successful startup case study

Teaching Entrepreneurs & Business Students

Successful Startups Case Studies: Lessons from High-Profile Companies and Founders

Introduction.

Successful startups are the lifeblood of the modern economy. They are the companies that create jobs, drive innovation, and bring new products and services to the market. But what makes a startup successful? What lessons can be learned from the most successful startups and their founders? This article will explore the case studies of some of the most successful startups and the lessons that can be learned from them. We will examine the strategies, tactics, and mindsets that have enabled these companies to succeed. By reviewing these case studies, we can gain insight into creating a successful startup and how to apply these lessons to our businesses.

Examining the early days of successful startups: what can we learn from their experiences, how to create a winning business model: insights from successful startups, the role of leadership in building a successful startup: what can we learn from high-profile founders, the power of networking: how connections helped launch successful startups, the impact of technology on startups: what can we learn from high-profile companies.

A combination of hard work, risk-taking, and a bit of luck often characterizes the early days of successful startups. Examining the experiences of these startups can provide valuable insights into the strategies and tactics that can lead to success. This paper will explore the early days of some of the most successful startups, examining the strategies and tactics they employed to achieve success.

One of the essential strategies successful startups employ is the ability to identify and capitalize on opportunities. Many of the most successful startups have placed and capitalized on emerging trends and technologies, allowing them to gain a competitive advantage. For example, Amazon was able to capitalize on the rise of e-commerce and the Internet. At the same time, Uber was able to capitalize on the bank of mobile technology and the sharing economy.

Another important strategy employed by successful startups is the ability to pivot quickly. Many startups have swiftly adapted to changing market conditions and customer needs, allowing them to stay ahead of the competition. For example, Airbnb promptly pivoted from a website for renting out spare rooms to a platform for booking entire homes and apartments.

Finally, successful startups often have a strong focus on customer experience. Many of the most successful startups have been able to create products and services that are tailored to the needs of their customers. For example, Apple has developed intuitive and accessible products, while Netflix has created a streaming service tailored to its customers’ needs.

In conclusion, examining the early days of successful startups can provide valuable insights into the strategies and tactics that can lead to success. Successful startups can often identify and capitalize on opportunities, pivot quickly, and focus on customer experience. By understanding and applying these strategies, entrepreneurs can increase their chances of success.

Creating a successful business model is essential for any startup to succeed. A business model is a plan for how a company will generate revenue and profit. It outlines the products or services the company will offer, how it will market and distribute them, and how it will finance its operations. A well-crafted business model can help a startup attract investors, secure customers, and achieve long-term success.

This article will explore how successful startups have created winning business models. It will discuss the critical elements of a successful business model, the importance of customer feedback, and the role of technology in creating a competitive advantage.

The Key Elements of a Successful Business Model

Creating a successful business model requires clearly understanding the company’s goals and objectives. A successful business model should include a detailed description of the company’s products or services, target market, pricing strategy, and distribution channels. It should also have a plan for how the company finances its operations and generates revenue.

In addition, a successful business model should include a competitive analysis. This analysis should identify the company’s competitors and their strengths and weaknesses. It should also identify potential opportunities for the company to differentiate itself from its competitors.

The Importance of Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is essential for creating a successful business model. Startups should use customer feedback to identify customer needs and preferences and to develop products and services that meet those needs. Customer feedback can also help startups identify potential opportunities for growth and expansion.

The Role of Technology

Technology can be a powerful tool for creating a competitive advantage. Startups should use technology to develop innovative products and services that are difficult for competitors to replicate. Technology can also be used to streamline operations and reduce costs.

Creating a successful business model is essential for any startup to succeed. A well-crafted business model should include a detailed description of the company’s products or services, target market, pricing strategy, and distribution channels. It should also have a competitive analysis and a plan for how the company will finance its operations and generate revenue. Customer feedback is essential for creating a successful business model, and technology can be used to develop innovative products and services and streamline processes. By following these insights, startups can create winning business models that will help them achieve long-term success.

Leadership is a critical factor in the success of any startup. High-profile founders have demonstrated the importance of strong leadership in building a successful startup. By examining the leadership styles of these founders, we can gain valuable insights into how to create a successful startup.

The most successful startups are often led by founders with a clear vision and a solid commitment to their mission. These founders can inspire their teams to work together to achieve their goals. They are also able to make difficult decisions and take risks when necessary. High-profile founders such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos have all demonstrated these qualities.

High-profile founders also understand the importance of creating a culture of innovation and collaboration. They recognize that their teams need to be able to work together to solve problems and come up with creative solutions. They also understand the importance of creating an environment where employees feel valued and respected.

Finally, high-profile founders understand the importance of staying focused on the company’s long-term goals. The incisions in the company’s best interest are unpopular in the short term. They also understand the importance of staying flexible and adapting to changing market conditions.

By examining the leadership styles of high-profile founders, we can gain valuable insights into how to create a successful startup. These founders have demonstrated the importance of having a clear vision, creating a culture of innovation and collaboration, and staying focused on the company’s long-term goals. By following their example, entrepreneurs can increase their chances of success.

Networking is a powerful tool for entrepreneurs looking to launch successful startups. By leveraging their connections, entrepreneurs can access resources, advice, and support that can help them get their businesses off the ground. This article will explore how networking has helped launch successful startups and the strategies entrepreneurs can use to maximize the power of their connections.

First, it is essential to understand the value of networking. By connecting with other entrepreneurs, investors, and industry professionals, entrepreneurs can access valuable resources and advice. This can include access to capital, mentorship, and industry knowledge. Additionally, networking can help entrepreneurs build relationships with potential customers, partners, and suppliers. These relationships can be invaluable in assisting entrepreneurs in launching their businesses.

Second, entrepreneurs should focus on building solid relationships with their network. This means getting to know the people in their network and understanding their needs and interests. It also means being willing to help others in their network when they need it. By building solid relationships, entrepreneurs can create a network of people ready to help them launch their businesses.

Third, entrepreneurs should take advantage of networking events. These events provide an excellent opportunity to meet new people and build relationships. Additionally, they can be a great source of information and advice. By attending networking events, entrepreneurs can learn from the experiences of other entrepreneurs and gain valuable insights into the startup process.

Finally, entrepreneurs should be willing to give back to their network. This can include offering advice, mentorship, or even financial support. By giving back to their network, entrepreneurs can create a strong network of people willing to help them launch their businesses.

In conclusion, networking is a powerful tool for entrepreneurs looking to launch successful startups. By leveraging their connections, entrepreneurs can access resources, advice, and support that can help them get their businesses off the ground. By building solid relationships, attending networking events, and giving back to their network, entrepreneurs can maximize the power of their connections and increase their chances of success.

Startups are increasingly leveraging technology to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. High-profile companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon have all used technology to revolutionize their respective industries. By examining the impact of technology on these companies, we can gain valuable insights into how startups can use technology to their advantage.

First, technology can create a more efficient and streamlined customer experience. Uber, for example, has used technology to create a seamless ride-hailing experience. By leveraging mobile technology, Uber has provided customers with an easy-to-use app to quickly and conveniently book a ride. Similarly, Airbnb has used technology to create an efficient platform for booking short-term rentals. By leveraging technology, both companies have created a more efficient customer experience.

Second, technology can be used to create a more personalized customer experience. Amazon, for example, has used technology to create a customized shopping experience for its customers. By leveraging data and analytics, Amazon has created a personalized shopping experience tailored to customers’ needs and preferences. This has allowed Amazon to create a more engaging and enjoyable shopping experience for its customers.

Finally, technology can be used to create a more cost-effective business model. Uber, for example, has used technology to create a more cost-effective business model by eliminating the need for drivers and vehicles. By leveraging technology, Uber has created a more cost-effective business model that has allowed it to become one of the most successful companies in the world.

In conclusion, technology can be a powerful tool for startups seeking a competitive edge. By examining the impact of technology on high-profile companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon, we can gain valuable insights into how startups can use technology to their advantage. By leveraging technology, startups can create a more efficient and personalized customer experience and a more cost-effective business model.

In conclusion, successful startup case studies provide valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs. By studying high-profile companies’ and founders’ successes and failures, entrepreneurs can gain insight into the strategies and tactics used to achieve success. By understanding the critical elements of successful startups, entrepreneurs can develop their systems and plan to increase their chances of success. Ultimately, successful startup case studies provide valuable lessons for entrepreneurs to learn from and apply to their businesses.

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5 Growth Strategy Case Studies and Key Takeaways

June 9, 2019

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“We must have spent tens of millions in signup and referral bonuses the first year,” says David Sacks, original COO at Paypal. But that initial investment worked.

“Dropbox went from 100,000 to 4,000,000 users in 15 months”

“Your customers probably won’t tell you when they hit a snag,” says Alex Turnbull, founder and CEO of Groove.

Cred Case Study: The Successful Story of a Fintech Startup

| 4 minutes read

An Indian Fintech Startup, Cred, entered the unicorn club on April 6 th, 2021. CRED had shown a strong footprint and became one of the most successful startups in recent times. Bengaluru, India Based Startup, made its name big, but it has its true story starting from Zero to billions. Although the road was not easy, they made the impossible possible and showed the strength of the Indian startup .

The company was established in 2018 and had a valuation of approximately $2.2 billion. Many other startups like Flipkart and OYO took more than ten years to reach a similar valuation level.

What is their Business model?

The startup is based on the “Hole and hook model”. It is a common problem that many credit card users don’t pay their credit card bill on time. So the business model of Cred encourages holders to complete payments on time by providing some exclusive rewards including 100% cashback.

The company found the ‘hole’ (flaw) in the credit card payment system and provided a ‘hook’ in rewards. They offer attractive rewards to their customers, which makes their product a brag-worthy proposition.

About the founder

Kunal Shah was also the co-founder of ‘freecharge’. Coming from a Gujarati family and a non-tech background, he is currently the founder of two big tech companies. He was motivated to start CRED after research and understanding the loophole in the overall credit card payment system. He is also the current CEO of the company Cred.

Also Read: Startup Case Study: How Byju’s is Disruption the Indian Edu-tech Sector?

What is their marketing strategy.

The marketing campaign of CRED is universal. They have implemented an aggressive marketing strategy to improve the value of their product. Surabhi Capoor is the brand and product marketing head at CRED.

The company’s marketing department came up with unique advertising ideas that made the brand larger than life. For example, the latest ad featured Kapil Dev (Former Cricketer) acting like a Ranveer Singh that pulled viewers because no one had seen him in this avatar before. Apart from this, during IPL (Indian Premier League), Cred starts to increase its awareness before the beginning of the IPL like the way Vodafone used to do by introducing Zoozoo (character).

Further, the company was marketed through various other celebrities on social media platforms . Meme marketing also worked for the company, and thus the awareness of the brand is on the rise.

What services do they provide?

The company started with just credit card payment services, but now it is expanding its reach in different sectors. The CRED app has more than 60 lakh users, and the number is increasing.

Listing the services provided in the app.

It allows you to manage all your credit card payments in one place.
The app notifies your regular payment details and due dates.
It offers rewards and cashback for new users.
The company provides CRED points on the completion of payment, and these points can be used to avail various vouchers and cashback.
The payment method is hassle-free.
They have started providing services for rent, loans, and insurance.

How Credible are they?

The company assures total privacy to the customers (claimed by the company). They deal with the valuable financial data of the customers, and they offer complete privacy on it. With such attractive rewards and enhanced security, it is trusted by its users. In just 2 years, they have successfully reached a million consumer base, and their number is ever increasing.

What is their Mission?

The mission of the company is understood by everyone. They want to improve and enhance the credit card payment system. Despite not making any profit in 2019 and 2020, they have eventually gained the trust of their users. They used the “reward and punishment tendency” effectively to attract and establish the customers base.

CRED & their Vision

CRED’s business model is futuristic. They want to develop themselves in diversified sectors like insurance, rent, shopping, loans, and realty payments. The company also focuses on a futuristic revenue model.

It aims to generate revenue through merchandising, commission and consulting. They can also use this vast customer base for sales pitching and generate good fortune from it.

How are they Funded?

CRED is one of those legendary startups that got funding right before its execution. This was made possible by the brilliant execution of the founder Kunal Shah. The company has made a loss of 63.90 crores and 378.89 crores in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Despite these losses, the company is trusted by its investors.

The company has around 28 investors and 7 lead investors. The lead investors are listed below:

Dragoneer Investment Group.
Tiger Global Management.
Sofina.
DST Global.
Coatue.
Falcon Edge Capital.
Insight Partners.

The company has raised funding of around $471.3 million from investors. The company’s other investors are Ribbit Capital, Gemini investments, Sequoia Capital India, and Rainmatter Capital.

Who are the Brand Partners?

The company offers different rewards and vouchers for customers. It has successfully bagged many reputed brands as its partner. Some of the esteemed brand partners are:

The story behind their Struggle and Success

Kunal Shah faced a serious dilemma before starting the company. He was offered to become an investing partner in Sequoia Capital of India. But the entrepreneur chose to start a company rather than become an investor.

The company has also registered itself as an IPL sponsor and has started building some revenue. Despite making losses in the first two years, it has continued to provide valuable services to its users. The company has a futuristic revenue model, and thus it is trusted by its investors.

Born in the family of entrepreneurs and have inherited the same. Started building applications in order to pay for my tuition. Later founded a tech company, marketing agency , and media outlets.

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124 Best Growth Hacking Case Studies & Lessons on Amazing Startups (2024)

Who doesn’t love a good case study on successful startup companies, right? Well, I’m excited you’ve landed here because I’ve worked hard curating these awesome growth studies and have spent hours reading plus writing notes for you to digest. I’ve highlighted some of the key takeaways you can get inspired by from these top startups for growth hacking ideas that you can explore, implement, and test for your startup business.

There’s a good chance you’ve heard of pretty much all these amazing companies I’ve talked about in this guide, and you’ve probably heard of the various press articles on how they’ve disrupted their respective industries/categories and the funding rounds they’ve received time and time again (for most of them anyway).

Yet, how well are you across some of the key strategies and tactics that helped contribute to the success of these startups that we all know and love today?

That’s why I’m absolutely pumped that you’re here because there’s so much you’re going to learn from the studies I’ve read and talked about in this guide.

The great thing about these growth hacking case studies is that they all include some epic growth hack golden nuggets you can learn from and are helpful to read regardless of your marketing/startup experience.

Also, just by reading and going through these studies helps with understanding the journey and process of what it took for these companies to experience exponential growth.

Additionally, reading these studies helps with motivation and being reminded that all these startups have tried and tested many strategies over the years. It helps us understand why certain channels and initiatives worked for them at a particular growth stage.

So, what do I highlight in each of the digests for the various case studies?

For each of the digests, I’ve done high-level notes and some key takeaways to give you a taste of what’s included in the study resource. It’s by no means an exhaustive digest that includes all the key points from the study, but I picked and shared some of the standout highlights.

For example, I mention through the digests these particular takeaways.

Statistics/data performance
Key channels they may have used
Strategies they may have tested and scaled
Top-performing campaigns they ran (which catapulted market penetration)
And some high-level strategy observations

To view more detail about tactics/strategies and to see other key points in detail related to the startup’s growth success, you’re going to have to go through all the resources (which is totally worth doing).

Note: Quite a few of the case studies I’ve listed as resources do date back a few years. I wrote these digests based on the information I found in these studies (but I also added some context and extra notes from my end too).

Many of these startups and brands, as of right now as I write this guide, have gone on to experience even more amazing growth, so many of the numbers in terms of funding, growth/marketing analytics (etc.) are probably outdated.

However, I chose these studies because they possess awesome detail, including great insights, data/statistics, illustrations, examples, and lessons on strategies/tactics. Plus, they are just great-quality reads and are lengthy in detail.

So, whilst you may come across guides/articles that were from a few years back, they are definitely worth reading due to the amount of information and lessons that are still very much applicable today for startups.

Related resource: Oh, and just before you dive in below, if you’re in DTC/eCommerce, I actually wrote a massive guide just like this on DTC and eCommerce case studies by specific channels (of which there are over 135+ studies to check out). Channels include specific case studies on TikTok, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Referral Marketing, and so much more. Good chance you’re going to want to devour this guide as well (haha).

Okay team, time to get into these studies (woo!).

(By the way, if I’ve missed any other case studies you recommend, or if I’ve left anything out that you believe I should include in the digests, just let me know). :)

1. Canva - The design platform grew into a billion-dollar company in less than a decade

Awesome case study by Gallantway on Canva, where they’ve done a timeline view of Canva’s growth over time (with screenshots) and other key channel areas that helped catapult Canva’s success.
When they were just starting out, Canva focused on highlighting social proof, the number of templates they had available, and promoting their growth performance (e.g. amount of new users).
An early-stage strategy they focused on was reaching out to influencers and bloggers in the SME/creator space, and utilising evangelists, such as Guy Kawasaki (chief evangelist).
All of their templates and designs have a landing page, which helps with targeted SEO queries, which helped spur their organic growth fairly quickly.
The company sends empowering welcome emails after signing up, letting people know they can easily create great designs too.
They did (and still very much do) a lot paid Facebook ads to targeted landing pages and templates, highlighting trust and credibility (customer quotes, reviews, etc.). Their Facebook and Instagram Ads game is very good even to this day.
They were also brilliant with Google Ads (and have done some clever campaigns over the years).
Their goal to add value to users is sincere, made evident through their free plans offered to non-profit organisations.

2. Buzzsumo - One of my favourite marketing applications grew to $5mil ARR in 3 years

Buzzsumo is one of the top content marketing and social media competitive intelligence platforms on the market, which experienced amazing early growth.
In the first year, they achieved $2.5mil ARR and soon, over the following couple of years, achieved $5mil ARR over 3 years .
Big growth levers for them were content marketing (which you’d naturally expect from a content/social media tool) and just a great product experience. They had a good retention rate.
They had a freemium tier in the early stages, which helped with initial acquisition.
They also worked and partnered with complementary marketing technology companies who had relevant audiences, such as Moz, Canva and Buffer.

3. Orrto (formerly Autopilot) - How this email automation platform grew from 0 - 3.5k customers in just 2 years

Orrto (formerly Autopilot) came into the market with an offering that wanted to avoid complexity, focus on self-serve, and be affordable. They had a good product offering compared to existing solutions.
One of the top strategies they incorporated through the lifecycle that helped with new customer acquisition and activation was content marketing/SEO.
Naturally, as an email marketing platform, they had a strong automation email nurture sequence that would send triggered emails based in certain customer behaviour - all personalised depending on the customer stage. Really awesome demographic which shows off a high-level email map.
They sent personalised ‘activation’ messages based on user usage during the trial period.
They worked on product-led growth initiatives, such as testing pricing sensitivity. Used “land and expand”.
Product integrations helped tap into new user segments.

4. Groupon - Yep, Groupon was one of the fastest-growing companies back in 2011 (and still going strong)

We all know of Groupon ’s major growth rise in the early 2010’s (everyone still remembers getting so many emails in the early days, right? haha).
Whilst they’re well-established over the years and have acquired millions of users, it’s their early-growth journey that is certainly interesting to learn more from.
They were masters ate FOMO-based tactics (and still very much good at it to this day), such as urgency comms via emails and on their site with limited-time deals.
A big focus in the early stages was their referral program, where they were generating customers at an average LTV cost of $30 just by offering a $10 coupon code. So for nearly every referral, they were generating $20. I’m not 100% sure how accurate this is (as I got this straight out of the article I’ve linked to above), but the point here is that referrals are a goldmine for generating profitable, high-intent users.
Groupon was also really effective with their viral campaigns, which help catapulted brand and email signups. Just by acquiring an email, they were able to do FOMO-based tactics at scale.

5. Moz - What to learn from this SEO marketing technology company that’s grown to $70mil+ ARR

If you’re in the SEO or marketing world, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Moz and Rand Fishkin - they had brilliant marketing flywheels .
When it comes to SEO, it played a major role in their early years, where they even ranked #1 for the term “seo”, which has an approximate search volume of 135,000 visits per month.
Of course, it takes time to make this particular initiative work, and it wasn’t until marketing flywheels started to function like a well-oiled machine that the organic acquisition of traffic and users for Moz skyrocketed.
They also understood user behaviour really well and where profitable customers came from (and how they behaved before they converted). They knew certain referral sources lead to better conversion value of customers.

6. ClickUp - How this project management platform grew to $20mil+ ARR (main lessons from the founder)

This isn’t particularly a long case study compared to many that I’ve talked about in this guide, but I love it as it comes directly from the founder of ClickUp itself.
Zeb Evans, founder of ClickUp, shares 3 key lessons that helped the platform get cut-through in an already highly-competitive market - getting ‘natural’ P/M fit, measure organic content (and collect feedback), and iterate + ship really fast.
With achieving ‘natural’ P/M fit, and how they managed to grow faster in the early stages compared to so many competitors was due to focusing on product-led growth initiatives - i.e. focus on developing a great product with natural ‘virality’ mechanisms. Whilst they raised a lot of money, they double-downed on this approach rather than an ‘artificial’ approach (e.g. getting PR and hoping for users that way).
ClickUp have done incredibly well with their organic content engine, which attributes to over $12mil+ in free clicks monthly - yes, monthly. That’s an insane advantage over other competitors in the space.
They do a great job with ‘social listening’ and get user feedback via active communities, such as Twitter, Quora, and Facebook Groups.

7. ProfitWell - 20:1 LTV:CAC Ratio & Doubling ARR each year (amazing)

One of the most impressive startups that many SaaS businesses know (and use) is ProfitWell .
I always admired them with their SEO content engine, where they ranked for some incredibly competitive keywords. Just their organic traffic alone has resulted in over 170k+ visits to their site per month (with a really good time on site) and over 18k+ subscribers.
They were also very strong with video marketing via YouTube and embeds, as well as attending many conferences. The Founder, Patrick Campbell, and their team understand the power when content and thought leadership work together.
A big move on their end compared to other competitors in the financial analytics space was offering the tool for free (a really good section to read).
By offering their product for free, they were able to aggregate key data points that helped provide benchmarks for SaaS companies and founders. This then made it an attractive way to create more content.
Not only does aggregating data help produce more awesome content, but of course helps a lot with their core business model, which is upselling to their users for audits and consulting services.

8. Toggl - Achieving 135k+ weekly Chrome Extension users in 3 years

This is a little old this particular case study, but there are some really solid takeaways and learnings for any Saas business that has a chrome extension.
Toggl is a time management and project management software, and in their early days, they focused on creating an extension called “Toggl Button”, which was then used by 135k+ weekly users. In the article, it was mentioned over 85k+ new users found them within a 2-year period.
They open-sourced the project, where they got many developer contributions, as well as internally maintained it as they saw it as a user acquisition channel.
The key strategies that helped them reach the 135k+ number (and as of right now, it’s over 300k+ users), were chrome extension directories, SEO-optimised store listing, press, content marketing, and promotion to current users, and of course, automated email campaigns.

9. YouFoodz - 3000% revenue growth by implementing this initiative

As we all know, there are a plethora of ‘ready-to-eat’ meal delivery services (almost too many). When it comes to growth marketing and epic results, the YouFoodz team produced some really great marketing initiatives that helped them grow WoW sales by 5-10%, and 3000%+ revenue growth in a fairly short period of time.
What resulted in serious growth in sales and brand awareness was down to two key initiatives - influencers and co-branded marketing with complementary brands.
Whilst they had a strong paid media ads campaign (and even above-the-line campaigns through TV), they also had a strong SEO game, which would ultimately help reduce their overall CAC and heavy reliance on ads.
YouFoodz also had an effective referral program which helped reduce overall CAC too.

10. Stripe - The payments company was given a $36 billion valuation after 11 years

Stripe set its foundations on placing high value on their developer audience, which eventually translated to mass appeal.
Innovation and continuous product improvement propelled the company’s reach.
They currently work with different companies and businesses in over 100 countries.
In recent years, the company moved from being a payments-focused service to being a financial provider, especially targeting small and medium businesses.
Acquisitions and partnerships levelled up the growth of the company.

