Recently the London Evening Standard newspaper declared that ‘London is heart of of Europe’s tech scene’. Working in the Silicon Roundabout, Europe’s best shot at the Silicon Valley, we feel the heartbeat of this tech scene. However, as Europe’s enthusiasm for creating new companies out of ideas has grown over the years there has been a major difference between Europe and the US, that’s scaling up. Richard Kershaw, the owner of digital.com in 2013 wrote a blog post entitled ‘BREAKING NEWS: Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Great Idea’.
In 2015 it’s reasonable to go one step further and state ‘Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Great App’ that is only if you have no users. Your website’s online community or a number of active registered users using your mobile application is where the gold is. Because, if you are going to turn your great idea into a money making business you will have to monetise all that traffic one way or another. Facebook gained its first million users within ten months. In Europe there’s numerous member states that don’t even have third of that number in population but are churching out start-ups like there’s no tomorrow. Scaling up quickly and building your online community on a budget is termed ‘Growth Hacking; which is a term still not widely used or understood over here.
Growth hacking is defined as a marketing technique that allows for a “lean” launch that focuses on “growth first, budget second,” using techniques such as search engine optimisation, website analytics, content marketing and A/B testing. An early example of “growth hacking” was Hotmail’s inclusion of “PS I Love You” with a link for others to get the free online mail service. Another example was the offer of more storage by Dropbox to users who referred their friends. Now, Facebook, Twitter and even Google, once being start-ups themselves offer relatively cheap advertising for app installations to grow your user base. However, for those users to keep using your mobile app or website it also depends on how great content and user experience is.
