How companies grow
The ultimate guide to growth playbooks for companies across major industries: SaaS, Marketplaces, Platforms, FinTech, and Utilities.
Growth is never a coincidence or luck.
It’s a result of a set of well-planned and executed efforts.
This set of efforts goes under the universally accepted codename “growth playbook”.
The most successful companies I’ve worked at were very intentional about those playbooks. They thought them through and continuously perfected them with ongoing experimentation. Here’s the ROI, here’s the payback. This lever we work with, this one we discard… rinse and repeat.
I’ve seen how ecomm and mobility marketplaces grow and their “secret sauce recipe” behind it.
However, I wanted to take a broader look at how different industries approach growth.
I’ve looked into 30+ growth playbooks of companies ranging from SaaS (Canva) to Platform (Nvidia), to uncover common patterns.
These materials were scattered across various articles and podcasts, so compiling them required some exploratory work.
What surprised me most was that while playbooks differ by industry, the fundamental principles within each market are largely the same.
Understanding these principles and applying them to your emerging business can dramatically increase your chances of success.
Let’s dive in.
Today’s article
Growth Playbooks. Tested growth tactics divided by industry (SaaS, Marketplaces, Platforms, FinTech, Utilities)
Core Principles. Core growth principles applicable to any company at any stage.
TL;DR. Key take-aways from the article for people on the go (2 minute read)
+ A bonus → An AI podcast of the article for those who’d prefer listening instead of reading.
📝 Word count: 3563 words
⏱️ Reading time: ~27 minutes
🌱 Growth playbooks
A few key concepts before we get started.
Inflection points
Inflection points are actions that solve the critical bottleneck needed for company growth at a specific point in time.
For instance, if a startup is heavily acquiring users, but leaking them at a mid or bottom of the funnel, these are critical bottlenecks. Similarly, resolving a supply constraint during the early stages of marketplace growth can be a crucial bottleneck.
Successfully overcoming these challenges unlocks an upward growth trajectory - this is what defines an inflection point.
Growth playbooks should be revisited and updated with each new inflection point.
PLG/SLG
In essence product-led growth means that the value of a product attracts user acquisition at close to zero cost.
Sales-led growth requires proactive sales and account management to acquire users.
There’s a widely circulating graphic of PLG iceberg with 8 layers. But in essence it means that your product should be so simple and straightforward that it sells itself. The problem, the pricing and the learning are so effortless that an arbitrary user can figure it out and start getting value out of it.
Chosing PLG over SLG or a combination of thereof is definitely a part of the company’s growth playbook.
Beachhead segment
In simple terms, always start with a specific niche for your target users.
The more specific the better. It’s labelled “beachhead” as a wartime analogy from US troop invasion into Normandy.
1️⃣ SaaS (Utilities)
⚡ Inflection points
Companies like Canva, Dovetail, Miro, Notion and others all have similarities.