Below are six key lessons I took away from the conference:

1) Order of operations is paramount

As in math, order of operations is important in growing your company and acquiring customers. Executing tactics, programs, and campaigns in the wrong order or with the wrong goal can be disastrous. In his keynote, Khosla Ventures investor Keith Rabois shared the optimal order for growing a tech startup he learned during stints at Square, Slide, and Linkedin. Here’s the order of operations:

• Develop a product
• Iterate & establish your product’s value
• Grow your customer base
• Experiment with growth hacking

2) The path to growth follows a process

In order to follow the plan Keith laid out in his keynote, you will need a better understanding of what growth looks and how to achieve it. In his talk, Sean Ellis, CEO of Qualaroo shared the phases of growth that he learned while working with Dropbox, Eventbright, Xobni, and LogMeIn helping to grow their customer base. Also, check out this blog post for more info. But just to break it down, here’s the path to growth:

• Product/Market Fit
• Transition To Growth
• Growth

3) Sustainable company value only comes from real user-engagement

When most people think of growth hacks they think of short-term tactics that drive large spikes in key metrics like usage or customers. While these short-term tactics help drive startups, Greg Tseng, CEO of Tagged explained that sustainable company value is all about real user engagement. In short, focus on tactics that increase real user-engagement, not vanity metrics.

4) You can validate your product in under 48 hours

Noah Kagan of AppSumo challenged the audience to figure out ways to validate businesses like Square and AirBnB in under 48 hours. After a lively conversation with seat neighbors, audience members shared ways they could validate each business, proving it could be done without any coding, design, and in most cases money. He followed this challenge by urging the audience to see if they could make their first dollar with the business idea they’ve been noodling on. Also, Kagan put together this handy resource outlining this topic that’s worth checking out.

5) Inception is not just a movie, it’s a growth hacking strategy

Josh Elman, Principal at Greylock, knows growth and shared his learnings from his time at Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with the audience by outlining a three step framework (Purpose, Inception, Adoption) for growing a startup’s customer base. While Purpose is fairly straight forward, Josh spent a good bit of time elaborating on the concept of Inception. This step covers how you make people aware of your product and the problem it solves. In his talk, Josh emphasized you need to train people to get the most out of your solution by spreading the right messages via your product (think how you can optimize your signup flow) and external communication like press (what story you are telling).

6) There are 3 ways to optimize for growth

Many marketers find it easy to get bogged down in how and where to optimize your product. To make it easy, Elliot Shmukler of WealthFront revealed three ways you optimize your product. Opportunities to optimize include:

• Reduce Friction — Make stuff easier to do
• Increase Incentives — Sprinkle in social proof and do a better job at communicating your products value
• Increase Exposure — Ask people to high value tasks in your product more often, more prominently, or in more places

Conclusion:

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and I appreciate all the work that went into this event by both the speakers and the conference organizers. Their hard work paid off.

Top photo credit: Jim Scheinman/Twitter

Enjoy!

About Noam

Noam Wasserman is a professor at Harvard Business School. For more than a decade, his research has focused on founders’ early decisions that can make or break the startup and its team. At HBS, he developed and teaches an MBA elective, “Founders’ Dilemmas,” for which he was awarded the HBS Faculty Teaching Award and the Academy of Management’s 2010 Innovation in Pedagogy Award. In 2011, the course was also named one of the top entrepreneurship courses in the country by Inc. magazine.

Connect With Noam

http://www.noamwasserman.com/
https://twitter.com/noamwass
“The Founder’s Dilemmas” On Amazon

In this episode, I am going to talk with him about the role of a startup CEO including how it changes from a team of three to a team of 50 people. Stay tuned to the end to hear Sam share how you can go about coming up with a big idea for your next startup.

Enjoy!

About Sam

Prior to Mass Relevance, Sam Decker was founding Chief Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice, the leader in Software as a Service (SaaS) social commerce technologies serving over 1,000 brands. Decker was responsible for building the company’s brand, products and platform. Before joining Bazaarvoice, Decker spent seven years of leadership at Dell, Inc. in marketing, online, CRM, and customer-centricity strategy. From 1999-2003, he led Dell’s consumer web site, building Dell.com into the largest consumer eCommerce site at $3.5B in annual sales, and established global best practices in merchandising, analytics, product management, and operations. Sam pioneered Dell’s customer-centricity strategy and customer segmentation using Six Sigma methodology.

