Case Studies of $1B Companies

Among the 40+ companies listed below, you can find 4 main marketing strategies with 13 tactics. Most businesses use a few of those strategies simultaneously to reach massive growth.

Commonalities of how MVPs of current billion-dollar businesses get the first 1,000 customers:

Obsessing with your first customers and developing your product or service based on their feedback.
Ship your MVP fast and later iterate. (If your MVP is good, it’s too late.)
Creating viral features lets you outsource the marketing side of the business to your customers while allowing you to focus solely on the product.
The market you’re in is more important than your product.

Reach Out To The Target Audience

Online

Zapier

Forums

Ahrefs

Forums

WordPress

Forums

Discord

Coinbase

Hacker News, Reddit

Dropbox

Hacker News

Gumroad

Cold emails

Udemy

Cold emails

Upwork

TechCrunch

Airbnb

Craigslist

Loom

Product Hunt

Notion

Product Hunt

Etsy

Social media

Offline

Canva

Cold calls, conferences

Groupon

Cold calls

Pinterest

Coffee shops

Snapchat

High school

Etsy

Craft fairs

Tinder

College campuses

DoorDash

Local stores & restaurants

Uber

Conferences & sports events

Word of Mouth

Viral Effect

A viral effect happens when the product or service needs at least 2 people to work. People naturally invite their friends to use it and interact with each other through the platform.

Telegram

Let's have a chat

WhatsApp

Let's have a chat

Discord

Let's play together

Twitch

Let's play together

Snapchat

Let me send you this message

Tinder

Let's find you another date

Zoom

Let's have a meeting

LinkedIn

Let me add you to my network

Pinterest

Let me show you my pins & style

Groupon

Let's do something together

Onlyfans

Let's get intimate

Etsy

Let's tag our craft fair

Slack

Let's group chat

Provide Superb Customer Service

Superb quality customer service is often one of the best viral factors in business.

Zappos

Let's have a chat

Udemy

Let's have a chat

Stripe

Let's play together

WOW Product

These products either

Solve a specific problem well, usually well beyond competitors’ ability.
Provide a distinctive “Wow” experience through their innovative capabilities, design, better UX or something else.

Ahrefs

Solve a specific problem

Fiverr

Solve a specific problem

Stripe

Solve a specific problem

Youtube

Solve a specific problem

Zoom

Solve a specific problem

Uber

Unique experience

Google

Innovation

Invite Only

Invite only strategy at the very early stage is common among many successful startups. To make it work, businesses must create enough hype around the platform.

Niching down and creating a lot of publicity around it (usually having influencers on your platform early on) seems to work best.

Scarcity + Authority Bias = FOMO

Pinterest

Invite-only

Medium

Invite-only creators

HEY email

Invite-only waitlist

Invite Only

Waitlists are an amazing tool to create a gamified FOMO around the project’s launch.

A great waitlist includes the following

A tracker – “87 people are ahead of you”
A clear CTA – “Interested in priority access. Get early access to referring your friend.”
An easy way to share on several channels

Dropbox

HEY email

Canva

Leverage a Network

Family, Friends & Colleagues

Sharing your product or service with your closest network is a great way to give your business the initial boost it needs.

OnlyFans

Slack

Medium

Linkedin

Fiverr

Instagram

Snapchat

Tinder

Leverage Existing Audience First

Leveraging existing audience first strategy you previously developed following like social media followers, email subscribers, and others.

HEY email

Twitter followers

Telegram

Instagram followers

Partnerships

Partnerships provide a way of tapping into different, already-established sources of traffic and other business opportunities.

Stripe

Paul Graham & Y Combinator

Appsumo

Imgur & Reddit

Netflix

Toshiba

Google

Yahoo, Netscape & AOL

PR & Influencer Marketing

PR & Influencer marketing helps you tap into a well-established traffic channel.

The additional benefit of these channels is projecting authority.

Bias and the Social Proof:

Whatsapp

Airbnb

CNN promotion

Hack The System

Abuse Loopholes in the Systems

Successful businesses often abuse loopholes in the systems to get more traffic. These loopholes usually occur in freshly-developed structures like new technologies.

Whatsapp

Amazon

Website listings, book orders

Fake the Traffic or Engagement

Fake traffic and fake engagement on platforms usually bring the social proof needed to show the users that the chicken & egg problem is solved and it’s safe to engage.

Airbnb

Craigslist

Paypal

eBay bots

Reddit

Reddit's fake accounts