11. Starbucks - The world-famous coffee brand has almost 30,000 stores across over 70 countries

Really love the detail and explanations of Starbucks through this case study.
Starbucks grew so rapidly because they focused on the customer experience.
One of the things that sets the company apart to competitors is that they place high value on both the importance of customers and their employees. They believe that happy employees means happy clientele.
The company launched Starbucks Reserve, which caters to customers that want an artisan coffee experience.
All their stores are located in strategic places with high foot traffic.
They used gamification to make their rewards program engaging, and it is considered the most popular loyalty program in America.

12. Morning Brew - This newsletter media company amassed four million subscribers within 8 years of launch through team and their referral engine

Morning Brew credits their growth to a well-oiled team, as they place a high value of importance on hiring the right talent for growth.
Their team culture is something they work hard to impart regardless of how much they scale.
The company took three years to hire an exclusive HR person and realised it’s never too early to start on that trajectory.
They added a hundred employees to their team in 2021 alone.
With 9 newsletters, 3 podcasts, and 3 education programs under their wing, the most important thing was ensuring that their employees had similar values.
Whilst the particular case study I’ve digested is focused on the growth of their team, you’ve also got to check out this referral marketing study by one of their former growth PMs (who now run an awesome newsletter growth tool called beehiiv ).
The breakdown and detail of how their referral program work is pretty awesome. (oh by the way, if you want to check out tools that can replicate Morning Brew’s referral engine, make sure to check out beehiiv and these other referral marketing software alternatives - some good free options, as well as paid options for more advanced features).

13. Dropbox - The cloud storage company grew their user base from 100,000 to 4 million in one year

Dropbox famously launched a referral program that gave customers free space in the cloud.
They made sure that the benefits were two-fold: both the person making the referral and the person accepting the invitation got more GB.
Invitations weren’t just sent out via links, as Dropbox had the capacity to link contacts from Yahoo, Google, and other such platforms.
A loop was set in place, so upon signing up, users will share to others, so they get even more free space.
This set the foundation for Dropbox’s success, as the company now has over 33 million users.

14. Afterpay - This BNPL payments provider has nearly 15 million users and a value of $28 billion

Afterpay was established to provide a practical solution to a common problem , instantly appealing to a certain consumer base.
Given the nature of the company, they first established partnerships with well-known firms in the industry.
They created an accompanying mobile app that makes it easier for customers to use and access the service.
The company initially targeted younger users with its branding.
As soon as they built a community of millions, they presented their service to larger merchants, further accelerating their growth.

15. Hubspot - The Martech giant’s subscriptions make up 94% of their entire revenue

From the get-go, HubSpot has partnered with well-known industry players which helped increase its reach and audience.
Their social media strategy centres on Facebook, Linkedin, and Youtube, with a focus on videos.
The company also partners with micro-influencers on Instagram that have high engagement with followers.
Content stacking is executed on their website by distributing valuable resource information and peppering their pages with lead forms.
They built a consistent community that is able to draw around a hundred million dollars every year.

16. Veed - This video editing software gained 500,000 monthly site visits in just two years

Veed.io greatly valued organic search as they built their company, thereby banking on SEO.
The company built great Tools and Resources pages, with the former having 117 pages and the latter having 45 pages.
Tools are their most popular page category, so they just focused on optimising respective pages, now drawing over 70% of their total site traffic.
Anchor text in backlinking is mostly branded to Veed.io, which helps prop up the organic growth of the site.
They also built communities apart from the website through the likes of Reddit, Quora and Twitter.

17. Notion - One of my favourite workspace platforms used their product to grow into a $10 billion brand

Notion is largely popular today, and it’s because they focused on bringing an amazing product to the market.
The product could be difficult to understand at first, so they marketed the process through YouTube.
But what set them apart and what they did such a good job at compared to other workspace/project management tools was their “templates” - which they describe in this article as “template growth loops” (great PLG strategy).
They openly call out the competitors that they could replace in one system and then add more value to the table.
Loops were used in their marketing strategy, not funnels. Their whole idea was to keep people coming back.

18. TikTok - The social media platform has over 1 billion active users, outgrowing Google in terms of domain popularity

TikTok allows all users to create and earn from their content, and this accessibility helped with their growth.
A very powerful AI was used to curate their user’s preferences, topping even that of Amazon and Youtube.
They have a team that actively looks for international trends and then makes them viral, adding to its addictive value.
The default viewing mode on the app is a loop, which means that videos will keep playing until they are paused.
Though the app has gained some controversy, they make sure to stay in the right so that these issues don’t hamper their growth.

19. Fiverr - The freelancing marketplace saw an almost 800% rise in their stock price in just one year

From the very beginning, Fiverr made sure they weren’t going to publicise themselves through the media.
The company grew by understanding one thing: When you have supply, you will generate demand.
They made sure that their pricing matched their quality of services, with excellent service to boot.
Growing and improving from mistakes is something the Fiverr team constantly integrates into their culture.
Innovation is encouraged throughout the company, with ideas being pitched even by the receptionist.

20. DoorDash - The delivery company’s market share went from 17% to 50% in just 2 years

DoorDash mindfully anchored itself on data by assembling teams that are known for their technical expertise.
⅓ of their entire tech stack team works with data , which is significantly higher than the proportion seen in other companies.
The company works with over 300,000 merchants, millions of customers, and a million delivery dashers, and they work to add value to all of them.
They invest in their technology and operational enhancements to help them increase their margins and contribution profit.
Menus and food items are entirely arranged using machine learning, so they can always be presented in the best way.

21. Gumroad - This online creator platform went from almost becoming bankrupt to reaching over $140 million in gross merchandise

Gumroad almost had to remove all team members in 2015 due to loss, yet they kept going, eventually hitting $3 million 3 years later.
The company took advantage of the pandemic as the creator audience grew, seeing a 94% revenue increase in a year.
They made sure to cater to even beginner and low-income creators.
Inclusivity and tight alignment with creators built their culture and community.
Their business model ensures that they enforce a fair margin on creators.

22. Atlassian - The tech giant established itself as a $10 billion business in just 20 years

Atlassian capitalised on product acquisition to propel their growth.
The company first focused on building tools instead of doing marketing, which helped increase its audience organically.
By the time they raised funding, they were already well-regarded in the industry.
They understood that while other companies can acquire other tools as well, they couldn’t integrate as well as Atlassian.
An IPO for the company came out in 2015 as the business grew sustainably, trading at a cap of nearly $6 billion.

23. Block - This merchant payment company maintained cheap services to eventually gain $18 billion in revenue

Block used to be known as Square , and the name change was due to the fact that they managed to release two successful products.
Their goal was straightforward: Make a simple solution to a widespread problem.
Efficiency and consistent quality became their benchmarks for growth.
They made the price attainable and the signup process easy, which helped them gain more traffic.
Given the industry they were in, Block made sure to always stay on top of updates and software to keep their products relevant.

24. Miro - Has become one of the most valuable companies in the world, serving over 30mil+ users

Miro is currently worth $17.5 billion, servicing 99% of the Fortune 500 companies.
They grew by doing one thing well: integrating apps and software.
Seeing the digital trend through the pandemic, Miro decided to double down, growing by 600% in two years.
The software does the same core things as competitors, but Miro offers a large number of integrations and has an easy UX.
A resource hub of blogs, templates, product pages, and use cases brings in over a million clicks in traffic every month.

25. Netflix - The streaming service went from renting videos to being a $100 billion streaming giant

Netflix understood from the beginning that they wanted to decentralise entertainment, making it more affordable to the masses.
The company adamantly refused to charge late fees for their video rentals, even when they were already operating at a loss.
They provided video streaming services before there was a demand, positioning them for the long run - they knew that this was the future of TV/video/movie consumption.
Given their business model, original dramas became the natural turn, giving them exclusive content.
When their streaming service went live simultaneously in over 100 countries, Netflix officially cemented itself as a global company.

26. Spotify - The music streaming company hosts nearly 300 million active monthly users

Spotify relied on word of mouth and opted out of traditional advertising for its publicity.
They used a referral program to promote their premium subscription.
The company presented listeners with the ability to take full control of the music they listened to, when they wanted to.
46% of all users are paid users, which is a high conversion rate.
Music is no longer just the sphere Spotify moves in, as they now also have podcasts, fuelling their growth.

27. Amazon - The giant has net sales of around $150 billion every quarter

Amazon always examines and improves on its strategies, online and offline.
Their platform centres on customer satisfaction, visible even on product pages.
The selection, pricing, and availability on Amazon continues to be a selling point, even after 20 years in the business.
Targeted ads and online marketing channels prop up their publicity.
Automated systems help them optimise the customer experience at all times.

28. Calm - This mobile app took only 7 years to become a billion-dollar company

Calm is the #1 meditation app in many markets and is one of the biggest iOS advertisers in the health and wellness realm.
True to form, their social media posts are calm in visuals and audio, providing a contrast to other brands.
They had stars like Matthew McConaughey narrate relaxing stories on their app.
Quotes and personalised messages from the app can seamlessly be shared to the social media of users, adding to their social proof.
The app encourages users to set reminders, which helps maintain an active audience.

29. Airtable - The company constantly raises upwards of $100 million in their funding rounds

Airtable is now growing its revenue at 70% year on year.
The company allows users to build software solutions with minimal coding, unlocking a valuable market.
It took them a while to hit $10 million, but they went from $10 million to $100 million in less than 4 years.
They shifted to focusing on B2B, their most valuable base.
Their increase in user base was matched with a rapid increase in hiring, providing sustainability to growth.

30. Shopify - The eCommerce merchant platform nearly doubled its revenue in a year

Over 100 million customers make a purchase from Shopify every year.
They offer a free trial to merchants to encourage a larger product base.
The company initially launched contests wherein they gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to successful eCommerce stores, drawing merchants.
A flash timer for a free webinar is constantly shown on their blog page, inciting urgency.
Shopify understands that offering free tools will generate more traffic.

31. Grammarly - The writing/editing online tool has around 7 million active users every day

Grammarly currently ranks in the top three search results for over 19,000 keywords.
Considerable traffic is also brought in by Youtube, where they have strategically placed ads.
They make their social media content relatable, with minimal posts about their product.
Blogs and resources on proper spelling and words to use are all over their website, bringing in more traffic.
The company uses remarketing for higher brand recall.

32. Wise - The fintech organisation prioritised global scaling and can be used in over 170 countries

Wise won be offering a superior product user experience and just amazing competitive rates.
They made sure to always abide by the laws and culture in whichever country they have their services.
Customer development was a foundational building block.
The company encountered several hiccups and made mistakes in the process, but they always made it a point to learn from them.
Product localisation made their product relevant and wanted.

33. YouTube - The video platform uses real-time personalisation to keep people watching longer

YouTube is constantly testing stuff (as you expect from a Google product), so some of the strategies/features may be outdated, but the principles of what they tested, what worked/didn’t is worth sharing. They key takeaway to learn from is how YouTube does personalisation.
Youtube makes a lot of recommendations unique to users using their cutting-edge algorithm.
To avoid having people feeling overwhelmed, they have a tab where people could go back to previous videos they’ve scrolled through.
They also have a “random video” button for those who simply cannot decide.
Narrowed-down recommendations can be seen through the “new to you” tab.

34. Monday - The 6-year-old productivity software has a $7 billion valuation

Monday.com caters to around 200,000 customers and has more than 12,000 organic visitors to its site each month.
They use keywords to rank high on SERPs, being the number one result under project management.
Just one of their pillar articles has over 1,000 backlinks and almost 2,000 keywords.
Their optimal formula is four links for every hundred words.
The goal is always to move site visitors down the funnel.

35. Ahrefs - My favourite SEO software grows its annual revenue by at least 50% every year

Ahrefs focused on making a good product before dishing out good marketing.
Customer experience became their primary driver.
They ran hundreds of blogs explaining how to use their tool, which helped people want to use it.
Maintaining a clean and easy product interface made them more appealing.
The company used social media ads for publicity.

36. Quora - The Q&A social platform grew by 37,000% in one year

Quora grew from having just 1,500 users to 550,000 users from 2010 to 2011 - pretty incredible amount of users to acquire in a year.
They used gamification to keep users coming back.
Their blog has over 100,000 tags writers can choose from.
A good anti-spam function was set in place, making sure audience participation is meaningful.
Customers can sign up by existing social media accounts, making it easier for new users.

37. Slack - The popular business app went from nothing to being a $7 billion company in 5 years

Slack relied on community and trust to help propel their company.
Emerging markets turned out to be a great audience for their product.
The company is known for creating the fastest-growing business app in Silicon Valley.
They made sure that their design and UX looked appealing to use.
An optimal market-product fit ultimately helped position their brand.

38. Pendo - The software company raised $106 million in funding within 5 years

Pendo invested heavily in their product, which led their company growth.
The company helps other companies improve their products as well, leading to their organic acceleration.
They built a community wherein users can freely express their thoughts and feedback.
Events and conferences are held for users interested in the latest tech and product development.
For them, product and community growth always go hand in hand.

39. Intercom - The SaaS company hit $50 million in annual revenue faster than Shopify and Hubspot

Intercom is known for growing its audience without spending a ton on advertising.
A lot of their subscribers just transition from their free trial plan.
The company actually intercepts traffic from competitors by marketing itself as an alternative.
They only focus on keywords that produce qualified leads.
Landing pages for ads and the website itself are different, with ad redirect pages leaning CTA-specific LP’s.
They had a big focus on “alternate”/competitor landing for audiences towards the bottom of the funnel (and showed conversion-intent).

40. Outreach - This sales outreach software company grew more than 100% every year

Outreach.io adds more than $10 million in bookings on a quarterly basis.
When the founders realised that their startup wasn’t scaling, they decided to pivot to Outreach - and it worked.
They followed the market demands and started riding the wave.
In their first years, they didn’t focus on marketing; they focused on releasing a good product.
The company owner wrote a book about the company, which got them even more publicity.

41. WhatsApp - The social chat platform gained almost a billion users within five years

WhatsApp got Facebook to purchase them for $19 billion within the same timeframe.
The company took advantage of push notifications to get people to use the app.
They made sure to cater to multiple platforms early on, ensuring their reach.
Other social platforms added different features, but WhatsApp focused on what it did best.
No push advertising is allowed on WhatsApp to the benefit of users.

42. Semrush - The SEO platform has over 6 million free users with hundreds of millions in ARR

Semrush stayed within its lane as an SEO software, and so it excelled as a household name in that area.
The founders focused on perfecting the product, even without fundraising.
Their growth was largely driven by word of mouth.
A very good affiliate program (40% commissions!) helped with their publicity.
Multiple languages are offered on their site (multi-lingual SEO), which helps provide a localised language experience for users depending on their location/preferred language. Multi-lingual typically helps with providing a better conversion experience.

43. ClickFunnels - The lead generation funnel builder grew its ARR by 400% in 18 months

Many of us know ClickFunnels and their ‘funnels’ success, but this is a damn good case study for any SaaS founder to read.
The founders of ClickFunnels just ‘clicked’ (pun intended) with complementary skill sets, allowing them to build a foolproof product (and believe it or not, it tools them years before they launched - yes, years).
They managed to maintain audiences from their previous ventures, which helped them establish the market for ClickFunnels.
Free trials eventually lead to upsells, helping secure their market.
Marketing was not limited to online; the founders also did in-person seminars with partners.
They had a really attractive lifetime affiliate offer which many took advantage of (40% lifetime in the early stages).
Their content, webinar and funnel game over the years has been superb, even in the early stages (which to those who know ClickFunnels, there’s no surprise here).

44. BeReal - This social media app has 10 million active users less than three years after its establishment

BeReal actually calls itself an anti-social media app, looking instead to capture real moments.
The number of users grew by over 300% over the past year alone.
There’s one thing the app does best: authenticity, which especially appeals to the younger generation today.
Time-limited push notifications are sent to users each day, giving them a sense of urgency to capture and post.
Adding human interactions and human elements helps with more ‘real’ interactions.

45. Gong - The startup has Facebook, Paypal, and Nasdaq as its customers

Gong.io actually doubles the number of employees they have each year - they now have over 1,000 after just 4 years of existence!
The company rebranded several times, only settling when they had found an identity that sets them apart.
They make sure that their customer growth process is frictionless and scalable.
Culture is important to the company and employees, as they believe that they grow when they are aligned with what they preach.
Email marketing and an SEO strategy helped propel their marketing.

46. Typeform - The form and quiz builder software improved its signups by 15% within three weeks

Typeform understood how even the small details on a website can impact conversions.
They built a process for internal linking, which boosted their SEO.
Understanding user demand eventually helped them gain demand.
People knew Typeform for their templates, so they leaned into these even more.
The company used a content loop to drive traffic back to them.

47. Zapier - Achieved a $5 billion valuation, and some experts still think it is underpriced

Zapier only fundraised $1.4 million, but they now have an ARR of $140 million . Seriously impressive what the Zapier team has achieved.
They are absolute beasts when it comes to programmatic SEO - whenever a new app joins Zapier, landing/content pages are automatically released with barely any human intervention.
They went from being a platform to being an ecosystem, significantly boosting their business and helping them to become known as the most prominent name in the no-code integrations space.

48. Lululemon - The athleisure brand went from a small studio to being worth $14 billion

Lululemon understood the fitness trend and decidedly hopped on it.
Their apparel was produced with utmost quality, with importance placed on both performance and fit.
The company created a new category for their clothing, making them iconic in that niche.
Having a clear understanding of their target market helped them push marketing initiatives forward.
They pay their employees 30% more, and having happy employees gives them a more productive workforce.

49. Skillshare - The educational platform hosts nearly 4 million students

Skillshare has been doubling its revenue every year, empowered by $25 million in funding.
The funding helped grow to over 200k+ paid users.
The company started out doing physical classes, then shifted gears when they realised that scaling was faster online.
Personalisation helps them encourage students to keep watching videos.
They have ‘world-class’ churn and pretty good CPA costs ($15-$20 as mentioned in this study). Maintaining an affordable monthly price for customers helped them maintain a low churn rate.

50. ConvertKit - This email marketing and creator platform started as a project which turned into an $8 million company

The ConvertKit founder was already a known author and blogger before he ventured into SaaS, which immediately gave him leverage.
He capitalised on his existing audience and email base to promote his company.
The company revenue declined early on, and they realised that they had to invest more money into their growth.
They leaned hard into excellent customer service, which gave them loyal customers.
Targeting small companies and niche markets helped them slowly establish their base, which created some awesome growth momentum.

51. Robinhood - The stock app caters to 3 million customers and is worth over $1 billion

Robinhood created a great app that has an appealing UI/UX.
They charge 0 commission and earn through letting their users borrow money for trades.
The app uses colours and icons to communicate activity with customers.
Push notifications providing updates about the market get users checking in multiple times a day.
Given the nature of the industry, speed in loading the app is fundamental.

52. WeWork - This company has over 500 office spaces all around the world

WeWork started offering co-working spaces before it became mainstream.
Their vision isn’t just to simply sell the spaces; they banked on the idea of community.
They started their expansion into different countries even before they got household famous in the US.
The company currently has over a hundred offices in New York City alone.
Understanding that people eventually grow into their own companies, they started offering a new service for private offices.

53. Jasper - This AI writing assistant went from 0 to $75 million in revenue in just 18 months

Jasper was built on the failures and attempts of its founders, who tried and never gave up.
The software offers integrations with other writing apps, such as Surfer.
The company built what is called the “Jasper Community”, where people can share tips and information with each other.
Payment plans are charged per word, which helps encourage upsells for power users (scaling/usage-pricing model). Good tactic/initiative for increasing ARPU .

54. Discord - The chat app only needed three years to cross over a hundred million users (and valued at over $2 billion)

Discord went from being a game chat app to expanding into business spaces , which exponentially helped their growth.
They partnered with video game streaming services and game companies to enhance consumer trust.
Word of mouth among players helped establish their initial numbers.
Their team understood that for as long as they built a great product, the growth will happen.

55. Calendly - The scheduling tool was driven by product-led growth

Calendly saw a problem and provided a simple solution.
As more and more people used their app, they became the go-to for different audiences.
They had to make sure they weren’t doing hard pushing and just let the product performance speak for itself.
By focusing on adding value to customers through their product, they addressed the user's pain points - just shortening the cycle of qualitative and quantitative feedback helped them iron out UX flaws and provide a seamless experience.
Calendly always requires the interaction of two people, which helps get the word out - similar to how two-sided referral programs work (and we all know how effective they can be as a strategy for WOM growth).

56. LinkedIn - The social platform didn’t need bells and whistles to hit 500 million users

LinkedIn leaned into datasets and user demographics when planning out action steps.
Over a hundred thousand articles/posts are organically published on the platform daily (this was dated back in 2017 - I’d say quite a bit more today).
They stayed up to date with technological enhancements, launching a native app to success (and they’ve done a great job with their mobile app too).
As influencers brought their followers to LinkedIn, the user base grew further.

57. Tinder - The dating app converts 8% of its customers into paid subscribers in just a few minutes

Tinder uses social proof to upsell users to its paid plans (good compelling paid features).
The app lets you try out and explore the benefits, and as soon as you get hooked to the “aha”, that’s when users start to see the value of upgrading.
Clicking on some ‘boost’ buttons will again lead to paid offers.
They also use push notifications that appeal to customer psychology to get customers to upgrade.
By taking advantage of a person’s need to know, they were able to make over a billion dollars in the past year.

58. Zappos - The shoe retailer has been around for two decades and only continues to grow

Zappos was acquired by Amazon in 2009, which set it up for online success.
The company has always had one goal: to give the best customer service possible.
They have a real time inventory system that is 99% accurate , allowing them to always be sure when responding to customer inquiries.
Exceptional service is a result of the culture they have set even within the company.
Accountability allows their people to feel empowered as they take ownership of their results.

59. Carta - This company handles the equity of over 20,000 organisations

Carta only took 7 years to be valued at over $7 billion.
This is a good study to read as mentions some good details about tactics they used for the first 100 users.
They leaned hard into building brand authenticity and customer relationships.
Seeing subscription plans fail in conversations with investors, Carta shifted to charging transaction fees instead.
Product market fit became necessary for them to hit their pace.
Email lists, including Silicon Valley, helped scale their growth.

60. ActiveCampaign - This B2B startup already caters to 50,000 customers

ActiveCampaign capitalised on its product positioning as they present personalised solutions, unlike many other competitors.
The company intelligently plants itself as the better option by conveying information to the consumers.
Their website experience ultimately depends on the audience and vertical, as they let people choose navigation designed for them.
A value ladder props up their entire subscription system.
Long, thoroughly informative blogs are published on a near-daily basis to boost their SEO.

61. Uber - The transportation service became a global name within six years of its establishment

Uber saw a need in urban cities and worked on a profitable yet effective solution.
They made sure that the customers felt like they were in control of their safety and options.
As an early adopter, Uber managed to stay ahead of the game even with the rising competition.
Their services initially started out as a more expensive alternative to cabs, then they revised their cost model.
Their simple business model made it easier to manage and scale.

62. Ikea - The famous furniture brand has nearly 500 stores around the world

This is a brilliant read and Cascade app (the author of this study) have done an epic job with other studies on other major companies which you can check out here .
Ikea is a household name at this point, but it took the company 80 years of persistent expansion to get to the brand recognition they have today (who doesn’t love Ikea, right?).
Their designs have always been simple, and this gained ground when the minimalism trend took over.
In the 1950s, IKEA faced manufacturing issues with their supplier so they decided to do things in-house.
When expanding overseas, the company made sure that the products and services were localised to each country’s expectations.

63. Hopin - This events software startup hit an $8 billion valuation in 2 years

Hopin focused on connecting people and was launched just in time for the pandemic.
The software was most advantageous for the event industry during a time when events had to be virtual.
Amidst their growth, they made sure to keep hiring people to ensure that all ground is covered.
They eventually branched out to different products, expanding on both services and audience.
Having a great product with a seamless growth loop benefitted their company.

