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Hacking Growth in the early days of BuySellAds

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We make buying and selling ads WICKED easy

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5 YEARS $50 MILLION SELF-FUNDED Some context...

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February 2007 Came up with idea September 2007 Finished Version 1 Started at HubSpot Full-time February 2008 Launched BuySellAds January 2009 BSA full-time 2 years, concept to real working product, replacing my full-time salary (with a 6 month hiatus) General Timeline

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Growth hacking... Startups... // BLAH BLAH BLAH

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DO STUFF!

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MAKE STUFF THAT PEOPLE WANT!

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/rant

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BSA - the early days

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One piece of whatever it is you’re doing is going to be GRUNT WORK

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Hi David, I noticed you have a bunch of sponsors in the sidebar. I’d love to help make it easier for you to manage those, and also bring you some new advertisers. We’re still in private beta, but the product is solid, and working really well for logopond.com, csselite.com, and 13styles.com. I’d love to add you to the list. If you’re interested to see what inside, here’s an invitation code: http://buysellads.com/register/?invite=HKSius98S98 If you have questions or if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. Cheers, Todd

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This link is fake: Any value for invite= would allow you to register http://buysellads.com/register/?invite=HKSius98S98 :)

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Didn’t waste time building features that were easily faked. Takeaway #1:

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Takeaway #2 Used exclusivity/privileged terminology (i.e. “private beta”) for over a year, using the fake invite system. (I’m not sure how well works today...)

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Grunt Work - Every email was personal - Every email was unique - Every email was super-targeted

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Another piece of whatever it is you’re doing needs to scale

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One piece needs to be naturally viral

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100% magic

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The final piece: Feedback Loop

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“To cancel your ads, please send an email to support@buysellads.com with the subject of ‘Cancellation Request’” Totally doesn’t scale

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“If you would like to withdraw your funds, please send an email to support@buysellads.com with the subject of ‘Cashout’” Totally doesn’t scale

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Many things you do won’t scale, and that’s OK. Scale is secondary. Things that don’t scale help build your feedback loop.

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Recap #1: ‘Lil bit of grunt work each day keeps the deadpool away #2: Something you’re doing better scale #3: Some piece of your puzzle should be naturally viral #4: Create a feedback loop, and it probably won’t scale (which is OK)

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OH, I ALMOST FORGOT There’s a #5...

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NOBODY CARES! The only real advice you need about doing anything in life

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Build Build Build Ship Ship Ship

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do stuff that makes you happy ... and then do it again

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@toddo BuySellAds.com todd@buysellads.com