Brainly’s Post

Brainly was my first growth project. I joined Brainly in September 2013 as the Country Manager for Poland, after being rejected as a Product Manager due to a lack of experience ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ At the time, Poland was already an established market for Brainly with over 5 million monthly users and 100+ moderators. My job was to keep things moving. A few months later came a turning point. Brainly faced the challenge of entering the US market – a critical move for securing a $9 million Series A round. We needed to prove our capability to expand beyond existing markets and succeed in the US. With ambitious goals set, Brainly aimed for an 8% weekly growth rate. It was during this pivotal time that the CEO took a leap of faith and offered me a new role, and I became the General Manager for the USA. It was a bumpy road, which I’ll leave for another post. All in all, we managed to expand in the US and get the money. A short while after, I also took on the role of Head of Growth. === I will forever be grateful for what Brainly has given me: ↗   I had the opportunity to build a hyper-fast growing startup (we scaled from 40M unique users monthly up to over 60M in less than a year). ↗   I took an active role in winning two rounds (Series A in 2014 and Series B in 2016 – a total of $38M). ↗   I got to know every aspect of growth, SEO, PLG, and growth loops (even before I knew that’s what you call it). ↗   Over 20 clients we later worked with at Skalski Growth came from referrals from someone I met at Brainly (thanks, guys 🙏). ↗   After leaving Brainly in 2016, we collaborated several more times (India, Emerging Markets, Brainly Tutor), most recently in 2023. ↗   To this day, I am often introduced as the person who expanded Brainly in the US. === Truth be told, there would probably be no Skalski Growth without my time at Brainly. That’s where I learned my passion was to help early-stage startups build their growth engines, which led me to start my own company. Since then, my team and I successfully built or contributed to growth engines for over 100 companies, including Dataedo, Pomelody, Omnipack 📦, Slowhop.com, debesto.com - European windows for U.S. construction companies, SonarHome, and many more. And the best part is – after all those years I'm still actively participating in growth projects. I never wanted to be "just" a CEO. I'm a Growth Guy at heart and I'm quite certain this will never change. PS At Brainly I also got to work with 100+ amazing individuals including Michał Borkowski, Tomasz Kraus, Meric Balak, Julien Zakoian, Eric Oldfield, Patrycja Szostakowska, Marcin Langowski, Kuba Piwnik, Mateusz Burdzel, Aleksandra Favero, Dubraska Jara, Sebastian Czoch, Mateusz Zimowski, Piotr Pyznarski, Roman Barzyczak, Marta Pyznarska, Przemyslaw Mateusz Oborski, Sofía Muñoz, Marcin Gnat, Łukasz Wiewiórowski, Szczepan Przybyło, Michał Łabędź, Przemysław Toś, Jason Green, Michal Gwiazdowski, Andrij Prunko, Iga Kowalska, Aleksandra Bialikiewicz

"Like most startups (even if it’s unpopular to say), we didn’t die because we ran out of money, but because we weren’t able to find a way to product-market-fit." We can all agree, it's easier than ever to start a company. But celebrating success takes 1001 things going right and typically some luck. You can have a great idea. Fantastic product. Talented team. Funding. Yet, that's rarely enough. For every SaaS company that gets it right, there are 10x that fail. I've worked with tech companies for 2 decades. This is one of the most candid, transparent breakdowns I've ever seen about what didn't work (kudos to Martí Gou of Gretel). It's long. It's well worth your time. Especially if you're in a situation where everything isn't exactly roses. Here are just a few takeaways.  — Product Market Fit: We talk a lot about Product Market Fit. But the devil is in the details. How you define and measure it? How much pivoting is happening? New features, products, changing the ICP, changing positioning? At the end of the day, are you solving a problem that customers care about and are willing to change their current behavior for? — Funding: Are you raising the right $ at the right time for the company? Can you ride the momentum? Are you scaling at the right time or too early/late? "Valuation is not equal to success or even the probability of success. Raising more money, even if it makes the headlines, shouldn’t be the main goal." — Positioning: Positioning for investors is not the same as positioning for customers. And investor feedback is much different than Market feedback. Be experts in what your customers want and let that guide your decisions. Also be careful about obsessing about your own vision. It's not about what you want, it's about what your customers will pay for. — Product: Your product will always take more time than anticipated. 1) Be careful to manage expectations. 2) Focus less about what your product is missing and more on how well it's solving your customers’ biggest problems. — Brand matters: Differentiation just through product is harder than ever. Enter brand. The investment in the product alone isn't enough. The same experience needs to be visible throughout the brand. Marketing, sales, cx, website, social... — Market: Are you a vitamin (nice to have) or a pain killer (essential)? Don't confuse interest (signups, conversations, excitement) with willingness to pay. — PLG: PLG is great for scalability, not to find PMF. (Love this line) — ICP: Be intentional in defining who you want to sell to and why. Then relentlessly focus and stay in that lane. Saying no is hard, but it's critical. The list is long and valid. What else caught your eye?

