💸 Side Project & Acquisition-led Growth
Today, we're learning from Mailchimp, Buffer, Crew, and HubSpot's strategies for unlocking distribution and growth.
“Distribution is greater than product'“ is common product wisdom that often gets thrown around, and there's a lot of truth to it. Although history has seen a few cases like Microsoft Zune and Threads, which failed to crack product-market fit and adoption despite their distribution prowess, most products that are functionally good can achieve exponential impact if backed by a great distribution channel. Building distribution is hard, and paid ads aren't always the solution.
In today’s edition of the newsletter, we will look into some examples of companies that unlocked distribution & growth via side projects and strategic acquisitions.
Buffer
Buffer, a social media management platform, strategically expanded its offerings by launching Pablo, a tool designed for creating quick and engaging visual content for social media posts. Understanding the critical role visuals play in social media engagement, Pablo was developed to complement Buffer's suite of services, enabling users to enhance their posts effortlessly.
The decision to launch Pablo on Product Hunt was a calculated effort to leverage the platform's community of tech enthusiasts and early adopters, thereby gaining immediate visibility and feedback. This approach not only introduced Pablo to a receptive audience but also effectively drew marketers and content creators into the Buffer ecosystem.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp, a leading email marketing platform, strategically acquired TinyLetter, a tool designed for sending simple, personal newsletters. This acquisition allowed Mailchimp to tap into a niche market of writers, small publishers, and individuals seeking a more straightforward, less commercial platform for their email campaigns. TinyLetter's minimalist approach complemented Mailchimp's more feature-rich offerings, providing an entry point for users who might later graduate to Mailchimp's broader suite of marketing tools as their needs evolved.
TinyLetter had half a million users at the time of its acquisition and funneled many more users into Mailchimp. TinyLetter caps writers at 5,000 subscribers, and with a change in business focus and an emphasis on more users upgrading to Mailchimp, Mailchimp has decided to sunset TinyLetter by February 2024. However, it did serve its purpose as an acquisition and awareness vehicle for Mailchimp.
Hubspot
HubSpot's acquisition of The Hustle, a media company known for its business and tech newsletter, underscores HubSpot's long-standing commitment to leveraging high-quality content as a cornerstone of its growth strategy. As a pioneer in inbound marketing, HubSpot has consistently emphasized the importance of creating valuable content, be it through informative blogs, comprehensive courses, or engaging videos, to attract, engage, and delight customers. This strategic move to acquire The Hustle in early 2021 aligns perfectly with HubSpot's ethos of providing educational and actionable content to its audience.
The Hustle, with its daily newsletter captivating over 1.5 million subscribers and a successful business podcast, "My First Million," boasting over 400,000 subscribers, offered HubSpot an unparalleled opportunity to diversify its content offerings and connect with a wider entrepreneurial audience keen on business and technology trends. This strategic acquisition not only enabled HubSpot to leverage The Hustle's significant subscriber base but also to assimilate its robust content creation capabilities, including the podcast's reach. This move aligns perfectly with HubSpot CEO's vision of integrating media houses within tech companies, unlocking new owned distribution channels and avenues for growth.
Crew & Unsplash
Crew, a platform designed to connect creative projects with top-notch professionals, found an innovative way to drive attention and traffic through the launch of Unsplash, a side project turned major success story. Initially, Unsplash was created as a simple solution to a common problem faced by the Crew team: the need for high-quality, freely available photographs for their work. By sharing a collection of free photos that could be used by anyone, Crew inadvertently tapped into a massive demand in the creative and digital industries for such resources.
Initially created to support Crew by providing high-quality, free photographs for anyone to use, Unsplash quickly became a pivotal growth lever for the company. At its inception, Unsplash was a simple Tumblr blog with Dropbox links, barely functional, yet it attracted 20,000 sign-ups on its first day. This unexpected success highlighted the immense demand for such a resource, leading to Unsplash's rapid growth. Within a few months, it boasted 80,000 members and over 1 million downloads, all achieved through word-of-mouth.Unsplash became more popular than Crew and was acquired by Getty Images for an undisclosed sum in 2021.
Masterclass Alert
For next week, we have invited Tushar Jha, Analytics Lead at Amazon, for a masterclass on SQL for Data Analytics. If you are in a Product or Growth role and wish to learn to run some queries to dig deeper into your customer segments, then register now for this masterclass.
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That’s all for today, folks! Hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter. We’ll see you next week. 🤗
Until then, keep learning and growing! 👋