During its development, every startup faces the challenge of moving from a random acquisition rhythm to scalability. This is what hyperGROWTH calls the go-to-scale stage, to clearly distinguish it from the go-to-market stage which concerns early-stage startups that are starting to commercialize their solution. In general, go-to-scale companies have successfully raised funds and often have up to 15 to 18 months of cash ahead of them. But that doesn't mean it has 18 months to become scalable. Go-to-scale companies must divide this cash period in two: one devoted to the next fundraising round, which generally lasts between 6 and 9 months, and another, earlier, during which they must demonstrate their ability to grow unquestionably over at least 6 months. The hyperGROWTH method and growth hacking are both designed to help a go-to-scale company to move to scalability.

Growth hacking is designed to help optimize the process of converting prospects into customers, for example by moving people from exposure to an ad to visiting a site, then converting them to a customer, then once they're a customer, getting them to buy again, etc. For a go-to-scale the most important step is acquisition: how will I acquire new customers and what is the most favorable channel among all those I can have at my disposal? There are many feedback from entrepreneurs who tell us: “I did some growth hacking: I tested 9 messages on 5 different channels for 15 types of persona. The problem is that my initial messages were not the right ones, my personas were totally biased and as a result the results were bad. I wasted time, it cost me money when I should have known beforehand what the right message was and to whom I am addressing it » To be effective growth hacking needs a foundation which is to have determined the reason that makes your offer a must-have. Without this base, the go-to-scale will waste time and money and above all has no guarantee of finding how to scale in a predetermined time. The hyperGROWTH method is designed to find this base as soon as possible and help the start-up avoid finding itself in a situation where it realizes too late that it has not found a way to become scalable. On the other hand, once this base is well defined, growth-hacking will give its full potential to allow the company to scale because it will make it possible to find the most effective channel to reach the decision-makers of the target, the optimal frequency of messages, their layout, even their iconography, etc. The hyperGROWTH method makes it possible to apply growth hacking more effectively by avoiding costly tests of inappropriate messages that hardly or not affect their target.

The successful transition to scalability, the go-to-scale, requires positioning decisions on the following four variables: 1. The target: what is the target of decision-makers who will make it possible to generate the maximum revenue for the minimum effort? 2. The reason for being must-have (also known as the compelling reason to buy your solution): what are the arguments that lead this target of potential customers to say to themselves “now is the time that I need the solution”? Identifying the reason for your must-have is what will give predictability to your acquisition efforts. 3. The price/the business model: what is the price that will encourage adoption (and, for those who do not have a SaaS business model, what is the right business model)? You may have identified a compelling reason to buy but have a price that is inconsistent with what potential customers are willing to pay or the revenue the company needs to grow in a way that attracts interest of current and future investors. 4. The messages: what are the messages that allow decision-makers to perceive for themselves why your solution is a must-have without the need for a lot of evangelism and pedagogy? What value proposition should you present to convince them? The whole difficulty is that these 4 decisions are intertwined and must be taken together in a concomitant manner because they are a bit like the four legs of a chair: if one is missing the chair does not stand up. A go-to-scale may, for example, have the right target, have identified the right reason to be must-have and even offer its solution at the right price but not have the right message. But adoption decisions are often made when the seller is not in the room. The simple fact of not having a message that allows decision-makers to perceive for themselves the must-have of their solution can cause more buying decisions to fail than necessary and block the transition to scalability. The hyperGROWTH method allow to generate market data to inform these 4 positioning decisions simultaneously in a short period of three to four months. This time will always be much shorter than if you only use growth hacking to find your positioning.

When entrepreneurs start growth hacking early on, they say to themselves “great, I will be able to test 18 channels and 10 messages”. However, it is erroneous to believe that growth hacking will rely on exhaustive A/B testing. Indeed, to be conclusive, A/B testing requires volumes of traffic that typically the go-to-scale has not yet reached or will take a long time to reach. For example, based on 1000 website visitors and a conversion rate of about 5%, it is necessary to note a difference of about 35% between the conversion rates of two variants to be able to conclude one is significantly more efficient than the other. Even in B2C, this means a lot of time and money spent testing assumptions (advertising messages, baseline, arguments, etc.) that you're not even sure are the right ones. In theory, setting up an iterative A/B testing process will gradually eliminate assumptions in order to retain only what works. But in practice, a go-to-scale will not have enough time to successfully test everything and gain certainty on how to become scalable.

The hyperGROWTH method is based on a new technique called cognitive mining. Cognitive mining is inspired by data mining methods for extracting and transforming data, with a notable difference : data mining is based on the analysis of databases describing the digital behavior of existing customers. However, a go-to-scale generally has no or very few existing customers! Cognitive mining will enable it to collect and extract quantitative data not on the behavior of customers who do not yet exist, but on the main priorities of future decision-makers in its market. Once this information has been extracted, cognitive mining will transform it using algorithms, developed by hyperGROWTH, which allow to identify the target on which we have the more chance of being able to scale. It is these algorithms that make it possible to identify how to position oneself to go from nice to have to must-have in a finite time... and that is the key to its success.

One of the most defining signs is when you realize you don't yet have a repeatable sales process that allows your startup to scale because you haven't been able to find the right message that makes potential customers, when they receive it, think "yes, this is what I need, I need to take action now". Typically, you change your baseline very frequently and you feel like you're looking for a needle in a haystack: it's difficult for you to drive your acquisition efforts by focusing on a given target of decision-makers that you predictably grab attention with a unique message and convert with arguments that make your solution a must-have in their eyes. Until you can do this you probably need to apply the hyperGROWTH method.

The deliverables of the hyperGROWTH method allow the go-to-scale to launch its growth hacking efforts on an objective basis that aligns all team members on a common vision to engage efforts towards scalability. These deliverables are based on the 4 positioning variables that the method determines: 1. The target. A presentation gives all the necessary information to be able to choose the target on which to focus for scaling: For each possible target, its profiling, its decisive needs (those which determine membership in the segments) make it possible to understand the specific expectation of each segment and to decide whether we are able to respond to them and when. Please note: a. Some of the slides presented in the target summary document are often reused/adapted by the go-to-scale in its presentations to investors and partners to explain the target market and the growth strategy. b. The efforts made to determine the suitability of the solution for each of the possible targets constitute a major input to the product roadmap, whether to fill a possible lack of product fit on a particularly opportune target or to cover the needs of future market targets. aim for later. 2. The reason for the must-have. Each selected target will be associated with the reason why this target will adopt. This implies not only a description of the decisive pain-points encountered by this one but also the circumstance which explains why the resolution of these pain-points makes the solution must-have. This must-have reason is the basis of all the marketing efforts that will be undertaken by the go-to-scale to make itself known and convince its target. 3. The price / the business model: Here the deliverable is simple but fundamental: the choice of a price (and, if necessary, a business model) which allows the go-to-scale to scale in an attractive way for its investors (current and future). Note that it is generally very difficult to A/B test a price. 4. Marketing messages: The first deliverable is a Hook (catch phrase) which is designed to make the target decision-makers perceive the must-have as well as the three decisive arguments that support it. This constitutes the architecture of all go-to-scale communications with its target: commercial presentations, explanatory videos, arguments on the home page of the website, mailings, press releases, etc. 5. In addition to these deliverables, we offer go-to-scale on request: a) A qualitative test of the reason for the must-have and commercial presentations (especially PowerPoint) with the decision-makers of the identified target in order to optimize their content. b) Editorial assistance in defining the content strategy to be implemented to reach the target and in writing all commercial content.