64. Instagram - The social media app only needed a few years to shape the online landscape completely

Instagram acquired a million users within its first 3 months.
Within two years, they were launched on Android, opening up to a whole new market.
Early on, they started venturing into sponsored posts, paving the way for influencer culture.
Taking cues from apps like TikTok and BeReal, Instagram takes ideas from competitors and makes it their own.
They constantly get into user data to make sure that their relevance stays amidst other rising apps.

65. Netlify - This six-year-old web product has a $2 billion valuation

Netlify leaned hard into headless development, especially when it was starting to gain ground.
All their free offerings and services helped get people into their ecosystem.
They invest heavily in customer engagement by offering blogs and free trainings.
Continuous building of an ecosystem linked to the product increases their reach.
With all developments, the company is seeing a 100% increase in users year on year.

66. Bumble - The tactics and strategies used by the dating app which helped them achieve $14 billion+ valuation

Bumble centres on the idea of letting women make the first move.
Bumble used immersive marketing experiences to bring their campaigns to life for users.
They use events as an opportunity to make their company feel personal for the people.
A deep understanding of the market allows them to conduct targeted strategies.
They were also very effective with UGC campaigns and using influencers for amplification.

67. Patagonia - The apparel line sees almost a billion dollars in annual revenue

From the establishment of the company, Patagonia deliberately set itself apart by focusing on nature and adventure.
They stand by what they say by constantly exploring new technologies that allow them to provide environmentally conscious products.
The company ran an ad called “Don’t Buy This Jacket,” explaining how their best-selling sweater costs to produce.
This appeals to consumers, delivering a 30% increase in revenue.
Customer loyalty ultimately drives the growth of the brand.

68. Salesforce - The giant CRM tool company staged a rally to eventually become a $13 billion empire

The CEO of Salesforce started out by just staging anti-software stunts around Silicon Valley to gain attention.
The company offered something else others didn’t, which helped them gain acclaim in the market.
Building an ecosystem around their CRM tool eventually propelled their business forward.
Known for making controversial moves, Salesforce eventually built a community agreeing with their values.
Their marketing, sales, and product strategies were constantly kept in alignment.

69. Lumen5 - This AI video software grew to 200,000 users without investing a dime in marketing

Lumen5’s founder has handled companies before, and he put everything he learned into building Lumen5 .
He understood that building a good team and culture was central to a successful business.
They had no need to please everyone; they just wanted to grow a loyal market base.
The company now works with plenty of Fortune 500 companies , each with their own standards and requirements.
Allowing localisation at the user’s control built interest in the brand faster.

70. Superhuman - This email platform turned into a $2 billion company even with Google, Yahoo, and Outlook around

Superhuman focuses on speed, and they knew that once people experienced that, they can’t turn back.
They run a waitlist, which makes people develop even more interest in them.
The founder had an idea and saw a need, so he did something about it.
Running press campaigns helped them build awareness around their product.
Their onboarding process actually includes a conversation with one of their personnel to make sure users are a good fit for what they offer.

71. Supermetrics - This PLG reporting software company managed to reach $1 million ARR without outside funding

Supermetrics centralises its entire operations on one thing: connection.
The company partnered with a Google product early in its release , which turned out to be beneficial for the company.
They optimised free trials to have customers interested in different products.
Maintaining an international mindset from the get-go helped them grow larger faster.
As they expanded, they made sure that their message and approach adjusted.

72. Zoom - The video meeting app only took a couple of months to become a household name

Zoom especially rose to fame during the pandemic, overriding other apps like Skype and FaceTime.
They took advantage of social media to create awareness around the product.
Knowing the market well and posting fun videos creates interaction among followers.
Conducting online events and contests for their audience also spurred on their numbers.
The company also received a lot of free marketing from influencers who use their app.

73. CoSchedule - This SaaS company acquired users in over a hundred countries in less than 4 years

CoSchedule’s founders never stopped trying, even after failing so many times.
They kept their discipline, with their eyes set on the goal of creating a successful product that truly serves their marketing audience.
Focusing on just one metric helped them achieve more things because when everything is your goal, nothing really is.
The company started out by just working on getting page views, which helped them get their first leads.
Eventually, they saw email subscriptions increase by over 300%, and they made sure to keep generating innovative content to maintain this.

74. Github - The code hosting platform grew to over 40 million users just through growth loops (and to a $7.5 billion-dollar acquisition)

GitHub did an awesome job with growth loops even at pre-launch, which helped them with initially acquiring them 6,000 users even before they officially started.
All they did was issue a code that people would like to show off, which increased their base organically.
They began offering different plans for individuals and corporations, addressing needs unique to each audience.
They did an exceptional job of building ‘network effects’ and a marketplace where users can connect with other users.
One thing that sets GitHub apart is they actually listen to feedback - having a product that solves problems and listens to its customers (and collects data/feedback) always helps with propelling growth.

75. Evernote - The note taking app has over 100 million users and a billion-dollar valuation

Evernote’s page actually gets 60 million views every month.
The fact that it’s multi-platform with seamless syncing makes it ideal for all audiences.
It is available in nearly 200 countries, of course, localised according to language, certainly helping with their user growth.
The needs of the founders drove the innovation for the product, as they knew that if they struggled with certain things, so did others.
Keeping to a Freemium model helped Evernote keep users over the long term.

76. Udemy - This online education marketplace is run by over $48 million in funding, but it took a while to get there

Udemy may be a household name now, but acquiring the first instructors to get on the platform was a struggle.
The company developed their own course to test run just how profitable the idea can be.
They heavily invested in data mining during their establishment.
Emailing and calling instructors one by one eventually led to their first commitments.
A/B testing their emails actually helped lead people further down the funnel.

77. Strava - This sports social network took over a decade to launch, and within the next decade, it had 70 million users

The idea for Strava was birthed in the 1990s, but the founders had to wait until the technology was in place before they could do something about it.
They banked on the “come for the tool, stay for the network” concept, and it worked.
Gamifying the performance meter of their app motivated the users to keep on doing well.
Running and cycling became their starting point, and as they became successful in that, they branched out to other verticals.
Data drives the company forward, with billions of records of user activity.

78. Sweat - This fitness app grew to over a million active monthly users through influencers

Sweat never received outside funding and instead used social media to scale.
The company founders were already well-known fitness influencers, and they banked on their already existing audience.
Over 80% of Sweat customers discovered the brand through influencer marketing.
All influencer posts reflecting the brand put a CTA in every post.
Constantly posting in online communities such as Facebook groups and forums also helped propel the brand.

79. Linktree - This link solution only took 6 hours to create and is now the most common link platform on Instagram

Linktree presents an efficient fix, so people no longer have to change links on their bios each time.
They use a Freemium model that allowed them to remain net flow positive from the very beginning.
After seeing 3,000 simultaneous sign-ups crash their server, they decided they needed to upgrade for the scale.
The company also understood that hiring enough personnel to manage growth was necessary.

80. Allbirds - This sustainable sneakers brand hit $100 million in revenue just two years after its launch

Allbirds was initially promoted on Kickstarter, where it hit its funding goal after just 5 days.
The company’s tech stack includes integrations to relevant branding tools.
Much of their success comes from WOM (word of mouth) through online advertising and sharing via socials.
They invest quite a bit in maintaining and improving their product quality.
A great welcome email campaign that includes informational videos and discounts draws in even more subscribers.

81. Instacart - This delivery service company grew its revenue by 14% during the pandemic

Instacart decided to upgrade its approach and business model to survive in this new landscape.
The company indexed their entire product list on Google, increasing their organic SEO even post-pandemic.
Their keywords hit different categories to maximise reach.
Product landing pages reflect all the details a customer would search for.
Recipes are also available on the website to increase traffic.

82. Zomato - The food delivery app generates over a million orders each day

Zomato was launched just 7 years ago, and they now have a valuation of nearly $6 billion.
They offer services apart from food deliveries, as they also now manage dine-in transactions.
Launching a subscription that provides large discounts to customers became their main selling factor.
The app also offers placements for ads from restaurants.
Using an SEO strategy that targets millions of keywords brings in considerable traffic to Zomato’s website.

83. Drift - This web chat utilised a blog content strategy to grow their brand

Drift’s first approach to the competitive industry they found themselves in is to create a brand that set them apart from the rest.
This meant providing valuable content to users.
Meaningful knowledge sharing eventually resulted in a bounce rate as low as 25%, resulting in increased user trust.
Their blog posts cover many categories, such as thought leadership, case studies, podcasts, and top-of-the-funnel.
Keeping in mind that they cater to many different audiences allows them to provide content that is able to speak to these markets.

84. Foundr - This online magazine grew their Instagram app to over 100,000 followers in just 6 months

Foundr saw 1.43 million likes within the same span of time.
Deep awareness and knowledge of what their target market is interested in allowed them to post content that would appeal to their audience.
By keeping the community engaged, they were eventually able to convince followers to become magazine subscribers.
Posting religiously every day gave their followers a sense of expectation.
Adding CTAs such as questions to drive engagement or getting followers to tag friends boost post performance by 300%

85. Copy AI - This AI writing software is two years old and already has 250,000 users

The founders built Copy AI in public to gain an audience even early on.
In the process, they also received feedback from users so they can make their revisions to the product before launching.
They also maintained transparency throughout the entire building period, providing social and Twitter followers (they did super well on this channel)with regular updates.
This gave them greater social reach and developed deeper brand loyalty.
Giving free accounts to non-profit organisations became a part of their social efforts, and this gained them recognition from the online community.

86. Webflow - This no-code website builder sees over 4 million visitors to its website monthly

Webflow managed to capture and retain users by staying true to what its product intended to do.
They started out by catering to just one customer profile, which helped them precisely target their market.
Yet as the company grew, their customer personas also grew.
Given the nature of the company, they made sure that their own company website is interactive, engaging, and intuitive.
The company generates multiple forms of content to prop up its website, such as blogs, ebooks, and tutorials.

87. Basecamp - This web application that decidedly refuses to innovate is a $100 billion business

Basecamp lives by their company values: grow slowly, go to sleep, underdo.
The founders are not fixated on cashing out on the company; they just want to keep the ship asail.
They don’t believe in staying on trend; they’re all about being timeless.
So, the company’s base products are all about solving problems which are not going away anytime soon, and doing that consistently.
Their product is simple and straightforward, which is exactly why people use it.

88. Buffer - The social media scheduling app sees a yearly income of $4 million

No one initially wanted to promote Buffer , so the company had to create their own blog for content.
They released articles 3-4 times a week, centering in on how to generate more followers and other such social media tips.
Ranking on both longtail and relevant keywords as well as short and unrelated keywords is part of their SEO strategy.
Link building only comes into play when it's organic and properly placed.
Guests are invited to write for their blog, to gain external traction.

89. Gusto - This HR platform has a valuation of over a billion dollars - a rarity in that industry

Gusto saw a problem they wanted to fix, so they did with all bases covered.
They knew that as long as they took good care of their product, people would want to stay with them.
A simple onboarding process and a UI that is easy to understand positions the company for even those who struggle with software.
They saw the opportunity to partner with accountants who acted like ‘influencers’/ambassadors (i.e. network effect), which helped in particular with their next stage of growth after their initial traction phase.
Running a referral program for employees and customers helped them bring in the numbers.

90. Duolingo - The language learning app uses guilt to get people to stay, and it works

Duolingo constantly sends out emails and notifications to users who haven’t used the app in a while.
The messages depend on the location, demographic, and overall profile of the user.
Gamifying the educational experience already helped keep more people on the app.
They do a great job with their “guilt-tripping strategy”, which then spurred memes on the internet. Smart and playful copy to get users back using the app and completing more milestones.
Something to check out as well is their TikTok profile/marketing, where they managed to achieve a 40x increase in their TikTok following in half a year (pretty impressive).

91. Snowflake - The cloud-based company went from being worth $10 billion to $70 billion in just 8 months

Snowflake has more than a million interested site visitors every month.
They stick to old-fashioned paid marketing strategies with a very accurate targeting of their market.
The keywords attached to their brand are specific, precise, and relevant to their service.
Multiple landing pages and offers were developed for different kinds of visitors.
The company also conducts webinars that are educational and gain a lot of traffic in that industry.

92. Pandadoc - This documents app grew 10x in 10 years

PandaDoc is currently used by over 7,000 companies.
They launched a partner program among companies to channel sales.
The company offers benefits for their partners such as their marketing collateral, tech stack, and other items that could be of use to them.
Discovery calls are also utilised to create more awareness about the brand.
At all times, their approach is that they keep the best interest of the customer in mind, as this in turn allows them to gain trust.

93. Clubhouse - The social media app is invite-only and has a $4 billion valuation

Clubhouse leans into the status and scarcity selling point.
Everything on the Clubhouse happens live, so once you miss a conversation, you just miss it.
This means that if users want juicy content, they will have to stay on the app.
Users can turn on push notifications so they will receive a notice every time a celebrity or a person they’re interested in goes live.
On the other hand, when users miss a live they wanted to listen in to, this could cause feelings of frustration (it did for me personally when I was first using the app).

94. Etsy - The online marketplace where people can find nearly anything is worth nearly $13 billion

Etsy has become a household name for online selling, as small hobbyists and companies alike can list whatever they wish to sell on the platform.
It started out as just a niche marketplace where people with small markets can find buyers.
They banked on growth loops to popularise their service.
Given the nature of the market, word of mouth definitely became an important part of their growth strategy.

95. Warby Parker - The eyewear brand built $700,000 worth of monthly click value with the help of SEO

Warby Parker uses a targeted keyword strategy.
The company used to run a blog, but they stopped that to focus more on their SEO approach.
They also do off-page SEO by communicating brand stories and values.
Backlinking and having pieces of content on big websites like Forbes and Market Watch build up their brand reputation.
Paid ads and campaigns are also being done to ensure that Warby Parker remains in the consciousness of the public.

96. OnlyFans - The app was launched in 2016 and quickly grew to 150 million users

The founder of OnlyFans saw the potential in the adult content industry and knew there was a market waiting to be tapped.
They rode on the online wave during the pandemic, seeing a 540% growth in just one year.
A lucrative referral program for creators got the company the base they needed.
In the process, they recruited creators with an already-existing audience.
Their subscription plan has multiple tiers, depending on what the customer is after as value.

97. Koala - This eCommerce company hit $13 million in revenue within their first year

Koala focused on influencers to drive fast cut-through and awareness, utilising in particular micro-influencers with a loyal audience.
The company provides discount codes to the influencer’s following, and in turn, the influencer will get a commission for every purchase using their code.
They also went the old-school way and posted billboards – beside their competitors’ billboards.
Videos on people using their products that show off the stability of their mattresses became huge hits, drawing attention to their brand.
Interestingly, they also did radio marketing to hit as much of the market as possible.

98. Groove - This help desk solution used content marketing to reach $5 million per year in revenue

Groove’s team readily sought out mentors in the industry so that they can learn how to improve on their existing approaches.
Although they already had a running blog at the time, Groove decided to scrap and then rebuild their content marketing approach from the ground up.
Research was done on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit so that they could get a handle on what people actually wanted.
They asked about what people wanted to read, and then proceeded to make posts built around exactly what their audience answered.
By providing thought leadership and interaction, they eventually gained enough trust so that the audience would use their product.

99. Asana - This workplace and project management tool founded by two former Facebook employees is now worth $1.5 billion

Built upon the experiences of the founders, Asana is meant to be a project management solution for easier collaboration.
The team knew what they wanted to solve, so they narrowed their product scope and did that well.
They made multiple iterations and conducted user tests to know exactly how to improve what they had.
Given how Asana worked, they released an API so that companies will feel free to do what they need with it.
As the base of the product functionality grew, they began focusing on user experience and the interface of the website.

100. Pinterest - The social platform used SEO to make their brand a household name

Everybody now knows Pinterest , but the company had to conduct a lot of testing to know how to build their brand.
Their team built their own experimentation tool, through which they can measure how certain actions affecting their SEO will impact performance.
Whereas A/B testing tests users, Pinterest’s tool tests pages.
This helped them know which popular SEO tactics worked for them and which didn’t.
Their end goal was to make data-driven decisions, and in getting numbers, they were able to do so with greater precision.

101. Figma - The design software took three years before they started releasing their beta

Yet today, Figma is arguably one of the most well-known software in the entire world.
They took their time in building what their product needed, so they were able to deliver on what users required.
Before the software was released, the Figma team built a community they could release to.
They started hosting demos to generate buzz, and they invested heavily in customer engagement.
Even after the launch, Figma kept on engaging with its users, increasing brand loyalty.

102. Acadium - This marketplace connects thousands of businesses with interested apprentices

Acadium is all about getting rid of the one-sided power dynamic in unpaid internships and offers a mutually beneficial solution for interested parties.
They crafted a growth engine that would emphasise partnership and affiliation.
The company doesn't utilise paid ads all that much, as they do believe in organic growth.
This has resulted well for them, as they currently have 30,000 companies and 60,000 apprentices on their platform.
Once they saw how companies utilised their network, they started charging more - and people willingly paid.

103. Mailchimp - The famous email solution added 4 million more users over just one year

As if MailChimp wasn’t already big enough, they went from 12 million to 16 million users within 12 months.
They grew their market by organic word of mouth.
Over the years, they tried different pricing models until they settled on one that would help users take control of their spending.
The company also has a forever-free plan, which definitely helped attract more interested customers.
Facebook ads also helped position MailChimp, especially during the beginning of their rise.

104. Axio (formerly Walnut) - This money management app saw its rise by catering particularly to Indian users

Note: this case study is old, but I thought the analysis was good and worth including. Some really good growth/digital marketing takeaways.
Walnut grew in popularity by being a recommended app on reviews and forums.
SEO helped prop up the app on the web, enhancing their brand recall and recognition.
They have a lot of reviews on app stores, which gives interested users a view of what they do.
By responding to review concerns, they show people how they address app issues.

105. Classpass - The fitness and wellness services marketplace has a billion-dollar valuation

Classpass is available in over 90 countries and features thousands of wellness and fitness partners.
They started with a payment scheme charged by class, then switched to a subscription model which gained them more traction.
The company released promotional pricing for the first month through Google Ads, bringing up their numbers further.
An unlimited model was initially offered, then they dropped it for being too risky on the profit end.
Diversified packages are offered depending on the type of user.

106. HelloFresh - The food subscription company caters to almost a million customers

This is a really awesome breakdown of HelloFresh, which great examples across their ads, emails, key product pages, and landing pages (including some click and heatmaps).
They have very impressive operations on a global scale - they operate in numerous countries across three continents (note: it says 9 in this resource, but it’s now 17).
They attract customers by keeping a simple yet engaging website.
Colour psychology is a major point in their design and attraction method.
The CTA button for meal plans and ‘getting started’ is always a focal point across most of their pages.
Providing free shipping helps push customers down the funnel.

107. Thumbtack - This home services platform grows their online audience through experimentation

Thumbtack gives customers more choices, so they can see which ones people are drawn to.
They conduct A/B testing and use data to drive decisions.
When making pricing changes, they also first measure customer reaction to see how to move forward.
Innovation and experimentation is central to their organisational culture.
Of course, tools are indispensable to their strategy.

108. Dribbble - The “LinkedIn for designers” is all about virality - and sustainability

Dribbble believes that growth is compounded, and rightfully so.
The company saw an increase in their users within 30 days through sheer networking and affiliation.
They use word of mouth to grow their base, spending almost nothing on marketing.
Given their audience, they make sure to maintain a brand personality and verbiage that resonates with creatives.
Adding user rewards to their system encourages interaction and involvement.

109. Squarespace - The website builder and creation company has a billion-dollar valuation

Squarespace grew to over two million paying customers within thirteen years.
The premise is simple: make website building easy, and that drew in many interested users.
While they are part of a crowded market, Squarespace managed to set itself apart by leaning into aesthetics.
The company built a team of like-minded individuals, which helped set the pace and growth of their brand.
They have released ads on Superbowl and well-known podcasts, increasing mainstream brand awareness further.

110. Headspace - The mental wellness app meant to promote mindfulness quickly turned into a multi-million dollar company

Headspace wanted to make meditation more accessible to the masses, so it did.
They used design to communicate relatability to their audience.
Though they largely use cartoon images, they make sure that even then, the characters are diverse in their colours, sizes, and lines.
Metaphors and ideas are used to communicate meaningfully to the audience.
A simple onboarding process and a great UI helped draw in users to what they had to offer.

111. Airtasker - This labour marketplace has a high-profit margins and huge potential for growth

Airtasker connects clients with labourers pretty easily, with a very sleek user interface.
The booking process is very straightforward and transparent, incurring trust from the users.
There are no upfront fees, and people can avail of services using three different models.
They refreshed their brand along the way , to make their identity more up-to-date.
Using traditional marketing channels such as ads are a go-to for further brand recognition.

112. Reddit - The social platform has 500 million active monthly users

Reddit knew what it set out to do, and they stayed on their lane.
Through the years, the company understood what customers wanted from them and their updates were always in tune with these.
Built upon community and anonymity, Reddit places a strong premium in relationships and privacy.
Moderators are given full control of subreddits, allowing niches to form unique cultures of their own.
At the end of the day, the platform is driven by the sense of belongingness and communication.

113. Invision - This design platform is a standout even for marketers

Invision is known for their approach to content creation.
They constantly release articles meant to pique the interest of users.
Tutorials and thought leadership from industry leaders are featured, and their audience are also directed towards Invision.
The company posts five times a week, on every weekday, which gives users something to look forward to.
Branching out to podcasts, ebooks, and workshops further increased the authority of the company.

114. Zendesk - This company went from $1 million to $1 billion in just over a decade

Zendesk was created by experts for experts, yet they grew because of their accessibility and simplicity.
Although the company faced detractors, they knew what they were building and stood by their vision.
They delved into enterprise deals to create a larger market for the brand.
As people want efficiency, they eventually launched an easy sign in for users, immediately simplifying the process and making them more attractive.
The company is known for being compliant to regulations and upholding privacy laws, which is especially important in that industry.

115. Eventbrite - The ticketing platform sold ten million shares during its initial public offering

Eventbrite has sold over $10 billion worth of tickets, and the numbers continue to grow year after year.
The company focuses on doing one thing and doing it well.
Being customer-driven lies at the heart of their values and builds their entire culture.
The more they engage with customers, the better their reputation and company growth is.
Their customer acquisition depends on a cycle where their customers market their platform for them.

116. Preply - This tutoring company grew 10x to be considered a hyper-growth startup

Preply has millions of active students and tutors from over 200 countries.
Through trial and failure, they managed to develop a system that works best for their company.
Data-driven decisions end up being major drivers for their growth.
By being efficient with their coding and strategy, they are able to implement features that have the most value with minimal opportunity cost.
One thing they learned as a team is that for each feature to be maximised, there needs to be an onboarding for users.

117. Product Hunt - The online community platform grew to 100,000 users through mindful relationship building

Product Hunt makes sure that it’s relational no matter what the topic of choice is.
They initially targeted their ideal audience and just grew through word of mouth from there.
By issuing invitations during the early release of the product, they built an exclusivity that eventually turned into community.
Knowing the different categorisations of their company helped immensely.
They also conduct personal meetups in different countries to strengthen their camaraderie.

118. Glassdoor - The review platform sees more than 17 million visits to its site every month

Glassdoor lets employees and companies leave reviews for each other, and thus is source to things a lot of people want to know.
It’s a place for social proof, taken to the next level.
70% of their traffic comes from organic searches and SERP positioning.
Providing data-driven assets and resources helped establish their brand at the beginning.
They have very strong backlinking to help with SEO, with hundreds of millions of backlinks.

