How to grow your business? #scaled16 case City Digital

1. How to turn around old-scool print business to
3rd fastest growing company in Finland* and to
61st fastest growing company in Europe*
*Deloi'e Fast500 ranking, 2015
@lavas

2. Ilkka O. Lavas
• 3 books about entrepreneurship
”Unstoppable Entrepreneurship, Amazon”
• Partner, board member, investor
– Portfolio of 15 businesses
– 10+ aquisitions done
– 4 exits
• Young Entrepreneur of the year 2009 in ’Southern
Finland’
• 36years, 2 sons, 1 wife,
2,8k+ fb, 1.1k insta
2,7k+ linkedin,
Snapchat @ilkkalavas
5,5k+ twitter @lavas
@lavas

3. EXITs:
Import & Export software
@lavas

5. ”Stop print business
and do 100% digital media.
Digital media is scalable!”
@lavas

6. We are more
interested in
print business
@lavas

7. Lesson 1: Dream Big
@lavas

8. 2012: ”I wish we could be bigger than iltalehK in Finland”
"Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words.
Be careful of your words, for your words become your ac7ons.
Be careful of your ac7ons, for your ac7ons become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your des7ny.”
- Author unknown
2015 this happened
@lavas

9. Media DigitalizaKon: City Digital
How did we jump to Finnish top10 list in 11 months
TransformaKon from
suffering print magazine into Growing and Successful City Digital Media Family
@lavas

10. City.fi – number of visitors
STATISTICS OF
VISITORS
0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
3,000,000
3,500,000
Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2012 2013 2014 2015E 2016E 2017E
Acquisition of
City by Ilkka
Lavas
Company name
to City Digital
Digital media family
establishment
Increasing # of
cooperative blogs
Establish new media
families from new
subjects and themes
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
Buy Klikki Network &
Establish Improve Media
Omiste:u media
Eduste:u media
@lavas

11. Media Digitalization: City Digital – How did we jump to Finnish top10 list?
STATISTICS OF
VISITORS
0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
3,000,000
3,500,000
Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
2012 2013 2014 2015E 2016E 2017E
Acquisitio
n of City
by Ilkka
Lavas
Company
name to
City
Digital
Digital media
family
establishment
Increasing # of
cooperative
blogs
Establish new
media families
from new
subjects and
themes
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL @lavas

13. ”Growth is important, and
most great companies
take it seriously.”
- Adam Nash, Wealthfront (LinkedIn, eBay,
Atlas Venture)
@lavas

14. Growth, is about increasing …
• Revenue
• Traffic
• Sales per customer
More
customers
More
revenue
More value
per customer
@lavas

15. Lesson 2
Start with
growth minded
people
@lavas

16. There is no such a thing as a
GROWTH CORPORATION

17. Mindset?
Carol S. Dweck (2012). Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential
@lavas

18. Yes! We can be even be'er in digital!
Carol S. Dweck (2012). Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential
+200%

19. Companies are ALWAYS
made of people to people by people
@lavas

20. People make companies grow

21. HowTo: Build growth minded company culture?
• Change owners
– Buy and turnaround
– Some owners are risk takes, some are cash cow lowers
• Change management
– Hire growth minded managers, set growth goals
• Change people
– Hire new
– Teach old (oh yes, many old dogs can learn new tricks)
– > New Culture
@lavas

22. Growth Mindset ßà Growth Culture

23. 3rd lesson. Scale! To grow,
you need to mulKply something
X 1
X 10
X 100
X 1 000
X 10 000
X 100 000
X 1 000 000
X 10 000 000
X 100 000 000
X 1 000 000 000
X 10 000 000 000
X 100 000 000 000
What can you mulKply?
@lavas

24. 3rd lesson. Ask yourself:
What can we mulKply?
Scalable
• Customers
And what customers you choose?
• What channels customers use?
• Unique Visitors
• Online Sales
• Programmatic Sales
• Ad Inventory
• Restaurants
• Table Reservations
• People who are Dating on Deitti.net
Not scalable
• More salespeople
• Face 2 Face sales
Dropbox income 99e /year per user
Cost per user first year (user acquisiKon cost,
hosKng, storage, etc) 233-388 e per new
customer before growthhacking.
- Economics! !!!!!! Profitability!!!!!
Virality: AdverKsing did not work. ”Invite your
friends, refer friend, install to you phone”.
”You get more space”
PrioriKze:
Scale what is scalable and profitable,
stop doing everything else
@lavas

25. Freemium -> premium
Multiple amounts of customers / uniques visitors / ad impressions
• Shopify 30k+
• Salesforce 100k+
• Yammer 200k+
• Slack 2 M+ daily
• GitHub 1,9M
• Mailchimp 2M
• Google apps 4M
• Freshbook 4,5
• Google analytics 30M
• Evernote 30M
• Dropbox over 50M people are on dropbox
2 M daily users,
0,57 M
PAID Accounts
@lavas

26. Case City Digital. What did we mulKply?
What did we multiply?
Ad impressions
2012: 800 000 ad impressions
2013: 6 000 000 ad impressions
2014: 14 000 000 ad impressions
2015: 160 000 000 ad impressions
Amount of customers
2012: 40 customers
2013: 200 customers, 30% paying digitally
2014: 4000 customers, 50% buying digitally
2015: 10000 customers, 70% paying digitally
@lavas

27. 4th lesson: Never stop improving.
Scale now, scale forever
1. Always Improve
2. Always Innovate
3. Be better
– as a team,
– with your products,
– better than competitors,
– better with your customers
@lavas

28. Media group has stable business and growing international
Companies within our group Presents i.e.
…
.EE
.EE
@lavas

29. Sports
Football
Sport
Enthusias
?cs
Ice
Hockey
Entertainm
ent
Lifestyle
Fashion
Wellness and
Ac?ve sports
Home and
gardening
Family
Pets
Cars and
motors
Technolo
gy
Food &
restauran
ts
Golf
In Finland we run one of the
Largest adverKsement network

30. Growth Plan
Product
Development
Phase
Scaling
@lavas

31. Dream Big
”I believe
we can
grow
to 100 M
company"
@lavas

32. 1985-2012
Business: print magazine
Area: Finland
Customers: Locals
Readers: 200k-450k
Unique visitors on web:
City 0,1 M , Network: 0
Impressions: 800 000
2012, 2015 ->
Business: Digital Urban Media and AdverKsement Network
Area: Global
Customer: Globally
Readers: 360k / 1100k copies
Unique visitors per week:
City Digital 0,5M (weekly), IM Network: 3M
Impressions 160 000 000
Grossglockner, Austria, EaKng Icecream

33. Team
1. Dream big!
2. Start with the Growth Minded team, create growth minded innovaHve culture
3. Automate everything
4. Scale it up
5. Never give up!
How to GROW?

34. Never give up!
@lavas

35. Your own thoughts
About your ability
Is oqen the
Biggest limiter
Of your success
Photo:
Robbie Grubbs

36. “Whether you think you can,
or you think you can't
you're right.”
- Henry Ford
@lavas

37. Ilkka O. Lavas
Angel Investor, Serial Entrepreneur
and Growth Entrepreneurship Maniac
Ilkka.lavas@city.fi
FB, IG, SC: IlkkaLavas
Gsm +358 400 997969
@lavas ßßß Follow now on Twi'er!!!
(yes, I will follow you back)
A ship in port is safe; but that is not
what ships are built for.
Don’t be afraid to grow. Be afraid not to grow.
“When you stop growing you start dying.” ― William S. Burroughs, Junky