"we do not have product-market fit (yet)?" 7y in silicon valley — i've yet to meet a founder with the humility to say that their world-changing startup doesn't have pmf. every founder & their cousin operates as if they have pmf, even if they get: — one meeting w/ a fortune 100 exec regarding a dinner or golf event in town 🍽️⛳ — their buddies or investor portfolio cos using their product at zero mrr 💸 — their dau/mau growth come from users based in madagascar 📊🦎 i've even seen founders take "fake it till you make it" to a borderline investor-fraud level. the wannabe therapist in me is always interested in the core fear behind their lies. 🤔💭 oops. i digress. . . . anywho... how do you know if your startup has pmf? the answers to the following qs should be pretty revealing: 1. are we experiencing a sudden/significant increase in demand for our product w/o increasing marketing spend? 📈 2. is our user base growing steadily & compounding over time? 👥 3. are we seeing strong word-of-mouth referrals & organic growth? 🗣️ 4. if we surveyed our users, would over 40% say they'd be very disappointed if they could no longer use our product? 📊 5. are customers actively seeking out our product & willing to pay for it? 💰 6. do we have a small but passionate group of users who absolutely love our product? ❤️ 7. is our customer retention rate high & improving over time? 🔄 8. is our cac going down? 💡 9. is our revenue growing consistently month over month? 📈 bonus: have we reached a point where scaling our operations is the primary challenge, rather than finding customers? 📊 . . . at Tough Trucks For Kids: 📈 qoq metrics: net income up 85.98%, revenue up 49.74%, new users up 58.42%, conversion rate up 106.47% 🌍🚚 we have inbound requests from 🇫🇮🇿🇦🇪🇬 + 37 other countries wanting our trucks + willingness to pay $$$ for international shipping 📧 we actually have customers who work at f100 cos — it's fun to see an email from t-mobile domain hit our inbox asking about a tough truck lol 💅 megan trainor, travis kelce, olympic gold medalists, et al have engaged w/ our content or bought our trucks. . . 🇺🇸 for 4th of july campaign, i had the not-so-novel idea to offer $100 off + free shipping to all veterans, military personnel, & first responders.🫡 my co-founder was like "howTF you gonna verify them?" 🤔 "i don't know. ill ask them to email me their ids." 📱 that's what they did. i am sitting with like 79 photo ids of police officers, firefighters, nurses, ex-marine corps 🆔👮♂️👩🚒🩺 it's fun to see our email thread go "where's my tank?". i just hope that the fbi doesn't raid me lol. 🚔😂 . . . see... we don't focus on pmf. 🥱 but we are sherlock holmes level obsessed with customer delight.🕵️ for everyone in the us of a, if you got a kiddo who's into construction vehicles, go check out tough trucks for kids 🏗️ — instead of staying glued to the ipad 🙅, go get 'em outdoors & digging dirt 😊 keep your engines revving! 🚜

This is how you kill your startup growth in the long run: Many startups mess up their GTM because they obsess over products before nailing market viability.  The graveyard is full of amazing products no one wanted. Because founders skipped answering the most important question - 💰 **Will customers pull out their wallets and pay for this?** 🛑 Don't do this -Spend years stealth-building a product without testing customer demand -Assume "if I build it, users will come" mentality -Design product in isolation based on founders' opinions -Worry about go-to-market as an afterthought -Obsess over growth hacks without product-market fit ✔ Do This Instead -Identify target customers' biggest unsolved problems first -Validate demand with LOIs before building anything -Land 100 customers who desperately want your solution, even if it’s just a basic MVP prototype. -Focus maniacally on deeply understanding your users -Build product iteratively with tight customer feedback loops -Ensure the product relieves users' top pains -Adjust offering & pricing based on customer usage data -Only polish and scale the product after repeated customer validation 🎯 Outcome -Launch goes viral with waiting lists to join -Traction and pay-as-you-grow revenue comes rapidly -Struggle to keep up with consumer demand post-launch Test demand rigorously before execution. This aligns engineering efforts tightly with market appetite. Once you have market pull, sure - go execute on engineering and design. But too many startups go backward. They build in a cave for ages then try pushing a polished product onto customers. Flawless execution but sadly misguided strategy. Don't make the same mistake! 🎯 GTM isn't about what you create - it's about deeply understanding your customer.** Now here is a meme that I really like below :)