119. TaskRabbit - This labour marketplace went raising from $120 million to $40 million

That’s not a good thing and just means that TaskRabbit failed to keep up with the market.
Though the company was an early pioneer in the gig economy, their bidding system ultimately became too liquid for users.
Because of how their process is, bidding and negotiations could take time, which is a disadvantage in the workplace.
The platform had no focus or niche and eventually became too generalised in their offerings.
Though they eventually pivoted their approach, it was already too late as competitors have gained leverage.

120. Superdry - This clothing retailer sees hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly revenue

Superdry has been around since the 1980s, but it only rose to fame in the early 200s after a celebrity was spotted wearing something from the brand.
Using an omni-channel marketing strategy to continue growing their market proved to be effective.
They also made bank-on mobile experiences for customers, knowing how much traffic it generated.
Most of their marketing efforts are focused on social media.
Although the company does campaigns for all demographics, they specifically lean into the younger market for relevance.

121. Snackpass - This food service app saw a 25% month-on-month growth throughout a year

Snackpass started out by catering to just one campus as a restaurant promotions app.
Then they launched gifting, which allowed users to send food and rewards to other users.
They built a college ambassador program which helped them spread like wildfire, allowing them to eventually host 10 campuses. Given its size at the time, the company achieved a $10 million GMV (which is pretty impressive for early-stage).
They’ve focused on creating a great product, which lead them to naturally getting referrals and WOM. They also have a really impressive roadmap of features to help them expand outside of just students and campuses (which they’ve already done quite well since this study was released).

122. Postmates - The company holds a 9% share of the entire food delivery industry in America

Postmates covers more than 100 areas, with collaborations with big brands such as Mcdonald’s and Starbucks.
Beyond that, they also have partnerships with small local businesses.
The service sets itself apart by allowing customers literally anything from anywhere in their area.
Their low fees are competitive and definitely comes as a selling point.
They also recently launched a pickup option in a bid for service expansion.

123. Paypal - The online payments service provider saw its stock price go up by 700% since its launch

Really enjoyed reading the growth journey at a high-level on PayPal over the years.
Though it looks like PayPal has already stagnated, their value continues to grow ( a market cap of over $300 billion ).
They know their product market fit and continue to lean into that. They keep building new features and products which are quickly adopted and used by millions and millions around the world.
As for their service, they know the needs of the people and just keep on doing what they do, providing consistency and fostering loyalty.
By acquiring companies like Venmo (way back in 2013) and acquiring more merchant/payments-based software, PayPal keeps on scaling their reach into new audiences.
Venmo alone and unlocking social payments has probably been one of the best decisions PayPal made for revenue growth.

124. Cash App - The fintech service launched in a crowded market yet still managed to acquire 30 million active users

I enjoyed reading both resources as was good to see where the product started as (first resource), and how hip-hop made them go viral (second resource).
Cash App just used the same old marketing strategies people have been doing for years, but they did it flawlessly.
The company hosted $500 giveaways through podcasts, immediately increasing user interest.
They also got hundreds of artists to actually drop the name of the brand in one of their songs.
Eventually, they started offering debit cards (really awesome read) - in both online and physical form, thereby expanding their service.
Through offering crypto and stock trading among other advancements, Cash App eventually stayed ahead of the game.

⚡ Frequently Asked Questions ⚡

What are the best growth hacking strategies (and your favourite tactics) used by some of the top startup companies that you love, which produced great results.

There’s a lot to learn from these top growth studies I’ve highlighted in this guide, everything from overall growth strategy and how companies have dominated their particular category to specific tactics for a certain channel or learning something that is so creative that it simply puts you in awe. The exciting part is that this guide uncovers potential opportunities for growth hacks and strategies you could implement for your brand, regardless of your business vertical or niche. For me personally, when writing this guide, there are six companies, studies and specific growth hacking strategies that I really enjoyed that stood out to me, which everyone can learn from (both results-wise and how well they’ve done with executing a great design/UX). Firstly, Morning Brew did (and continues to do) an amazing job with their referral program. Second, Veed, a social video editing platform, has done a superb job when it comes to scaling SEO. Third, Notion with their templates and onboarding. Fourth, Gong with their B2B SEO strategy and their LinkedIn engine (seriously amazing what they’ve achieved with LinkedIn organic). The fifth would have to be a combination of Calendly and Airtable, with both doing an amazing job in their respective use cases with product-led growth strategies. Then finally, the sixth study that has done a great job with multiple growth hacking strategies that I really love is by Duolingo. They’ve done a superb job when it comes to personalisation, gamification and in-app notifications. This is not an exhaustive list, as there are many others I could mention, but for me personally, these were the standouts.

Which is your favourite growth hacking case study that you recommend other SaaS businesses, founders, VCs, product managers, and growth hackers/marketers should read?

This is a hard one to truly pick just because so many of these growth hacking case studies are worth reading if you’re in SaaS. However, probably my favourite study that really goes into amazing detail, including detailed breakdowns, illustrations and a good amount of takeaways, would have to be the Airtable growth study by Sacra. Amazing for both product managers and growth hackers as it goes into detail about their product-led growth strategy, GTM analysis, upmarket analysis for them targeting new customers in the corporate/enterprise sector, and just awesome breakdowns to learn some great takeaways across their marketing and product. The level of detail is quite phenomenal and worth bookmarking for future reference, and that’s regardless of whether or not Airtable is in your space.

Which is your top recommended eCommerce growth marketing case study that you recommend founders and digital marketers need to devour?

Similar to the SaaS growth hacking case studies, I’ve talked about a few amazing eCommerce studies that are pretty damn awesome. Yet, if there’s one I absolutely recommend that you have to check out if you’re in the world of eCommerce, is the Lululemon study by Dejan Gasjek. The level of detail is truly awesome, with a great level of illustrations and references to check out, which support the key takeaways Dejan points out. This study itself does a great job in illuminating the overall marketing and strategy initiatives, tactics and trends that Lululemon implemented to beat Nike in a few categories. I definitely learnt a lot, and I also have a lot of respect for how Lululemon has done digital marketing, branding, and delivering great retail experiences to help them stand out and compete against one of the most recognisable brands in the world. Plus, I really love how they understood their customer segment and demographic.

What are some of the best low cost strategies, growth hacks and channels that you thought were clever from these startups that can apply to most SaaS companies and eCommerce brands?

How you define ‘low-cost’ does come down to the growth stage of your business and the resources you have available to properly execute and scale. Having said that, some of the best low-cost growth hacking strategies I’ve found to consistently work for SaaS or eCommerce businesses are - Content and SEO (and working out how to scale this process - just look at Veed’s study), referral programs (cost barely anything to setup aside from tools - look at Morning Brew’s and OnlyFans study), affiliate programs (costs around tools and engaging influencers - look at Clickfunnels and Semrush study), influencers (can be expensive but micro-influencers can be budget-friendly - see Koala study), TikTok (organic reach is pretty decent - check out Duolingo study), and co-branded marketing/partnerships (try to leverage off established brands and tap into audience pools - see Afterpay study).

Which are the best SaaS growth hacks and tactics that are worth concentrating on for businesses that are in a more competitive vertical/category?

For SaaS companies, the more consistent strategies, ‘growth hacks’, channels and initiatives that have consistently produced great results for clients and startups I work with, as well as what I’ve noticed over the years watching top SaaS companies (plus from what we can see with these case studies), is that SEO, Content marketing, outbound/outreach, and just good product-led growth strategy, typically delivers the best results. Each of these areas is pretty big in its own right, but for anyone in SaaS reading this, I can say for certain that each of the four areas is primarily what you should focus on when it comes to sustainable and scalable growth.

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100 Indian Startup Success Stories for the new age entrepreneur [2022 Updated]

Each entrepreneur puts in his 110% effort to make their startup successful. Nevertheless, that’s not the only factor in formulating the perfect recipe for Indian success stories. Successful startups in India are built on persistence, mentorships, disruptiveness & market requirements.

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India has established itself as one of the biggest startup hubs around the world. Every other day a new startup emerges from the ocean of opportunities to make it up to the list of startup success stories in India. However, we must remember that 90% of startups fail in their initial stages.

In this article, we’ll be talking about the successful startup stories in India that have been able to build their empire to become the emperors of their niche marketplace. From food delivery to ecommerce, these 12 inspiring startup stories will encourage you to be a part of startup success stories today.

Fact: According to reports by ET ( 1 ), around 86% of the men continue to dominate the startup space, with women entrepreneurs constituting 14% of the startup share.

100 Inspiring Successful Startup Success Stories in India

These 100 startups have been able to survive amidst the struggling economy of our nation to emerge as the top successful business stories in india:.

Bombay Shaving Company
Ecomm Express
Urban Ladder
PolicyBazaar.com
Housing.com
BankBazaar.com
EaseMyTrip.com
Bare Anatomy
Treebo Hotels
Clear Car Rental
KillerLaunch
AddressHealth
TravelTriangle
Bewakoof.com
GoaBrewing Co
Skillsmatic
Avaada Energy
Skyroot Aerospace

100 Inspiring Startup Stories in India:

Launch: 2013

Founders: Ritesh Agarwal

Industry: Hospitality

Estimated Valuation: $16 billion

Ritesh Agarwal, the founder of the homegrown unicorn Oyo, has established itself as one of the largest hotels and hospitality chains worldwide, with operations in over 800 cities across 80 countries, including India, the US, China, Europe , China, and more.

Airbnb was the biggest source of inspiration for Ritesh, who started on his journey of being one of the best entrepreneur success stories as a teenager.

Fact: Ritesh launched Oravel Stays in 2012, later relaunched as Oyo in 2013.

Visit their website here .

Launch: 2010

Founder: Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Industry: Fintech

Estimated Valuation: $15 billion

Paytm started as a digital wallet in its initial days but has transformed into a completely new payment platform. The fintech service has emerged as the top fintech company even after facing fierce early competition from brands like Freecharge.

Fact: Paytm’s user base grew from 125 million to 185 million three months post demonetization.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who was struggling to make ends meet with Rs 10 in his pocket, tasted victory the hard way, and today, he stands as the founder of the billion-dollar homegrown unicorn.

3. Flipkart

Launch: 2007

Founders: Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal

Industry: Ecommerce

Estimated Valuation: $24 billion

The Walmart acquired ecommerce company Flipkart stands as the largest ecommerce platform in India. Today, the ecommerce platform has expanded its business horizons by foraying into the video streaming industry with Flipkart Originals.

Fact: The first customer of Flipkart was a young engineer from Mahbubnagar, Telangana.

Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal started as an online bookstore that made around 20 successful shipments in its first year of functioning. It was not late before the platform started grabbing people’s attention that making it the top online retail market in history.

Launch: 2014

Founders: Nandan Reddy, Rahul Jaimini, & Sriharsha Majesty

Industry: Foodtech

Estimated Valuation: $3.3 billion

The viral food delivery startup has marked itself as one of the inspirational stories of success that started in its Bengaluru neighborhood, where six delivery executives were covered by only 25 partner restaurants.

Today, the food delivery firm has over 2.1lakh delivery executives across 300+ cities in India. Currently, the company processes over 1.4 million food orders daily across the country.

Note: Swiggy recently received funding of $1 billion from Naspers and Tencent Holdings

Visit their site here .

5. Ola Cabs

Founders: Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati

Industry: Mobility

Estimated Valuation: $6.2 billion

Ola Cabs, started by IIT-B graduates Bhavish and Ankit, has emerged as the most prominent Indian mobility service provider in the country. That offers its services across 50 cities in India and is evenly spread across countries, including the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

The idea of Ola, a cab aggregation startup, came from Bhavish’s terrible experience. At the same time, he was traveling from Bengaluru to Bandipur, where the driver of his cab stranded him in the middle of nowhere over a failed negotiation deal.

6. BookMyShow

Launch: 1999

Founders: Ashish Hemrajani, Parikshit Dar & Rajesh Balpande

Industry: Online Ticket Booking

Estimated Valuation: $1 billion

We see BookMyShow as a stable platform in the online ticket booking sector. It is considered as a one-stop platform to book online tickets , especially for movies.

Surprisingly, the upheaval of BookMyShow is one of the most motivational success stories that showcase the power of perseverance. The platform currently provides services across five countries with over 30 million customers.

Fact: The initial capital invested in BookMyShow was just Rs 25,000.

7. MakeMyTrip

Launch: 2000

Industry: Travel Agency

Estimated Valuation: $23.5 billion

MakeMyTrip is India’s leading online travel company that provides online services like travel packages, hotels, flights, rail, bus tickets , etc., to its clients. Founded by IIM-A alumni Deep Kalra, the success of MakeMyTrip has been recognized not only nationally but internationally as well. The company was even listed on NASDAQ.

Fact: MakeMyTrip was initially launched to cater to the needs of NRIs for their Indo-American trips back and forth.

Launch: 2008

Founders: Byju Raveendran, Divya Gokulnath

Industry: E-Learning

Estimated Valuation: $5 billion

Byju’s started as a mere e-learning platform but has grown to become one of India's most popular and highly trusted ed-tech brands.

The platform founded by Byju Raveendran & Divya Gokulnath provides online tutoring sessions to students ranging from study material of class VI to material about competitive exams like IAS, CAT , GRE, etc.

Fact: Byju has registered 35 million users on its learning app with 2.4 million paid subscribers.

9. BigBasket

Launch: 2011

Founders: Hari Menon, VS Sudhakar, V S Ramesh, Vipul Parekh, Abhinay Choudhari

Estimated Valuation: $1.2 billion

The online food and grocery buying platform allow users to buy products ranging from food supplies, grocery , beverages, personal care products, bakery supplies, etc. BigBasket has marked its presence in over 25 cities across India, with Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR , Hyderabad, Chennai , Pune, and Ahmedabad being the top cities.

Fact: Hari told a publication that despite being in the business for five years, their core team still works on a 7- to 12:30 am model.

Launch: 2012

Founder: Falguni Nayar

Industry: Ecommerce- Fashion & Beauty

Estimated Valuation: $750 million

The IIM-A alumnus Falguni Nayar left her 9 to 5 job at Kotak at 50 to pursue her dream of establishing Nykaa. The platform was launched to develop a one-stop platform of beauty products in India, making it the first beauty-exclusive ecommerce platform .

Fact: The online beauty & fashion platform opened its first offline store at T3 Terminal, IGI Airport, in November 2015.

Launch: 2015

Founder: Vikram Chopra

Industry: Automotive

Estimated Valuation: $242.6 million

Cars24 is the number 1 used car selling and buying platform in India that Vikram Chopra founded in 2015. Cars24 enables you to sell or buy second-hand cars hassle-free. The platform has over 100 offline stores pan India that enables a person to evaluate the value of his car with direct consultation from the Cars24 employees.

Fact: Cars24 launched an ad campaign #ByeByeDrive, which focussed on the sentimental value connected with ‘your car.’

12. PharmEasy

Founder: Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah, Mikhil Innani

Industry: Ecommerce- Healthcare

Estimated Annual Valuation: $64.7 million

PharmEasy is an online pharmaceuticals delivery platform that assists by delivering the required medicines & diagnostic test reports to its patients. It currently functions across eight cities in India, including Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Jaipur, Delhi, Noida, and Bangalore.

13. Instamojo

Founders: Sampad Swain, Aditya Sengupta, Akash Gehani, Harshad Sharma

Industry: Fintech Software and Services Industry

Estimated Valuation: $200 Million

Instamojo is an on-demand payment startup success stories that enable entrepreneurs to develop, run, and extend their online business. With transactions becoming a vital part of any industry, Instamojo is developing ‘Payment Links,’ allowing companies to get started with online payment collection quickly.

Instamojo also provides a suite of services and products that allow sellers to create an online store, uncover insights into their store behavior, and further scale up their successful startups in India.

Fact: Instamojo has a customer base of 1200000 plus startup stories.

14. Unacademy

Founders: Roman Saini, Gaurav Munjal, and Hemesh Singh

Industry: Education

Estimated Valuation: $510 Million

Unacademy is a digital site that provides material for big competitive exams and delivers brief tutorials in videos on various topics that can be viewed free of charge. It enables prospective students to promote self-learning better through startup stories.

Partnering with the best minds and offering classes on any topic in different languages is the dream of the startup success stories in Unacademy. The entire community will benefit from these classes.

15. Nykaa.com

Founders: Falguni Nayar

Industry: E-commerce

Estimated Valuation: $750 Million

Nykaa is among the successful startups in India website with a range of beauty and health items for men and women. They also offer comprehensive content, product reviews, beauty how-to videos, expert articles, and e-beauty magazines. Nykaa goods are authentically purchased directly from startup stories manufacturers to have distribution experience.

From the Sanskrit word ‘Nayaka,’ which means an actress or a spotlight, Nykaa’s primary purpose is to celebrate every woman's star and be her trusty companion.

Fact: Nykaa is an Indian startup success stories brand that sells beauty, wellness, and fashion products.

16. MobiKwik

Launch: 2009
Founders: Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku
Industry: Digital Wallets

Estimated Valuation: $1 Billion

MobiKwik is one of the successful startups in India by being the most significant mobile wallet for the redundancy of personal portfolios. Indian consumers can store money in a virtual wallet and then use it across channels (mobile, desktop, register, text, and IVR). It allows Indian consumers to pay utility bills and shop with registered traders in their wallets.

MobiKwik is an outstanding startup stories. Every penny in your pocket is well taken into consideration. Additional security settings on all mobile devices on which it operates can also be used.

Founders: Kabeer Biswas, Ankur Agarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha
Industry: Consumer Service
Estimated Valuation: $56.4 Million

Dunzo is a hyper-local startup stories delivery app that catches anything and everything in a city and delivers everything. Dunzo also runs a bike taxi service in Gurgaon and offers it in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon, Pune, Chennai, and Hyderabad.

These successful startups in India will change how you move things, shop, and never get to your house. The App links you to the closest seller that can order, receive, and deliver supplies from any shop or restaurant in the area.

Fact: The company's headquarters in Bangalore has over 1 million users.

18. RazorPay

Founders: Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur
Industry: Microcredit, Mobile payment, Payment system, and Financial Technology
Estimated Valuation: $450 Million

Razorpay is a platform for successful startups in India to accept, process, and disburse their product suite of payments. It provides access to all modes of payment, including credit card, debit card, net banking, UPI, and popular wallets, including Jiosaw, Mobikwik, Airtel Money, PayZapp, and Ola Money.

Razorpay is the only converged payment system company in India that enables your startup stories to accept, process, and disburse payments through its software suite.

Launch: 2018

Founders: Riteish malik
Industry: Collaboration, Coworking, and Real Estate
Estimated Valuation: $30 Million

Innov8 Coworking is a Y-Combinator-based startup success stories in India that support workspaces and community startups. They provide high-quality workspaces (managed private offices and coworking areas). The first Thought space in India is Innov8 Coworking, a successful startup in India.

They promote the participation of people from all walks of life, whether they be entrepreneurs, employees, freelancers, designers, or just willing to work in a highly competitive environment. They are presently based in Chennai, Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chandigarh, and throughout India.

Fact: The Innov8 Space In DLF Cyber Hub is a fully managed office space startup story with 500 seats.

Founders: Zishaan Hayath, Hemanth Goteti
Industry: Education Industry
Estimated Valuation: $38.3 Million

Toppr is among the first successful startups in India with post-school devices for personalizing learning. They support candidates in training for various colleges, boards, and rigorous exams.

They study student behavior and create adaptive paths with infinite combinations of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data. This ensures every student's unique and personalized learning experience of startup stories.

Note: The Toppr startup success stories app is free for its users except for some specific video lectures.

21. Bombay Shaving Company

Founders: Shantanu Deshpande, Raunak Munot, Deepu Panicker, and Rohit Jaiswal
Industry: Personal Service
Estimated Valuation: $494.2 Million

Bombay Shaving is a successful startup in India that focuses on developing a variety of shaving care, beard care, and skincare products. The startup stories brand specializes in men’s grooming, personal care, shampoo, beard care, skincare, and homemade soap.

Bombay Shaving Company started with the idea that shaving should be more than a worldly task for most men. Before, after, and after the shaving process, they installed a rubber device.

22. FirstCry

Founders: Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha
Industry: Retail Distributors
Estimated Valuation: $100 Million

FirstCry is a baby and toy online startup stories website. More than 20000 products are from more than 250 major brands, such as Mattel, Ben10, Pigeon, Funskool, Hotwheels, Nuby, Farlin, Medela, Pampers, Disney, Cinderella, Gerber, Zapak, Mee Mee, etc.

It is among the successful startups in India with a high-quality online shopping experience, fast, reliable delivery service, and prompt customer care. It offers the best products and brands at the best price.

Fact: FirstCry is Asia’s most extensive online shopping startup success story for kids and baby products.

Founders: Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah
Industry: Consumer Services
Estimated Valuation: $2 Billion

Zomato offers customers web and mobile startup stories for searching, ordering, and discovering restaurants. It provides global information and online ordering about restaurants.

Furthermore, Zomato provides food delivery, table reservations, and premium membership services for restaurants to allow users to search, rate, and review restaurants. This also enables users to create successful startups in India networks for trustworthy recommendations for fellow food lovers.

Fact: The number of monthly users on Zomato is around 20 Million.

24. CarDekho

Founders: Amit Jain
Industry: Automotive Industry
Estimated Valuation: $75 Million

CarDekho.com is India’s leading startup stories search engine for vehicles that allow consumers to purchase decent cars. This startup success stories website and application have great automobile content, including expert reviews of car brands and models that are in Indian hands, detailed information and prices, comparisons, and videos and pictures.

The organization has relations with several successful startups in India car suppliers, including more than 4000 car dealers and a variety of financial companies to promote the purchasing of cars.

Founders: Richa Kar

Industry: E-Commerce

Zivame is an online lingerie startup stories with hundreds of Indian designs. By type, brand, color, and size, customers can easily search the lingerie by identifying what to wear!

Zivame reflects its offline entrepreneur stories shopping experience with detailed pages of products, low-cost, quick shipping, and a customer-friendly trouble-free return policy. Whether you’re an Indian woman or a man, Zivame is about creating a shopping experience online startup success stories.

26. Ecom Express

Founders: K. Satyanarayana, Manju Dhawan, Sanjeev Saxena and A.Krishnan

Industry: Delivery/E-Commerce/Logistics

Ecom Express Private Limited is a startup stories that Indian Express Industry veterans promote. This startup's success stories have over 100 years of diverse and vibrant experience in the Indian Express Industry.

The entrepreneur stories are built to cater to the diverse needs of the rising electronic commerce market through leaps and bounds. There are no startup stories adequately prepared to serve the demands of this rapidly growing sector that are changing daily.

27. Urban Ladder

Founders: Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa

Estimated Valuation: $119 Million

Urban Ladder aims to create well-equipped, beautiful homes in Urban Indians for home solutions on startup stories. The exquisite range of furniture by Urban Ladder is soon becoming popular with shoppers in highway companies with over 1000 items and 25 categories, such as wardrobes, sofas, beds, and so on.

The furniture is carefully curated with design insights from the experienced design team of Urban Ladder and delivered by the proprietary logistics team of Urban Ladder startup success stories for safe door deliveries.

Fact: Urban Ladder is one of the best entrepreneur stories in this field, making furniture buying an enjoyable task.

28. PolicyBazaar.com

Founders: Alok Bansal, Avaneesh Nirjar, Manoj Sharma, Tarun Mathur, Yashish Dahiya

Industry: Auto Insurance/Commercial Insurance/Finance

PolicyBazaar operates an online life assurance startup stories that analyze financial products and compares them to general insurance. PolicyBazaar is a well-known startup success stories for purchasing people.

Its mobile insurance and comparison entrepreneur stories give the user information about products. Users can compare and analyze financial products, such as medical, life, travel, or motor insurance, ULIPs, and other investment products at low prices.

Fact: PolicyBazar accounts for almost 25% of life coverage in India and over 7% of the local health insurance startup stories in India.

