Kicking off Growth Berries!

I’ve kicked around starting a newsletter for the last 6 months and finally decided to do the damn thing. Few things you can expect:

• Trends you need to know: think social, hot IPOs, mergers that (might not) make sense, and how to get hip with the next wave of consumers
• Software you need to try: looking to tee up some solutions that can make your life a whole lot easier
• People you need to follow: too many people killing in my space so looking to do profiles of said folks (let me know if you want a feature!)

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Community Building > every marketing channel combined

“Being open with your community is the best way to get them to buy into your mission”

Excerpt from the ambitious book, Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinburg & Justin Mares

My buddy: isn’t Roblox that shitty kids game?

Yes it is and there’s clear evidence it can define how game companies are built and engage with their communities. The game itself is a mix of LEGOs, Farmville & Fortnite where users (half of which were born after 2008) can hang out with friends, build in-game realities and make money from their efforts – in-game developers earn a percentage of the revenue their experiences generate.

Today, the company went public via direct listing, and if you buy soon after it’s available to the market, your portfolio will thank you.

Have I played the game? No

Do I know anyone that plays? I don’t think so

How can I know it’ll have long-term impact? They’ve built a community that’s getting some unique results

• Roblox Birthday Parties: gone are the days of spending 30 minutes hardwiring 4 Xbox’s so 16 boys can play HALO all night, today’s gamers don’t even need to get out of bed to sing Happy Birthday
• Be better friends: in a survey last year, gamers reported creating tight relationships with those who they game with

• Building coders of the future: remember when you felt like a hacker for updating your Myspace background from blue to blue AND green stripes? Roblox is taking it a step further by partnering with educational programs to teach coding basics that can be implemented immediately in the game

Their efforts to build a tight-knit community are proving to be an advantage based on the numbers released prior to going public. CNBC reported the company spent just 6.3% of its revenue on marketing costs.

How’s that compare to other tech companies pre-IPO?

Google: 6% 

Facebook: 12% 

I’d say that’s good company to be in.

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Get evangelists early on

I work with a Texas-based startup called nutiliti who is looking to make paying utilities a whole lot easier by connecting residents with their local utility providers, compiling all their utilities into one bill that can be evenly split, and cutting the cord once it’s time to move out.

While I have been helping them grow on social, they’re building relationships with their clients and this became evident to me based on how they interacted with their customers following the devastating storms that caused outages across Texas.

• Don’t shoot the messenger: most public authorities are not great about sharing up-to-date information so the team stepped in to simply communicate the most recent updates to their users via text and got some laughs along the way

• Becoming thought leaders on social: they took their responsibility to educate the public further by creating engaging social content that provided clear guidance and even going on Instagram Live to give clear updates directly from utility providers themselves
• House of the Month: every month they pick one of the houses on their platform and treats the group to dinner helping not only build a connection but also creating content and incentives for future customers

This team knows their space inside & out and has identified that building a community today and going the extra mile will keep users on for the road ahead.

Check them out at nutiliti.io and follow @nutiliti on Instagram & TikTok

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