After reading Mark Hayes and Jeff Goldenberg book’s that talks about how to penetrate your organization and unleash your potential, I realized that not only HR can be change keys within your boundaries, nor the bald people with “leader” title in their business card, THE GROWTH HACKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY was my starting point to adapt some of these principles that I would love to encourage everybody to read it, can be acquired from here: http://growthhackerguide.com .

Growth Hacking in Information Technology sector is the fossil that will be converted to your structure later on.

Being non-tech entrepruner in tech environment

So where to start? yes of course on your bed dreaming to be the next Facebook founder and having your 1000 sqm open office, with bunch of blonde girls with thick glasses and some jars of candies, but before that there is one missing valuable factor which is your UNIQUE IDEA. majority trying to replicate one current application and looking for an awesome designer to make it looks futuristic with one slight different in the functionality and call it “My Unique Selling Point”, as I said in the previous article, go and “BUILD FEATURES NOT APPS” and the tweak here is you don’t have to be the programmer who can work with HTML, JS, PHP, SQL, mobile, security, sandwich making, payroll, bla bla .. you need to be the one who keep polishing your idea and pump the spirit on everyone to make it see the light.

Chase talents before dreams

Among all the dark tunnel, there is light somewhere that need to be revealed, this stage is where you follow your instinct to understand the environment and the progress, I been with many entrepreneurs during my mentorship sessions, all of them they intercept the surroundings well and came up with special combination for IT solution with real-world demands, but the flipping point is always when they build a decoy of illusions filled with some sacked losers from their jobs to limiting themselves, alongside with the fear of lacking the funds to make it the next empire, now days we can see some crappy apps that had a valuation of millions (or with b) and they didn’t spend similar amounts to build it, how? THEY HAD FAITH AND BELIEVE.

So in which stage you should empower your idea and your team? all of them, based on an experience the developers will feel bored for a reason with the repeatedly changes, especially if it were something unnoticeable, designers doesn’t like to follow instructions, they just want to fly and fly until they land on the order’s nest, marketing people need an inspiration to keep seeing everything still pink, and lastly sales team will always need to let them watch Leonardo’s movie “The Wolf of the Wall Street”, the rest .. well I supposed some cash and KitKat will be good for the meantime 😛

Not to forget that your relations worth something, especially in the IT organizations and project, try to leverage your network and feed it always with good vibes, you will never knows when they will worth and contribute, I have been working with my colleagues on Web-to-Print solution for business and enterprise sector, it is been 6 months of focused R&D, we reached to stage where we struggled to activate the “Go-to-Market” plan, suddenly this bulb popped up between us and we remembered our partners from Xerox who led us to Mr. Kelvin Thomas the regional director of XL MEA who told us we are looking into the wrong market, we were looking into the multi-million (or with b) businesses and trying to penetrate them with a new product, means we are asking them to change their procedures, protocols, adapt new technology, give us some access and to be our friends :), unfortunately our correct market was the mid-segment (SOHO) who was easy to invite them to Starbucks and hear some old jokes from them and convince them about how beneficial this technology for them, and yes it CLICKS for us.

Going again back to Growth Hacking, you will find most of the posts talking about conducting test, doing some cycling marketing strategies or enabling the social media, well all of them are correct, but in IT industry there is always something more to be figured out, might be connecting the elements once, or your rivals and competitors in the market, or any other element may sneak out the spark from the idea, again with an experience that I’m working on right now is enabling the Augmented Reality through our printings and enhance our customers experience and add extra value, although we had all the fundamentals, support, demand and resources available, yet the idea still floating and not been launched yet. this is the stage where the IT becomes sometimes a target not just a tool.

An example I found around is www.paywithatweet.com website, simple idea with Hollywood level of execution, simply you need to get the offer or promotion, you need to tweet and spread the word, how easy and simple it is, your development efforts is relying on understand Twitter API and how can you manipulate it, you can discover unmet need for the market and start forging it until make it a problem need to be resolved, and since it is your hand-made problem is you shall be the first and best who can resolve it and provide a solution, the figure below demonstrate how this can be done.

ِApart from liking the figure below, one important personality trait shall be existed in everyone who want to be this bearded pirate is being Open-mind, waves of judges, different ideas, criticisms, negative vibes and applauses will come to you, but that never means you are in the right track 100%, or you can upgrade your idea to something better, remember that you are supposed to build a solution (app or website) that people needs not you want, all the cloud of talks coming to you it is from people’s perspective, it might be correct and it might be wrong, look how to extract the useful part from it, find how can you add this segment into your solution in a way and another, think how can this benefit your project, not how to deflect it, this is the part where you listen and interact, to give credits and to appreciate the team.

So when we are talking about Growth Hacking here, we are talking about two main things; Rapid Growth and Explore the Potentials, and in general as can be found in the online resources, we can summarize this process in 5 main points:

1. Acquisition: Attract people and visitors to your solution from various channels, from social media, from mass media and let them know about your services.
2. Activation: Upon successfully driving the people to your website, an action required, you need them sign up or navigate your website, or to download your app or to order your service, this is also what it been called in E-commerce by Conversion.
3. Retention: By successfully activating your customers, you want them to come again, to repeat the action and keep using your service or solution, find all the methods and mechanisms to retain them and give them the best experience.
4. Referral: What will be the motivation for them to tell their friends? to spread the word of mouth? to convert them to be your sales and PR team? Referral is enabling them to share your content and to reward them for that, helping to rapidly expand and growth.
5. Revenue: Well you want to turn their activities to revenue, here where you will learn about monetization and to turn the users’ behaviors and demands to cash.

I wrote this article based on my own experiences in different segments, it will not gives you the full picture of Growth Hacking or best techniques, but it will helps to understand how it works, a small gift I found while writing this article is this website: http://startupstash.com , it has plenty amount of good resources and tools for startups, pay it a visit and hopefully will continue this articles in the following weeks.