Why Marketing Funnels Are Not The Best Way To Think About Your Business

Alright, so today I want to talk about the concept of startup cycles. So this is a blog post from a venture capitalist named Tomasz Tunguz, who we've actually had on the Leveling Up podcast. So you can just search Leveling Up. Tomasz is spelled a little differently, so I'll spell it for you: T-O-M-A-S-Z space T-U-N-G-U-Z. You know, I think to understand startup cycles first, it's important to understand startup funnels, and he actually has another blog post on this. So let's Let's use my blog as an example. Let's use singlegrain.com, which is an ad agency. So the way that works is that you will be discovered, maybe you'll come through Google, you'll find one of our blog posts and you hit the site, and then what you'll do is you'll become interested, maybe you'll fill out a lead form, and then after you fill out a lead form, then a salesperson will call you, and then after that, a proposal will be sent to you, and then after that, the deal is closed, and then you're onboarded, right? And that is the funnel of becoming a customer. So there's an endpoint right there. The idea behind a funnel is that it ends, right? Now, what would actually be more productive for a company is that, what Tomasz is arguing here is that you have to think of it, your startup, as cycles. So he used to think of it as funnels. You got different funnels, right? So for example, with a product funnel, maybe you, user signs up for a freemium account and then they will, they hit the aha moment and then they start, they request a demo and then, you know, maybe they're onboarded, right? Or maybe there's a self-service model. And then It's the same kind of deal. There's an endpoint right there. Cycles do not end. So if we come back to the example I gave with sales earlier, so instead of the onboarding ending, maybe there's a constant dating process happening, right? So after the customer is onboarded, there are constant check-ins where we provide new strategies to the client, right? And that helps with retention. And after we provide new strategies, maybe, you know, 1 or 2 months after that, we suggest, hey, you know what? I think that, you You, I think, you know, Mr. Customer or Ms. Customer, what do you think, how do you think we've done so far? If it's really good, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, maybe if it's a 9 or 10, will you refer someone to us? Now, if it's below a, let's say below a 7, for example, you know, will you tell us how to get better? Will you give us some feedback? And so you're constantly collecting feedback, right? You're either at that point you're collecting feedback, right? Or you are asking for a referral. At that point, right? And then what happens is you constantly date the customer, constantly date the customer. So the cycle continues, continues, continues. And then once they refer someone, the loop starts again, right? Someone fills out a lead form, you know, they go through the whole process again, they're presented a proposal, and then boom, then they're onboarded, and it just continues on, right? And they start referring other people. So that's a cycle that continues. Now, same thing with the product cycle too. Once someone gets onboarded, you continue to figure out how you can add value. Maybe every now and then you'll send them a You know, automated emails on what they're doing well, what they can improve on, and then you know the cycle improve will continue. And then you run an NPS survey, which is a net promoter score survey, asking them. And you could use a tool like God, I forgot the tool that we use. God, there's a lot of NPS survey tools out there, but that you can use. So anyway, you do that, and then same thing afterwards. You say, "Hey, you know if it's this, I'm going to ask for either a referral or a testimonial, or if it's below this, I'm going to ask for feedback to help us get better." Right? Either way, or not either way, like. You know, among those 3 ways, you can't really lose. So, you know, I think it's really important to reframe how you think about things. So same thing with Tomasz over here, right? He thought of things as funnels, right? Now he's like reframing, he's like, okay, now I really believe it's about cycles. And this is an accomplished venture capitalist over here. So constantly be thinking, how can I challenge the way I think right now, right? Mark Andreessen said, strong views loosely held, right? So anyway, I don't have any much more to add around this, so I'll just say, hey, go to levelingup.com to learn more about the book I have coming out called Leveling Up, and we'll catch you later.