Sharing my 2 keys for expanding your startup to other regions, within the "Organic Growth, Global Mindset" theme. Also covers the SMILE Framework for growing your startup.

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
www.ColinHodge.com

2. "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

3. "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

4. Today, you’ll hear my
2 keys for growing outside of
Taiwan

5. But first, story time!

6. 8 years ago, I didn’t know s#!t

7. ● Studied Computer Science and
Business Management @
Cornell University
Startup Founder
● Worked @ Amazon.com and
Microsoft
● Quit to start making apps
● Joined an accelerator with my
dating app startup, when
random luck and spotting a
spark of growth changed my

8. 2016:
6M Users, $0 on Ads
Sold to Paktor

9. 2017:
Merged with 17Live
VP of Growth & Marketing

10. 2018:
Ran non-TW regions (HK, MY, SG,
ID) & helped launch JP

11. 2019:
Global Chief Growth Officer &
CEO of 17 USA

12. 2 Key Lessons on
Global Expansion

13. 1. Empower local
product adaptation

14. ✅ Local pulse on the market
✅ Priority from product team
How?

15. Failure:
Expanding 17 Live into Indonesia.
🚫 Didn’t overcome local negative market trends
(fewer resources from HQ)
🚫 Low priority from product team

16. Success:
Expanding 17 Live into Japan.
✅ Local resources as part of product team: PMs,
designers, content team
✅ Top focus for HQ for many quarters, leading to
different features & content

17. Expanding 17 Live into HK & USA.
😰 No local product teams but local expert leading
region with limited resources
😰 Low to medium priority from product team
✅ Smart local management & creative marketing
Bonus: Mixed Results

18. 2. New Channels,
Borrowed Lessons

19. ✅ Research best channels to reach audience
✅ Borrow from playbook you or others
successfully ran elsewhere and apply to these
channels
How?

20. Failure:
Expanding Down into Asia with Ads.
🚫 FB ads weren’t best place to find users
🚫 Ignored previous successful organic growth
playbook

21. Success:
Expanding 17 Live into Japan.
✅ Talked to startup execs & team to choose
Twitter as key new channel
✅ Used playbook from TW & HK to grow
streamers, users, revenue

22. That’s great, but...

23. Is there an everyday system for
growing my startup?

24. METRIC IDEAS
FRAMEWORK FOR GROWING YOUR STARTUP
SUCCESS
S I
LAY OUT EXPERIMENT
L E
M

25. 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?

26. SUCCESS
“When launching in a new region for 17 Live,
our first definition of success was having a full
page of active content during core waking
hours.
This meant recruiting enough active content
creators (streamers) and incentivizing them to
stream long & often.”

27. METRIC
Choose your North Star
METRIC and discuss what
affects it
FRAMEWORK FOR GROWING YOUR STARTUP
S I
L E
M

28. 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?

29. METRIC
“We found the best way to measure front
page active content was the metric
‘Daily Active Streamers’.
Newly signed artists, attractive contests that
artists could brag about on SNS, artists’
earnings, and contract structure greatly
influenced this.”

30. IDEAS
Brainstorm IDEAS to
improve the metric
FRAMEWORK FOR GROWING YOUR STARTUP
S I
L E
M

31. IDEAS:
Brainstorm IDEAS to improve the metric
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?

32. Psychology: Personas
- Map out the type(s) of targeted users you want, including
demographics
- Imagine yourself in their daily lives, moods, attitudes, and interests
- Ideally, base these user types on your existing userbase, drawing
from their behavior within your product
- Create names and characters for these “personas” to make it easy
to remember
“Jess”, 24, works as a part-time influencer & model, earning
$1,500/mo, loves basketball, fashion, and singing. She spends 3 h /
day on Instagram, 1h on FB, on her iPhone. Wants to earn more
and become famous so she can brag to her friends.

33. IDEAS
“Using psychology of streamers and borrowing
from our global playbook:
- contests for streamers refer new users
- flashy prizes: billboards & fashion modeling gigs
- appeal to their desire for fame
- they posted lots new channels like Instagram -
1000s of new users, with very low cost”

34. FRAMEWORK FOR GROWING YOUR STARTUP
S I
LAY OUT
Select promising ideas
and LAY OUT how to
try them
L E
M

35. LAY OUT:
Select promising ideas and LAY OUT plans
● 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!

36. LAY OUT
“We planned out dozens of ideas for recruiting
and incentivizing streamers:
- free promotion on our app store screenshots
- front of the app promotion
- social media contests
- referral programs
- daily prizes
- billboards, cinema ads, etc.”

37. FRAMEWORK FOR GROWING YOUR STARTUP
S I
EXPERIMENT
L E
M
EXPERIMENT with your best
ideas, iterate, and repeat!

38. EXPERIMENT:
EXPERIMENT with your best ideas, iterate, and
repeat!
● 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 to ensure that you find one of the best
● Repeat the LAY OUT & EXPERIMENT steps with promising ideas until you find a spark to
focus on.

39. EXPERIMENT
“In MY, we saw a spark of growth when we
featured streamers on the top of the app
(organic/free), so we continued to experiment
with more featured spots.
In US, streamers and new candidates were
super excited by the Hollywood billboards, so
we continued planning similar campaigns.”

40. EXPERIMENT
“In 2014, I noticed a small jump in users one
day. After investigating, I found that we were
ranked for a good keyword on App Store
search. That was the spark that led to
optimizing our App Store listing, resulting in
10x free downloads by experimenting with the
next 3 app updates!”

41. Does this even work?

42. Results: While CGO @ 17Live

43. Where does this work?

44. GLOBAL GROWTH
41%

45. Who uses this system?

46. A Silicon Valley
social company
with over $200M in
annual revenue,
where I’m a Board
Member
● A top-grossing social app in Taiwan that
Startup Founder
Executive
Consultant
Mentor

47. A top-grossing
social app in
Taiwan that saw
20x growth in
revenue & users,
while Head of
Startup Founder
Executive
Consultant
Mentor

48. The #1
livestreaming app
in Developed Asia,
17 Live, while Chief
Growth Officer and
Head of Marketing
Startup Founder
Executive
Consultant
Mentor

49. The successful
launch of TW’s 17
Live into the US
with 17 Live USA /
LiveAF, during my
tenure as CEO
Startup Founder
Executive
Consultant
Mentor

50. 50+ startups from
Taiwan, Thailand,
India, Malaysia, and
Brazil, and more,
through workshops
as a mentor with
accelerators
Startup Founder
Executive
Consultant
Mentor

51. METRIC IDEAS
REMEMBER TO SMILE!
SUCCESS
S I
LAY OUT EXPERIMENT
L E
M

52. "SUCCESS SEEMS TO BE
CONNECTED WITH ACTION.
SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE KEEP MOVING.
THEY MAKE MISTAKES, BUT THEY
DON'T QUIT.”
—CONRAD HILTON
www.ColinHodge.com
Contact info, slides, more info:
Thank you!