29. JustDial

Launch: 1997

Founders: V.S. Mani

Industry: Information Services/Internet/Local/Search Engine

Estimated Valuation: $235 Million

JustDial provides users across India with local search startup stories on multiple platforms such as a website, a motive site, apps (Android, iOS, Windows), phones, and text (SMS). Just Dial Ltd is the number 1 startup success stories local search engine.

Justdial’s user entrepreneur stories have also begun ‘Search Plus.’ These apps are designed to make various daily tasks simple for users to perform and access through an app.

Note: On Android, iOS, Windows, and Blackberry platforms, Justdial Apps are available and can deliver mobile internet user-based startup stories on location.

30. Limeroad

Founders: Ankush Mehra, Manish Saksena, Prashant Malik, Suchi Mukherjee

Industry: E-Commerce/Fashion/Internet/Shopping

Estimated Valuation: $15 Million

Limeroad is a startup stories that brings you a love of products and gives you the possibility of creating your own space, taping into hidden talents, making your look and collections, and helping you to share this second opinion with friends in your creations.

We wanted to find LimeRoad as the digital startup success stories counterpart of the Grand Trunk Road in the 16th century. This road has changed the trade face of the Indian entrepreneur stories subcontinent.

31. Housing.com

Founders: Abhimanyu Dhamija, Abhishek Anand, Advitiya Sharma, Amrit Raj, Neeraj Bhunwal, Rahul Yadav, Ravish Naresh, Rishabh Agrawal, Sanat Ghosh, Saurabh Goyal, Snehil Buxy, Vaibhav Tolia

Industry: Internet/Online Portals/Real Estate

Estimated Valuation: $105 Million

Housing.com is the fastest-growing online real estate startup stories. They have created a unique property search startup success stories that fill the gaps left in the market due to simplifying the search for a home without fake listings and endless site visits.

Conducted by passionate troubleshooting professionals and backed by the world’s top investors, they are ready to be India’s most trusted entrepreneur stories.

Note: It can provide 3D models for each new project and deliver 360-degree views for each piece of land listed on Housing.com.

32. Epigamia

Founders: Ganesh Krishnamoorthy, Milap Shah, Rahul Jain, Rohan Mirchandani, Rohan Mirchandani, and Uday Thakker

Industry: Consumer/Fast-Moving Consumer Goods/Food and Beverage

Estimated Valuation: $13.9 Million

Epigamia is a premium natural Greek yogurt that promotes one cup of good living startup stories. They love the food at Epigamia and always find ways to get the best out of these startup success stories.

Greek yogurt was launched when Dahi was pressed for higher protein and infused with real fruit to stimulate taste buds. Since then, they have pushed the limits of what they can by creating goods that are tastier and better for their customers.

Note: Epigamia is an all-natural Greek yogurt entrepreneur stories that encourage one cup at a time, a safe way of life.

33. Bira 91

Founders: Ankur Jain

Industry: Brewing/Craft Beer/Food and Beverage/Wine And Spirits

Estimated Valuation: $246 Million

Bira 91 is a modern beer startup stories that provide the new world with flavorful beers. The startup success stories build an extensive product portfolio and push the global shift in products to more color and taste.

The company has five beers, Bira 91 White, Low Bitterness Wheat Beer, Bira 91 Blonde, Bira 91 Light, Bira 91 Low-Calorie Lunchtime, Strong, High Intensity, High Alcohol, and Bira 91 ‘The IPA,’ the first Indian IPA brewed and bottled. The company’s products have been designed to be of high-quality entrepreneur stories.

Fact: The 91 is derived from the country code you dial to India and are named initially after the Punjabi word for brother, Bira.

34. Vedantu

Founders: Anand Prakash, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena, Vamsi Krishna

Industry: EdTech/Education/Internet/Mobile/Mobile Apps/Tutoring

Estimated Valuation: $24 Million

Vedantu is an e-learning startup stories with an online platform for customized learning in real-time. It offers software startup success stories that connect tutors and students to one lesson for students online in real time.

Through Vedantu, they see how teaching and entrepreneur stories have been happening over the decades to reimagine and develop. Learning and education can change rapidly, and their goal in Vedantu is to speed up these changes.

Fact: The name ‘Vedantu’ also bears witness to its purpose.

Veda = ‘Knowledge’ and Tantu = Network.’

35. NoBroker

Founders: Akhil Gupta and Amit Agarwal

Industry: Commercial Real Estate/Mobile Apps/Property Management

NoBroker creates a peer-to-peer listing network for the efficiency of property transactions. The satellite allows a house to be bought, sold, and leased in the same place without charging brokerage fees.

NoBroker is a troubled real estate platform that allows the purchase/sale/rent of a house without paying any courier. NoBroker was started because we all felt it could not just be the way to find a new home to pay for reliable brokerage.

36. Chaayos

Founders: Nitin Saluja

Industry: Food and Beverage/Restaurants/Tea

Estimated Valuation: $40.8 Million

The chai adda, serving chai made freshly, is a contemporary interpretation of chaayos startup stories. Their focus is on helping your “Meri Wali Chai,” chai made precisely to the taste of their customers the minute they place their order, be it an adrak tulsi kadak chai or a paani Kam elaichi cinnamon chai.

With 12 add-ons startup success stories, its customers can make their chais in Chaayos in over 12,000 ways.

Note: Chaayos entrepreneur stories are currently present in Delhi, Mumbai, Noida, and Gurgaon.

37. BankBazaar.com

Founders: Adhil Shetty, Arjun Shetty, and Rati Shetty

Industry: E-Commerce/Finance/Insurance/Marketplace

Estimated Valuation: $280 Million

BankBazaar.com provides instantly customized online startup stories that offer instant rates on credit, mutual funds, and insurance products. You can search for these products on the Site or mobile app at once and compare and apply for them on this startup success story.

It has been designed with intelligent technology capabilities and integrated into the platform by more than 50 of India’s leading financial and insurance entrepreneur stories.

Fact: Consumers can track their application and troubleshoot problems through various channels such as the BankBazaar application, WhatsApp, Email, or Voice support.

38. Pee Safe

Founders: Srijana Bagaria and Vikas Bagaria

Industry: Fitness/Health Care/Wellness

Estimated Valuation: $20 Million

Pee Safe Toilet Seat Sanitizer startup stories Spray protects against germ-free and unsafe toiletries. It protects women against UTIs by spraying PEE SAFE on their toilets before use.

It should be a matter of no concern when you find a dirty public toilet while traveling or outside your house. Startup success stories Sprinkler on a seat ensures protection against illnesses such as UTI, gastroenteritis, or diarrhea.

Fact: PEE SAFE sanitizer entrepreneur stories are made of a rubbed IPA formulation which sanitizes the area within five seconds of use.

39. EaseMyTrip.com

Founders: Nishant Pitti, Rikant Pitti

Estimated Valuation: $211 Million

Easy Trip Planners Pvt. Ltd. (EaseMyTrip.com) is an online travel startup stories based in Patparganj Industrial Area, New Delhi. It covers flying tickets, reservations for hotels, rental cars, bus reservation,s and vacation packages of startup success stories.

The travel agency uses a Galileo-like computer booking system or sometimes books tickets directly from airlines. This entrepreneur stories offers both offline and online bookings for hotels and cars.

Fact: In places such as Bangkok, Singapore, Dubai, and the Maldives, the startup stories have their branches outside the world.

40. Bare Anatomy

Launch: 2019

Founders: Rohit Chawla and Sifat Khurana

Industry: Beauty/Health Care/Personal Health

Estimated Valuation: $1.15 Billion

Bare Anatomy is a women’s startup stories of next-gen personal care. Bare Anatomy is a perfect balance of heart and mind through innovative startup success stories supported by modern science, design, and creativity.

Starting with hair care products, including hair shampoos, hair oils, serums, and hairstylists, the entrepreneur stories begin with a view to revolutionizing the personal care and beauty industry.

Fact: ‘Bare’ means something basic and straightforward, without addition and ‘anatomy’ means studying something’s structure or internal functioning.

Founders: Aqib Mohammed and Shashwat Diesh

Industry: Consumer Goods

Estimated Valuation: $1 Million

Azah is a premium organic women’s wellness startup story. Azah sanitary pad entrepreneur stories resulted from wide-ranging research from thousands of Indian women with valuable feedback to help us create and develop a pad that solves their problems.

For example, 49 percent of women reported rash during their period in a survey of over 300 women. They have chosen to use organic cotton in their pads that do not irritate breathing.

Note: Azah Pads startup success stories are made of high-quality materials such as organic cotton and superabsorbent biodegradable products.

42. Milkbasket

Founders: Anant Goel, Anurag Jain, Ashish Goel, Ekwe Chiwundu Charles and Yatish Talavdia

Industry: Delivery Service/E-Commerce/Food and Beverage/Internet

Estimated Valuation: $ 50 Million

Milkbasket is a subscription micro delivery startup stories that every morning satisfies customer needs for daily dairy products and households. They deliver milk, bread, eggs, juices, butter, and other everyday items required daily, free of charge, right at the customer’s door.

The startup success stories were built on the unique Indian habit of delivering fresh milk daily at home. These entrepreneur stories are based in Haryana, India, but also provide to Hyderabad, Noida, Dwarka, and Bengaluru.

Launch: 2016

Founders: Sidharth Menda

Industry: Commercial Real Estate/Coworking/Property Management

Estimated Valuation: $350 Million

CoWrks is a first-class home-gathered coworking startup stories supplier built with love on Indian soil, creating spaces for startup success stories of every size.

Their sole objective is to bring together, fuel inspiration, and connect the largest community of working professionals worldwide. Its workspaces enable people to speak freely while they are doing some of the best work of their lives.

Note: With their standard and customized premium workspace solutions, CoWrks entrepreneur stories satisfy the various requirements of its members.

44. ZestMoney

Founders: Ashish Anantharaman, Lizzie Chapman, and Priya Sharma

Industry: Big Data/Consumer Lending/Financial Services/FinTech

Estimated Valuation: $56.9 Million

ZestMoney is a growing FinTech consumer lending startup story that use digital EMI without a credit card or a loan value. The startup success stories believe that everyone who holds a credit card or has a credit score should be able to pay at EMI.

ZestMoney was made available to millions of Indian consumers through mobile technology, digital banking, and AI. These entrepreneur stories receive support from world-leading digital finance investors such as PayU, Ribbit Capital, and Omidyar Networks.

Fact: ZestMoney is a real success stories where you can buy products on EMI from merchant partners without needing a credit card.

45. Treebo Hotels

Founders: Kadam Jeet Jain, Rahul Chaudhary, and Sidharth Gupta

Industry: Hospitality/Hotel/Internet

Estimated Valuation: $81.71 Million

Treebo Hotels are obsessed with offering affordable quality accommodation startup stories. The soothing shade of these trees has allowed many exciting discussions between fellow travelers.

They are too fond of conversation with their guests while serving them diligently in startup success stories. Treebo is the leading tech, cost-effective accommodation brand of Indian asset-light.

Fact: The name of Treebo entrepreneur stories is derived from the fig tree “Bo Tree,” which was used to illuminate Gautam Buddha.

Founders: Jiby Thomas and Pranay Chulet

Industry: Classifieds, E-Commerce, Internet, Marketplace, Rental Property

Estimated Valuation: $1.5 Billion

Quikr is online startup stories and free classifieds that help users sell, buy, rent, or discover anything across India.

Group members may come to their startup success stories and find an apartment and stay in, sell their old car, motorcycle, music device, tablet, or furniture, advertise their small entrepreneur stories, find a tuition class or take a break as a model or artist, attend a salsa party, or get an audience for a local show.

47. CureFit

Founders: Ankit Nagori and Mukesh Bansal

Industry: Apps/Fitness/Health Care/Wellness

Estimated Valuation: $575 Million

CureFit is a health and fitness startup stories that provide fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being to digital and offline experiences to make fitness fun and easy. CureFit startup success stories give training sessions a whole new meaning with a range of group training classes led by trainers.

It enjoys training, everyday food is healthy and tasteful, with yoga and meditation mental fitness accessible and without hassle for medicine and lifestyle.

Note: CureFit is a health and fitness entrepreneur stories that provide fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being to digital and offline experiences.

48. Grofers

Founders: Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar

Industry: Delivery/ E-Commerce/ E-Commerce Platforms/Grocery/Retail

Estimated Valuation: $535.5 Million

Grofers is an online startup stories with low prices that get products across categories such as grocery, beauty and wellness, household care, baby care, and pet care delivered to your door. Grofers startup success stories supply more than 3,000 products every day at prices lower than supermarkets.

Grofers entrepreneur stories currently operate throughout India in a total of 26 cities: Agra, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Mysore, Nagpur, Nashik, Pune, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara, and Visakhapatnam.

49. Xpressbees

Founders: Amitava Saha and Supam Maheshwari

Industry: Delivery Service/E-Commerce/Internet/Logistics/Supply Chain Management

Estimated Valuation: $1.35 Billion

Xpressbees is a logistics e-commerce startup stories that offer its partners reliable logistics solutions. They are the fastest growing supplier of end-to-end supply chain solutions for express logistics startup success stories in India.

The entrepreneur stories offer customers comprehensive last miles, reverse logistics, collection of payments, drop shipping, supplier management, cross-border services, compliance services, and tailored software solutions.

Fact: Xpressbees startup stories deliver 6,00,000 packages in a day.

50. Delhivery

Founders: Kapil Bharati, Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua and Suraj Saharan

Industry: E-Commerce/Logistics/Supply Chain Management

Delhivery supply chain services startup stories providing products and services to build confidence and improve consumer lives. Many engineers have started the company, including Bhavesh Manglani, Kapil Bharati, Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua, and Suraj Saharan.

It provides a complete suite of startup success stories such as last-mile delivery, third-party and transit warehousing, reverses logistics, payment collection, vendor-to-warehouse shipping, and more. The entrepreneur stories are backed by Times Internet Ltd, which purchased a minority interest in the firm in June last year.

51. ShareChat

Founders: Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, Bhanu Singh and Farid Ahsan

Industry: Internet/Mobile Apps/Social Network

Estimated Valuation: $460 Million

ShareChat is a social media startup stories in India. It offers only in Indian vernacular languages content consumption and sharing startup success stories to cover over 1.17 billion Indian wireless network users. It is provided in 15 Indian languages.

ShareChat has been designed for accessible content sharing from WhatsApp entrepreneur stories. It has been designed to work on even the worst links-” Wherever WhatsApp works-and, its “users initially sent mostly text updates.

Founders: Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee

Industry: E-Commerce/Food Delivery/Food Processing

Estimated Valuation: $525 Million

Rebel Foods Services (Faasos) is a food supply startup stories that disrupt how people order and get food on the phone. They serve around 10,000 customers every day who order through their mobile app, startup success stories, and this number is growing significantly every month.

An internet connection is all you need to run our mobile app or our website. You can check out “Eat Good, Eat Exciting” in 15 cities in India and over 200 locations. “There’s a wide selection of breakfast options, Indian food boxes, Chinese, South Indians, Biryani and Rice combos, wraps, etc.

Fact: The trick throughout the operation is how Faasos entrepreneur stories work with its many brands in a single ‘cloud kitchen.’

53. Pepperfry

Founders: Ambareesh Murty and Ashish Shah

Industry: E-Commerce/Furniture/Shopping

Estimated Valuation: $300 Million

Pepperfry is an online shopping startup stories, home, and lifestyle that sells products with cash on delivery facilities. The startup success stories aim to be a one-stop shop for clients looking to spice up their houses.

Pepperfry was founded by Ambareesh Murty and Ashish Shah in 2012 and is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Customers can sell their used furniture and, in return, get gift cards from Pepperfry entrepreneur stories that can be redeemed for any purchase made on Pepperfry.

54. Dream11

Founders: Bhavit Sheth and Harsh Jain

Industry: Fantasy Sports/Mobile/Sports

Estimated Valuation: $2.25 Billion

Dream11 is the biggest sports game in India, with over 30 million fantasy cricket, soccer, and kabaddi players and NBA players. Dream11 offers Indian sports fans startup stories to demonstrate their knowledge of sports.

From the next matches, fans can create their real-life team, score points based on their on-the-field performance, and compete against other fans' startup success stories. Dream11 helps sports supporters to increase their participation and get closer to the sport they love as a team owner, not just an audience.

Note: You can access Dream11 entrepreneur stories via the web/mobile site or the Android and iOS apps.

55. redBus.in

Founders: Ashish Kashyap and Phanindra Sama

Industry: Public Transportation/Ticketing/Transportation

Estimated Valuation: $138 Million

RedBus is an online bus ticketing startup story with a presence in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Colombia, and Peru, serving more than 5 million passengers startup success stories worldwide.

It simplifies worldwide travel for men. By creativity, RedBus specializes in finding alternatives. RedBus’ pride lies in the in-house talent of compelling, smart, passionate individual entrepreneur stories from different fields of expertise.

56. Mu Sigma

Launch: 2004

Founders: Dhiraj C Rajaram

Industry: Management consulting

Estimated Valuation: $1.5 billion

Mu Sigma’s startup stories go back to 2004 when it was launched. The Indian decision sciences company primarily offers its data analytics services. Founded by a former strategy consultant at Booz Alten Hamilton & PricewaterhouseCoopers Dhiraj Rajaram in 2004, Mu is an Indian privately owned firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Mu Sigma is among the fastest-growing companies globally and has raised a cumulative sum of 163m in its funding over the years.

Dhiraj Rajaram’s startup stories of beginning and running Mu Sigma is amongst the most inspiring startup stories of all time. While starting, Dhiraj had no idea that he could get into entrepreneurship. One reason why he entered the entrepreneurship segment is due to his unending urge to learn.

The three factors that made Dhiraj Rajaram’s startup stories successful are:

His unending urge to learn
To separate the noise from signals
The belief that innovation in business is nothing but a chance

You can visit Mu Sigma’s site here .

57. Clear Car Rental

Founders: Sachin Kate

Industry: Car Rental Services

Startup stories play a key role in helping inspire aspiring entrepreneurs by going through the hardships and challenges faced by other entrepreneurs to build a successful startup. Sachin Kate, the founder of Clear Car Rental, started his journey of hustling by selling newspapers at a young age since money was a big challenge for him.

Later, when he was in class 11th, he got a job as an office boy at a computer institute. Steadily, Sachin’s interest in computer science started increasing, and he pursued B Sc in Computers. He later worked on various website-building projects for the travel and hospitality industry.

He went on to launch the Clear Car Rental site in July 2010, when competitors like Meru Radio cab service had already settled in the market for a couple of years. Step by step, Clear Car Rental established its place in the market and offers its services across 210+ cities in India today. It has marked its place in providing unique local and outstation travel solutions to its users.

Check the Clear Car Rental site here .

Founders: Bhupinder Singh

Industry: Financial Services

Valuation : $187.5 m

InCred is an online credit provider for personal & business loans. It relies on data analytics to ease and accelerate lending and provides various financial products, including home loans, car 95 vehicle loans, education loans, and loans for SMEs. The startup stories of InCred talk about how Bhupinder Singh formed the company. Singh used to head the Corporate Finance division of Deutsche Bank before founding InCred.

The InCred platform initially received Rs 500-600 crore funding from Rajan Pai, MD & CEO at Manipal Group, and Gaurav Dalmia, Founder & Chairman at Landmark Holdings, IDFC PE, & Alpha Capital. The platform’s startup stories continued with InCred Finance’s acquiring InstaPaisa.com, a fintech platform, in 2015. Paragon Partners later invested Rs 25 crore in the company in March 2017.

Note: InCred aims to solve the credit problems of all its consumers with a focus on Consumer loans, Home loans, Education loans, and SME Lending.

Founders: Vidit Aatrey & Sanjeev Barnwal

Industry: Social e-commerce

Meesho is an Indian social e-commerce platform founded by IIT Delhi alumni Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal. The startup stories of Meesho are as unique as the concept of Meesho itself. Based in Bengaluru, Meesho enables small businesses and individuals to start their online stores via social channels like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Autrey and Barnwal initially created FashNear and later pivoted to Meesho, a short-term meri shop, in 2015 end.

The startup stories for Meesho started when Aatrey and Barnwal met Anu, a Bengaluru housewife running her offline boutique by her name. Anu was passionate about her business and used the most readily available technique to expand her business- WhatsApp. She would buy her inventory and stock from suppliers through WhatsApp, who would send her pictures if a new collection on WhatsApp. Meesho’s startup stories adopted the entire strategy to build their platform for local businesses.

Note: Meesho already has over one crore resellers earning over Rs 25k per month by reselling on its platform.

Check Meesho’s site here .

60. ShareChat

Founders: Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan

Industry: Social Media

ShareChat is an Indian social media platform developed by Mohalla Tech Private Limited and founded by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan. The social media platform has over 60 million monthly active users across 15 Indian languages.

While the startup stories for such platforms have a usual curve, ShareChat’s popularity increased massively in India after the ban of Chinese products and apps, including ShareChat’s biggest competitor- TikTok.

ShareChat is a regional content platform allowing Indians to use the power of the internet without going through the English language barrier. It aims at bringing local, relevant content to smartphone users across India in Indian languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam. The platform now has over 160 million registered users and is on its way to becoming the most preferred social media platform in India.

You can visit ShareChat here .

61. KillerLaunch

Founder: Heena Vinayak

Industry: Information Technology, Internet

Estimated Valuation:

KillerLaunch.com is a platform aimed at launching careers in top startups in India. It allows recruiters to list job/internship openings, which job-seekers can explore and use to submit their applications.

As a user, you can use their perfectly designed filters to find a job you’ve looking for accurately. You can set filters according to the salary/stipend you wish to work for.

Fact: KillerLaunch allows you to work with leading startups in India. Find a job or an internship with the startup you’ve been dreaming of!

As long as you are looking for startup jobs, KillerLaunch will never fail you. Either find or start your own, KillerLaunch has it all!

62. Wow! Momo

Founders: Sagar J. Daryani, Binod K. Homgai

Industry: Food and beverage/ Fast food restaurant

Estimated Valuation: $120 million

Wow! Momo, India’s fastest growing momo chain started by classmates Sagar and Binod, began selling steamed momos from their six by six kiosk in Springdale Spencer in 2008. The food chain started from a garage in Kolkata, India.

Wow! Momo, an Indian chain of fast-food restaurants, started with a meager investment of Rs. 30,000 INR to Rs.860 Crore INR.

The company has expanded to Kolkata, Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai, Lucknow, Delhi, Bengaluru, Cuttack, Puri, Kochi, Bhubaneshwar, and Kanpur. Pam-fried momos became their USP. Serving delicious momos is their agenda.

Fact: Wow! Momo offers 16 different varieties of momos for vegetarians and non-vegetarians. For vegetarians, Wow! Momo offerings include corn and cheese, among others. They offer chocolate momos as well!

63. AddressHealth

Founders: Anand Laxman, Anoop Radhakrishnan

Industry: Healthcare

Estimated Valuation: $1.5 Million

AddressHealth is India’s first one-stop-shop pediatric primary healthcare service provider. The company is a pioneer in this field. Today, the company became the largest school health provider with its School Health program. Also, they run several Child Speciality Clinics. Recently, the company completed ten years of excellent healthcare service.

However, it is conducting several projects to complete medical examinations of students from head to toe.

Fact: Grand College Canada awards AdressHealth as “The Stars in Global Health-7”.

64. Flyrobe

Founders: Shreya Mishra, Pranay Surana, Tushar Saxena

Industry: Fashion

Estimated Valuation: $2 million

Flyrobe is an on-demand wardrobe service that lets consumers rent clothes at a fraction of the retail price. Its service includes three-hour local deliveries and pickups. Flyrobe has been endorsed by 20 Bollywood celebrities on social media, which has helped to remove the stigma of used clothing.

The startup has raised $7 million from IDG Ventures, Sequoia Capital , and several angel investors.

Fact: Flyrobe also offers a brand new men’s collection, including jackets from international; brands, suits, and tuxedos traditional kurta pajamas and sherwanis sets from the best Indian designers.

