Frog and Toad are Cofounders

Growth Hacking

Frog ran up the path to Toad’s house. He knocked on the front door. There was no answer.

“Toad, Toad,” shouted Frog, “get off your computer. We’re seeing growth!”

“Blah,” said a voice from inside the house.

“Toad, Toad,” cried Frog, “We had 500 downloads yesterday! Our twitter account has over 1000 followers. Come celebrate!”

“I am not here,” said the voice.

Frog walked into the house. It was dark. All the shutters were closed.

“Toad, where are you?” called Frog.

“Go away,” said the voice from a corner of the room. Toad was working on his computer. He had put on noise-cancelling headphones.

Frog pulled Toad out of Emacs. He pulled up GA and pointed at the screen.

Toad blinked at the trend line. “Hmph!” said Toad. “I cannot see anything.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Frog. “What you see is a clear uptick in our conversion rate. And it means that we can begin a whole new funding round together Toad. Think of it,” said Frog. “We will skip through Sand Hill Road, and run through the Valley and swim in venture capital. In the evenings, we will sit right here at this computer and count the orders.”

“You can count them, Frog,” said Toad. “I will be too busy. I am going back to work.”

Toad went back into the house. He sat down at his machine and put his headphones over his ears again.

“But, Toad,” cried Frog, “you will miss all the fun!”

“Listen, Frog,” said Toad. “How high is our conversion rate?”

“It’s 1% across desktop and mobile,” said Frog.

“Well then,” said Toad, “a little more feature development will not hurt me. Come back again and get me up when we’ve hit 1.5%. Go back to work, Frog.”

“But, Toad,” said Frog, “I will never raise more money without my CTO.”

Toad did not answer. He was coding.

Frog looked at his computer. GA was still up.

Frog pulled out users running IE. He pulled out mobile web visits, both Chrome and Safari. He switched to the mobile app view. He pulled out Android visits as well. The Frog ran back to Toad’s computer. “Toad, Toad, get up. We’ve just hit 1.5%.”

“What?” said Toad. “Can we have hit 1.5% so soon?”

“Yes,” said Frog. “Look at GA.”

Toad looked at GA. The conversion rate was showing 1.5%. “Why, it is 1.5%!” said Toad as he pushed away from his machine.

Then he and Frog called their board to see how the market was looking for funding.