Before Dell, Decker spent more than six years in the Bay Area leading marketing, sales and product strategy at B2B and media startups. Decker has authored two books on word of mouth marketing, serves on the digital advisory board for P&G, served on the board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and posts occasionally at deckermarketing.com or @samdecker.

Connect With Sam

http://www.massrelevance.com
http://deckermarketing.com/
https://twitter.com/samdecker
http://www.linkedin.com/in/samdecker

In this episode, I am going to talk with him about his experience advising startups so that you can learn how to find, connect with, and leverage startup advisors for your company.

Enjoy!

About Bill

Bill is an entrepreneur and an investor/advisor to a dozen really cool tech companies. In his spare time he helps out at Capital Factory, 500 Startups and TechStars. Bill was the founder and CTO of Webmail.us, which Rackspace acquired in 2007. After helping to scale his email business, Bill spent a year working on partnerships and M&A at Rackspace. He left Rackspace in 2011 to peruse a new project. Bill often gives talks on technology and entrepreneurship and loves chatting with kick-ass entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world.

Connect With Bill

http://www.linkedin.com/in/billboebel
http://billboebel.com
https://angel.co/billboebel
https://twitter.com/billboebel

This interview is a part of the “BIG Idea” series where I will showcase entrepreneurs from around the world that are tackling huge opportunities.

In this episode, I am going to talk with Dana about where the idea for Wahooly came from, what he did to get it off the ground, and how you can benefit from their work.

Enjoy!

About Dana

Dana Severson is a Minneapolis-based entrepreneur, veteran adman and hobbiest writer. Currently, Dana is the Cofounder and CEO of Wahooly, a venture-backed startup that helps emerging companies gain traction by matching them with online influencers. Wahooly has emerged as one of the most anticipated and talked-about companies in Silicon Valley.

In addition to have written for both Ad Age and Fast Company, Dana has been featured in Inc. Magazine, USA Today, Mashable, Techcrunch and Business Insider. He’s been recognized for his marketing ingenuity, creativity and entrepreneurial vision. Before starting Wahooly, Dana was the co-founder of IDesignYourLogo.com, which employed a social approach to brand development, clients included such names as Robert Scoble, Peter Shankman, Scott Monty and Guy Kawasaki.

Connect With Dana

http://wahooly.com/
https://twitter.com/danerobert
http://www.linkedin.com/in/drseverson

In this episode, I am going to talk with Elizabeth about how you can create an effective and powerful PR strategy for your startup.

Enjoy!

About Elizabeth

Data-driven Marketing Communications MBA with 10 years experience in online and offline marketing for business and consumer brands. I love working with early stage technology startups to bring to life a powerful 360-degree marketing and PR plan, strategy to execution.

At Swipely, we help hundreds of local merchants grow sales by unlocking the data behind every transaction. Check out our transformative service called Payment Marketing: a single solution to understand, engage and retain customers with analytics, marketing and loyalty programs.

Connect With Elizabeth

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elizabeth-ducoff/4/608/82b
http://frostyourself.com/
http://about.me/elizabethsigal
https://twitter.com/elizabethducoff

In this episode I am going to talk with John Robert about PR for tech startups including when to do it yourself, when to bring on a PR agency, and when it is time to bring it in-house.

Enjoy!

Connect With John Robert

http://jones-dilworth.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-robert-reed/9/444/72a
https://twitter.com/johnrobertreed/
johnrobert@jones-dilworth.com
https://www.totemapp.com/
http://www.thedailydot.com/

In this episode, I am going to talk with Kevin about what you can do to improve the entrepreneurial community and ecosystem around in order to foster innovation and improve your bottom line.

Enjoy!

About Kevin

Kevin Koym accelerates entrepreneur success. Kevin leads and coaches teams and individuals to innovate to breakthrough performance through doing more with less.

Championing the cause of startups for over a decade has given Kevin the chance to launch a number of companies across the world. The culmination of those experiences has led to the founding of Tech Ranch Austin, a venture accelerator for early-stage technology companies. Through Tech Ranch Austin, Kevin has optimized his ability to assemble the pieces necessary to get a startup functioning and growing quickly. Before Tech Ranch Austin, Kevin founded, or was on the founding teams, of 7 different startup companies and four entrepreneur networks in the US, Mexico, and Chile, that he continues to actively grow. And Kevin’s service to these groups was also recently recognized as “Technology Community Leader of the Year” for 2010 by the Association of Information Technology Professionals, Austin Chapter. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Kevin fell in love with the startup process while working for Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer, Inc.