65. Jumbotail

Founders: Ashish Jhina

Industry: Marketplace and business

Estimated Valuation: $12.7 million

Jumbotail was founded in 2015 by Standford University batchmates Karthik Venkateswaran and Ashish Jhina. Jumbotail connects Kirana stores with brands and producers via its marketplace. It claims to serve 30,00 Kirana stores via its full-stack e-commerce model consisting of its B2B marketplace platform, warehouses, last-mile delivery supply chain network, and a fintech platform for payment credit solutions to Kirana store owners.

66. DocTalk

Founders: Krishna Chaitanya Aluru, Akshat Goenka, Vamsee Chamakura

Estimated Valuation: $5 million

DocTalk is a doctor-patient engagement platform. This company mainly gifts doctors to develop better relationships with their patients, which causes a better quality of care.

67. SmallCase

Founders: Vasanth Kamath, Rohan Gupta, Anugrah Shrivastava

Industry: Stocks and exchange-traded funds

Estimated Valuation: $8 million

This fast-growing business in India is bringing a simplified investing approach to the growing middle class in India. In retrospect, they are very similar to other investment companies growing fast, such as Acrons and Stash.

Fact: The Bengaluru-based startup provides users with a professionally built basket of stocks called ‘small cases,’ allowing them to invest in portfolios of broker-partner stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)

68. InstaVans

Founders: Vinay Goyal

Industry: Transport and Vehicle

Estimated Valuation: $2 million

InstaVans model transforms the conventional model of shippers spending hours calling up various truck operators to find trucks with free capacity while truckers struggle to market their availability. By offering a model that shippers an on-demand platform for shippers and truckers alike.

Fact: Instavan’s addressable market is estimated at $15 billion, or about Rs 97,000 crore a year, with an average cost of Rs 1,800 per trip. More than two million registered small trucks transport more than 1.5 million tonnes of goods.

Founders: Prashant Tandon

Industry: Pharmacy

Estimated Valuation: $36 million

1mg is an online pharmacy network and generic medicine engine. It allows users to find information about medicines prescribed by doctors and buy them. Users can discover drugs by categories under ailments, classes, companies, and brands. Its mission is to make healthcare accessible, understandable, and affordable for a billion Indians.

Founders: Anupam Agarwal, Karan Jain

Industry: Car rental

Estimated Valuation: $23.3 million

Revv is an Indian car-rental startup that offers multiple options to meet all your self-drive needs. The company was founded in 2015 and currently operates in 11 cities in India: Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi NCR, Chandigarh , Jaipur, Vizag, Mysore, and Coimbatore.

To date, Revv has a fleet of around 1,000 vehicles and claims to have served around 300,000 users. It has its main office located in Gurgaon, India.

71. TravelTriangle

Founders: Sankalp Agarwal, Sanchit Garg, Prabhat Gupta

Industry: Travel and Tourism

Estimated Valuation: $34.9 Million

TravelTriangle is an exciting new way of buying trips online in India. One of India’s best-growing companies, TravelTriangle, promotes local travel agents and gets you the best flights from them. They have created a marketplace where travelers can interact with local travel agents. That same marketplace also empowers local travel agents to compete online with big fishes…

Fact: According to the VCCEdge report, Venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funds invested $115.69 million across 13 deals in the travel segment in 2014. In 2013, there were nine transactions of $8.2 million.

72. BiggBang

Launch: 2020

Founder: Applancer Services Pvt Ltd

Industry: Coworking spaces and office spaces

Estimated Annual Valuation:

BiggBang provides perfect coworking spaces and office spaces for rent. The coworking space is located in three cities: Chandigarh, Mohali, and Panchkula. BiggBang has many top-level facilities, which make it one of the best coworking spaces to work!

Recently BiggBang has also launched a young startup program to provide free spaces to startups in return for a small share in their revenue.

BiggBang also provides hot-desking facilities and private office spaces.

Visit their website here.

73. Lenskart

Founder: Peyush Bansal

Industry: Opticals, eyewear retail chain

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 310.9 crore

Lenskart was founded by Peyush Bansal, who launched Lenskart in 2010, and Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi in 2010. Peyush, a former Microsoft employee, also founded Valyoo Technologies, a parent company of Lenskart.

Lenskart offers more than 5,000 styles of frames and 45 unique types of high-quality lenses. The latest eyewear trends are an homage to a group of interior designers and styles that keep tabs on the latest trends.

Founder: Naveen Tewari

Industry: Mobile Ad network

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 384.21 crore

The founder and CEO of InMobi mobile advertising network giant, Naveen Tewari, has come a long way. Naveen is a trained engineer, studied at Harvard Business School, and worked for McKinsey’s information company.

Today, InMobi can strike a chord with itself and call itself a global company. Besides India, it has offices and operations in Australia, Taiwan, the US, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Germany, China, and more. Although it only launched in China in late 2011, Naveen described InMobi as “one of China’s largest advertising networks.”

75. Zerodha

Founder: Nitin Kamath

Industry: Stock brokerage company

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 850 crores

The founder of Zerodha, “Nithin Kamath,” before founding Zerodha, worked at the call center at night and traded in the morning hours. At the age of 17, he was introduced to the stock market by his friend and has since started trading.

The firm did not spend money on advertising or marketing its company. They do not make ads.

They make money by charging a lump sum of Rs. Twenty futures, options, and internal trade. In contrast, some competitors charge more than this based on the percentage of sales sold. Its business model in which it operates is ‘low margin – high volume’.

76. Gradeup

Founder: Shobhit Bhatnagar, Vibhu Bhushan, and Sanjeev Kumar

Industry: The education sector

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 30 crore

Split distance is a freemium platform. Anyone preparing for the competitive exams can download the app and visit the website to prepare for the appropriate exams – they can join the community – share with peers and mentors to answer their doubts, and access the preparation like previous years' papers, etc.

Additionally, some paid services on the platform such as)) Green card – Purchase Test series and b) Classroom – Live classrooms, aspirants who can add extra value to their preparation.

77. OkCredit

Launch: 2017

Founder: Aditya Prasad

Industry: Online payment merchant

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 654.4 million

OkCredit is a solution based on small business owners and their customers to record credit/payment transactions nationwide. Using a computer, OkCredit reduces the merchant’s burden of keeping and counting paper accounts. It also allows them to send group notifications to customers during delays or missed payments.

78. NinjaCart

Founder: Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Vasudevan Chinnathambi, Kartheeswaran KK, Ashutosh Vikram

Industry: Fresh farm supply chain

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 66.27 crore

Ninjacart was discovered in 2015 as a B2C hyperlocal food delivery organization. Their main goal is to help retailers take their items online and deliver quality food to consumers less than 60 minutes from ordering scales. This was still a novel concept back then.

Initially, about 7,000 farmers were on its platform, but on average, 2,000 transactions every month. The production arrives daily between 4.00 pm and 6.00 pm, with some farmers traveling up to 400 km to make the drop.

79. Bewakoof.com

Founder: Prabhkiran Singh

Industry: Ecommerce clothing

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 400 crore

Bewakoof is a fashion brand that lives to create creative and high-quality clothing for a fashionable, modern Indian. Bewakoof was introduced to the goal of creating impact by innovation, honesty, and thinking.

Bewakoof.com started with an investment of Rs 30,000 and received a seed subsidy after six months of work.

80. GoaBrewing Co.

Founder: Suraj Shenai

Industry: Brewery, beverages

Estimated Annual Valuation: Rs. 125 crore

From choosing the most sophisticated styles to presenting them to the entire quirkier packaging, they had my heart from the moment I set my eyes on the Eight Finger Eddie IPA. Pineapple Saison follows next, and to me, these two are bees made with great skill. Sensitivity is only available in Goa at the moment. The good – is there is no need to finish the beach kings on the beach.

81. BulkMRO

Founders: Devang Shah, Gaurang Shah

Estimated Valuation: $12.7mn/year

Bulk MRO is a Mumbai-based startup that provides a one-stop-shop industrial product solution to the marketplace. This business has a B2B model. Launched in 2015, it has already raised revenue of 25 crores from seed funding.

Devang claims that Bulk MRO acts as a ‘big seller’ to large corporate customers and controls the entire MRO pool or indirect retailers through their platform. It eliminates several customer inefficiencies, including decreased order durability, GST compliance, and malfunction.

Founders: Naveen Tewari

Industry: AI

Glance, a major marketing component of InMobi Group, uses AI to provide personal information to its users. The service replaces the blank screen with relevant local news, news, and unusual games. Late last year, InMobi acquired Roposo, a Gurgaon startup, which enabled it to launch short-form videos on the platform. Google also invests in Roposo.

It has 33 million active users working every month. The users can spend about 20 minutes consuming content in many forms in more than ten languages in the app daily.

Founders: Vijay Arisetty

Industry: Mobile application

Estimated Valuation: $170 million

MyGate has allowed users to opt out of data-sharing agreements with applications such as Swiggy and Dunzo with the “pre-approval” of delivery staff. The app no longer authorizes visitors to bring their cell phone numbers to the gate if they are permitted to enter.

MyGate has voluntarily implemented the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards, considered the most comprehensive data privacy laws. Compliance with the GDPR is not required for companies operating within India.

Founders: Amit Gupta

Industry: E-vehicles

Estimated Valuation: $14million

Yulu was founded to tackle traffic congestion and its product – the air pollution it causes. “One-third of the air pollution in the city is caused by cars. In Yulu, our aim is not only to reduce traffic congestion but also to do something about road pollution,” said Amit Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO of Yulu Bicycles.

85. CleverTap

Founders: Suresh Kondamudi

Estimated Valuation: $35million

CleverTap has served over 8,000 customers globally. It helps the websites to grow and maintain their users for a lifetime by several. Engaging and retention programs are offered by various means.

Many renowned companies like Vodafone, Star, Sony, Domino’s Pizza, Gojek, Cleartrip, and BookMyShow have been known to use CleverTap to engage and retain customers on several sites. The startup has opened its headquarters in Singapore and planning to expand further.

Founders: Akshay Joshi

Industry: Environmental Intelligence

Estimated Valuation: $6 billion

Ambee is an Indian-based startup that provides real-time environmental status regarding the weather, humidity, temperature, UV, and all such parameters. It provides all such information to the businesses that work depending on weather parameters like the agricultural sector.

According to WHO, there should be a weather sensor every square kilometer to measure the weather accurately, but that can’t be seen in India. Hence the company has come up to help such startups by providing open data sources.

87. Doubtnut

Founders: Aditya Shankar

Industry: Educational app

Estimated Valuation: $ 50 million

Doubnut is an online platform to help students with their academic doubts and classes. Students facing any problem while solving any question have .to upload the photograph of their problem simply, and they will get the answer to their doubts within 10 seconds with a full video explanation.

88. Skillsmatic

Founders: Dhvanil Sheth

Estimated Valuation: Rs. 60 crore

Skillsmatic develops new educational products to build basic skills in young children aged 3 to 9 through fun learning techniques. The firm delivers products such as writing and erasing work mats, educational games, and STEM toys. Their main aim is to help the kids learn and apply key concepts throughout the play. It is one of the 17th launches from Surge’s first team.

Founders: Krishna Kumar

Industry: Agribusiness

CropIn has merged the agriculture sector with technology and generates AI-based data to provide SaaS solutions to various Agri-business worldwide.

Using the latest AI, Machine Learning, and Satellite Imaging, CropIn creates a network of all these stakeholders, empowering clients such as banks, insurance companies, government, development agencies, agricultural companies, agricultural enterprises, farm machinery companies, food processors, and vendors to analyze and interpret data to get real-time insights on static plants.

90. Avaada Energy

Founders: Vineet Mittal

Industry: Energy production

Estimated Valuation: USD 15 million

Avaada Energy is a startup with an independent energy producer (IPP) for renewable energy projects. It is a Mumbai-based firm and a green energy company that promotes sustainable energy through its use and open access solutions in the solar, wind, roof, and hybrid markets. The company works with various businesses, supporting them in realizing business objectives through environmental sustainability programs and social commitments, producing beneficial results.

Founders: Sachin Bhatia

Industry: Shopping Network

BulBul is an online shopping app, and customers can use the video feature for shopping purposes. It is based in Gurugram and has a motive to make online shopping convenient and social-friendly by helping the customers make shopping easy.

The customers don’t have to read the product description and can simply see the video of it in several languages. It serves to help the women of the country with easy and convenient shopping.

92. Skyroot Aerospace

Founders: Pawan Kumar Chandana

Industry: Aeronautics

Estimated Valuation: $15 million

Skyroot aerospace is an India-based startup that has successfully launched its missile in the sky. It has now become the first private company to build an indigenous rocket engine on its own!

The Hyderabad-based startup aims to make India independent by building homemade missiles. It was founded by two former ISRO scientists, Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka. It also builds small satellite launch vehicles.

93. Hansel.io

Founders: Varun Ramamurthy Dinakar

Industry: Deep tech

Estimated Valuation: $5.4million

Hansel.io is a B2B startup that helps resolve issue like app hanging without updating the app. It provides a convenient speed for an app to work to have a seamlessly fast experience.

The developers can fix any crash using various advanced tools like hotfix and diagnosis from a single point.

94. Streak AI

Founders: Harsha M

Estimated Valuation: $1.3 million

Now traders can create algorithms with Streak AI to generate trading signals without coding! Streak AI has claimed to be one of the few sites worldwide where users can generate unique algorithms to create trading signals. Hence buying and selling stocks have become easy with Streak AI!

95. Terraview

Founders: Prateek M Srivastava

Industry: Image processing

Estimated Valuation: $815,000

A SaaS-based startup, Terraview helps by providing drones and AI-based image-building solutions that help maintain vineyards across the country.

Terraview’s advanced tools help farmers to detect and analyze areas of canopy cover, soil hydration, weather prognosis, pruning, and detection of bacteria and fungus, and pest infestations, which can’t be done normally without such tools.

Founders: Nikhil Tripathi

Industry: B2B agriculture

Estimated Valuation: $200billion

Bijak is a B2B agribusiness platform that offers buyers and sellers better prices, more operating costs, and better performance. The Gurgaon-based company ensures immediate loan disbursement, reduces costs, eliminates waste of resources and a convenient payment channel, and operates as a bookkeeping app.

Bijak aims to bring accountability and transparency to agricultural prices through a buyer/seller rating system based on real-time transaction data. Speaker users can use those standards to identify and trade with trusted partners.

Founders: Heshan Fernando

Estimated Valuation: Not disclosed.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone has been stuck in their homes. This has made hospital consultations for people a bit difficult as people are hesitant to visit hospitals due to fear of catching the virus. oDoc is a new telemedicine app that conveniently helps people consult a doctor over audio, video, or texts in their homes’ safe environment.

Download the oDoc app and consult the doctor about your health problems.

98. Epigamia

Founders: Rohan Mirchandani

Industry: Food; Greek-yogurt

Estimated Valuation: INR 110 Crore

Who doesn’t loves yogurt? Epigamia was launched in 2008, and since then, the startup has acted as a game-changer for the industry. The firm has launched yogurt in many flavors and variants, ensuring everyone falls in love with it!

The Mumbai-based firm has also been endorsed by popular celebrities like Deepika Padukone and has generated many funds in several rounds.

99. Nemocare

Founders: Pratyusha Pareddy

Estimated Valuation: $1 million

NemoCare is a startup with the main motive to prevent infant and maternal mortality due to various underlying conditions. From a planned blueprint, device, and performance, NemoCare smart baby monitor has embedded technology in its pocket and is supported by a team of user experience and designers of a user interface (UX / UI), software developers, and embedded engineers.

This device also provides comfort in the form of haptic vibrations in a child’s foot, as a first step towards controlling stress when an apneic episode is detected, assisting physicians in emergency emergencies.

Founders: Srinivas (Vasu) Sriramdas

Industry: Online training

Estimated Valuation: $4billion

Edyst helps college students and working professionals by providing them training via online video classes. The site currently has two popular and high-demand courses that ensure selection in MNCs like TCS and Infosys.

The other courses aim to help the student for companies like Amazon and Uber that can help them make at least $126 million a month.

FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions about Startup Success Stories

1. do you need to study business to have startup success stories.

No, you do not need to study business as a subject to build a successful startup. However, that doesn’t mean you can start a business without any knowledge of the market. While starting a startup, it is imperative to study the market trends to build strong startup success stories .

2. Is starting a YouTube channel a startup?

If this question had been asked ten years ago, some would have laughed. But today, with advancing technology and digitalization, many individuals are starting YouTube channels with the only aim of earning money. Yes, a YouTube channel can be considered as a startup, especially one started by internet entrepreneurs. YouTube channels with successful startup stories are usually the ones that function as a whole company and produce content for their YouTube channel .

3. Are their startup success stories about YouTube channels?

Many YouTubers have contributed to building a strong digital community in our countries. Their YouTube channels are startup success stories for many and have been able to accumulate a following of millions.

Some of the startup success stories of YouTube channels are of:

BB Ki Vines
Sandeep Maheshwari
Technical Guruji
Mostly Sane
Flying Beast
Mumbiker Nikhil

4. How does yourstory contribute to making your startup stories?

Successful startup stories are not made in a day. They are yourstory of the highs and lows you faced in your entrepreneurial journey that make startup success stories. These are the startup success stories of inspiring entrepreneurs who paved the way of innovation and dreams to build an empire.

Startups are taking over the world with their innovation and improved convenience, and these 12 Indian startups have succeeded in the cut-throat competition in the market amongst different brands. The greatest lesson from these startup success stories is to have the strong willpower to give up.

BurgerGPT: Redefining the Burger Experience in India with Founder Pavas Ahuja

Sharechat: india's own social media giant - a comprehensive walkthrough, prescription for disruption: practo's controversial encounter with india's healthcare sector, charging up a revolution: ather energy - the indian startup that's electrifying the two-wheeler industry, us military advances ai assistant for special operations, google faces pressure to combat nonconsensual images, apple intelligence vs. android’s hybrid ai, hebbia raises nearly $100m series b for ai-powered document search.

Carmine Mastropierro

5 startup marketing case studies and main takeaways.

I hope you enjoy my blog post. If you need self-development coaching and a community, join my academy .

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The highest survival rate for businesses at the five-year mark is 51.3%.

That means nearly half sink like the Titanic.

How do you avoid your startup being Jack on the board during the end scene?

By using the right marketing strategies.

I’m a firm believer that one of the best ways to learn is by replicating other’s success and putting a twist on it.

So, without further ado, here are five startup marketing case studies to learn from:

1. AirBnB’s guerrilla outreach

Some times you need to get your hands dirty.

You can’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and get personal with customers.

That was AirBnB’s philosophy when they first launched.

In fact, here’s what they did…

AirBnB identified listings on Craigslist. Yes, Craigslist.

The place to get free stuff and find weird people for a weekend band.

They reached out to these individuals with the following cold email :

It doesn’t get simpler than that, huh?

They displayed a value proposition by explaining the individual could be making hundreds of dollars more from their listing if they joined AirBnB.

The company practically offered free money .

How can a startup replicate this?

Step 1: Identify where customers hang out

While you could attract leads by using inbound marketing, nothing is faster than going directly to them .

This starts with understanding customers like the back of your hand.

AirBnB understood that individuals with rental properties often listed them on websites like Craigslist. So, that’s where they went.

Where does your customer base spend time?

Is it LinkedIn?

Is it conferences?

Step 2: Have something of value to give

AirBnB offered people a free platform to drive more sales to their rental listings.

What can you offer? A demo? A consultation?

Deliver as much free value up front and the sales will take care of itself.

That’s because getting someone’s foot in the door is the first step of creating an effective funnel.

That brings me to my next point.

Step 3: Engineer the perfect funnel

The largest growth will come from having a step-by-step funnel in place.

This maps out every interaction and steps a user takes from finding a startup for the first time to converting.

Once you have found where ideal customers are spending time, reach out to them with an offer they can’t refuse.

(Yes, just like The Godfather.)

Here’s a pitch I received recently, for illustration:

The proposal is simple: I mention their tool and I receive a $149/month software plan for free. Don’t mind if I do. 🙂

Granted, I’d recommend the offer require little to no needed effort by the user to maximize conversions .

Once someone takes the first step, though, it’s time to up-sell.

Pitch related products, services, or plans. They’re already invested by joining your platform, hopping on a call, etc.

Follow up on a regular basis, too.

Most sales reps quit too early and miss out on money.

In sum, a simple but effective funnel a startup can use looks like this:

The initial contact is made and a targeted offer is presented.
Up-sells are delivered in the back end through email marketing or directly through a startup’s platform.
Follow-ups are sent to convert any leads who weren’t ready initially.

Read my SaaS marketing funnel guide to learn more.

2. PayPal paid users to sign up

Shout out to Elon Musk.

PayPal is one of the most successful startups of all time.

Did you know that they went from one million users to five million in the matter of a few months during the year 2000?

How did they do it?

They gave everyone $20 to sign up and an extra $20 for referrals.

This is a classic example of offering an incentive to get users into a platform. Think of it as startup inbound marketing .

Sure, they lose $20 per user, but they will make that back on fees.

How can your startup take a similar approach?

Here are a few ideas:

Give users ad spend, credits, or money

Have you ever been offered one of those free Google Ad vouchers before?

It’s the same approach as PayPal.

Your startup can do the same thing, too.

This will change depending on your exact platform.

Nonetheless, consider giving users free ad spend, credits, or another item.

This will encourage them to register for the platform and gets their foot in the door.

You can then up-sell them on paid plans or other services.

Look how Bluehost does this with a free domain and SSL:

Adobe is another fantastic example as they offer free trials for their software.

However, it only lasts seven days.

Then you have to pay.

Once someone tries out the tool and sees how great it is, they’ll be more willing to buy it in full.

Pay for referrals

You see this all of the time.

It’s extremely effective.

Many platforms will pay users to refer other people as they know that potential customers are worth much more.

Let’s imagine that your customer’s average lifetime value is $500.

If you paid $50 for a referral, you’d be generating 10x ROI!

I recommend using the free referral software GrowSurf . Sign up for a free account to begin.

This will take you to the following setup page where you first page the type of reward.

Next, add the reward its details.

Design the appearance of the referral program in the next section.

GrowSurf will then ask you to confirm and edit your email settings.

Feel free to add integrations on the “Options” page and choose an installation method after this.

Promote the referral program on your website, social media, and in the backend of your funnel.

Whether you’re banking or using a marketing SaaS product, they all have one annoying similarity: fees .

It eats away at revenue and is like a little mosquito that never goes away.

So, do users a favor.

Wave certain fees and market it as a cost-savings proposition.

The investing platform Wealthsimple is a prime example:

There are no account or balance fees and say they say, “you keep more money in your pocket.”

3. Duolingo grew through building communities

Duolingo is an online learning platform. They have over 50 million users after launching two and a half years ago.

That’s lightning quick.

They have a team of 40 and also launched 39 language courses in the past year alone.

How are they moving so fast?

Well, it didn’t happen overnight.

Firstly, they started a small community that was passionate about learning languages.

They allowed contributors to edit courses and share their knowledge.

Those individuals would then share courses they contributed to and talk about Duolingo, creating a snowball effect.

Duolingo engineered a genius system, too.

Users can come in and translate content sentence-by-sentence which creates more content .

Consider making a private Facebook group, mastermind, or similar community-feeling within your startup to leverage this strategy.

4. Slack made a damn good product

Imagine spending close to nothing and becoming one of the most successful SaaS products in history.

Enter Slack .

I’m sure your company already uses it. It’s that popular .

For those unaware, Slack is a collaboration and communication platform.

It helps businesses improve productivity, project management, and keeping in touch while in fast-paced business environments.

We’ve all dealt with annoying email chains, losing files, and having to go months back to conversations to retrieve files.

Not with Slack .

They solved all of that and it’s how they grew.

That’s right. No fancy tricks or big budget campaigns.

