In this interactive workshop, Heidi Yu guides a small audience of early‑stage founders through the fundamentals of product growth. She begins by asking participants to briefly describe their products—a pilot‑trip trading platform, a kids‑programming/robotics education service, a wardrobe‑rental marketplace, and a call‑answering service. Using these examples, Heidi elicits a brainstorming session of growth channels, covering viral loops, sharing, referrals, gamification, PR, paid advertising, SEO, and email campaigns. She highlights practical considerations such as platform‑specific ad choices (Google, Instagram, billboards), the importance of avoiding spam (citing bans on Facebook and Twitter), and the role of user‑generated content as brand ambassadors. The conversation shifts to email marketing, where she discusses service providers (Mailchimp, SendGrid), A/B testing subject lines, and deliverability challenges. Heidi then dives deep into PR tactics: systematic media outreach, demo‑day events, securing exclusive coverage, and leveraging high‑profile outlets (TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal) to generate downstream buzz. Throughout, she balances enthusiasm for growth experiments with cautionary advice about over‑messaging and platform restrictions, offering a concise, actionable framework for founders to plan and execute their go‑to‑market strategies.
Chapters
I'm so honored to be here to share my story with you guys and also something maybe help you guys with your products, with your startups, with your dream, I don't know. So I was invited here to talk about growth. So any of you guys are working on a product right now or going to do a product or doing something soon? I need 3 people to tell me what you are working on.
A platform for pilots to trade their trips automatically, which lets them more money and days off.
Wow, wow. So who are your users?
My users are all commercial pilots and flight attendants.
Wow, cool. Sounds like really cool expenses. Um, I'm developing an online platform to teach kids programming and robotics in developing countries. Okay, cool. So users will be like the No, users have gigs for themselves to volunteer. Oh, nice. Cool, cool. Let's do over there. I have a wardrobe rental service that I rent out wardrobes for on-camera projects. It targets a lot of influencers, bloggers, and YouTubers. Oh, nice. So relevant. That's cool. That's really cool. Okay, we will talk about more if you guys didn't tell me what you are doing. during the time I will ask questions. So seems like you guys are all working on product right now. A lot of you guys are going to work on product. So you have a product. Is this hard to build? Is it hard or easy for you guys right now? Easy? Hard?
Hard.
Hard, right? It's hard. But however, it's getting harder later when you are going to say, oh, this is my baby right now. It's the time for me to share with the world, tell everybody, hey, come over to try it out and you guys will love it. So how can you get your baby out there in front of the world, in front of everybody, say this is amazing, I'm solving the problem, I'm helping you out, helping the kids, helping the pilots, and also helping those wardrobe bloggers? Is that your users, bloggers? Yeah, wardrobe rental. Okay, those rental people. So actually, there's so many ways you can get it out. Some of you guys, can you tell me some way? One person say one way.
Viral.
Darn.
Okay, viral. Okay, what is viral?
It's like an incredibly fast rate of growth that's out of the ordinary.
How? How can you do it?
Online.
Okay.
On like social media.
Okay, okay, cool. Next one. Somebody can tell me what's something you can think about. Sharing. Sharing.
Yeah, press. There you go. Yes, and what's the next? Advertising. Advertising.
PR.
PR. Yeah, PR. What is PR? Press.
Is that right?
So SEO. What is SEO? Search engine optimization. Awesome! You guys are all good. What is this? Are you guys making an app? Making an app?
App Store.
A new startup.
Yeah, yeah. What else? Okay, somebody said advertising. What type of advertising will you guys can think about? Tell me anything you guys can. Yep. What else? Google. Okay. Instagram. Okay.
What else?
Billboards. Cool. What else? I heard some.
Paying for users, like actually paying for users.
Yeah. Paying for like ad network.
Yeah.
Sales team. Probably you need a sales team for your Google Ads. Google Ads, yeah. Like app ads. And the last one? Spamming.
Spamming.