Personally and professionally, Kevin is defined by his ability to inspire both individuals and businesses to seize the technological and social revolution on the horizon in order to better their community as well as their profit potential. The key roles Kevin has played in a variety of startups throughout his life have enabled him to fine-tune his ability to replicate the success of helping entrepreneurs build what they never thought as possible before.

Connect With Kevin

http://www.techranchaustin.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinkoym
https://www.twitter.com/kkoym
http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/
 

In this episode, I am going to talk with Charles about where the idea for Civitas Learning came from and what he’s doing to get it off the ground.

Enjoy!

About Charles

Charles discovered a passion for education while teaching high school students on the weekends during his undergraduate days at Stanford, and upon graduating translated that passion into the founding of multiple education start-ups. These early ventures included ClickSafety.com, an online safety training company, and Testakers.com, the first rich-media, diagnostic and prescriptive test prep tutoring application online. In 2002 his business was acquired by Kaplan, where he spent the next nine years as an in-house entrepreneur, launching several edtech businesses in the K12 and higher education markets.

Charles is a two-time CODiE Award recipient for excellence in software development and a former director on the Education Board of the Software & Information Industry Association. He speaks at educational conferences around the country when he’s not at home in Austin, Texas enjoying time with his wife, son and dog.

Connect With Charles

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/charles-thornburgh/0/405/146
http://www.civitaslearning.com/
https://twitter.com/CivitasLearning

In this episode I am going to talk with Jason about the three key metrics every SaaS entrepreneur should use to monitor his/her business including what they are, how to monitor them and what you can do to improve them.

Note: I want to hear from you! If you have any questions about this interview or something you want to learn please reach out to me here.

About Jason

Jason is the founder of four companies including Smart Bear and currently WPEngine.

He took Smart Bear from start to multiple millions in profit, without debt or VC, then sold it for cash.

Jason is also a mentor at Capital Factory (like TechStars or Y-Combinator in Austin) and an investor in a few companies.

He’s the author of Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review, the most popular book (50,000 copies) on modern, lightweight methods for doing peer code review effectively without everyone hating life. Jason is also the co-host of OnStartups Answers along with Dharmesh Shah.

Jason live in Austin, Texas with my wonderful wife, a chef and entrepreneur who blogs about cooking healthy at home, and my precious baby daughter Abigail.

Connect With Jason

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncohen
http://www.wpengine.com/
http://www.asmartbear.com/
https://www.twitter.com/asmartbear

Today’s guest is Dean Kakridus, the founder and CEO of nineten innovation.

In this episode we are going to cover all sorts of topics including:

• Why he launched his business
• How you can be a better service provider
• How startups like yours should select service providers
• Why design is so crucial to a startup’s success
• How startups can find the designers they need to make a great product.

At the end of the interview, Dean will share with us his philosophy on life and discuss actionable tactics you can use to alter the course of your life and be a happier you.

Enjoy!

About Dean

Dean has 18-years of experience (all within the high-technology industry) in industrial & product engineering, design, business development, strategy, startups, and generating value around innovative products and services.

As a lifelong tech enthusiast and Internet pioneer, Dean has worked across various technology industries including mobile, Internet, software, consumer electronics, personal computers supercomputers, and design consulting services. He has contributed to the development of many early web browser/ Internet service innovations and business models, including co-inventing the Google search-from-browser model, and enjoys solving big UX problems. He approaches all business challenges from a human-centered design & engineering perspective, knowing that revenues and profits follow quality and usability.

After four great years at frog design, he founded a new firm called nineten innovation. For big brands and startups alike, nineten is a lean UX, “un-agency” approach to engaging with just the right measure of outsourced creative talent, experience, and passion needed to deliver innovative, valuable and usable products & services to market. They’re the x-factor and difference-maker you trust to deliver transformative design and development work with greater effectiveness and lower cost than typical agencies because, unlike agencies, nineten is not in the deliverables business. They’re in the business of building great experiences that help people live well and creating winning results for both our clients and delivery partners.