They developed such a wicked product that people used it; they shared it.

It went viral .

The platform is used by over 12 million people every day and expected to earn $4.22 billion in revenue by 2025.

Here’s a cool video from Eric Siu on how Slack does their marketing to learn more:

5. Moz put their money where their mouth is

An SEO company killing it at SEO .

Ironic, isn’t it?

Actually, it’s the picture-perfect strategy.

You instantly prove to potential customers that you clearly know your stuff.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t be one of the largest SEO companies and all over the first page of Google.

But let me step back for a second.

Moz was founded by a wonderful gentleman named Rand Fishkin.

Rand built Moz originally as a consulting company and drove traffic primarily through blogging and SEO.

The company does tens of millions of dollars in revenue and it’s all thanks to laying the foundation with a blog .

Don’t miss out on hearing him talk about it on this LeadQuizzes podcast episode:

Furthermore, I challenge you to drink your own champagne .

A.K.A use your own platform or service to grow and acquire customers.

Another example is yours truly. 🙂

I use content marketing , copywriting , and SEO to land clients for my agency.

Wrapping up today’s startup case studies

Growing a startup is a helluva experience.

Fun, rewarding, and stressful sums it.

Especially stressful.

Nonetheless, you can gain peace of mind and improve your trajectory with the right marketing plan.

Some of the main takeaways from the case studies I showed you today include:

Use outreach and guerilla marketing tactics like cold emailing to acquire customers.
Offer users incentives to sign up and pay for referrals.
Grow an online community that promotes your brand and creates a viral effect.
Offer a completely free product that gets people talking about your startup.
Show the world you’re expertise by deploying your product or service.

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6 Brilliant Small Business Case Study Examples For Marketers

Explore case study examples for small businesses. Additionally, find strategies for handling common challenges and solutions for growing your business.

6 Brilliant Case Study Examples for Small Businesses

Every business starts small.

The success of a business lies in its strategy to overcome any challenge during its journey.

If you are trying to take your business to new heights, start identifying challenges and create solutions.

The best way is to learn from sundry success stories.

There are several case studies of different businesses that can teach you which strategy to take for selling your product and attracting the target audience.

In this article, we will discuss some of the top case study examples that can assist in upscaling small businesses.

Let’s begin.

Challenges Faced by Small Businesses

As far as businesses go, there are always hurdles that need to be defeated. Starting a business is itself a big achievement for entrepreneurs, but the main challenge is maintaining one.

There are three common challenges businesses need to overcome. These include managing the expenses, hiring people, and following new trends to develop a customer base.

1. Increased Expenses

Every business revolves around money. There are different areas where businesses have to spend their money. But the issue is handling the financial hurdles. With an unplanned budget and financial advice, businesses will be spending more than they need to.

Keeping an eye on expenses is important because the expenses determine the profit the business will make.

However, it is not easy to reduce the expense. It’s affected by demand and supply. If businesses need to keep up with the market’s demands, then the chance of increasing expenses is 100%.

2. More and Skilled Manpower Required

Businesses don’t run themselves. They need manpower with skills to handle different departments. Generally, the number of employees in a small business ranges from 1 to 500 people. Getting this manpower is easy but getting a skilled one is difficult and time-consuming.

Whenever looking for manpower, businesses need to decide what skills they want in their candidate. The problem is candidates can’t always fulfill all the requirements. Besides, hiring manpower also increases the expenses.

3. Keeping Up With the Latest Trends

The market is fluid. It changes and introduces new trends. Small businesses need to keep up with changing trends to keep their business growing. But this is where many businesses start to fall apart.

The thing about new trends is that businesses need to sell their products at the right time. It means they have to keep on studying the market to speculate their next products. If a small business fails to deliver during the peak of the trend, then it will suffer a heavy loss.

Solutions to Grow a Small Business

The best thing about businesses is that there is an attempt to find a solution for every challenge. It brings out the competition in the market, which is huge for surfacing different kinds of solutions a business can adopt.

1. Reduce the Expenses

When it comes to expenses, businesses are focused on spending huge sums on communication because communication is the key element of increasing customers and revenue. It’s not a big problem for big companies, but it is expensive for small businesses. Thus, finding innovative and cost-effective marketing strategies becomes essential for maximizing outreach and impact without straining financial resources.

Fortunately, the cloud telephony system has removed the dilemma while making business budgets because cloud phone services are cheaper than plain old telephone services.

It reduces the initial cost of new businesses up to 90%. Recent surveys suggest that over 74% of businesses prioritize cloud phone systems as their urgent investment.

The same goes for marketing which is necessary to attract potential customers. Small businesses don’t have enough budget to advertise their products.

The best solution for this is using social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to promote and sell their products.

Case Study: Coffman Engineers

Coffman Engineers clearly states that although the cost of using a virtual phone number adhered to cloud phone is 50% more per employee, it still provides overall 25% more savings than plain old telephone service (POTS).

Coffman Engineers have been relying on cloud phones ever since their one office location faced a disaster. Now they have a disaster recovery feature built into their cloud phone system. It helped them to be ready for any disasters without losing communication with employees.

Not just that, they found all the necessary features bundled into one subscription package in a VoIP phone system. Such a facility enabled them to handle all their business communication using only one platform.

Key Takeaways

Small businesses must invest in cloud telephony for business communication.
Extensive use of social media to promote and sell your products/service.

2. Improve Employee Productivity

As we discussed earlier, manpower is a big challenge for small businesses. Hiring more employees doesn’t mean higher productivity. It’s about smart task allocation through a streamlined workload management strategy . Businesses also need to hire the right candidates to keep their expenses in check and improve productivity.

There are different tools available that can monitor what the employees are doing. Time tracking tools and workforce management tools are key components every business needs.

Especially in remote working scenarios, these tools are crucial to getting the full effort for the employees. Companies have seen a 35%-40% rise in productivity in employees working remotely with the use of tracking tools.

Case study: On The Map Marketing

On The Map Marketing , a digital marketing agency, used time tracking tools that showed that remote working employees tend to work more hours since they can work at flexible hours.

On The Map Marketing first started using the time tracking tool when they were opening their office in Riga, Latvia. The CTO of the company wanted the time spent on different tasks on his computer as well as managing the remote working employees.

Using a time tracking tool, they were able to track their productivity with a detailed report of their daily activities during office hours. It helped them calculate salary bonuses. They also found the productivity level of each employee to determine their value for the company.

Small businesses should use a time tracking tool to make sure employees focus on their office work.
Small businesses can track the performance of each employee at office locations or remote working locations.

3. Reward Your Customers

A business becomes successful when it can keep its customers happy. In efforts to upscale a small business quickly, the marketplace has seen a decline in the quality of products and services. It is a primary reason for customer dissatisfaction.

About 45% of business professionals rate customer experience as their top priority for growing a business.

Survey says more than 85% of buyers are willing to spend more for a better customer experience . Therefore, small businesses need to focus on improving their quality of products and services, which is a powerful indicator of customer experience.

Case study: Starbucks

Starbucks introduced a Reward Loyalty Program in which customers collect stars to get exciting rewards. This program drives 40% of Starbucks’s total sales .

By adapting the gamification method, Starbucks added a reward loyalty program to their already established app. This move drastically increased sales and digital traffic. They brought mobile payment, customer loyalty, and content partnership in one powerful app.

Customers started registering for My Reward via their app. They are given stars(points) in exchange for their interaction in the app or purchase made. The higher the number of stars a customer gets, the better rewards they get.

Small businesses can give different forms of rewards for more customer engagement.
Improvement in customer service can drive more sales and attract more customers.

4. Build Your Brand

Small businesses should learn to build their brand image on social media. While marketing any product or service, the brand image is a key factor for understanding how people view your business.

A brand image must first include mission, vision, and values. It also requires a brand positioning statement that can set your business apart from the competitors.

It’s important to create a unique brand personality. For this, businesses need to design a good logo because customers are most likely to recognize a business looking at a logo. They will have to identify their target audience to craft a good brand image.

According to a study, around 89% of users stay loyal to a business with a good brand image .

Case study: Apple

Apple logo is a well-recognized design that reflects the brand value. Over the years, the Apple logo has gone through several design changes.

The most important rebranding of the company came when Steve Jobs changed the logo which impacted the overall personality of the company. Now, this logo is the most recognized logo in the world.

Looking at the Apple logo, customers can feel a sense of trust, reliability, and innovation . It is the main reason for the huge sales of all Apple products across the globe.

Branding helps a business build strong relationships with prospects and attract them to be loyal customers.
Small businesses need to create a strong brand image to sell their products efficiently.

5. Prioritize on Partnerships

Partnerships and collaboration can lift the businesses to maximize their cost savings. It allows businesses to strengthen their programs using available resources and tools.

This has a direct effect on improving the efficiency of their operations. It improves the credibility of the business in the marketplace.

Case study: RENAULT & NISSAN

Renault and Nissan have a strong partnership in automobiles. Their partnership made a remarkable achievement of making up 10% of new car sales worldwide .

Renault and Nissan chose to make an alliance rather than a merger because an alliance has many stronger benefits than a merger would give.

With an alliance, they can access more geographical areas where foreign investments are restricted. These companies got better chances to enter each other’s territory where they were already established companies because of the alliance.

Although they faced numerous challenges including fluctuation in price share, they managed to resolve issues and succeed.

Small businesses can collaborate with other businesses to increase their chances of higher product sales and profit for everyone.
Partnership with other businesses allows all parties to benefit from each other’s strong areas.

6. The Right Marketing Strategy

Every business requires to sell its product and services to the market. Without the right social media marketing strategy , a business cannot compete in the marketplace. The first thing about marketing is knowing your target audience and competitors.

When small businesses know who they are competing against, it will help them to see how the competitors are executing their business and attracting their customers.

One such way is to grow your website traffic which can bring you more leads and eventually customers. And how do you increase your website traffic? SEO. If done right, Search Engine Optimization can drive huge traffic to your website to reach your marketing goals.

Case study: Zapier

Zapier used an SEO strategy revolving around long-tail keywords for generating organic traffic to their website. They created 25,000 unique landing pages for unique keywords.

Zapier had a structure and layout for each page including well-optimized human written content. They outsourced SEO content and focused on a playbook for the onboarding process and launched new apps so that they can get partners to write content for them.

On top of that, they also outsourced link building to their partners. These partners wrote valuable guest post content of Zapier on their site and gave a backlink to Zapier. It helped Zapier to get new users as well as drive their website traffic.

Small Businesses should improve their website traffic by adding more landing pages with relevant content.
Backlinks through guest posts on other websites can drive more website traffic and attract more prospects.

Now that we have discussed these examples, let’s see how you can create these studies.

Now that you have a fair idea of the business challenges and solutions, there is a good chance of delivering a good strategy for growing your small business.

On top of that, the case study examples above will help you view how other businesses overcome their situation to take their business to new heights.

The most important aspect of upscaling a small business is understanding the customer’s needs. Therefore, you should design a persuasive marketing strategy to attract customers and compete with other businesses in the market.

And a good marketing strategy for any business must include social media. And to make the most of your social media marketing efforts try SocialPilot for free today.

Frequently Asked Questions

🌟 How do you upscale a small business?

Upscaling a small business is a very challenging process. Whether it's making a budget or hiring employees, you have to focus on things that are best for your business. Planning, targeting prospects, marketing strategy, etc. are crucial steps for upscaling businesses and competing with big companies.

🌟 What is a small scale business?

Small scale businesses or Small scale industries (SSI) provide products and services on a small level. Normally in the US, a small business consists of less than 250 employees. Also, it has small capital investments and less office space.

🌟 Why do entrepreneurs find it difficult to scale up?

New entrepreneurs find difficulty in scaling up their businesses because they don’t know what to do. Even if they know, they have to face many challenges like market research, finding loans, allocating space, etc. Also, legal matters are always a major concern for making changes.

🌟 Why is scalability important in business?

Scalability is important because it directly impacts business competition, profitability, brand image, and product quality. Since small businesses have huge growth potential and high return on investment (ROI), they have to properly focus on scalability.

🌟 When should you scale a business?

A small business should look for upscaling its business if it has achieved a minimum annual growth of 20% over 2-3 years with only 10 or more active employees.

About the Author

Anwesha Ghatak

Social Media Marketing For Startups: A Beginner’s Guide

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What Makes a Successful Startup Team

It’s not all about experience and industry knowledge.

What makes a successful startup team? One common answer is that prior startup experience, product knowledge, and industry skills predict the success of a new venture. But is prior experience sufficient for a team to work well together? In a recent study of 95 new startup teams in the Netherlands, researchers explored that question. They found that experience alone was not enough to make a team thrive. While experience broadens the teams’ resource pool, helps people identify opportunities, and is positively related to team effectiveness, a team also needs soft skills to truly thrive. Specifically, they found that shared entrepreneurial passion and shared strategic vision are required to get to superior team performance.

When venture capital investors are doing due diligence, they focus carefully on the financial side of the business. Does the company have an interesting business model? How big is the addressable market? What are the growth plans of the company? They hire expensive experts and use advanced data tools to answer these questions and ensure that every financial detail is on the table.

EM Eva de Mol is Managing Partner at CapitalT, a venture capital fund investing in early stage tech companies. Dr. de Mol worked on her PhD at the VU University Amsterdam and Berkeley Haas Business School. Her research focuses on entrepreneurial teams and investing.

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Failure hurts.

Watching something you’ve poured endless amounts of time and energy in, only to see it crumble before you will hurt like hell. It’ll be like a physical punch to the gut, and it will paralyze you. It’s no wonder that entrepreneurs avoid failure like the plague.

A startup can go under for a variety of reasons. While founders can stand around and point fingers at each other, attribute it to forces outside of their control, or just blame bad luck. The reality is that startup failure is from a refusal to acknowledge problems until the ship is already sinking.

The reality of the situation is you are more likely to fail than you are to succeed. If you’re defining startup failure as the inability to deliver on the projected return of investment, then 95% of startups are failures.

But there is no greater teacher than failure.

If you’re going to be an entrepreneur then you better get used to failing, it will become an inevitable part of your life. Don’t run from it, embrace it, and see what lessons you can learn from it.

By analyzing the post-mortems of various failed startups here are the expected and not-so-expected reasons why they failed and what you can learn from their mistakes. Watch out for those icebergs.

Be Wary of the Pivot

Fab was once known as ‘ the world’s fastest-growing startup ’ and was valued at over at $1 billion before it ultimately crashed.

Fab underwent a variety of changes from an LGBT social network, to a daily flash sales site, to ‘the world’s design store’, before finally being sold off to PCH, for a reported $15 million in cash and stock .

Fab is both a success story and a cautionary tale to entrepreneurs about the risks of pivoting. A pivot generally means that a business is looking to find a fresh perspective and vision to prevent itself from growing stagnant.

Hypothetically a startup should constantly be evaluating data: measuring the market, contemplating new strategies, testing new products. A pivot allows a business to forge ahead in a new direction when either the opportunity is clear, or the current strategy is failing.

“Once we made the decision to pivot, we committed to doing one thing and doing it well. No distractions.” – Jason Goldberg, cofounder and CEO of Fab.

Fab was originally known as Fabulis an LGBT social networking site before pivoting wonderfully into a daily flash sales site for independent artists. Cofounders Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shellhammer admitted to themselves that Fabulis wasn’t turning out to be the success that they hoped, being stuck at 150,000 users for the last few months. It was time to pivot.

The data they had gathered from Fabulis illuminated a real hole in the design market. People were looking for an easy and accessible way to purchase unique and interesting designerwear.

So, they pivoted and became a daily flash sales site for designer housewares, accessories, clothing, and jewelry. The move paid off with Fab growing to over 10 million users and reportedly generating more than $200,000 every day.

Two years later after the initial pivot, despite a shaky business model, Fab decided to pivot again. This time looking to become a designer alternative to Amazon and IKEA. Coupled with a failed attempt to expand into the European market, Fab began its spectacular fall.

READ MORE: Is Your Business Not Making Enough Money? Here’s How to Fix It

The first and foremost requirement for a pivot to truly succeed is it must solve a major problem. At the time Fab was a hugely successful company, despite the fact that the daily flash sales model wasn’t sustainable in the long-term, choosing to drastically scale down their product offerings moved too far from their identity as a designer store. Fab ultimately created another problem while prematurely trying to solve another.

It’s only natural for a struggling startup to pivot, especially when the alternative is to remain stagnant and unprofitable. However as Fab demonstrated, pivoting for the sake of pivoting, or to expand on a shaky business model will almost always guarantee disaster for any entrepreneur out there. No matter how much money you’ve raised.

READ MORE: How Competitive Collaboration Can Boost Your Business

Too Ambitious, Too Fast

At its peak, in 1999, it was valued at $1.2 billion. Two years later they filed for bankruptcy, laid off 2000 employees, and closed up shop. Webvan could potentially be considered a startup ahead of its time, their vision was a home-delivery service for groceries, where customers could order their groceries online, but that’s not where the problem lies.

15 years later it’s still being studied by business schools around the world as a forewarning against excess and ambition.

Webvan can also be considered a product of its time, the result was that it followed the ‘Get Big Fast’ (GBF) business model that every other startup was religiously following at the time. In 1999 Webvan announced they would expand to 26 major cities.

The following two years became a logistical nightmare with Webvan ultimately losing a total of $830 million before filing for bankruptcy.

“Webvan committed the cardinal sin of retail, which is to expand into new territory before we had demonstrated success in the first market. In fact, we were busy demonstrating failure in the Bay Area market while we expanded into other regions,” said Mike Moritz, former Webvan board member, and partner at Sequoia Capital.

READ MORE: How to Make Money With Your Email List

At some point, every successful startup will have to start scaling up and expanding their business. It seems like common sense, but expansion should only be undertaken when a business model has first proven to be successful.

A few rules of thumb are that a scalable business model should be flexible to be able to adapt to different market conditions, core users and customers are evaluated and understood, and the business model should be able to operate without your direct supervision. Common sense right?

Yet according to the Startup Genome Project’s survey of over 3200 startups , 74% of startup failures can be attributed to premature scaling. Another key finding was that startups, on average, need 2-3 times longer to validate their market than the founders expect. This underestimation of appropriate timelines applies unnecessary pressure on founders to scale prematurely.

Despite early validation, Webvan failed to consistently evaluate the data. If they had paid closer attention then they would’ve seen that their business model was shaky and could not possibly support their desired plans for expansion.

It’s only natural for entrepreneurs to want to grow their business. But as Webvan learned, it’s important to grow your business for the right reasons. To pay attention to the data at hand, and never grow for the sake of growth.

Be Wary of Who You Get in Bed With

Pretty Young Professional was founded by four colleagues at McKinsey, a global consultancy firm, who noticed the lack of resources for young women in the world of entrepreneurship.

It had a simple vision, to provide a weekly newsletter and cultivate a community for young female entrepreneurs. All four were coworkers, friends even, who shared a similar passion and vision. A meeting was held; positions and equity were decided amongst themselves and written on a notepad. And that’s when the trouble began.

READ MORE: How to Build a Profitable Marketing Strategy

Kathryn Minshew, co-founder, and CEO of Pretty Young Professional said that “it came down to some pretty fundamental differences of opinion around where the business should be heading. I think, naively, we assumed that if we kicked the can down the road on some of those things, we’d be able to sort them out.”

Despite the years you’ve shared together and the many years of in-jokes you have, conventional wisdom dictates that it’s a bad idea to mix business with friends.

A study by the University of Auckland Business School found that while maintaining strong friendships with co-workers generally improves work productivity and morale it also creates a dilemma when trying to reconcile personal relationships with professional decision-making.

In business, it’s required that you have to make the logical and necessary decisions in order to benefit your company, even at the cost of personal friendships.

11 months in, the four founders of Pretty Young Professional had split into two camps due to differences in opinion, and a coup was staged. The legality of the original document was called into question, Minshew was hit with a lawsuit and called to step down as CEO, and the editorial team of Pretty Young Professional had their site and email access cut. The company quickly collapsed despite calls from excited investors and a thriving user base.

While it is possible to work with friends and family, it requires completely honest communication, both parties must understand that it really is nothing personal, and, perhaps most importantly, vest your ownership. It’s always best practice to ensure that you legally protect yourself and your assets, a promise between friends rarely holds up in the court of law.

READ MORE: 5 Best Sales Funnel Software Tools to Power Your Business

The Double-Edged Sword of SEO

The premise was simple, to help parents find tutors for their kids online. By 2013 they had over 7000 tutors signed up on their platform and has raised an estimated $1.8 million. Then the rug was swept out from under then and they closed down a few months later, after 3 years in operation.

It appeared that Tutorspree was doing everything right, it had managed to raise an impressive amount of capital from heavyweight investors like Sequoia Capital and Lerer Ventures. They were scaling at a decent pace, albeit not as fast as they wanted, and the business model was proving to be profitable.

However, it fell apart in March of 2013 when Google changed its algorithm and Tutorspree found their traffic reduced by 80% overnight . While this normally wouldn’t cripple a business, it was a catastrophe for Tutorspree. SEO was baked into their business model from the very start and almost all of their customer acquisitions originated from SEO.

“Nor is the largest lesson for me that SEO shouldn’t be part of a startup’s marketing kit. It should be there, but it has to be just one of many tools. SEO cannot be the only channel a company has, nor can any other single-channel serve that purpose.” – Aaron Harris, co-founder, and CEO of Tutorspree.

READ MORE: How to Develop Powerful Business Core Values and Mission Statements

There are many different types of SEO practices, but SEO is essentially improving the visibility and authority of a website by having it rank higher on search engine listings. The entrepreneurial community itself is very divided on the merits of SEO.

The issue with Tutorspree wasn’t whether or not it used SEO effectively or ineffectively. The issue was that due to its effectiveness, the founders became blind to other models of customer acquisition and developed an overreliance on a model they had absolutely no control over.

Google’s algorithm constantly changes and there’s no telling how it will ultimately affect your website’s ranking. Google has consistently proven to burn anyone that chooses to rely on SEO as their main strategy.

It should go without saying that you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs into one basket. Entrepreneurs should invest half their marketing into a high-risk strategy, and the other half in a proven consistent strategy, albeit with a lower return on investment. When it comes to business, you can either live or die by the sword or just be smart and carry a shield.

READ MORE: Building the Perfect Sales Funnel for Your Shopify Store

Failure is difficult to handle, but there is no better teacher. Although every business listed failed spectacularly, all of their founders got back up, dusted themselves off, and forged ahead to eventual success.

While it’s easy to see all the mistakes you made in hindsight, don’t let yourself get to that point. Failure can be seen a mile away if you’re paying close enough attention, even if it means asking yourself some uncomfortable questions. A lot of businesses could have been saved if just the smallest amount of preparation was undertaken, or if founders had just a little bit more patience.

Is there a bigger startup failure that you’ve heard about? We love case studies! Let us know in the comments below.

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About Jonathan Chan

Jonathan "JC" Chan is the first Content Crafter at Foundr Magazine. When not writing about anything and everything to do with startups, entrepreneurship, and marketing, JC can be found pretending to be the next MMA star at the gym. He has also contributed to outlets such as Huffington Post , Social Media Examiner , MarketingProfs , Hubspot and more. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn !

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Case Study: How these 5 successful Startups stood out in a crowded market.

Starting a new business is a daunting task, and to add to that more often then not Startups find themselves in a crowded market struggling to stand out and make an impression to their potential customers.

Below are five case studies of (now successful) Startups, in mature markets like fintech, dating and toilet paper, that used unique messaging and Brand Personailty to make a strong first impression.

Bumble – brand personality archetype: Innocent

Bumble came on to a dating app scene that was full of brands with the lover brand personality archetype – think direct competition Tinder with its flaming hot ‘sexy’ personality.

Whitney Wolfe Herd deliberately built a brand that was cute, warm and soft (based on the Innocent archetype) to offer a safer dating space for women.

