How to scaleJoe Griston Regional Director, Europe freelancer.com

@gristonjoejoe@freelancer.com

4 billion people have never used the internet

But they are coming, FAST!

An extra 2 billion internet users by 2020

Different cultures Different lifestyles Different life pressures

Established internet users spend their time doing this:

New internet users spend their time doing this:

The wealth of human knowledge can be found online

Meet Sebastian Thrun

Sebastian had a bold idea

160,000 enrollments 23,000 passed

Of the top 400 students… Not 1 went to Stanford

Meanwhile, in the ‘developed’ world

What do startups need?

Talent!

Freelancer.com is the world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace by total number of users

and number of projects posted.

10,005,209Projects & Contests Posted

20,731,448Registered Users

19 *As of 29th September 2016

Empowering entrepreneurs, globally

Small businesses, startups, entrepreneurs,

consumer employers

Large, high quality, on-demand

entrepreneurial workforce

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We are changing lives in the

developing world by providing

opportunity and income.

We help small businesses, startups and

entrepreneurs turn that

spark of an idea into reality.

Design of a digital counting wristband for $220

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We are changing lives by

providing opportunity and

income.

23.

24

25

Crowdsource your job with Freelancer Contests

Over 120,000 Contests posted in 2015.

Freelancer run contests

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NASA partners with FreelancerCrowdsourcing solutions to complex problems faced by

the astronauts on the International Space Station

NASA Challenge: Astronaut Smartwatch App Interface Design

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Global, and growing

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34 Supported Languages 20 Supported Currencies

Languages Currencies

USD AUD CAD EUR GBP HKD INR CLP

44 Regional Websites

24x7x365 Multilingual Support Team

Afrikaans Bahasa Indonesia Bahasa Malaysia

বাংলা

Català Čeština Dansk Deutsch ελληνικά English Español Suomi Filipino Français

िहन्द

JMD IDR ZAR MXN SEK JPY MYR NZD

PHP PLN SGD BRL

Magyar Italiano ⽇日本語 한국어

Norsk-Bokmål Nederlands Polskiа Português Română ру́сский язы́ Shqip Slovene Svenska Kiswahili Thai Türkçe Tiếng Việt українська мова 中⽂文(简体)

Who do we hire?

• 30% University Medalists

• 50% PhD

• Polyglot Software Engineers

• Mechatronics Engineers

• Quantum Physicists

• Mechanical Engineers

• Marketing Manager

FREELANCER TEAM

• Machine Learning Experts

• Electronic Engineers

• Australia’s Best Cash Game Poker Player

• Natural Language Processing Experts

• Astrophysicists

• MBA

• Bachelor of Commerce

Why?

HOW MUCH DID THESE UNICORNS SPEND ON MARKETING IN 2015?

YoY Growth: 41% MarketCap: $USD 1.6Billion

Founded: 2005

YoY Growth: 45% MarketCap: $USD 1.9Billion

Founded: 2006

YoY Growth: 44% MarketCap: $USD 1Billion

Founded: 2006

POP QUIZ

104% of Revenue

Founded: 2005

54% of Revenue

Founded: 2006

80% of Revenue

Founded: 2006

HOW MUCH DO THESE UNICORNS SPEND ON MARKETING?

POP QUIZ

How much does UBER spend?

POP QUIZ

How much did Freelancer.com spend in 1H16?

18%

AVOID THE DEATH SPIRAL OF PAID MARKETING WHERE LTV < CPA

Where should your growth come from?

