli, where we create joy by making people’s lives more fun. I’m interested in technology that keeps people and their data safe without slowing business down. Feel free to reach out if I can help you.