Connect With Dean

http://www.nineten.net/
https://twitter.com/ATX/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kakridas
 

In this episode, I am going to talk with Dan about the company culture he’s built at BuildASign, focusing on why he did it, how he did it, and the impact it has had on his business. Stay tuned until the end to hear Dan share the one thing you can do to improve your company culture today.

Enjoy!

About Dan

Austin native Dan Graham serves as CEO of BuildASign.com, a three-time ABJ Fast 50 award winning and two-time INC5000 company. Dan earned undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from the School of Law at UT Austin. In March 2005, he co-founded BuildASign.com and bootstrapped the company to great success. Since then, BuildASign.com has grown to operations in four countries with 200+ employees and $30Million in revenue, having taken zero funding. Dan also serves the Austin community in a variety of capacities including the Board of Directors of Austin Pro Bono; as a member of the Cities of Service Steering Committee for the City of Austin; Board of Directors Vice Chair of Small Business for Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce; Chair for UT’s Innovation & Science Enterprise Advisory Board; and Board of Directors of Lights. Camera Help.

Connect With Dan

Dan’s Twitter Account
Dan’s LinkedIn Profile
BuildASign.com
BuildASign.com’s Twitter Account

I am going to talk with Chuck about the strategies, channels, and tools SpareFoot uses to find customers.

About Chuck

Chuck Gordon is the founder and CEO of SpareFoot, the largest open marketplace for self storage.

Connect With Chuck

Chuck’s LinkedIn Profile
SpareFoot
SpareFoot On Twitter

In this episode, I am going to talk with Rick about the approach, strategies and tools he uses to brand and market YETI in an effort to equip you with the knowledge you need to succeed.

Enjoy!

About Rick

Rick Wittenbraker is the VP of Marketing for YETI Coolers, maker of ultra-durable, super-insulated premium coolers for serious outdoor enthusiasts. YETI Coolers are wildly stronger, keep ice longer and are certified grizzly bear proof. He has helped YETI Coolers achieve rapid growth and a loyal customer following dubbed the “YETI Nation”. He is also co-founder of The SEAM, Society for the Encouragement of Authentic Marketing, and Stage One Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on online brands and technologies.

Connect With Rick

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickwitt
https://twitter.com/#!/WittRick
http://www.yeticoolers.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/yeticoolers
http://www.stage1capital.com
https://twitter.com/#!/stage1capital

Chris is the director of the entrepreneurship program at the University of Georgia and a verified “value proposition guru.”

On this episode, I am going to talk with Chris about why you need a value proposition and how you can go about crafting one.

About Chris

Chris is an entrepreneur and lecturer at the University of Georgia where he teaches entrepreneurship at the Terry College of Business. He also serves as the director of the Terry College of Business Entrepreneurship Program. Certified as a business appraiser, Hanks provides expert witness testimony regarding the value of privately held businesses. He is also active in the funding and franchising of startups. He has owned multiple businesses, including music, e-commerce, publishing, and export ventures.

Connect With Chris

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-hanks/9/53/848
http://www.schoolforstartups.com
https://twitter.com/#!/ChrisHanks

Kevin is a serial entrepreneur and author of the new book “Startup: An Insider’s Guide To Launching and Running a Business.”

On this episode Kevin is going to help arm you with the knowledge you need to build and market your product successfully.

About Kevin

Kevin is a serial entrepreneur – which means that he started his first company when he was 24 years old and has built companies in several industries (and had 3 exits) since then. He is still building startups today, serving as an executive for the latest successful acquisition (Classified Ventures, Chicago). He also has the privilege of being a business advisor and mentor for startups internationally.

He recently wrote the book Startup: An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Running a Business, a unique guide that a fellow entrepreneur recently called “The single best book on starting a business that I have ever read”. He guarantees that it will improve your business.

Connect With Kevin

His Forbes.com Profile
http://www.KevinReady.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinready
https://twitter.com/#!/keready

Today’s guest is Sanjay Parekh. Sanjay is the founder of Startup Riot and ShotPut Ventures and past co-founder of Digital Envoy.

On this episode, I am going to talk with Sanjay about the fundraising landscape in Atlanta for seed, angel and VC level funding.

Questions Asked

Seed
How many seed stage investors are there in Atlanta?
• Who are they?
• How are they structured?
• What do they like to fund?
• How much money are we talking? (What level of funding)
• When would I approach one of these investors? (What stage of the business?)
• What should I have?
• What is the best way to approach these individuals?

