Growthathon is now in Tokyo! (Event Report in English)
What is Growthathon?
Growthahthon is a coined word with Growth Hack + Hackathon, where participants of growth hackers creatively solves problems presented by "challenge sponsors."
Experts like not only engineers and hackers, but also marketers and designers and writers meet together, collaborate for the same “real”challenge and simulate experience of being growth hackers.
The first ever Growthathon was held last year in San Francisco and now it’s in Tokyo for the first time ever out side Silicon Valley partnering with it.
The objective of Growthathon is, as described above, to virtually experience being a growth hackers or part of a growth team with a real growth challenge provided by companies. Thus the curriculum is simple as below.
Growth hackers conference (in the morning)
Growthathon (in the afternoon)
Growth Hackers Conference
In the morning, we held a Growth Hackers Conference, with invited talked by experienced growth hackers from Japan and also Silicon Valley. These talks are important for all the participants because they can learn a lot about how they run growth team for their real products.
At the beginning, I did an opening remarks entitled “What is Growthathon? Who are Growth Hackers?”as an introduction to growth hacking, by introducing what people are saying about it, how people are practicing it and how it is defined now.
Next, Hiro Maeda, Managing Director of Open Network Lab and an angel investor in Silicon Valley, talked about why growth hacking matters, but he addressed “it should be done when you have really awesome product.”
After that, Ken Zi Wang, founder of Fandrop and Organizer of Growthathon in Silicon Valley had an invited talk remotely from San Francisco. He introduced their experience of growth hacking and experience of their previous Growthathon, and their recent growthathon called #WinSXSW. He addressed that “Growthathon is a platform-play, and is fruitful for everyone who participates in it.”
In the afternoon, after the Growthathon, while Challenge Sponsors were reviewing participants solutions, Ryosuke Kawamura, founder and CEO of Bitcellar, gave an invited talk. Bitcellar is running an nearly-30M-download mobile photo app called FxCamera, and he talked why they started growth hacking, and how they are working on it. In his talk, he addressed that “Good apps, and even awesome apps never grow without growth hacking, because there are 2,000,000 apps in the market and it’s not easy to just stand out.” He also introduced their story empirically about how they are working on growth. He addressed that “agile development and positivism with numerical data are the most important prerequisite to work on growth hacking.”
Growthathon
In the afternoon, we held a first Growthathon in Japan and first in the world outside Silicon Valley. We introduced 3 challenges of 3 companies who have products with a lot of traction and growth-related challenges/problems. Participants are organized into teams of 3 people as a virtual “growth team,” and try to solve those growth challenges.
Growth hackers are judged/screened twice: for (1) your creative Ideas and Feasibility at the end of Growthathon, and (2) Achievement with KPIs and Results with challenged goals in a month. Second Judgement Winners would be invited to the next Growthathon (to be held in May) to talk with the Challenge Sponsors about their growth hacks.
These are the challenges and awards by the challenge sponsors:
Bitcellar Inc.
Challenge: Explore new channel for customer acquisition by using external social graphs
Award: US iTunes Card
Increments, Inc.
Challenge: Grow downloads and activation of Kobito, memo application for engineers on Mac.
Award: Kindle Paperwhite
NEC BIGLOBE, INC.
Challenge: Grow userbase of "MIRU PHOTOBOOK," their photo scrap book application
Award: amazon Gift Card
The secret, it’s not a secret though, why Growthathon provides great opportunity for participants to “virtually” experience and practice working as a real growth hacker or for a real growth team lies in these challenges. Given the process to growth as 6 steps, following that defined by Mike Greenfield, Growth Hacker in Residence at 500 Startups, participants challenge step 4 and 5 at the Growthathon. Steps 1-3 are already done by Challenge Sponsors, and, if the proposals are adopted by the sponsors, step 6 is available afterward. Furthermore, participants can work with the real growth team having feedback from them sitting next to you.
Track: Figure out what needs to be tracked. Track it.
Understand: Delve into the data to understand how people are using the product.
Prioritize: Evaluate and prioritize the areas most likely to yield growth. Sometimes they’ll be tweaks, sometimes they’ll be re-architected features, sometimes they’ll be completely new features.
Design/Write (at Growthaton): In the top area or two, design a few features that are likely to yield growth. I emphasize writing because the words describing a product often matter at least as much as any other characteristics.
Build (at Growthaton): Code it up, push it out.