The coolest marketing launches aren’t always new features. In fact, this year, in addition to all the awesome new features we’ve launched (ahem DevEx surveys, Data Cloud, investment breakdowns, DORA improvements, and more), we’ve also put a ton of effort into two badass projects that have little to do with the product and everything to do with creating the best customer experience out there. I’m talking about: ✨ Self-service. We’ve always offered a free self-service trial but earlier this summer, Ari-Pekka and our growth team rolled out the option for engineering organizations to buy Swarmia with a credit card, without ever talking to a human. This is perfect for those smaller teams who’ve tested the product, love it, and prefer getting onboarded on their own. ✨ Swarmia Startup Program. After just ~6 weeks of working at Swarmia, Santeri launched a sweet offer for startups affiliated with one of our partner VCs: 50% off paid plans for the first year. I’ll drop a link to the landing page in the comments so you can check it out. (Also, we’re accepting leads about potential new partners at startups (at) swarmia (dot) com so hit us up.) Moral of the story? Work for a company who goes out of their way to be great for customers to work with 🥰

🚀 Just finished reading a captivating article on mastering Go-to-Market strategy! The key takeaway? Speed is the new competitive weapon. Here are some insights to ponder: - Don't wait to build your network or digitalize it, start now! - A killer Go-to-Market strategy triumphs over a superior product without market access. - Understanding the market phase is crucial for an effective strategy. - Remember, Startups are meant to grow fast, everything else follows from growth. - Building a suitable machine before launching your product is vital for an unfair competitive advantage. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on accelerating growth through Go-to-Market strategies? https://lnkd.in/g_y9xrwB

If you’ve seen the movie Field of Dreams, you’ve heard the phrase “If you build it, they will come.” If you’ve launched a product, you know this is never the case. A distribution strategy is almost as important as product/market fit for the success of a product. Andrew Chen, General Partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and ex-Growth at Uber, has these tips: - “Startups end up needing both: 1) an insight about customers that gives them product/market fit 2) an insight about distribution that creates traction” - “I often joke that by the time there’s a case study about a new marketing tactic or channel, the advantage has already been arbitrage away, and probably no longer works.” - “Early channels are often very low volume. But you want that. The reason is that they are highly relevant and they are small enough that larger companies do not focus on them.” - “Often times this is a period where you have one channel that kind of works, and you’re testing a few other channels simultaneously. Your efforts here should be experimental and iterative. You can often look at direct competitors as well as adjacent products and see what they’re doing, to inspire you on the right channel.” - “The natural cadence of products will indicate to you the channels that are most likely to work. If you have episodic usage, you’ll probably need to do SEO/SEM, affiliate, or referral — something that helps you target high intent users. If you’re product is social or helps with workplace collaboration, then you might lean into referral programs and viral growth. Products in commerce naturally lead you towards paid ads, contact creators, etc.” #productmarketfit #growthmarketing #productmanagement #leadership #startuptips https://lnkd.in/eYRvDd7g

Is your mental model of startup growth a little dated? 🚀 If so, I highly recommend reading this great piece by Kyle Poyar where he challenges some of the traditional approaches for scaling startups. What resonated deeply with me, based on my personal experience as a startup advisor: -Build a Minimum Remarkable Product ✨ "There needs to be something remarkable about the initial product, which sparks interest, word-of-mouth and ongoing usage even if the product isn’t at full feature-parity yet." Having great technology alone was never enough, and now that’s even more true. A well-designed product, supported by a clear vision and strong brand, is foundational for startups. This also means investing early in strong designers and product marketers. For example, when I met the team at Quilt, an early-stage startup in the heat pump space, I was struck by their exceptional product design and inspiring brand—key drivers behind their growth and big differentiator in a fast-growing industry. For Key it's about building closely with their design partners. -Hire Ops to Test and Grow Potential Channels 🔄 I love the velocity and rigor of the team at Rows.com, who ran over 10 experiments across 4 channels in just 8 weeks! At the beginning of a campaign, I always encourage marketing teams to generate a lot of ideas and mock them up quickly (thank you Canva!). This gets you past perfectionism and helps you learn quickly. -Strong Retention and Word-of-Mouth = PMF 🔗 This point really struck a chord. It’s easy to get caught up chasing growth metrics, but the true indicator of product-market fit is when customers love your product so much that they keep coming back and recommend it to others. For enterprise companies, consider connecting your marketing and customer success teams early on and developing a strong lifecycle marketing strategy for retention -and upselling! -Stay Lean Through Automation and AI The quote from the Simo Lemhandez CEO of folk says it best: “We try to be slightly stretched so that we either automate stuff or solve it in a product-first way rather than thinking that hiring a new person will always solve the problem. There’s a strong constraint we impose on ourselves not to hire too fast and to not consider hiring as the only solution to solving a problem.” If you want to better understand how AI agents can help your business, follow Sara Zare—she’s passionate about the topic and has built a lot of knowledge! What does this mean for sales and marketing leaders today? As we head into 2025 strategic planning, consider these trends and encourage your team to brainstorm how they can be adapted to fit your company’s stage and industry.💡 PS: I will be interviewing Paul Lambert, CEO at Quilt on October 29, join us to hear more about how they build remarkable products! RSVP: https://lnkd.in/gEnh3564 Charlie Schrier Emily Atkinson Alexei Dunaway Mark Grozen-Smith Kushagra Shrivastava Christopher Fong

