The Viral Startup A Guide To Designing Viral Loops

Andrew Chen is a blogger and entrepreneur focused on consumer internet, metrics and user acquisition. He is an advisor/angel for early-stage startups including Appsumo, Cardpool (acquired by Safeway), Catchfree, Gravity, Mocospace, Launchbit, Qik (acquired by Skype), WeeWorld, Votizen, and is also a 500 Startups mentor. In his blog, Andrew shares his best advice for a viral startup. This eBook includes the most interesting, popular, and relevant advice from Andrew's blog (www.andrewchenblog.com) and organizes it into actionable advice for readers. Linking to additional resources and further reading, it's the perfect road map that breaks down the path to a truly successful viral company.

Here's something you may not know about today's Internet. Simply by designing your product the right way, you can build a flourishing business from scratch. No advertising or marketing budget, no need for a sales force, and venture capitalists will flock to throw money at you. Many of the most successful Web 2.0 companies, including MySpace, YouTube, eBay, and rising stars like Twitter and Flickr, are prime examples of what journalist Adam L. Penenberg calls a "viral loop" -- to use it, you have to spread it. After all, what's the sense of being on Facebook if none of your friends are The result: Never before has there been the potential to create wealth this fast, on this scale, and starting with so little. In this game-changing must-read, Penenberg tells the fascinating story of the entrepreneurs who first harnessed the unprecedented potential of viral loops to create the successful online businesses -- some worth billions of dollars -- that we have all grown to rely on. The trick is that they created something people really want, so much so that their customers happily spread the word about their product for them. All kinds of businesses -- from the smallest start-ups to nonprofit organizations to the biggest multinational corporations -- can use the paradigm-busting power of viral loops to enable their business through technology. Viral Loop is a must-read for any entrepreneur or business interested in uncorking viral loops to benefit their bottom line.

Most startups end in failure. Almost every failed startup has a product. What failed startups don't have are enough customers. Traction Book changes that. We provide startup founders and employees with the framework successful companies use to get traction. It helps you determine which marketing channel will be your key to growth. "If you can get even a single distribution channel to work, you have a great business." -- Peter Thiel, billionare PayPal founder The number one traction mistake founders and employees make is not dedicating as much time to traction as they do to developing a product. This shortsighted approach has startups trying random tactics -- some ads, a blog post or two -- in an unstructured way that will likely fail. We developed our traction framework called Bullseye with the help of the founders behind several of the biggest companies and organizations in the world like Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), Paul English (Kayak.com), Alex Pachikov (Evernote) and more. We interviewed over forty successful founders and researched countless more traction stories -- pulling out the repeatable tactics and strategies they used to get traction. "Many entrepreneurs who build great products simply don't have a good distribution strategy." -- Mark Andreessen, venture capitalist Traction will show you how some of the biggest internet companies have grown, and give you the same tools and framework to get traction.

Here's how it works: you read a book, you recommend it to a friend. That friend tells another friend. And another... until the book becomes this year's word-of-mouth sensation. This is the first to analyze the power of the 'pass-it-on' phenomenon, introducing us to the architects of the mightily efficient, money-spinning model known as the Viral Loop - the secret behind some of the most successful businesses in recent history. Outfits such as Google, eBay, Flickr and Facebook all employ the model at their core; all have seen their stock valuations skyrocket within years of forming. The genius lies in the model's reliance on replication: what's the point of using Facebook if none of your friends can see your profile, or using Flickr if you can't share your photos? Where's the joy in posting a video on YouTube if no one watches it? Thus, in creating a viral product that people want, need and desire, growth can, and will, take care of itself. Find out why the Loop will catch us all up, sooner rather than later...

This book is the "Hello, World" tutorial for building products, technologies, and teams in a startup environment. It's based on the experiences of the author, Yevgeniy (Jim) Brikman, as well as interviews with programmers from some of the most successful startups of the last decade, including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Stripe, Instagram, AdMob, Pinterest, and many others. Hello, Startup is a practical, how-to guide that consists of three parts: Products, Technologies, and Teams. Although at its core, this is a book for programmers, by programmers, only Part II (Technologies) is significantly technical, while the rest should be accessible to technical and non-technical audiences alike. If you’re at all interested in startups—whether you’re a programmer at the beginning of your career, a seasoned developer bored with large company politics, or a manager looking to motivate your engineers—this book is for you.

★★ Buy the Paperback version of this book and get the eBook version included for FREE ★★ Content is the cornerstone of effective viral marketing, there's no way around that. If you wish to draw in a bunch of traffic from various places while you are still young, then viral content is the way to go. However, the majority of people who have a go at viral marketing don't really have a clue about how to make things happen and they overlook the fact that niche networks already exist. Fortunately for you, you don't need to waste your time because this book will provide you with the essence of viral marketing so that you can know which kind of content goes viral each and every day. In this book, you can expect to learn: -The reason why content goes viral -What it takes for viral marketing to be successful -How to draw in a bunch of sources from all around the web -How to make the most out of your viral marketing while doing less work -And a lot more... Anyone can achieve some kind of viral outcome on the internet as long as the right knowledge is used, and that is what this book is all about. Doing something of a viral nature is a worthwhile life goal for anyone to accomplish at least once. If you're ready to discover a shortcut which can allow you to gain followers much more quickly, then scrolling over to the buy button and clicking it the first step towards that.