Athyna’s Growth Tactics

Why Read: Discover strategic growth hacks like leveraging embedded media, creator-led funding, and using their own product and more.

Featuring: Jaryd Hermann (@jarydhermann), Author / Creator at How They Grow

Link:“8 lessons from my first startup investment”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Leveraging Embedded Media Companies for Growth:

  • Point: Create or acquire a media company to generate leads and drive growth for your software company.

  • "Modern media companies (e.g. NYT) have a software company embedded inside. But, next-gen software companies will have media companies embedded inside."

  • "By owning these embedded media companies, these software companies are all enjoying what Bill calls negative CAC through this channel and organically integrating their brand in extremely valuable, non-salesy, content."

  • "Owning your own brand-independent media company is like having another business that gets paid to organically drive excellent leads to your main business."

• Implementing Creator-Squad Growth:

  • Point: Create a group of creator investors to continuously promote your company and drive leads.

  • "Athyna's latest funding round of $2.5M was mostly led by 15 creators. Myself included. The combined reach of this group is well into the hundreds of thousands of unique people, with many millions of monthly impressions. As investors in Athyna, we talk about Athyna."

  • "The data? 40% of Athyna's leads are now coming through this channel."

  • "Don't be shy about giving away parts of your company to people who can have a direct hand in helping you grow it efficiently and sustainably. That's employees. It's key customers or partners. It could be creators..."

• Adopting a Strategy of Constants:

  • Point: Focus on improving the fundamental, unchanging needs of your customers rather than chasing trends.

  • "There's a Bezos philosophy around strategy: Always focus on the constants. This means invest in the customer needs and wants that will never change."

  • "Once we had our needs analysis mapped we started building. All product and features pitches needed to map back to a user need from one of our three ICPs"

  • "The companies that (1) are super clear on what their constants are, and (2) always do R&D around going deeper on them, will beat the ones who have loose understandings of them and easily chase shiny objects."

• Avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome:

  • Point: Stay focused on your core strategy and avoid distractions that don't align with your strategic choices.

  • "No should be the default answer to new things. Until the evidence is clear that saying Yes clearly integrates with your strategic choice set—Where To Play, How To Win—shut that shit (politely) down."

  • "Focus x Execution = up and to the right. Distraction x Execution = sideways (or often down) and to the right"

  • "You won't grow by simply doing more things and playing in more spaces. You need to know when to go deeper on what you have, vs going wider."

• Scaling Cold Outbound Email:

  • Point: Use multiple sub-brands and domains to increase your email outreach volume and effectiveness.

  • "Athyna went from sending 50 emails per week to a scaled outbound machine sending 1.2M emails per week. They did this using a suite of different sub-brands."

  • "It's quickly become their biggest growth channel, with 60 million emails being sent a year. And doing some napkin math, at $6M+ ARR, that's an ROI of $0.1 per email."

  • "If you're playing the outbound email game, increase your surface area of success by using multiple domains via sub-brands to run sequences."

• Developing Tactical Sidecar Products:

  • Point: Create free mini-products that solve related problems for your target audience to attract them to your core product.

  • "You can build free mini-products (AKA sidecar products) that solve a general, high-frequency problem for your ICP, some of who will then convert to the core product thanks to well placed CTAs."

  • "These products are like honeypots; attracting new users to the core product with a free (and valuable) hook. They are great for PLG motions!"

  • "If you build a sidecar product, make sure it aligns closely with your market's main problem/needs map."

• Cultivating a Helpful Mindset:

  • Point: Consistently offer genuine help to others without expecting immediate returns to expand your network and opportunities.

  • "Being incredibly helpful to others eventually helps you."

  • "I just try to be helpful as a rising ship floats all boats. I have never really believed in competition, but more so in collaboration. And I guess it's the same with the program, my socials, and my newsletter. I'm trying to build a big base of allies."

  • "Help yourself by helping others."

• Building and Using Your Own Product:

  • Point: Use your own product extensively to drive quality improvements and align with customer needs.

  • "The most successful companies use their own product to grow. 'Never trust a skinny chef!'"

  • "When you rely on your own product as a tool to be successful, it aligns the incentives with your customers, drives craftsmanship and attention to detail, and gives you ongoing feedback from being your own power user."

  • "The more that you and your team use your own product, the higher the quality bar (and customer empathy level) will be."

Reward Diagreement

Why Read: This article provides a playbook for cultivating a culture of open and rewarded disagreement, enabling startup founders to make higher-quality decisions by challenging their own assumptions.

Featuring: Admired Leadership (@AdmiredLeaders), a development program focused on leadership behaviors that create loyal followership & results.

Link to Article: “Rewarding Disagreement”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Encouraging Open Disagreement:

  • Point: Actively encourage team members to express disagreement and opposing viewpoints.

  • "Good leaders encourage those around them to disagree, candidly offering an opposing view whenever they have one. They explicitly tell colleagues they want their disagreement, and they do their best to embolden them by tempering their reactions to any opposing viewpoints. Asking them to expound on their thinking before debating the merits demonstrates the leader's desire to consider all views."

• Actively Rewarding Disagreement:

  • Point: Intentionally reward people who disagree to promote a climate of open and honest debate.

  • "Great leaders go one step further. They intentionally reward people who disagree, thereby promoting a climate of open and honest debate. While asking for and even seeking disagreement encourages team members to step up and offer a contrary view when they have one, the real reward occurs when leaders incorporate the counterarguments into their thinking."

• Incorporating Counterarguments:

  • Point: Demonstrate the value of disagreement by incorporating counterarguments into your thinking and decision-making.

  • "Telling team members that what they have said and the points they offered have made an impact on how the leader now views the issue is the highest prize. Leaders who let team members know that because of their disagreement, they have changed their opinions, reconsidered their views, shifted their perspective, or altered their decision showcase the inherent value of a contrary view."

• Showcasing the Impact of Disagreement:

  • Point: Explicitly communicate how disagreement has influenced your perspective or decision.

  • "When team members are shown that their contributions have positively influenced the leader, they begin to see honest disagreement in a different light. Learning that they can have an impact on both the process and outcome, team members who openly disagree experience the value they provide by being candid."

• Fostering a Culture of Continuous Disagreement:

  • Point: Create an environment where disagreement becomes a valued and ongoing practice.

  • "Great leaders light a perpetual fire when they go out of their way to describe this kind of influence. Not surprisingly, such a reward promotes more disagreement and candidness. To the delight of an exceptional leader, once team members are rewarded for disagreeing, they rarely stop."

• Recognizing Disagreement as Essential for Quality Decision-Making:

  • Point: Understand that disagreement is crucial for making high-quality decisions and avoiding the pitfalls of unchallenged opinions.

  • "Just as agreement is the foundation of consensus, disagreement is the cornerstone of quality decision-making. Without it, leaders are defenseless against their own opinions."