Context
Vlaams Acceleratie Platform (VAP) was looking for a partner to develop their growth culture, mindset and skillset in order to move from startup to scaleup. The goal was to eventually be able to set up growth experiments and campaigns by themselves.
The following Flemish startups (with scale-up potention) have succesfully gone through the program: Chestnote (Messaging app), Twikey, POM (Finance SaaS), UXprobe, Survey Anyplace (B2B SaaS) and Fan Arena (Gaming Platform).
Challenge
The teams had a need to develop a Growth mindset and to learn several skills. But how do you get any commitment from startups? They are often in a shaky position, where they are often confronted with their relatively short lifetime.
The bottom line is to be selective with people and other resources. Also, it is necessary to “bootstrap” the budget. These issues bring enough challenges with them to think of a suitable program. This also includes we need to adapt to the distance and cultural differences ;).
Approach
To get the teams from the startup aligned and into a growth mindset as soon as possible, we have went with a hands-on program. Plenary team-workshops were given on a biweekly basis, as well as 1-on-1 coaching. From setting up a tracking plan, to monitoring a campaign.
The Growth-program allows startups to structure their growth marketing in clear processes and responsibilities. It allows them to perform certain tasks more efficiently through automation and outsourcing.
Results
The program has allowed most of the startups to perform more growth experiments with the same team size, which leads to accelerated learning and more growth.
After the accelerator program, we have supported the startups SurveyAnyplace and Twikey for a few months as Growth Architect. Here we set up growth processes and implementation of several experiments. The experience from SurveyAnyplace was as follows:
“We have benefited most of cold e-mailing to specific target audiences that we have found by using social information (primarily LinkedIn) for personalization and segmenting. We have seen conversion rates between 5% and 15% for this type of campaign. We will use and refine these methods to differentiate our approach based on the leads’ position in the sales funnel. “
6
Months of startup program

8,9
Rating of the program
35
Participants
8
Days Bootcamp
40
Experiments started