GE 140: How Lloyed Lobo Got—and Kept—10,000 Users in Speakeasy’s Pre-Launch (podcast)

Hi everyone, today we have Lloyed Lobo, head of growth at Speakeasy, a tool that provides superior conference calling, screen sharing, and collaboration to close more business, faster, as well as the co-founder of Traction Conference.

In today’s interview we’ll be talking about how Lloyed Lobo got—and kept—10,000 users in Speakeasy’s beta launch, why the conference calling business is inherently viral, and how startups in particular need to focus on one channel first rather than going after 6 or 7 at once.

Episode highlights:

• [4:44] – “The other thing to keep in mind is a solution like conference calling has some inherent virality…. I think like 20 or 30 percent of our new users come as a result of being on a call with somebody else.”
• [7:25] – On what makes Speakeasy different from the competition: “You don’t want your clients entering long PINs and downloading stuff. First thing, other solutions on the market have long PIN numbers, you’ve got to download software, etc. So, with us, you don’t have that. PINless number, custom URL. You just join.”
• [13:07] – “But it’s really important to stay focused… I think what drives focus or what can drive focus and improve that is having targets. So if you have a set target … I need to hit this revenue goal or this MRO goal or this user goal, then you’re not going to try dumb things. You might, but you’re going to focus on things that will get you there.”
• [24:11] – “It’s easy to get 5-600 people to attend your conference…. What worked best for us was building an email list, building a community, direct emails. I’m a big believer in email marketing to your community. That worked.”

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: Lloyed Lobo Growth Everywhere Podcast Transcript.

Must-read books:

• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by  Justin Mares
• The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million by Mark Roberge

Resources from this interview:

• Twitter – @lloyedlobo
• LinkedIn
• Speakeasy
• Traction Conference

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