Growth ideas

A long and growing list of ideas to inspire your team’s thinking on increasing top-of-funnel, monetization, conversion, retention, and velocity

👋 Hey, I’m Lenny and welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career.

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Q: Love your frameworks, but I could use some concrete growth ideas.

Sometimes you just need ideas. I get that! Here are a bunch to get your juices flowing. My advice is to get your team together and go through this list with the mindset of “How might we…?”

Drive more top-of-funnel (short-term)

1. Convince an important (niche) influencer to mention you (e.g. Tinder, Twitter, Clubhouse)

2. Do something controversial to get people talking about you (here’s some advice)

3. Buy lots of billboards in a concentrated area (e.g. Brex, Airtable, Venmo)

4. Release a shareable one-off product (e.g. Copy.ai, Ahrefs, Calm, UberPuppies, and a bunch more advice)

5. Launch on Product Hunt and hustle to get to #1 (guide, guide, guide, guide, guide)

6. Publish a viral piece of content (e.g. Clancy’s Auto Body TikTok video, Dropbox, Superhuman)

7. Get a popular newsletter or podcast to cover you (e.g. Ramp and Packy, Vanta and Acquired, Substack and The Generalist)

8. Expand to an additional location (here’s some advice)

9. Share something remarkable about your product or company

10. Translate your product into other languages (e.g. Facebook, Airbnb)

11. Organize a high-profile launch event (e.g. Salesforce, Airbnb, Spotify)

12. Launch on a new platform (e.g. Android, VR)

13. Orchestrate a PR stunt (e.g. IHOP, Tinder, Salesforce)

14. Create a viral video (e.g. Descript, Spotify, Blendtec, Poo-Pourri, Dollar Shave Club)

15. Get your users and investors with the most followers to all post an announcement on social media at once

16. Run an ad on a large podcast, TV show, or radio show (e.g. Eight Sleep, Coinbase)

17. Run a killer contest or giveaway (e.g. Jet, Harry’s, Coinbase, more examples)

18. Create a limited-time deal (e.g. Amazon Prime Day, Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, more examples)

Drive more top-of-funnel (long-term)