I'm excited to share a new growth framework that @danhockenmaier and I have been developing (with help from the amazing @reforge crew)

I've been finding myself coming back to this framework often when talking to founders about growth.

Thread

1/ As a startup, it's essential that you, and your team, have a clear understanding of how your business is likely to grow. We call this building a Growth Model. With this, you'll know which growth investments to make right away, which to avoid, and which to double-down on.
2/ Our advice is to think about your business like a high-performance race car. The same four components that help a car drive faster also help your business grow:
1. ⚙️ The (Growth) Engine: Self-sustaining growth loops that drive most of your growth (e.g. virality, perf marketing, content, sales)

2. 💥 Turbo boosts: One-off events that accelerate growth temporarily but don’t last (e.g. PR, events, Super Bowl ads)
3. 💧 Lubricants: Optimizations that make the growth engine run more efficiently (e.g. improved conversion, a stronger brand, higher customer retention).

4. ⛽ Fuel: The input that your engine requires to run (e.g. capital, content, users).
3/ All four of these components help your business grow, but understanding your Growth Engine is the most important part because it’s the only component with the potential to be self-sustaining. e.g. engines naturally create an output that can then be re-invested in more growth.
4/ ⚙️ GROWTH ENGINE(S)

Companies grow primarily through four possible Growth Engines:

• Performance marketing: FB, AdWords, TV, etc.
• Virality: Word-of-mouth, referrals, inviting friends, etc.
• Content: SEO, shareable videos, or newsletters, etc.
• Sales: Salespeople
5/ Using just these four engines, we can explain the growth of every breakout success. Here are a few examples:

• Uber/Lyft: Virality + Performance marketing
• Snapchat: Virality
• Zoom: Virality + Sales
• Slack: Virality + Sales
• Salesforce: Sales
6/ Check out our previous @firstround review piece where we outline a 3 step process to determine which engine is likely going to drive your business's growth and how to operationalize it.
https://t.co/djWwLzhqOk
7/ 💥 TURBO BOOSTS
Next, we have Turbo Boosts. Similar to a turbocharger in a car, these are tactics that can accelerate growth for a period of time but don’t deliver ongoing acceleration. They include things like:

• PR
• Events
• Brand marketing campaigns
8/ These tactics aren’t "engines," because in most cases they aren’t sustainable and repeatable at scale. For example, any startup that has received the “TechCrunch bump” knows that it can give you a nice boost in traffic, but it’s often not clear what to do next.
9/ However, Turbo Boosts can still be very valuable tools for kickstarting and accelerating your growth rate, particularly at important inflection points for your company, like lighting the initial spark, or launching a new product or market.
10/ 💧 LUBRICANTS
Third, we have lubricants. Lubricants don’t drive growth directly, but instead optimize the efficiency of your engine. Also, without enough lubrication, your engine will stop. There are 3 broad categories of lubricants:

• Conversion
• Activation
• Retention
11/ Of these three categories, retention is the most important, as Brian lays out in this post.
https://t.co/MlrmElVjF0
12/ ⛽ FUEL
Finally, we have Fuel. Without it, even the most optimized engine won’t run. The type of fuel required is specific to the type of growth engine you’re running:

• Paid marketing and sales engines primarily need capital, which can be invested in ads or salespeople
13/
• Content engines unsurprisingly need more content, which can be used to attract users.
• Viral engines require only more users, who in turn refer additional users.
14/ For more, including the six most common growth pitfalls, and how to put this into practice, check out the full post.

Huge shout-out to @bbalfour and @onecaseman for their help with this post, and to my brother-from-another-mother @danhockenmaier

https://t.co/ZGW1qWT5zC

More from Lenny Rachitsky

Earlier today, I gave a talk at the @SubstackInc's writer conference about building a writing habit. Below are the ten concrete strategies I shared that have helped me publish a post every week for 1.5 years 👇

0/ First of all, just sharing advice about this topic gives me serious impostor syndrome because writing is still pretty new to me, and I have much to learn. But these are things that have helped me, and I hope they'll help you.

1/ Strategy 1: Commit publicly

This was maybe 50% of my initial motivation. Having told people I was going to write weekly made me feel bad when even thinking about skipping a week. It gave me just enough nudge to keep


1b/ You don't need to make this super public. Just sending an email to a few friends regularly with your concrete goals about writing (and anything else) works wonders.


1c/ If you *really* want to be motivated, ask people for money. Nothing motivates you more than people paying you for regular

More from Tech

You May Also Like

@franciscodeasis https://t.co/OuQaBRFPu7
Unfortunately the "This work includes the identification of viral sequences in bat samples, and has resulted in the isolation of three bat SARS-related coronaviruses that are now used as reagents to test therapeutics and vaccines." were BEFORE the


chimeric infectious clone grants were there.https://t.co/DAArwFkz6v is in 2017, Rs4231.
https://t.co/UgXygDjYbW is in 2016, RsSHC014 and RsWIV16.
https://t.co/krO69CsJ94 is in 2013, RsWIV1. notice that this is before the beginning of the project

starting in 2016. Also remember that they told about only 3 isolates/live viruses. RsSHC014 is a live infectious clone that is just as alive as those other "Isolates".

P.D. somehow is able to use funds that he have yet recieved yet, and send results and sequences from late 2019 back in time into 2015,2013 and 2016!

https://t.co/4wC7k1Lh54 Ref 3: Why ALL your pangolin samples were PCR negative? to avoid deep sequencing and accidentally reveal Paguma Larvata and Oryctolagus Cuniculus?
Department List of UCAS-China PROFESSORs for ANSO, CSC and UCAS (fully or partial) Scholarship Acceptance
1) UCAS School of physical sciences Professor
https://t.co/9X8OheIvRw
2) UCAS School of mathematical sciences Professor

3) UCAS School of nuclear sciences and technology
https://t.co/nQH8JnewcJ
4) UCAS School of astronomy and space sciences
https://t.co/7Ikc6CuKHZ
5) UCAS School of engineering

6) Geotechnical Engineering Teaching and Research Office
https://t.co/jBCJW7UKlQ
7) Multi-scale Mechanics Teaching and Research Section
https://t.co/eqfQnX1LEQ
😎 Microgravity Science Teaching and Research

9) High temperature gas dynamics teaching and research section
https://t.co/tVIdKgTPl3
10) Department of Biomechanics and Medical Engineering
https://t.co/ubW4xhZY2R
11) Ocean Engineering Teaching and Research

12) Department of Dynamics and Advanced Manufacturing
https://t.co/42BKXEugGv
13) Refrigeration and Cryogenic Engineering Teaching and Research Office
https://t.co/pZdUXFTvw3
14) Power Machinery and Engineering Teaching and Research