From Zero to One Million Users
Many products launch, but few reach widespread adoption. Learn how the founders of Dropbox and Xobni attracted millions of users within the first two years of launching their products on a $0 marketing spend.
The web and social media have rewritten the rules for customer acquisition and engagement, creating a new playbook of techniques for reaching huge audiences quickly on a shoestring budget.
This session will include practical tips on how to encourage word of mouth, build buzz and attract PR, and create products that people love. It will also introduce frameworks attendees can use for bootstrapping and scaling growth, acquiring and retaining users, building products that spread themselves, and turning customers into evangelists.
Presentation
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Drew Houston
Dropbox
Drew is the cofounder and CEO of Dropbox, the leading way to store and share files online. Dropbox lets you get to your important files from any of your computers or the web. The company launched at the TechCrunch50 conference in 2008 and is backed by Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator.
Drew was named one of the top “Twentysomething Entrepreneurs” by BusinessWeek in April 2008. Before founding Dropbox, he was a lead software engineer at Bit9, a venture-backed network security company, cofounded a profitable online SAT prep company called Accolade, and held engineering roles in various startups since the age of 14. He received his S.B. in computer science from MIT.
Adam Smith
Xobni
Adam Smith co-founded Xobni Corporation. Adam served as a Program Manager at Expedia.com and as a Developer at Vecna Technologies. He served as a Consultant of Siteadvisor before and after acquisition by Mcafee Corporation. His efforts were focused on the application of machine learning to email. He has been working in the email space for seven years. He is interested in machine learning, data mining, and large scale systems. Mr. Smith is a computer science graduate of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and started his Master’s Degree at MIT doing research in the Networking and Mobile Systems research group.
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Comments
Enjoyed the approach they took for the session.
Great information this morning. At a minimum I’m going to check out Dropbox. I have been looking for a solution like this for a while and now it seems as if it has been dropped (pardon the pun) into my lap. Great all around presentation from Drew and Adam.
Excellent presentation. I wonder how many times did you practice that because it was really smooth.
I got a page full of notes from this one and tons of motivation to actually implement those on my website. Thanks!
Totally B2C focused. Would be nice to hear some B2B angels as well.