Slack - brand personality archetype: Regular Person

Whilst most SaaS companies were building product-first businesses, Slack took a different approach to technology, by creating a brand that had a human-like personality. While other big SaaS giants like Microsoft and Oracle have Ruler brand personality to foster trust and authority, Slack has gone in the opposite direction. The brand (and product itself) aims to be an ideal colleague that is hardworking, humble and collaborative.

Dollar Shave Club - brand personality archetype: Rebel

Before the Dollar Shave Club, most men’s grooming brands looked and sounded the exact same. There were just a few established, big players dominating the market with ruler brand personalities.

Dollar Shave Club built a brand based on the rebel brand personality, deliberately disrupting the existing market by blowing apart expectations of price, product, placement and promotion. Their witty and cool personality ( launched with viral video they put on youtube ) helped to attract a specific niche within the grooming market that was ready for something new.

Who Gives A Crap - brand personality archetype: Jester This one is my favourite. Most toilet tissue brands focus on being the caregiver and build brands around being comfortable commodities.

Who Gives a Crap is a toilet tissue subscription service that donates profit to global sanitation projects. The brand has a jester personality, using childlike play and humour to engage audiences whilst also bringing attention to the more serious topic of sanitation to help make a difference.

Honest Company - brand personality archetype: Caregiver

Most babycare brands unsurprisingly have caregiver brand personalities. However, they usually focus on the baby receiving the care and not on the caregiver (mom and dad) themselves.

The Honest Company’s caregiver brand personality is slightly different. It understands that the modern caregiver doesn’t just want to get the job done, but they themselves want to feel good about their role. Honest purposefully built a brand that makes customers feel good about using its sustainable and clean products, because not only are they taking care of their families but also themselves and the planet

Moral of the story is sometimes going against the tide and building a personality that is opposite to the industry norm can really help a Startup in standing out and create their own niche.

Brand personality archetypes are powerful when leveraged effectively. If you’re interested in knowing about all 12 brand personality archetypes and which one are you check out here .

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Digital Marketing

START Planning Steps To Develop Your Digital Marketing Success Plan – S For Strategy

Find out how to achieve ROI and business outcomes with a documented digital marketing success plan. Get tips from Corey Morris' new book.

This excerpt is from The Digital Marketing Success Plan, the new book from SEJ VIP Contributor Corey Morris.

In what is the most distracted and disrupted era in digital marketing–especially SEO–history, we’re testing and trying things out faster than ever. While change is coming at us fast, it is critically important to still have a documented, actionable, and accountable plan for your digital marketing efforts .

In his new book, Corey Morris, details a five-step START Planning process to help brands arrive at their own digital marketing success plans to ensure ROI and business outcomes are at the heart of every effort while allowing plenty of room and agility for the rapid changes we’re experiencing in digital and search marketing.

Search Engine Journal has an exclusive feature of the first step in the START Planning process–”S for Strategy”–unpacking the four steps in this first and most critical phase.

Chapter 3: S For Strategy

The Strategy Phase is the most comprehensive part of the START planning process. The subsequent phases are all dependent on the work done and defined in this phase.

Strategy works through profiling, auditing, research, and goal setting. Knowing what marketing has been done in the past, where things stand currently, and—most importantly—where you want to go is critical at this juncture and overall for any digital marketing success plan.

The strategy phase has four steps, the first of which is profile. This could be considered a simple step, as we’re just gathering information and definitions.

However, it could also be misinterpreted, and it is challenging because it requires an expert to ask the right questions. That includes detailing the team involved in the effort and defining the product (services) we must sell, the brand, and the target audiences.

In short, we’re putting the details on the table about who we are, our resources, and our capabilities. We are identifying what we’re selling, what value it has, how we deliver it, and the pricing model. We also must know what our brand is in terms of positioning, differentiation, and equity that it holds.

And, as important as anything, we must know who our target audience personas are, their customer behaviors, and the funnels or journeys they take to buy.

Anyone can ramble off some demographics or targets. But, as companies grow, having a mutually agreed understanding of what the business sells, who it sells to, and the money it costs to do so is extremely hard.

I say all of this in hopes that you don’t get stuck here on some of the hard details, and also knowing that if it is easy, you might want to challenge some things and see if you can go deeper and ensure that you truly have the agreement and buy-in that you seem to.

The second step in the strategy phase is audit. We need to know what we’ve done in the past and are currently doing so we have a full picture of what has worked, what hasn’t, and why. Audits are important at this juncture, and this step might be one of the most time-consuming in the entire digital marketing success plan development journey.

As you obtain or create documentation of historical activities, you’ll need access to all the past and present networks and platforms. Then, you can deep dive into audits , including technical paid search , technical SEO , content SEO , web systems, email marketing systems , and more, based on what has been done in the past and what is available for you at this juncture.

The third step in the strategy phase is research. So far, the focus has been on who we are and what we’ve done leading up to where we currently stand with our efforts. This phase is where we get perspectives beyond our own data and understanding.

This is where we seek out internal perspectives from marketing, sales, ops, product, and other relevant teams and stakeholders—as well as from our customers or clients. Additionally, we’re doing external research to learn new insights or validate what we think when it comes to competitors, target audiences, and what the future opportunity forecasts or models out for us.

The final step in strategy is goals. With a thorough picture of who we are, where we stand, and what opportunities are out there for us, we can workshop to arrive at a realistic set of goals . Maybe we came into the process with our own goals, or maybe at this point, we’re starting from scratch.

Regardless, this step is critical to the rest of the process and arriving at a plan that can drive success. This is where we look at business goals and how marketing can affect them and ensure we set proper expectations before we move the strategy from ideas to action.

“WE HAVE A PROBLEM” Premium Roofing Manufacturer Story

A high-end roofing manufacturing company came to us with a unique problem. Marcy, their marketing manager, had a lot of past success with SEO, their website and email marketing, and extensive campaigns driving traffic to their websites for homeowners and contractors alike–fueling their sales operations.

Marcy had gone through several different agencies over the past few years. She had varying experiences with them, had a great one for a while, and then had a couple that didn’t value or know as much about SEO. She didn’t realize that, at the time, it was a line item to some of those agencies. It was getting done, and rankings and traffic were fine. Nothing was sticking out of the ordinary.

One day, Marcy noticed a problem in Google Analytics. Traffic is starting to drop overall. She dives in and, as she is very familiar with the reports and channels and diagnoses this as an SEO problem within a minute. SEO traffic is dropping, but she can’t tell why.

The agency says everything looks good on their end. Marcy can’t find any errors on the site. However, there’s this mysterious drop where she can see they’re not where they used to be in the Google rankings. Subsequent drops in traffic, conversions, and form submissions going through to their sales team validate it.

She remembered her work with me a few years prior at a different agency and reached out. She thought of me as someone she could trust to fix any SEO problem, which I take as high praise. I was at a conference in Silicon Valley, getting ready to take the stage to speak about SEO troubleshooting.

And so that was the ironic part of it to me. I gave my speech and immediately after had a longer conversation with Marcy over the phone. I could dive in and see the same things she saw, and I knew that we needed to do a full audit very quickly and understand what was going on.

I brought the rest of my team back home into the challenge. Within two days, we had diagnosed two very acute issues that were hidden and that most people wouldn’t see. We wouldn’t have found them unless we had gone through our analysis auditing process to get that deep.

We presented those findings to Marcy and her CEO, who both knew how big of a negative impact this would have on their business if they didn’t get this corrected.

We presented three options. One was to fix the issues technically within their current site. Still, being forward-thinking and ROI-driven, we didn’t want just to offer to patch the holes and wait for the next problem to come. So, we presented two other plans. They included a midrange plan and a long-range plan to build a new website and not only fix the issues but also strategically amplify some other things.

They opted to invest in the new website, and that turned into an ongoing relationship with us to monitor and amplify their SEO and take it to new heights, not just reclaiming what they had lost but making new ground. And I’m excited that we saw that all the way through. It played out exactly as we had projected and was validated by growth for them.

The company eventually sold for a record amount and won awards from our peers for that work. The moral of the story is not just to accept the status quo but to realize that not all professionals who have SEO in their title have an equal set of skills. Auditing is an important tool in getting to the root cause, not just for fixing an immediate problem but even more critically for long-term success.

“WE HAVE TO GET THIS RIGHT” Continuing Care Retirement Community Story

Jamaal found us through Google. He was the director of admissions and marketing for a high-end retirement facility that serves as a continuing care community. They had everything: independent living, dining in chef-inspired restaurants, activities, a pub, and anything that active senior living would want through the continuum of care, including assisted living and skilled nursing.

They have an excellent reputation in their city and are well known; however, that’s with the community at large. They needed help to reach their target audience, who could be potential residents or adult child influencers in their lives—the next generation down.

When something happens, and it’s time to look for this type of living situation, the people at that important step are less aware and less prepared for the conversations they must have with their loved ones in a critical phase of life. These people were supposed to be moving into research and action toward admission.

Also, while it was a wealthy, high-end property, it was nonprofit, very benevolent, and gave back so much. The margins were tight, and there wasn’t a large marketing budget, but they knew they needed to do something.

Jamaal’s challenge when he came to us was, “I know you can do everything. I know I probably need all the things under the digital marketing umbrella. I even need a new website, but I don’t have the budget.”

We said, “That’s not a problem. We start small with many of our clients and find the areas where we can have the greatest ROI and impact. Then, we build from there and create budgets, opening up dollars for investment in other opportunities.”

So, we came into the situation, and we analyzed their audience. They had a wealth of data. They knew their business inside and out, and it was fantastic for us to see that. Still, they needed help understanding digital marketing and couldn’t connect the dots.

They had talked to three or four other providers who gave them high-ticket products or service offerings and didn’t want to work with them to find the right solution or where they should get the most bang for their buck.

We returned to them and recommended, “You should start with SEO.”

Jamaal laughed because he said that was the opposite recommendation that several of the other agencies had made. They had said, “No, you should start with $100,000 a month in Google Ads.”

I said, “You should start on SEO at a fraction of that,” even though we knew the challenges were there with being unable to build a new website. We’d have to navigate their antiquated website and optimize what they had.

We knew that telling the story, getting the content right, and even optimizing a lousy website would get us further along in the long-term journey of driving new leads to the website. We knew we only needed a handful of people to find the site to understand what they did at the right moment, get the right story, and come through the doors and experience this wonderful place.

After building momentum, one lead at a time, we could start talking about a new website, activate additional marketing channels, and layer in aspects of the digital marketing success plan to see success in the long term.

Ultimately, they grew as a business and their marketing investment grew respectively. Eventually, they were acquired by a large hospital system, where everyone could flourish and get the mission and the word out.

The moral of the story is it’s always better to do something rather than nothing.

But if you’re on a limited budget, understand that the obvious answers or the expensive ones aren’t necessarily the best ones. Be willing to dig into the data, do the hard work, and see the opportunity to create new budgets.

By seeing small successes, one at a time, you can build toward bigger things.

To learn more about why digital marketing planning is so important, Corey’s START Planning process, and how to implement which he details in the full book (including more real stories and “how to” sections for each phase of the process), download the book now on Amazon .

For a limited time through July 17, the Kindle version is only 99 cents.

You can also find out more information and free resources at https://thedmsp.com

More resources:

The Importance Of Starting Your SEO Campaign With Strategy Development
The Top 10 Digital Marketing Certificate Programs To Enroll In
SEO Strategy: A Full Year Blueprint

Featured Image: nuruddean/Shutterstock

Corey is the owner and President/CEO of Voltage. He has spent nearly 20 years working in strategic and leadership roles ...

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Drug Delivery Business

Vivani expects to start long-term GLP-1 implant trial this year

July 11, 2024 By Sean Whooley

The company anticipates a fourth-quarter start for its NPM-115 program in Australia, pending regulatory clearance there. This program looks at the investigational six-month GLP-1 implant for chronic weight management. The company intends to evaluate patients who are either obese or overweight with a related comorbidity.

Vivani recently received the green light from the FDA to begin a separate clinical program for NPM-119 , a six-month GLP-1 implant for treating type 2 diabetes. That now-approved trial also applies to NPM-115.

Both implants utilize the company’s NanoPortal implant technology to steadily deliver medication over extended periods of time . The company aims to guarantee correct doses for patients while avoiding potential safety concerns around fluctuating drug release profiles. The technology can also deliver large hydrophilic molecules, including peptides and proteins. The company believes this enables a broader range of therapeutic applications.

Vivani’s latest milestone follows a strategic shift announced earlier this year aimed at prioritizing obesity implants. The company said it based this change on emerging data regarding the potential for high-dose GLP-1 products.

“In February, our company announced that we were re-prioritizing the development of our GLP-1 implants to focus on the treatment of obesity and chronic weight management in response to the significant medical need and unprecedented market demand,” said Adam Mendelsohn, Vivani president and CEO. “Today we can report that our first-in-human study, LIBERATE-1, is expected to enroll patients who are obese or overweight to primarily support NPM-115’s development program. We anticipate initiating this clinical study in Australia later this year.”

Mendelsohn also said the company believes the results of the trial “may provide clinical validation of our NanoPortal drug delivery technology to support a broader application of the technology in the treatment of chronic diseases.”

About Sean Whooley

Sean Whooley is an associate editor who mainly produces work for MassDevice, Medical Design & Outsourcing and Drug Delivery Business News. He received a bachelor's degree in multiplatform journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at [email protected].

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Drug delivery business news.

Business Idea: Start A Mobility Equipment Business in 2024

Monthly Revenue $25K

Mobility equipment is a niche where there's significant and growing demand, but it remains underutilized by entrepreneurs. Starting a mobility equipment business means supplying essential products like wheelchairs, scooters, walkers, and lifts to people who need them most.

Begin by identifying reputable suppliers and establishing a reliable supply chain. Focus on building a user-friendly online store to showcase your inventory and manage orders efficiently. Marketing should highlight the life-changing impact of these products, appealing to a wide range of customers, from elderly individuals to those recovering from injuries.

This business offers a unique combination of profitability and social value, as you're not just selling equipment but enhancing the quality of life for your customers. If you're passionate about making a difference, the mobility equipment business could be both a fulfilling and viable entrepreneurial venture.

Examples Of Successful Mobility Equipment Businesses

Successful mobility equipment business businesses and case studies

Breeze Mobility is a successful eCommerce store selling a range of high-quality mobility aids & wheelchair accessories and has grown from a few thousand dollars in revenue to turning over $30,000 a month, with goals to become a social enterprise and increase its range of own-branded wheelchair accessories.

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A group of 4 successful surgeons negotiate better contracts: a case study

How can a group of dedicated general surgeons transform their compensation and work conditions in six months? Here’s their story.

The group’s story: facts and dynamics

Four general surgeons, one NP, and one PA for a specific physician have been practicing at a small community hospital with three ancillary facilities in the Northeast for many years. The group and staffing have been dependable, without turnover, for the past three years. Three physicians have many years before retirement and are dedicated to staying in the community. One is planning to retire in three years. They provide a full range of surgical services, including trauma calls and assisting gastroenterology on weekends. They are at maximum work capacity, highly productive, and successful (production = 5.22 90th-percentile physicians). They want to hire a third party to help the team negotiate a new contract versus going alone.

What the group wants

Increase in pay and benefits, of course.
Update the structure and contents of the physician agreements with renegotiation targets at 2-3 years instead of 5-6 years.
Hire a new physician to increase the group to five in anticipation of the upcoming retirement.
Possible new operating room equipment, including resource and technology updates.
Will the hospital be open to negotiations with a third party?
Can the group of surgeons be on the same page?

For any progress to be made, all physicians must agree on terms and what they want. This unity and collaboration benefit the group and the health care community as a whole, fostering a sense of teamwork and shared goals. Fragmentation, back deals, side offers, and similar issues are common in negotiations, posing a significant challenge and potentially breaking groups apart. This facility faces multiple local, regional, and national challenges. These complexities underline the necessity for specialized services for group contract negotiations.

Leveraging third-party expertise in compensation strategy

Thoroughly analyze both sides—what the physicians want and what the hospital can afford to do. Using various data sources, determine the “fair market value” for the group in the particular location. Mediate with the hospital: Most physicians are not prepared for this process, either from a time or knowledge standpoint. The administration viewed the negotiations as a win-win for the hospital, community, and physicians.

Results: What happened?

The conversion factor per wRVU increased by $8 in year one, $10 in year two, and $12 in year three from the baseline number. They added a $50,000 quality bonus per year for each physician (which we were able to guarantee in year one). The call pay didn’t change in favor of the higher CF per wRVU. By running calculations using the last 12 months, the overall benefit to the group in year one will be $594,334 with the same level of production. Accounting for four surgeons, the average of the group (production did vary) will be over $148,000 in year one alone.

What physicians considering a group negotiation need to know

The total process took about 5-6 months. It’s not uncommon for this process to take longer, with the hospital dragging out the process, resulting in inaction or poor results.
All the surgeons did was invest a few hours upfront in calls and emails, send documents, and approve the asks/proposals/offers.
Able to put a ‘renegotiation’ piece in the agreement in three years—so can repeat the process to re-up this in three years (it was 5+ last time before they got an update or appropriate pay and benefits increase).
The administration enjoyed working with an expert third party, and the best part was that the physicians benefited with minimal effort.

Key takeaways

Physician employers: partners, not adversaries. They want physicians to be satisfied with their compensation arrangements. There is already a shortage of surgeons, and the number is expected to worsen. Replacement of surgeons poses financial, health care, and community challenges. They find it difficult to get a physician’s time and attention.
Even within the same group, physicians cannot decide what they want and have no clue what is “fair” since they do not have access to industry knowledge like hospitals do. We solve these issues. Often frustrated and underappreciated, physicians can find solace when their compensation is fair, a sentiment that physician employers may not always be aware of. Maximizing physician compensation reduces burnout. Many physicians know medicine but little about the business of medicine. It is essential to have tools to even the playing field so the team has the power of knowledge in negotiations.
Physicians: they are busy, overwhelmed, and skeptical. Despite their dedication to medicine, many physicians are locked into long-term agreements without updates. This lack of clarity can lead to uncertainty and feeling in the dark about their contracts, which could be improved with precise and updated agreements. They have difficulty agreeing on patient care, let alone what they want in their careers, which would improve their lives.

This case illustrates the importance of preparation, unity, and strategic communication in contract negotiations. The surgeons’ proactive approach improved their contractual conditions and set a precedent for future negotiations within the hospital.

Jon Appino has been the driving force behind Contract Diagnostics since 2011, where he leads a dedicated team on a mission to empower physicians with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to negotiate robust employment contracts and secure the best compensation packages. With over a century of collective experience, the CDx team is a paragon of field expertise. With over 25 years of diverse health care experience, Jon leads this seasoned team of professionals. From Pete’s 20+ years to Anu’s 25+ years, complemented by Jillian and Laura’s 10+ years each, our team boasts a wealth of knowledge. This remarkable tenure is further fortified by the skills and backgrounds of our other team members, including Kathryn Sarnoski, MD, and Jan Schmitz, director of operations. Their combined experience ensures that Contract Diagnostics offers the most seasoned and insightful guidance in physician compensation.

Discover more of Jon’s perspectives on physician compensation by exploring the Contract Diagnostics blog or connecting on social media platforms like LinkedIn , Facebook , YouTube , and Instagram .

The Contract Diagnostics team offers comprehensive consulting services tailored to physicians and their families, addressing employment contracts and compensation structures. Our expertise spans contract physician compensation, schedules, benefits, and more.

Our mission is to establish a central resource where physicians can access information, consulting, and coaching to navigate the intricacies of employment contracts and compensation structures, ensuring equitable remuneration.

Questions? Feel free to reach out to us via our website or at 888-574-5526.

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Stories of Success in Education: Nexford University

In 2022, IFC provided its first financing to Nexford, a next-generation online university with a mission to expand access to high-quality and affordable education that aligns with market demand. This was followed by a second round of funding in 2023, helping Nexford University broaden its range of program offerings across geographies and scale its technology infrastructure.

These investments by IFC have played a pivotal role in Nexford University’s rapid expansion across Africa and beyond while supporting organizations and regional economies to address emerging talent gaps. With nearly 6,000 enrolled students in 110 countries, Nexford University is empowering learners from across the globe with industry-relevant education – supporting them to launch impactful global careers and make a difference.

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Savoring Fenway experience, birthday boy Butler fuels win with big 2B

Right fielder's recent success can be traced back to adjustment at plate.

Martín Gallegos

BOSTON -- Lawrence Butler has been looking forward to this road trip to Fenway Park since the start of the season. Not only was it going to be his first time playing at the historic stadium, but the three-game series also happened to fall during the rookie’s birthday week.

Once the A’s team bus arrived to Fenway for Tuesday’s series opener, Butler was immediately awestruck by his introduction to the legendary venue, which included a visit inside the famous Green Monster in left field.

“Walking down the tunnel to the field, it feels like a video game,” Butler said. “Like you’re in MLB The Show. It’s crazy. Just to be able to share the same field as some of the greatest players to ever play this game is very cool.”

Taking the field for his 24th birthday on Wednesday, Butler keyed Oakland’s 5-2 victory over the Red Sox by reaching base three times as part of a 2-for-3 performance that included a two-run double off Nick Pivetta in the third inning.

“Man,” Butler said. “To go 2-for-3, [with a] walk, two RBIs and a dub in Fenway, it’s an amazing birthday.”

Butler kicked off his birthday festivities the night before when he bashed a 457-foot three-run homer that stands as the longest of his career and the longest by any A’s player so far this season.

Over his last nine games, Butler is hitting .345 (10-for-29) with three homers and nine RBIs. That success directly correlates with a mechanical tweak he made before a game against the D-backs on June 30. Butler worked with A’s director of hitting Darren Bush on an adjustment to keep his head movement under control at the plate, allowing him to see the ball better coming out of the pitcher’s hand for a longer period of time.

When a hitter makes an adjustment, it can take some time before the desired results start to show. In the case of Butler, his adjustment at the plate has delivered instant success.

“You love to see the results happen this fast,” manager Mark Kotsay said. “But that takes an open mind and willingness to make adjustments, which is hard for a young player. I tip my cap to him for doing that.”

For Butler, the immediate results are a sign that his approach is right.

“I’m on the right path to becoming the player I want to be,” Butler said. “I’ve just got to thank [Bush] for helping me acknowledge the problem and fixing stuff up.”

Kotsay pointed to Butler’s two hits on Wednesday -- both of which went the opposite way to left field and were struck at an exit velocity of 100 mph or more -- as evidence of the adjustment paying off.

“Those two balls he hit today, if you go back two or three weeks ago, he was taking those for strikes,” Kotsay said. “He wasn’t being aggressive. He wasn’t trying to use that side of the field. Those two balls he hit tonight were missiles. The double into the corner was a huge at-bat and a huge momentum swing in the game.”

Butler’s performance over the past couple of weeks is who the A’s believe he can be at his best. This is a player who is equipped with an exciting blend of speed and power tools that project stardom. Now, it’s about maintaining that consistency through the rest of the season.

“He’s been swinging it really well and looking really good at the plate,” said JP Sears, who set the tone on the mound for Oakland with 5 2/3 innings of one-run ball with eight strikeouts. “We’re obviously expecting more of that from him in the future.”

Aside from baseball, Butler’s birthday was rather tame. He spent most of the day at the ballpark as he had early cage work lined up. Of course, nothing could have beat the present of a victory at the end of the day.

“I had early hitting on my birthday so I had to show up early,” Butler said with a laugh. “No days off.”

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Why Britain Just Ended 14 Years of Conservative Rule

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For more than a decade, Britain has been governed by the Conservative Party, which pushed its politics to the right, embracing smaller government and Brexit. Last week, that era officially came to an end.

Mark Landler, the London bureau chief for The Times, explains why British voters rejected the Conservatives and what their defeat means in a world where populism is on the rise.

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The Conservatives have run Britain for 14 years. How have things changed in that time?

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