I never had money to scale startups so I learned 5 principles for growth hacking startups with $0

1. Spend 10% of your time on high-risk, high-reward activities.

Ask: which action requires least input and will bring me the highest output?

Go through your to-do list.

Don't see any actions that 10x your growth?

Go for a walk and brainstorm them.

10% of your to-do list should be activities that take 10 min of your time and boost your product's growth by 10 times.

But you don't want to be a dreamer with no cash.

So you invest other 90% into things that move your startup forward (building and selling).

Don't spend all your workflow hanging out with guys from Tech Crunch.

You can waste the whole year and achieve nothing.

But if you're patient with these 10%, one day you'll be rewarded.

2. Look for strategic partners

Newsletters, communities, influencers.

Who already has your ideal audience?

Say you're building a Twitter analytics tool.

And there's this guy with 60k followers writing how to grow on Twitter.

This is your strategic partnership opportunity.

Don't be pushy.

Build a relationship.

Ideally you want them (!) to want to work with you.

Start with writing valuable tweets and being in their attention zone.

One day they check what you're working on and may even DM you first.

It happened to me.

As you build your relationship, slowly help them conclude they can do nearly nothing and make a lot of money.

Don't beg them to partner with you.

Make it obvious how much they will benefit from it.

It takes 3 months, but imagine running 5 affiliates with 30k potential users in each.

• Option A: you give them 50% from each paying user they bring.
• Option B: you give them equity.

Both work.

Go for B when you're confident they can bring you 3 levels higher.

3. Do less, get more

Every week you want to ask yourself: How can I do less and achieve more?

Implement this thinking ritual into your weekly routine.

This is growth hacking in its essence.

As soon as you make your first money, outsource activities to virtual assistants and freelancers.

Time is your most precious asset.

Especially when the goal is to go big, fast.

Remember 1 thing when hiring:

The more you save, the more you lose.

Your worst hires are the cheapest.

You'll spend days explaining what to do and how to do it to a rookie.

You don't have time for that.

4. Think 10X

Simple. Want to hit 100 more users by June?

Plan your workflow so that you hit 1000.

Only plan for activities under your control.

You can't make people reply.

You can make yourself learn to write better.

• a) what should you do every day?
• b) how should you structure your day?
• c) what should you stop doing?
• d) how should you rest?

Fake success is glamorous. Real success is boring.

5. Boost referrals

When each new customer brings 2 more customers in the first 30 days, you 3x your revenue every month.

ClickFunnels got it right and scaled from $14M to $100M in 4 years.

Basic way to grow referrals is to pay users for it.

You don't have to be basic.

Many banks do monetary rewards, but it may be the wrong vibe for your startup.

Think which cool extras you can give to users who bring new users.

I made 2 friends download Call of Duty Warzone just to unlock one sniper rifle.

Both of them bought DLCs the same week.

Recap

1. Spend 10% of time on high-risk, high-reward activities

2. Look for strategic partners

3. Do less, get more

4. Aim for 10X goals

5. Boost referrals

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Watch full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_6uU6KgexE