The ultimate B2B SaaS growth hack
Stop looking for hacks. Let alone a growth hacker.
Ok, I chose this catchy headline on purpose (guilty).
Short and sweet summary of this post:
Stop looking for hacks. Let alone a growth hacker.
Let’s be specific and take the example of a company, named ATC:
ATC is a B2B SaaS company, targeting SMEs, mainly operating in a self-service mode (meaning no sales representatives involved)
ATC has raised a seed round
ATC has launched a product 6 months ago
Team of 5, focused on tech, product, ops
Initial traction is good, user feedback is good
Current user base came from personal extended network and word of mouth, no action was taken to communicate around the product
This is usually the moment when founders think, there’s product / market fit, we need to accelerate user acquisition. Let’s recruit someone… a ‘growth hacker’.
Let me be direct: I think one of the worst things ever is to use ‘growth hacker’ as a job title. I often (correlation close to 100%) see this title followed by a series of bullet points, just proving you don’t know what you’re looking for:
“Ninja”, “Magician”, “Wizard” (!!!, can’t figure out if I’m on Disney+ or on a job board)
Star of paid marketing, managed 8-figure budgets
Amazing at writing content, in French and English
Advanced excel skills, SQL appreciated
Full-stack developer: can scrap things to collect emails (!!! because you need a full-stack developer to do this...)
Great brand strategist
Amazing at social media
Will adjust the product so that it drives growth
Held similar position for at least 2-3 years
Ideally, started career in investment banking or management consulting in top tier firm
Bonus point: good at photoshop, in case you need to do your own assets to run campaigns
Package: 50K€ and ‘bspce’ (!!! this is a topic in itself, but here are my thoughts on Sifted)
In a slightly better version, the job title would be ‘growth manager’ or ‘head of growth’, but the content of the job description would be similar.
Why I think it’s bad
Inefficient
I’ll be brutally honest: if someone ticks the boxes, she will be (i) either a co-founder, (ii) either a VP/chief executive in a successful company, (iii) working in a VC, (iv) retired :) Talent is scarce, and talent does not like the feeling of co-founders not knowing what they’re looking for and having unrealistic expectations.Inaccurate
A ‘hack’ is a smart and creative approach to a problem. Even if, the tech literature has showcased great hacks that contributed to create billion dollar companies (Airbnb reverse engineering of Craiglist API), hacks are usually (i) short-term (Craiglist eventually shut Airbnb out), (ii) useless if they are not supported by a growth system: think Airbnb brand, customer service, their army of lobbyists and public relations people working with governments (fighting locals claiming Airbnb is making rents rise for instance)Repulsive
It’s very personal, but I think it reflects bad on your employer brand. It just shows you or your HR person has copied/pasted an old buzz word without even knowing what it means, and made a litany of wishful requirements. I’m a big advocate of testing before recommending anything, but believe me, no need to test, go straight to taking down all mentions of ‘growth hacking’ from your job board, asap. You’ll thank me later :)
Pick a side
To me, it all boils down to 2 options:
Option 1
Are you looking for someone who will focus on finding a ‘magic hack out of her magic hat’, which can accelerate growth in an opportunistic way?
After hack #1 (let’s say you’re very lucky and found a good hack, which does not happen that often), what’s next? Episode 2: let’s find hack #2, and 3, and 4… in an endless loop?
OR
Option 2
Are you looking for someone who can build your growth system long term? By this, I mean:
Scalable acquisition and revenue channels: number of clients, cost of acquisition, average revenue per user
Brand building (hardly trackable but ultimately fuels ‘organic acquisition’): mindshare
Data and marketing operations infrastructure: user data collection and availability within the organization, automations of what can be done without requiring Tech/Product teams bandwidth
Ok, so how do I do now?
Of course, you’d like to have both options 1 and 2. But let’s visualize ourselves in a world where (i) talent is scarce, (ii) you’re still a small company, you’re great, but experienced candidates don’t queue to work for you (yet) -> does it ring a bell?
You saw me coming: option 2 is the way to go. How do I do then?
Again, I see, 2 options (I love decisions trees, one thing I miss about McKinsey & Co):
Option a
The vanilla spray strategy. Choose someone who:
Is analytical, breathes and lives by these concepts: cost/benefit, 80/20, risks/mitigation, expected outcomes/ETAs etc.
Has a very quick learning curve: comfortable with not knowing anything about a topic, but 3 days later will be the most knowledgeable person you know about it. Typical signs: they read everything they could read about it (fast reader!), interviewed peers/experts about their learnings, have broken down a topic/challenge in smaller ones that are more approachable.
For instance, to the question: how to scale affiliation? -> typical sub-questions would be:
- Why should we use this channel? pros/cons
- What are the pain points now, which hinder us from scaling? What are our needs?
- What are competitors/similar companies in other spaces doing?
- What minimum viable internal product and team do we need to scale affiliation?
- What off the shelf tools can we use? What’s the cost (time, money, features) compared with building our own tool?Enjoys going from concepts to getting shit done.
Very organized/structured, a star project manager
Someone who’s not afraid to go to client meetings, to negotiate with providers, do customer support, read through an API documentation to convince tech team. I’d go further: someone who thinks it’s fun (on top of being important) to be on the ground. That does not mean this person will have to do everything by herself all the time, but it’s important to count on her to be able to jump in if need be.
Limits: this person is not an expert in anything, but will become an expert in analyzing, finding, implementing the best strategy for your company’s specific challenges. Make sure they have support from experts (advisors, entrepreneurs in residence from VC funds, freelancers etc).
Option b
The expert strategy. Choose the topic you’re currently (i) the least comfortable with, (ii) you think is most needed by your company:
Acquisition channels
Branding
Data and marketing ops
For instance, one of the co-founders is great at branding, you know a great freelancer who can kick-start tests on acquisition channels, then the most urgent thing is to find someone who’s strong on data and marketing ops.
Ideally this person will have interests in the 2 other topics, and have great managerial and project management potential, so that she can potentially be managing the 3 topics when company grows.
Limits: this person’s point of view will be very influenced by her expertise, so you don’t get an agnostic point of view as in option a). Make sure she is good at managing project outside her zone of expertise.
So, let’s summarize:
If you don’t know where to start with your growth strategy, I’d recommend to look for a generalist profile ticking the boxes of option a) (these are ‘must-haves’)
If you already know what your strengths are, and a high-level idea what growth strategy you want to have for the next 6 months, it means you have some of the skills internally. I’d recommend option b)
Last but not least, the ultimate B2B SaaS growth hack is to ban ‘growth hacking’ because your growth strategy can not rely on coups that may never happen. It needs to be well-thought of, calculated, iterated, balanced and above all sustainable. Forget the phrases ‘growth hack/hacker/hacking’, forbid it from conversations, except to say ‘this is just a hack, what is our strategy beyond this?’, especially from all HR materials. These are the details that the best candidates, that you are busting your asses off to recruit, notice.
Don’t forget headhunting firms, if you use them, make sure to check the wording they use to describe the role. Candidates don’t care if it’s the headhunter mistake or not, and you’re hiring for someone who is sensitive to marketing, so your brand attractivity will be impacted.
And it’s all you have, especially in early stages.
If you think this was useful, I am thinking of other posts on designing the right scorecard and corresponding job descriptions, on how to attract talent, how to assess candidates…
Should I keep going? What topics should I cover first? Let me know in the comments :)