Let’s hack growth together! For the most of my professional career, I've primarily been a glorified SWE in various capacities, deriving satisfaction from tackling complex challenges and persistently refining solutions until they excel. Lately, however, my focus has shifted toward an entirely different puzzle: Acquiring paying customers but this time it unfortunately doesn’t involve coding 😀. It's a humorous departure from my norm but I embrace it. Though I’ve had the privilege of to have built a successful global service-based business, yet venturing into the realm of cloud-based B2B SaaS startups reveals a starkly different landscape. As I navigate this new territory, I plan to share insights and reflections, documenting my experiences in the hopes that they may someday benefit others—whether my 3 year old in the in future, or anyone embarking on a similar journey. One of the most daunting challenges in startup development—beyond assembling a top-tier team, creating a valuable product or service, and securing funding—is securing and growing paying customers. It's crucial to understand that even with a product that meets a genuine need, failure is a stark possibility if you lack an effective means of reaching your audience. Moreover, success isn't guaranteed by simply having a needed product and a distribution strategy. The real test is in clearly articulating your value proposition in a manner that resonates with potential customers, addressing their problems directly. In my quest to master marketing and B2B sales, I've read countless books. While they offer an abundance of insights, the relevance of their advice can vary greatly. Often, these resources draw from the successes of their authors' ventures, which may not directly apply to one's unique circumstances. This can lead to confusion, leaving you feeling as though you're back at square one, uncertain of the next steps. However, a strategy that has proven effective for several colleagues involves a willingness to experiment. By exploring various approaches that seem promising and focusing on those that yield results, they've been able to refine their strategies. This process of trial, error, and reinvestment continues until a scalable model emerges, demonstrating that perseverance, coupled with flexibility, can pave the way to success. As a founder I want to do sales myself first, figure out what really works then delegate, just like I did with building the first version of the product. As a result I’ve been trying a ton of thing and going forward I’d be sharing my learnings in realtime. Here are some of the things I’d be trying out myself. 🚀 Email Marketing  🚀 LinkedIn outreach 🚀 Content Marketing 🚀 Paid Ads  🚀 Thought leadership  🚀 Strategic Partnerships 🚀 Product vitality (PLG) 🚀 SEO Optimization 🚀 Taking demo calls  🚀 Networking Events If you’re a B2b product founder, let me know your experience. Let’s hack together! #startupgrowth #b2bsales

Start and End with Your Customer Prior to joining Range Ventures as an investor, I worked as an GTM operator across various startups, fractional COO/CXO, and as an advisor to scaling businesses- all giving me exposure to businesses at the point of inception through massive scale. While in these roles and especially during my time leading Customer Success at Gusto, I saw thousands of businesses across various sectors that all had one thing in common- they were building companies that solve real problems for their customers. As I have transitioned from an operating role to an investing role, I have been shocked at how many founders I have met that have skipped the most critical step in company building- creating a product that solves a real problem for customers they know deeply. Many companies seem to have forgotten the age-old advice to put the customer first. They're building companies around "solutions" for non-existent problems. We have all seen this before and even companies like Google, despite their notoriety, has failed miserably at launching new businesses. For example, Google+ failed to resonate with users. It was designed as a competitor to Facebook, but it didn't sufficiently differentiate itself or offer new value to users. The platform's interface was complicated and it didn't address any unique user needs that weren't already met by existing social networks. Despite Google's attempts to integrate it with its other popular services, users didn't see a compelling reason to switch from other platforms to Google+ and was shut down in 2019. Regardless of where you are in your startup journey, maintaining a customer-centric approach should be at the heart of all your operations. There's no business without customers. In one of my favorite books, "The Mom Test," Rob Fitzpatrick outlines three key principles for obtaining valuable customer feedback that forces you to anchor your market research in a way that doesnt bias or influence the conversation/feedback you receive, ultimately helping you build a product customers need. 🗣 Discuss their life, not your idea. This allows you to understand their needs and perspective instead of receiving vague or polite feedback about your idea. ⁉ Ask for specifics in the past, not generics or opinions about the future. This provides you with concrete facts about their behavior, not speculative or hypothetical responses. 🎧 Speak less, listen more. This enables you to collect maximum information from your customers rather than imposing your thoughts on them. Stay tuned for part 2, how to maintain a customer-centric approach as you scale.