This document contains tips and strategies for startup growth from PayUmoney's Growth Masterclass. It discusses how to grow at the idea, MVP, and post-launch stages through content marketing, building communities, email campaigns, and distribution strategies. It also provides examples of how companies like PayPal, Spotify, and Airbnb achieved growth. Throughout, it emphasizes the importance of storytelling, psychology, distribution, team, and using common sense over being purely data-driven in the early days.

1. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
The Startup
Growth Masterclass
#GrowKolkata | @PayUmoneyIGD

2. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
PayUmoney India Growth Drivers
“PayUmoney is more than an online payments
solution. We are partners in your venture
growth”
Offline:
High impact
workshops/ Events
Online:
IGD Platform

3. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Every person has an image of who
he/ she wants to be. Your product/
service needs to ensure that you
take the user closer to this
lifelong quest in the
simplest possible manner.

4. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
HomeBrewed Growth Stories
• Cloud Catalogue : m-commerce for SMEs
Hacking early growth in Gurgaon
• Infinity Assurance : Insuring your gadgets
Raised 3.8 Crores from IAN
• Twikster : set up your e-commerce store the
awesome way!
A hack for a niche target audience

5. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
What’s unique about this
pricing page?

6. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Can an interesting advisory
board be a growth hack?
Ask the team at Infinity Assurance. They raised
the first round of funds relatively quickly
compared to many other startups.
The biggest strength they have is an advisory
team which has helped them create a powerful
distribution across 10 cities in 6 months.

7. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Let the user be ‘emotionally’
and ‘propositionally” be in
control!

8. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
How do you grow at the
idea stage?
1. Content Marketing (tell powerful, moving stories)
1. Language is everything!
2. Audience segmenting + Community building
3. Imagination and the ‘what if’ landing page
4. Build mindshare, reduce friction

9. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Remove the imaginary wall that
you create when you call a
human on the other end ‘your
customer’. He’s as much a
human as you!
Now build your story & your venture!
Download the e-book: Do You Collide With Your
Customers from Amazon!

10. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Ask for help!
The most genuine way to do it is “if
you believe someone can actually add
value to what you’re building, tell
them. Then invite them over and
simply talk about your mission”
Leave it right here. Wait for the inspired one’s to revert.

11. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Content = powerful, moving
stories!
Remember the good old days, when your grandma used to
tell you stories of kings, queens, super heroes may be!
Stories involve. Stories ignite imagination. Stories
drive action. Stories make people share!

12. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Sandi MacPherson did an incredible job of using
powerful content to grow Quibb amongst the early
adopters.
Sandi MacPherson did an incredible job of using powerful
content to grow Quibb amongst the early adopters.
A Quibb GDC Breakfast meet

13. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
A personal Email nails it. This is the beginning of a
relationship and not a ‘transactional customer-business
engagement’

14. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Powerful stories work.
The proof:
FirstRound, a highly admired venture capital firm creates
high quality content which shares ‘key learnings’.
PayUmoney, the online payments company from India uses
content to help Startups and SMEs get massive visibility and
get their growth challenges discovered by the one’s who can
solve them!

15. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD

16. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Meet, Neetzan Zimmerman!
In November 2013, Zimmerman, was
responsible for more traffic to Gawker
than all of the rest 20 writers combined.
Source: https://medium.com/@morganb/what-does-this-guy-know-about-virality-that-no-one-else-does-
955e1efc17f9

17. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD

18. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Language is everything.
Look around, everyone’s looking to create a door for
opportunities to knock.
Help them create those doors in your language. Your
positive communication will create a VIRAL impact.
The hack: ask this question from everyone you meet:
how can I help you?

19. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Audience Segmenting
Build a clear ‘archetype’ of your audience.
1. Age
2. Income group
3. Geographical location
4. Needs
5. Choices
6. Is he/ she married?
And every possible piece of information which helps you
‘know the person personally’.

20. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Build a passion community!
Its magical!
There’s nothing more powerful than getting like minded
people together around a certain context.
If others share your context to the extent that they will
passionately share your word, you have a large game at
hand.

21. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Imagination and the ‘what if’
landing page
Imagine if every startup attending this Startup Growth
Masterclass today, looking to raise money, gets discovered
on “PayUmoney India Growth Drivers” platform?
Imagination is a powerful tool to engage humans. The
critical caveat is: be honest. Don’t sell.
Create a world where this “imaginative solution”
that you propose, solves the real world problem
and see the receivers reaction.

22. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Build mindshare between the
problem and ‘you’
You can’t control when people see great opportunities. But
you can make sure that they think of you first.
At an idea stage, ensure that you meet people like a
problem solver. They must appreciate your value in their
life.

23. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
How do you grow at the
MVP stage?
1. SPEED matters : build the must have product
that your user imagines as a solution!
2. Build an MEP instead : the minimum
experiential product!
3. Emails are magical : if done right!!

24. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
When you are invited to be part of
something far bigger than your
normal life,
you buy into the much
bigger vision, satiating
your-self.
*BTW, your users are like you!

25. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Hack: Build a personal
entertainment system in
under $50.
This should make your customers “imagine” and “experience” your
solution and believe that they will pay you for the future of personal
entertainment.

26. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Establish a framework of
growth (things to measure and improve upon)
1. Acquisition
2. Activation
3. Retention
4. Referral
5. Revenue
6. Churn

27. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
A product will not grow by
itself. It needs distribution.
At PayPal our initial user base was 24
people, all of whom worked at PayPal.
Acquiring customers through banner
advertising proved too expensive.
However, by directly paying people to
sign up and then paying them more to
refer friends, we achieved extraordinary
growth. This strategy cost us $20 per
customer, but it also led to 7% daily
growth.

28. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
How Spotify builds products?
Set a clear “human definition” for your product/ service.
Use words which map “human emotions” to your product
features.
The products are designed to be easy, personal, and fun.
Even Metallica, long known as die-hard opponents to music
streaming services, now say that Spotify is “by far the best
streaming service” and are “stunned by the ease of it”.
Source: http://quibb.com/links/how-spotify-builds-products/view

29. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
How PayUmoney removed
complexity and built features
which users fell in love with!
The SMEs wanted to go slow and adopt technology of
which they already know: Email and SMS.
All we did, was build over these existing tech layers!

30. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD

31. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
1. Email Invoice
2. SMS Invoice
3. PayUmoney Button

32. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD

33. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
How Watsi got people to
donate with a wildly
successful Email campaign?
What we ended up with was an email that reads like a real-
life introduction to a person, like, ‘This is Chanda. He’s a 14-
year-old student in Cambodia who needs surgery to use his
hands again after severe burns, and is really happy to
connect with you to get the treatment he needs,’”
Source: http://firstround.com/review/what-startups-can-learn-from-watsis-
wildly-successful-email-campaign/

34. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD

35. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
How do you grow once the
product/ service is LIVE?
1. Be awesome and Be Trustworthy
Build on human nature!
2. Human psychology
Triggers that work!
3. Be aggressive. Respect time
*Be discoverable : SEO + Push people’s interest in other people
4. PR works. You like it OR not!

36. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
How @PayUmoney’s Buyer
Protection Guarantee
increased transaction
volumes for SMEs and
Startups?
Its not about a ‘transaction’. Its about ‘how safely can I
transact’, ‘what will happen if the transaction gets stuck
somewhere’, ‘who will protect my rights as a consumer’?
The BPG is the simplest and the most powerful answer for

37. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
The Karma Hotspot!
Every time a
new user finds
your hotspot
and logs onto it,
you’re rewarded
with 100
megabytes of
extra data

38. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Medium does it beautifully well!
If I liked Oguz’s story that I read it till the
end, it pulls me to read more of him. And
that’s perfectly how it should be!

39. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Google: usage of calendar!
Logic: expecting a user to add events to a Google
calendar was not always the most optimal
fashion of making every Gmail user actively use
Google Calendar.
Google added ‘add to calendar’ call to action within your
Email. So now when you get an Email like “call tomorrow”
Google automatically asks if you would like to add it to your
Google calendar!

40. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Get a phone number. Create a scalable in-bound process!
Source: aircall

41. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
But how do you build
distribution as a nature?
1. Define your product’s core value, the key atomic unit. Eg:
1. Medium: post
2. Dropbox: file
3. Twitter: tweet
4. Instagram: picture
Linkedin uses this beautifully well when it
suggests “Who’s viewed your profile”.

42. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Incredible psychological
triggers:
• The in-group effect
We tend to like and trust people who we feel are similar to us. This also
affects our decision making.
• The ohh Iv seen a similar thing effect
Affinity breeds automatically for things that you can relate to with a past
experience.
• There is safety in numbers
We tend to believe in something that many others already believe in

43. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
image via source 6
Airbnb photography program was launched in 2010. Hosts
could schedule a professional photographer. The service
became an instant hit
Source: TC

44. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
How to get great PR, without
spending a bomb!!
HARO/ HASO: most startups keep looking for PR. The trick
to get great PR is to add value to a story which a reporter is
doing.
Use HARO/ HASO lists to add value to stories that journalists
around the world are doing. You might get published in the
Huffington World tomorrow!

45. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Be where your customer are.
BUT, don’t be where they
most expect you to be!
*Tissue papers by hike app!
*Flipkart and Citibank ATMs (as seen in June May 2015 at a
Citibank ATM)

46. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Retention is always more
important than Acquisition.
Hashtaag.com : pushing notifications to facebook increased
daily active user base by 70% compared to the previous
month.
*The venture is now closed

47. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
What internal factors affect
growth?
1. Team
2. Common sense!

48. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Team!

49. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Just ensure, no BS!
1. Keep it very very lean
1. Let go of the one’s who don’t match up to the
speed of growth that the venture requires.

50. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Who should look after
growth in your team?
Everyone in your team must have understanding of these
analytics and every week everyone must know how the
market is growing!
Hire the head of growth after the first 1000 users

51. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
The biggest growth hack:
Common sense!
You could be data driven and that’s exactly where the
fault lines lie. In early days of growth data is always to
be inspired by NOT be driven by.

52. #GrowKolkata @PayUmoneyIGD
Paritosh Sharma
Head, SME and Channel Partner Business
PayUmoney, PayUbiz
Email: paritosh.sharma@payu.in
Thanks!