Learn the basics on how to grow your startup organically, using lessons from around the world, from "The Global Growth Expert," Colin Hodge. These slides show the simple SMILE framework that Colin developed during his time as Chief Growth Officer @ M17 Entertainment & later as a traveling Growth Expert. As discussed on live video with MOX Taipei and Taiwan Tech Arena.

1. 1
"SUCCESS SEEMS TO BE
CONNECTED WITH ACTION.
SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE KEEP MOVING.
THEY MAKE MISTAKES, BUT THEY
DON'T QUIT.”
—CONRAD HILTON
Organic Growth,
Global Mindset!

2. 2
Colin Hodge
● Specializes in Organic Growth with a Global Mindset
● Board Member for a Silicon Valley social company with over
$200M in annual revenue
● Served as Chief Growth Officer at M17 Entertainment, which
includes the #1 livestreaming video company in Developed
Asia, 17 Live, overseeing global expansion and helping to
launch the biggest markets, as well as leading the marketing
team at headquarters in Taiwan
● Served as CEO of 17 Live USA and launched the highly-rated
PG video streaming app, LiveAF, in Los Angeles, California
● Grew revenue and users of new or acquired social apps as
Head of Paktor Labs, including 20x growth for one app that is
now a top-grossing social app in Taiwan
● As CEO & Founder, created and grew viral app DOWN to
6M+ users organically, exiting in successful acquisition
● Studied Computer Science (major) and Business
Management (minor) at Cornell University (B.S. 2007)

3. 3
GLOBAL GROWTH
41%

4. 4
METRIC IDEAS
Choose your North Star
METRIC and discuss what
affects it
Brainstorm IDEAS to
improve the metric
FRAMEWORK FOR GROWING YOUR STARTUP
SUCCESS
Define what SUCCESS looks like
& what you need to improve to
reach it!
S I
LAY OUT
Select promising ideas
and LAY OUT how to
try them
EXPERIMENT
L E
M
EXPERIMENT with your
best ideas, iterate, and
repeat!

5. 5
SUCCESS
Define what SUCCESS looks
like
& what you need to improve
to reach it!
Ask yourself, "If we vastly
improve any area, which would
have the biggest effect for us?"
Alternatively, what aspect of
the company is holding your
progress back the most?

6. 6
METRIC
Choose your North Star
METRIC and discuss what
affects it
● Measures how well you are
doing with your current
definition of SUCCESS
● What aspects of your
product/service can affect this
metric?
● What's currently running to
improve this metric?

7. 7
IDEAS
Brainstorm IDEAS to improve
the metric
Tactics:
1. Psychology: get into the customers'
mindset
2. Examples: think how others, like
competitors or similar biz in other
regions, have attacked this problem
3. Think Big: If you want to increase
this metric 10x and money nor time are
an issue, what would you do?
Rules:
1. There are no bad ideas - be supportive
and positive!
2. Use "and" NOT "but"
3. Let people finish expressing themselves
without interruptions
4. Record the session: notes, audio, etc.

8. 8
LAY OUT
Select promising ideas and
LAY OUT how to try them
Choose the the top ideas, balancing
estimated impact and implementation
ability.
Plan how you would try the idea to see
if it improves the metric.
This should be an MVP version at first!

9. 9
EXPERIMENT
EXPERIMENT with your best
ideas, iterate, and repeat!
● Run A/B tests with acceptable level of risk (e.g. if you don't
want to risk revenue too much, set your baseline variant at
80% and the new variant at 20%).
● Ensure results are statistically significant (95% confidence
interval).
● Look for 🎇 sparks 🎇 of potential growth - results where a
key metric moves significantly - and then pour gasoline on
by focusing experiments in that area.
● Iterate on many different variations of tests, if possible, to
ensure that you find the best way to communicate it to your
customers.
● Repeat the LAY OUT & EXPERIMENT steps with promising
ideas until you find a spark to focus on.

10. 10
METRIC IDEAS
Choose your North Star
METRIC and discuss what
affects it
Brainstorm IDEAS to
improve the metric
REMEMBER TO SMILE!
SUCCESS
Define what SUCCESS looks like
& what you need to improve to
reach it!
S I
LAY OUT
Select promising ideas
and LAY OUT how to
try them
EXPERIMENT
L E
M
EXPERIMENT with your
best ideas, iterate, and
repeat!

11. 11
PREP YOUR QUESTIONS!
1. Your first name
2.Your 1 sentence startup pitch / description
3.What growth challenge are you currently
facing?
11

12. 12
Case Study

13. 13
Background
❏ Voice call social matching app based in
Taiwan
❏ Before I started consulting with them:
❏ ~ 2k DAU and $0 Revenue
❏ Grew only through word-of-mouth
and forum posts
❏ Team of ~ 3
13

14. 14
Initial Focus
We decided to focus initially on critical mass in the market (Taiwan), to boost
usefulness and enable greater network effects.
Our first North Star Metric: Monthly Downloads
Through experimenting with App Store Optimizations, formalizing the
process and expanding effort on forum posts, and garnering news coverage,
we were able to increase downloads by 500% in the first 3 months.
14

15. 15
Second Focus
After jumpstarting their Monthly Downloads, we updated the focus.
Our second North Star Metric: Week 1 Retention
We set up measurements for onboarding funnels, match success rates, push
notifications, etc. We were able to increase week 1 retention by 200%+ in
the next 2 months.
15

16. 16
Third Focus
With the active user base growing rapidly, we started to focus on revenue.
Our third North Star Metric: Conversion to paid users
We rolled out multiple pricing experiments for the core feature, testing a
subscription with and without a trial, for example. As we landed on an
optimal payment structure, we expanded the revenue sources to another
feature as well. Within 6 months, we increased monthly revenue from $0
to $100,000s per month.
16

17. 17
Overall Results
Within 18 months, we:
- Increased DAU by ~ 30x
- Grew the userbase ~ 25x
- Grew annually recurring revenue (ARR) to
$MILLIONS
17

18. 18
www.ColinHodge.com