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Organic B2C Growth for Startup Founders and Marketing Professionals

4.8

(7 ratings)

4 Weeks

Cohort-based Course

Learn how to think like a scrappy growth leader and to apply the PR and a/b testing playbooks that worked in the early days of Duolingo.

Class is in session

Organic B2C Growth for Startup Founders and Marketing Professionals

4.8

(7 ratings)

4 Weeks

Cohort-based Course

Learn how to think like a scrappy growth leader and to apply the PR and a/b testing playbooks that worked in the early days of Duolingo.

Hosted by

Gina Gotthilf

Ex VP growth at Duolingo from 3m to 200m users, ex Tumblr growth lead

Gina Gotthilf

Ex VP growth at Duolingo from 3m to 200m users, ex Tumblr growth lead

Previously at / featured on

Course overview

Learn how to think like a growth leader

Most growth courses focus on theory. I learned by doing, so in this course, I'll cover super tactical examples of what worked and didn't as I worked to massively scale Tumblr and Duolingo in the early days.

My goal is to help you understand how to think like a great growth leader and draft a plan for how you'll successfully boost growth at your organization by sharing examples from a 10+ year career helping startups scale to hundreds of millions of users.

By the end, you should have a much clearer understanding of what makes someone decide to try a new product or service, what makes them come back over and over, and how to use that thinking to systematically drive acquisition and retention.

In other words, you'll learn the fundamental blocks for building the growth engine for your b2c startup.

What we'll cover:

Lesson 1: Growth opportunities and how to prioritize them

- Case studies from top tech companies

- How to prioritize across your possible growth initiatives

- How to unlock the resources you need to lead more growth initiatives at your organization

Outcome: draft a v1 of your mini growth roadmap and get live feedback from Gina

Lesson 2: Free user acquisition

- Learn to come up with campaigns ideas and pitch them to journalists and influencers by yourself without an agency

- Understand the PR playbook that worked for Duolingo in the early days

- Gain access to my outreach templates for LinkedIn and email

Outcome: draft your first PR campaign with a media outreach list and pitch

Lesson 3: Activation and retention (PLG)

- Understand how to come up with and prioritize your team's a/b testing ideas

- Access examples of successful experiments at Duolingo and learn how they were created

- Learn how to apply gamification to improve user retention

- Leverage our highest ROI wins for ASO and SEO

- Learn how to determine whether experiments were successful

Outcome: Draft a proposal for how you'll improve a key retention metric

The course is a mix of lecture, structured exercises/case studies based on real scenarios and office hours with Gina.

Who is this course for?

You're a product/marketing professional or startup founder ready to build on your growth skillset and think like a growth leader.

Your startup has product market fit. The growth strategies we'll cover should only be applied after PMF.

You're not a marketing or growth expert but aspire to become one by being scrappy and ambitious.

You're a product/marketing professional or startup founder ready to build on your growth skillset and think like a growth leader.

Your startup has product market fit. The growth strategies we'll cover should only be applied after PMF.

You're not a marketing or growth expert but aspire to become one by being scrappy and ambitious.

What you’ll get out of this course

Identify organic growth channels to acquire users for free.

We'll brainstorm channels as a group with case studies, learn how to prioritize ideas and draft plans for testing them effectively.

Map a/b testing opportunities to improve conversions along your entire funnel

Learn how to come up with and prioritize a/b test ideas, from landing pages to activation strategy and gamification. your actual in-app Understand how to determine if an experiment failed or succeeded.

Build and launch your own PR strategy

I'll share the playbook I created at Duolingo, examples of pitch copy and press releases, and walk you through how to draft a plan and whether you should work with a PR agency.

Unlock a network of peers to help brainstorm and validate ideas

Learning growth skills can be daunting and learning. Meet peers with whom you can stress-test ideas and share resources way beyond this course.

This course includes

Interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

3 in-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

4 projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

4.8

(7 ratings)

What students are saying

Course syllabus

Expand all modules

Week 1
Sep 9—Sep 15
Nothing scheduled for this week.
Week 2
Sep 16—Sep 22
Nothing scheduled for this week.
Week 3
Sep 23—Sep 29
Nothing scheduled for this week.
Week 4
Sep 30
Nothing scheduled for this week.
Post-Course
Modules
Understanding B2C free growth opportunities
Understanding B2C free growth opportunities
1 Lesson • 2 Projects
How to acquire new users for free
How to acquire new users for free
1 Lesson • 1 Project
How to improve retention for free
How to improve retention for free
1 Lesson • 1 Project
Creating your growth plan
Creating your growth plan
0 Lessons • 0 Projects
Module 1
Module 1
0 Lessons • 0 Projects
Bonus
Modules
Listen to my "A Side / B Side" career story to feel inspired to succeed.
Listen to my "A Side / B Side" career story to feel inspired to succeed.
0 Lessons • 0 Projects

What people are saying

"Gina's growth mindset is like napalm oil: our 20-minute conversation blew my mind and motivated me to get to work! I'm here 90 days later promoted to Global Marketing Director. The strategy she advised me on took our company to new places.

Kate Busby

Global Marketing Director, Nova Kid School

Gina got her hands dirty with me in crafting a PR strategy for my startup and helped me write our press release. She taught me how to think about SEO and landing page conversions. This resulted in a burst in leads and media coverage from prestigious outlets like MIT Technology Review and top Brazilian magazines—all on a $0 budget.

Pedro Freire

Founder @ BlueAI

Having Gina on our board has been a gift. She is inquisitive, empathetic and hilarious. Be ready for the tough questions that others may shy away from asking. During our steady-state growth, Gina asked probing questions that pushed us toward greater ambition and accountability.

Yasmin Cruz

Co-founder and GP at Visible Hands, 2023

Meet your instructor

Gina Gotthilf

Ex-VP growth at Duolingo, co-founder and COO at Latitud

Gina led growth and marketing at Duolingo from 3m to 200m users via organic strategies and was part of the executive team during multiple rounds and strategic pivots. She also worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign, and led growth at Tumblr in Latin America.

Gina is now the co-founder and COO at Latitud, an a16z-backed platform and fund supporting early-stage tech companies in Latin America.

Gina's had the honor of presenting to President Obama and giving keynotes around the world. She was featured on First Round Review, Lenny's Podcast and 20VC, and gave a TEDx talk when she was 25.

Gina has a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from Brandeis University, where she co-authored a neuroscience study.

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