Measure (if adopted): Gauge success of new features. GOTO 1, 2, or 3, adjusting strategy
After organizing teams, teams each selected challenges and started growthathon. They were trying hard to one goal: grow sponsors’ products. People in charge of and working for those sponsors also joined the “growth teams” and discussed the possible solutions. This was just a hackathon, but it was just like a real growth team working in each companies of challenge sponsors, and participants virtually experienced real growth team.
At the same time, in the venue, mentors like Kensuke Furukawa, CEO of nanapi and one of the most prominent growth hackers in Japan, were walking around, jumping into the teams randomly, and giving really practical advices and accurate feedback based on their real experiences to the teams and also to the challenge sponsors.
At the last stage of the Growthathon, Redbull Girls came to the venue to help exhausted growth hackers revive by providing “wings”to them.
Winners of the Growthathon Tokyo #1 Challenges are as follows:
FxCamera Award: Team FxCamera (not real one)(Leo, Mika, Imai)
Kobito Award: Team Lucky7 (Tanahashi, Nakanishi, Tano, Lee)
MIRU PHOTOBOOK Award: Team 1 (Takenaka, Jinda, Inoue, Yamada)
Great news was that all the sponsors really liked those solutions and said they “will try” on their products.
Another great news was that one of the mentors, Yuki Kanayama, CEO of Vasily which provides really growing mobile apps for fashion coordinate and who was previously a founder of Yahoo! Japan Fashion, gave a “special Vasily Award” to one of a team, giving a comment that the team, made up with 4 students, Den, Hada, Kono and Yamanaka, was “really active asking for feedback from the sponsors and mentors.” He continued. “Great growth hackers are always curious about new experience, knowledge, channels and findings, and they listen to people’s advice.”
After party was filled with the air where all the participants accomplished their mission, having desire to continue this exciting but steady journey being growth hackers.
“Growth Hacks” for our Growthathon Tokyo itself
This growthathon was, at the same time for us, organizers, a test to grow Growthathon itself. It was not to just to “grow” Growthathon, but was also make it a sustainable platform, like Ken Zi said. We had 2 KPIs and the results were as follows.
Is there demand for sponsorship? Can we attract 3 sponsors for this Growthathon? Does this 1st Growthathon attract further sponsors enough to continue? Though we had only 2 weeks to prepare, we had 3 great challenge sponsors. One of the sponsors told the the teams that they were satisfied because they could ”find great and different ideas” which they never hit on in their normal team. We had multiple numbers of proposals to become our challenge sponsors at the venue and after the Growthathon. We also had multiple proposals for venue sponsors as well. We are grateful for this.
Is there demand for participants? Will all the seats be sold out? Are they satisfied with Growthathon? What would be our challenges for the next one? Though we limited number of participants to 30 growth hackers, because this was our test and had only 1 week before the very day, it was sold out, thanks to many people’s and great media partners’ supports and cheers. We aded seats up to 40, but it was sold out soon as well. We really appreciate this. Participants, seemed to be satisfied with this first, small but rich-contented Growthathon, because, based on their feedback, (1) they could understand about growth hacking and growth hackers through lectures and practice, when there were still few Japanese resources, (2) advices by mentors were really practical, accurate and thus valuable, and (3) they could virtually experienced real growth hacks in virtual growth teams working on a real growth challenges with the real teams in charge of the real products. There were, on the other hand, we had some problems to be solved for the future Growthathons and this was also really appreciated because further Growthathon can never be worse because we learned a lot.
As Ken Zi taught us in his invited talk,“Growthathon is a “Platform-Play,” and it’s well worth participating for everyone, including participating growth hackers, sponsors, mentors, and also organizers. Sponsors can aks growth hackers solve their growth challenges, and meet potential hires. Mentors can also find ideas and candidates of their teams. Participants can communicate with other growth hackers, pitch sponsors with their real results as their potential growth hackers, learn from mentors and experience real process of growth hacks. They can also pitch the worlds. ”
Now we have validated our hypothesis, we will do the next one. Stay tuned!
Acknowledgement
This Growthathon have never happened without following people and companies. Open Network Lab as a venue sponsor, Bitcellar, Increments, and NEC Biglobe as challenge sponsors, Redbull Japan as “wing” sponsor, Bitcellar, Strawberry Corns (Naploli no Kama), Sumajin, Saintmedia for food sponsors, Ken Zi Wang (Growthahon / Fandrop), Hiro Maeda (Open Network Lab), Yuki Kanayama (CEO, Vasily), Kensuke Furukawa (CEO, nanapi), James Hollow (President, Alien-Eye, Growth Hacking University / Mentor at 500 Startups), and Noboru Yamaji (ex-CTO, Groupon Japan) as mentors, TechCrunch Japan for writing before the event, CAREER HACK for for pre and on-site close reporting, Startup Dating for reporting the event, other media partners including Growthathon Blog, PandoDaily and VentureBeat (via Grwothathon.com), and NIKKEI BP as reporting media for continuously supporting us, Growthathon in Silicon Valley as our official partner, all the growth hackers who participates in our Growthathon in your weekends. We really appreciate your cooperation and contribution.