Yeah, have you guys dealt with any spamming? I got blocked on Facebook. Who else? Yeah.
I don't even know why. I wasn't even spamming.
So there's so many ways They told me this. There's so many ways to just be careful. Don't spam your people. Don't do it. I've done a bunch before and sometimes it kind of really working a little bit, but however, really get your toe later. I was banned on Twitter. I was tagging everyone. They were like, you don't spam me. Or I sent people emails. They were like, okay, are you using a mail merger or something? Mail merge. Be careful, really be careful. And I got kicked out from some online chat room for just, oh, you should try my service. But you know, it's like, just be really careful on that. So something that's viral is cool, content, content. So who is creating the content?
We.
Other than yourself?
Create the content.
What's that?
Our users.
Users, yeah. Have your users create this content for you, and to be your spokesperson.
Email.
Hmm, email. Have you guys done any sort of email campaign? How does that work?
The rates, I mean, when they do open it, if you make it engaging enough, they do come in, but I mean, you really got to play with the title and everything and do like A/B testing. But yeah, I mean, it's been okay.
Yeah, what's your product?
Well, right now it's a call answering service for entrepreneurs and small businesses. So I can give you a business number so you don't use your personal phone number, and then every call that comes in gets answered professionally by a secretary personalized to your business.
Okay, cool. And where did you get your email list?
Oh, this was for another product I was building a few months ago. That was for something else in the telecommunications space.
Yeah, and what type of email service you are using for your email?
Mailchimp.
Mailchimp? Okay, cool. Yeah, there's also like SendGrid or other services. I've done a lot of email campaigns. Sometimes, right now, I just feel like more and more email go to the spam folder. Or Gmail just lists you under social media or some, there's some different categories. So less people open their email now. I feel like it really costs money too when you're using those services. PR, anybody done PR before? Press? Are you guys going to think about it? Not paid for PR. Not paid for PR. PR is not paid for that. You've done it? How does that work?
Well, what we did, or what I did for our last company, was we contacted every single newspaper, as well as TechCrunch, and any of these bloggers that existed. We were in Boston, so anyone that was influential in Boston to come take a look at our product, come take a look at what we were working on. And it kind of created a buzz. So much that it had the bigger companies thinking we were doing more than we were. We actually were just in prototyping stage.
Did you guys get featured somewhere?
Yeah, a few.
Oh, nice. Nice. So what's that schedule look like? So when you guys are having something, you are thinking about, okay, I'm going to hit the PR end of the month, maybe next Thursday, or sometimes 3 months later? What's the process that should be like or would be like?
When it was for us?
Yeah, when did you guys start it, and when did the stuff launch and people pick you guys up?
We started at the beginning of the quarter after Match launched, and we saw our— so we started, I think it was end of June, we started actively seeking people to come and take over Sure. And then on— we had 2 different demo days. So on those 2 demo days, we invited like a bunch of tech bloggers and like people who write about healthcare.
Yeah.
And check out like all the companies, but like the purpose was to like come check ours out.
Totally.
So it was like they— even if they were gonna write about the entire event, that we made sure that they wrote at least like a sentence about us. And it was cool because After Demo Day, we had a few hundred more, not much, but a few hundred more views of our video online explaining what our product did.
That's cool. Yeah, that's cool. So when we were doing the PR for BoostInsider, we really want cool PR can pick us up. So actually, we got featured by TechCrunch. There's something here about our PR, but however, we sent out like hundreds of emails to those media, like Wall Street Journal, and people talk with me on the phone like, okay, if I'm going to feature you, will that be an exclusive deal? So a lot of times maybe when you guys can pick up some big guys in your industry and share with those guys first, say, hey, I'm doing an exclusive deal with you. So that's more likely they will, okay, this is cool, I will talk about this one before anybody else. So if the big ones talk about you, then the smaller ones all pick it up. If nobody pick you up, just send a bunch of emails out then. So that's my trick.