Angel
How many angel investors are there Atlanta?
• What type of stuff do they like to invest in?
• How would I get connected with them?
• What do they want to see?
• Who are the angel investors in Atlanta?
• Who are the leaders?
• What amount of money are they looking to invest?
• How do I get in touch with them?
• Any other advice regarding approaching an angel?

VC
How many VC funds are there in Atlanta?
• What do they want to see at this stage?
• What types of companies are they interested in funding?
• Where do I need to be with my business?
• What metrics are they looking for?
• What level of money are they looking to invest?
• Who are the VC firms in Atlanta?
• What types of stuff do they each want to invest in?
• How do our viewers get in touch with them?

About Sanjay

Sanjay was a founder of Digital Envoy where he led the strategic vision of the company most recently as the Chief Strategy Officer and previously as the CEO. Sanjay is also the original inventor of Digital Envoy’s patented NetAcuity IP intelligence technology. Digital Envoy was acquired by Landmark Communications in June 2007.

Sanjay has served as an expert consultant for numerous startups, corporations, and organizations including the Department of Justice.

In 2004, Sanjay was named an Outstanding Young Atlantan by Outstanding Atlanta, one of the “Top 40 Under 40″ Georgians by Georgia Trend magazine, and a 2004 American Marshall Memorial Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States. In 2003, Sanjay was named to MIT’s Technology Review TR100 list as one of the top 100 young innovators of 2003 and one of the “Top 50 Entrepreneurs” in Atlanta by Catalyst Magazine. Sanjay was also named a Technology Pioneer with the World Economic Forum in 2002 and 2003.

Sanjay has an electrical engineering degree, specializing in computer engineering, from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Sanjay also holds an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Connect With Sanjay

http://startupriot.com/
http://sanjayparekh.com/
http://www.shotputventures.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjayparekh
https://twitter.com/#!/sanjay

1) How Much To Pay Yourself When You Own A Business

2) Better Questions Bring Better Solutions

3) Why Business Plans Can Actually Hurt Business Progress

4) How To Properly Define Your Brand

5) A New Way To Get Innovative

6) When Is It Time To Seek Financing?

7) 10 Ways To Get Your Blog Noticed

8) The Best Customer Management System

9) Are In Person Sales Still Better Than Online

10) The 5 Biggest Expenses You Can Easily Cut

11) Reclaim Your Life From Distractions

12) Dont Hold Meetings, Hold Huddles

It’s easier than you think and I will help you do it.

Overview

In this session I will walk you through a framework for finding and landing customers. If you want more customers, sign up for this session.

Still not convinced?
To sweeten the deal, I will also share with you 11 ways I’ve found to harness my current customers to land new ones.

My Presentation

About Me:

I am a startup marketing nerd that helps startups craft and implement their go-to-market and customer acquisition strategies. You can find more about me at TheStartupSlingshot.com (where I have interviewed 70+ super smart entrepreneurs), or follow me on Twitter @tssupdates.

During his career, Mark has co-founded several companies including echo, which he sold to Ticketmaster and has held a board seat on several companies including StudioNow. Most recently, Mark founded a company called FLO {thinkery}.

On this episode, I am going to talk with Mark about what he learned during his career that led him to launch FLO {thinkery} and how he did it.

Questions Answered

• What is FLO {thinkery}?
• Where did the idea come from?
• What about this idea really got you fired up?
• Why didn’t you pick one of your other ideas?
• How did you know this was the right opportunity to pursue?
• What were you looking for in a business idea?
• Are you modeling flo after another company?
• What was the first thing you did once you had the idea?
• How did you go about building the team around you?
• Who are your customers?
• What does your sales process look like now?
• What did you learn from your time at echo that you see yourself using at FLO?
• How has having that experience helped you in future?

Relevant Links

New Course: How To Raise Seed, Angel and VC Funding In Nashville With Mark Montgomery of FLO {thinkery}

About Mark

Mark Montgomery is a pioneer in the e-commerce and business to consumer marketing space. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with hundreds of entertainment and corporate clients, including names like Sony, Kanye West, Keith Urban, RIM/Blackberry, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Bon Jovi, Pearl Jam, Best Buy, Gnarls Barkley, Rascal Flatts, and General Motors to name a few.

Connect With Mark

http://findyourflo.com/
http://hellomarko.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/hellomarko
http://www.linkedin.com/in/hellomarko/