Biggest keys to watch when scaling from $1M to $3-$5M?

Stop thinking you don't have the skills to do something. You can learn anything if you decide to, but assuming up front that you can't (forever) is dangerous. my2cents

There is quite a bit of information available online about eCommerce conversions rates. According to a ton of sources, average visitor-to-sale conversion rates vary from 1-3%. This does not mean the Furniture conversions will be the same. The bigger problem is that visitor-to-sale conversions are not a good data point to use to measure or tune your eCommerce business. All business have some unique friction factors that will affect your final conversion rate. It's very important to understand each of these factors and how to overcome them. The best way to measure and optimize is to take a conversion funnel approach. Once you have defined your funnel you can optimize each conversion rate to better the total effect. For example: Top of the funnel: - All web site visitors, 100,000 / month First conversion: View a product page, 50% of all visitors Second Conversion: Add to Cart, 10% of people who view products Final Conversion: Complete Checkout, 80% of people who put items in a cart In this example we see that only 10% of people who actually view products put them in to a cart, but 80% of those people purchase. If you can figure out why visitors are not adding items to their cart and fix the issue to increase the conversion rate, revenue should increase significantly because of the high checkout rate. You can use free tools like Google Analytics to give you a wealth of information about your site visitor and their behavior or there are some great paid tools as well.

I'm answering your question assuming that you hope to be able to replicate it's own success in your own mobile app. There are a couple of factors responsible for it's growth that are instructive to anyone building a mobile app. "Leveraging the intimacy and privacy of the mobile phone." We now have an *intimate* relationship with our phone like no other device in the history of technology. Every internet company that started before around 2010 has built their core interactions around "the old web" one which was accessed primarily via a browser on a computer. Companies that start with a clean slate, should be building their interactions around how to do whatever the app is supposed to do while leveraging what is unique to people's relationship to their mobile devices. Photo-sharing has become a core part of the way we communicate now. Snapchat built something that provided an experience that leveraged the feeling of privacy and intimacy that is unique to mobile. "Provided an escape from the "maturity" of other online services." Too many parents, aunts, uncles and other "old people" have encroached into the social networks of teens and young people. As a result, they've had a desire to find places to express themselves in places inaccessible by older generations. An important distinction is that it's not just parents and relatives that young people are trying to avoid, but also employers & colleges who are increasingly using "mature" social networks to review applicants. "Leveraged PR even bad PR" The fact that the app got so much press about it being used to sext was perfect PR for the company, as it essentially reinforced the brand experience that it has today. Essentially, "if it's safe enough to send a sext, it's safe for any kind of communication I want to have." And although the safety and security of Snapchat is actually not as advertised, it still enjoys the reputation of having less impact than any primarily web-based service. Building a successful mobile application is one of the hardest challenges to face designers, programmers and entrepreneurs in the history of writing software. Happy to talk to you if you're considering building a mobile app, about what I've learned about the "table stakes" for success.

Nichole's list is comprised of people who talk about growth marketing. Although growth marketing is a component of scaling-up, scaling a company is much more about operational issues. Everything from tech stack to culture to legal and compliance and almost always sales. On growth, there are a lot of people who talk about the principles of growth from a marketing perspective and a couple of people on Nichole's list are known for *talking* about growth but I'm generally wary of people who are more known for *talking* than actual notable accomplishments in growing products. Ivan Kirigin (formerly on Dropbox's growth team, now running a company I invested in called YesGraph), Gustaf Alstromer (AirBnb growth team), Elliot Shmukler (helped LinkedIn grow from 20m to 200m members, now in-charge of growth at Wealthfront who has been absolutely killing it), Drew Dillon (an early PM at Yammer, now Head of Product at AnyPerks), are all active on Twitter. Actually Elliot isn't but you can still search quotes he's made about growth via Twitter using his name. If you have more specific questions, am happy to try and point you to the right resources.

Anyone who calls themselves something fancy like that is probably one of the 99% in the industry that have no idea what they are doing and will make you hemorrhage money. Find a MARKETER with a proven track record and use them to build an empire. If you don't want an empire and, instead, want to make your friends jealous by bragging about "new hires," then hire a "growth hacker" or "assistant of hardcore development" or "rad visualization chairman" or whatever other stupid position all these failing startups get caught on.