Back in 2008, Dave McClure introduced the Seedcamp community to the concept of Pirate Metrics. For the next 10 years we obsessed over the importance of optimizing the customer acquisition and retention funnel. In recent years a new trend has emerged—that of Product Led Growth or PLG—and with it a new metaphor—the growth loop or “flywheel”.

In the interim, we had the rise and eventual fall of growth hacking. From the ashes we saw the emergence of growth designers, growth marketers and dedicated growth teams; all using a mix of multi-variant testing to iterate to iterate growth.

In this session, Seedcamp Venture Partner Andy Budd will attempt to demystify the secrets of start-up growth, with the goal of helping you land your first 1,000 customers and then scale up from there.

More about Andy Budd:

As a design and product person, I help founders navigate their early product decisions: how to understand user needs, figure out which features to build, and achieve product-market fit. I also help with the design and product management process, essentially helping founders build the machine that builds the product. Having a great product is an important first step, but it means nothing without customers. As such I’m particularly interested in the field of Growth Design and Product led Growth. Essentially how founders can use a design-centric approach to grow and scale their customer base by understanding human behaviour, viral loops and network effects.