Lastly, I personally thank my friends and awesome organizers Takuya Kanda and Hiroshige Umino.
* Never forget reading this awesome report by CAREER HACK.
Growthathon Tokyo #1 Overview
Summary
Date: Sunday March 17, 9:00am - 9:00pm
Vanue: Open Network Space (8 min on foot from JR Ebisu Station, 2nd floor of Daikanyama DG Building)
Participants: 40 growth hackers
Registration: PeaTiX
Content: Lecture and hackathon
Organized by
GrowthHacker.jp
Co-organized by
Open Network Lab, Inc.
Organizers
Yusuke Takahashi @aerodynamics (GrowthHacker.jp / AppSocially)
Hiroshige Umino @yaotti (Qiita)
Takuya Kanda @kantaku (IT Service/Social Game Producer)
Partner
Growthathon (in Silicon Valley)
Program
Morning: Growth Hackers Conference (talk session)
"Who are Growth Hackers? What is Growthathon?" by Yusuke Takahashi @aerodynamics (GrowthHacker.jp / AppSocially)
Invited Talk "Why Growth Hack Matters" by Ryosuke Kawamura @RyosukeKawamura (Bitcellar / FxCamera)
Afternoon: Growthathon (hackathon for growth hackers)
Growth Hackers solve the problems presented by the Challenge Sponsors, by creatively proposing how to growth hack and achieve their KPIs, and implementing its solution. At the end of the Growthathon, growth teams present their solutions, Sponsors and Mentors review and judge them, and the teams will be awarded for their Creativity and Feasibility.
Participants organize a growth team with 1 - 3 people, at the venue in the morning.
Time Table
09:00 Venue opens
09:00~10:00 Breakfast Networkking
10:00 "Who are Growth Hackers? What is Growthathon?"
10:30 Invited Talk 1
11:00 Presentation by Challenge Sponsors about their Problems, KPIs and Awards
11:40 Introducing Mentors
12:00 Teams up, Start Growth Hacking
17:00 Submit Growth Hacking Solutions
18:00 Presentation by Growth Teams
19:00 Invited Talk 2 / Review and Judgement
19:30 Awards and Drink-up
21:00 End of the Growthathon
Registration
\3,000円 (prepay on Peatix)
\4,000円 (at the door)
No receipt issued. We accept upto 30 participants.
Requirements for Participants
Being or wants to be a growth hacker
Skills and Knowledge which are awesome for growth hackers to have:
Programing (HTML5, iOS, etc.)
Graphic Design (Images, Web, etc.)
UX
Writing (natural language that moves people)
Challenge Sponsors
Bitcellar Inc.
Challenge: Explore new channel for customer acquisition by using external social graphs
Award: US iTunes Card
Increments, Inc.
Challenge: Grow downloads and activation of Kobito, memo application for engineers on Mac.
Award: Kindle Paperwhite
NEC BIGLOBE, INC.
Challenge: Grow userbase of "MIRU PHOTOBOOK," the photo scrap book application
Award: amazon Gift Card
Mentors
Ken Zi Wang (Growthahon / CEO, Fandrop)
Hiro Maeda (Open Network Lab)
Yuki Kanayama (CEO, Vasily)
Kensuke Furukawa（CEO, nanapi)
James Hollow (President, Alien-Eye / Growth Hacking University / Mentor at 500 Startups)
Noboru Yamaji (ex-CTO, Groupon Japan)
Takuya Kanda (IT Service/Social Game Producer)
Hiroshige Umino (Qiita)
Media supported by
TechCrunch Japan
Sd
CAREER HACK
GrowthHacker.jp
Growthathon Blog
PandoDaily
VentureBeat
Interview Media
NIKKEI Business Publications, Inc.
Venue Sponsor
Open Network Lab, Inc.
Food Sponsors
Bitcellar, Inc.
Strawberry Cones Co., Ltd. (Pizza - Napoli no Kama)
Sumajin, Inc.
Saintmedia Inc. (Net jinzai bank)
Surprise: “Wing” Sponsor
Redbull Japan, Inc.