GROWTH-DRIVEN COMPANY CULTURE

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• Software Engineering

• Data Science

• Product Management

• Security Engineering

• UI/UX/Design

➜ Includes staff with PhDs and advanced degrees

➜ We now have 145 engineering staff across 5 labs

➜ Up to 40k+ users on-site at any time

➜ Databases serve up to 65,000 QPS

➜ Reliability of 99.99% YTD

We release 20-30 times a day

• 80 million events per day • Over 120k user notifications per

day • Over 500k user messages per day

• Decouple independent components • Targeted scaling solutions • Insulate against broader impact • Accelerated development through

working with APIs • Mobile applications • User assistance / support

Service Oriented Architecture / External API

GROWTH-DRIVEN TEAMS

Product Manager

Data Scientist

2-3 Software EngineersEngineering Team Lead

Designer

1-2 Quality Assurance (QA)

Front End Developer

DATA SCIENCE

FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION

#1: DON’T BE LIKE MOST COMPANIES!MOST COMPANIES ONLY TRACK THREE THINGS

Traffic Users Revenue

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

Get Traffic ? Get

Users ? Profit

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

TRACK EVERYTHING!!!

• Transparency: All metrics incl. revenue is accessible for everyone in the company

• Monthly/Quarterly goals need to be in quantifiable metrics

• Every member in the team is accountable for their team’s metrics. Performance is strongly

rewarded based on that.

• SIT THE PRODUCT TEAM TOGETHER (NOT FUNCTIONALLY) !!!

Growth-Driven Teams

GROWTH-DRIVEN TEAMS

TRACK YOUR FUNNEL!!!FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

TRACK YOUR FUNNEL!!!

CPA < LTV

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

DO NOT HIRE DONALD!!!Our website is shit, we have to make it more usable! OK, how? Do we have data to prove this? What metric defines usability?

I can’t code. I can’t query the database. Can an engineer find out how many users we have in Australia? NOPE. They’re busy.

We need our campaign to go viral What defines virality? How much revenue will it make? Where do you think the problem is?

Reads Wired.

Oops, is it 5pm already? I have to go to my hairdressing appointment!

DO HIRE WARREN BUFFETT!• CompSci, Maths, Economics, Stats or Engineering Degree

• Dashboard & data are their source of truth that they look at and refer to regularly

• They also constantly query and add their own stats

• They can visualise and fit their core funnel perfectly with DATA

• Can code (AND NO HTML IS NOT CODING)

• Always formulate his/her own hypothesis (mostly data-backed) , code and validate it him/herself

• SQL Gurus

• Reads HackerNews

WE HAVE TO A/B TEST

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

WE HAVE TO A/B TEST• Correlation & causation can now be tested easily • Always form hypothesis and test it by linking it to

success metrics • Almost all things have to be A/B tested including

your new features • A/B testing should be done on multiple metrics – NOT

just one metric • Mobile testing is a bit harder but we can still do it

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

#2: Conversion Rate is Everything and Everywhere

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #2

INTRODUCING GROWTH SPRINT500 STARTUP

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

RULES OF GROWTH SPRINT

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

• Generate 50+ experiments for the product • 50 in 50mins

• Group experiments into AARRRR

• Determine the ICE score for each experiment (with the team in a planning meeting) • Impact (I) = Estimate of how impactful a feature will be (scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most

impactful) • Confidence (C) = How confident you are that the experiment will achieve the estimated

impact (scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most confident) • Effort (E) = The estimated amount of effort to develop and produce the experiment (scale of 1-10

with 10 being the least amount of effort)

• Rank experiments by ICE score to determine the experiments most worthwhile to tackle during the sprint

• Ensure with the development team that all experiments are doable in one day (not strictly necessary for all growth sprints). THREE SPRINTS THREE EXPERIMENTS EACH DAY -> 30 EXPERIMENTS IN TWO WEEKS

PROCESS

PROCESS

AT FREELANCER,

EVERY QUARTER, WE HAVE

ONE FULL MONTH OF

GROWTH-FOCUSSED TESTS

AND TWO MONTHS OF

DOING THE RIGHT THINGS

RIGHT

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

#4: GET THE MACHINES TO HELP YOU!!!

Machine Learning

FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #2

Amazon Recommender System

Freelancer Growth Principle #4

Machine Learning at Freelancer.com

Freelancer Growth Principle #4

Questions?