How can you make sure you’re ambitious enough for your market? Because if you’re not, you’re just making your life harder… At the same time, you should always begin by executing small: “Do things that don’t scale”, as Paul Graham recommends. This talk is about why Growth Hacking works (or not) depending on your vision & your execution! Started in 2010 by Skype’s founder, TransferWise has one of the best money-transfer products for both B2C & B2B. With more than €116M in equity funding, we can learn from them how to scale operations & conquer countries with the right mindset!

1. THINK BIG, DO SMALL
LESSONS LEARNED FROM BUILDING THE EUROPEAN
PRODUCT AT TRANSFERWISE

2. FIRST INTRODUCTIONS

3. INTROS

5. Transferwise was started
to solve a problem

6. HOW DOES TRANSFERWISE WORK?

9. A BANK COULD HAVE STARTED
TRANSFERWISE AT ANY POINT IN
THE LAST 100 YEARS

10. BUT THEY DID NOT

11. WHY?

12. WE ARE ON A MISSION

13. Money without borders.
Instant, convenient, transparent
and eventually free
We’re powering money for people and businesses:
to pay, to get paid, to spend, in any currency,
wherever you are, whatever you’re doing

14. $0.5 million ➤ $1 Billion

15. 60 ➤ 600 TransferWisers

16. Evangelism is the biggest
driver of growth

17. We believe we can create evangelical
customers.

18. Why do people recommend our
product ?

19. RATIONalRational Emotional

20. RATIONalProduct Cause

21. RATIONal
Speed
Price
Convenience
Coverage
Trust
Cause

22. To achieve advocacy your product needs
to be an order of magnitude better than
the alternative

23. AS A RESULT - YOU WILL GIVE YOUR
CUSTOMER STORIES TO TELL

27. HOW DO WE DO IT?

28. AN EMERGENT
WAY OF BUILDING PRODUCT

31. WE WORK IN AUTONOMOUS
INDEPENDENT TEAMS THAT FOCUS ON
KPIS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO
OUR CUSTOMERS AND DRIVE OUR
GROWTH

32. WHO OTHER THAN PEOPLE
WITH HANDS-ON DOMAIN
KNOWLEDGE CAN DO THE
BEST JOB POSSIBLE?

33. EUROPEAN PRODUCT

34. We are the currencies team.
@nilanp

35. OUR METRIC:
MNU’S

36. We launch new currencies :)
@nilanp

38. IS THIS IT?

39. SOME CURRENCIES GROW FAST

40. Brazil

41. SOME CURRENCIES DONT

42. There’s nothing special about the
product.
Yet

43. SOME COUNTRIES HAVE MORE
OPPORTUNITY

44. Things stop being simple…

45. WHAT TO DO?

46. WE ARE NPS DRIVEN

50. 3 PROBLEMS

51. 1. IT DOES NOT MEAN NOTHING IF YOUR
PRODUCT DOES NOT WORK

52. WE ONLY FOCUS ON NPS IF WE KNOW
THAT THE PRODUCT IS WORKING

53. 2. IT’S ELUSIVE AND EVASIVE

54. IT IS SENTIMENTAL

55. YOUR
PRODUCT
> COMPETITOR

56. NON COMPARABLE

57. HAS A CRAZY TIME LAG

58. 3. CRAZY HARD TO MOVE SIGNIFICANTLY

60. SO HOW DO WE TACKLE THIS?

61. GROWTH HACKS

63. EUROPE IS DIVERSE

66. OUR CUSTOMERS
Use us differently
Talk about us differently
Expect different things
CARE about different things

67. Countries in Europe have:
1) Different currencies (wow)
2) Different payment Schemes
3) Different payment methods (iDEAL in Netherlands,
SOFORT in Germany etc…)
4) Different clearing houses

68. TURNS OUT
EVERY COUNTRY IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT

69. IS THERE A SILVER BULLET IN EUROPE?

70. NO

71. 1 SILVER BULLET
BECOMES 5 THOUSAND BATTLES

72. BACK TO THE BASICS

73. NPS IS DRIVEN BY PRODUCT PILLARS

74. Speed
Price
Convenience
Coverage
Trust

75. HOW TO IDENTIFY THEM?

76. WE CATEGORISED NPS COMMENTS

77. WHAT TO CHOOSE?

78. 5 MAN TEAM
30+ COUNTRIES

80. 6 THINGS WE IGNORE

81. WE IGNORE
Things that do not align with our values
1

82. Well, we did not always do that…
We told people that we are 8x cheaper than the banks…not everywhere. Truth is -
we just didn't check
We do not always tell people upfront that we do not deal with cash. We actually
don't - just didn't figure to tell that
We show credit card fees only in the end of the transfer flow - but should tell it
earlier (just did not figure out how)
EXAMPLE

83. It is important to create a practise in your organisation
that doing things you believe in is good
Even if it hurts certain metrics in short term

84. WE IGNORE
Things that do not align with our product pillars
2

85. WE IGNORE
Things that are not backed up with qualitative or
quantitative data
3

86. It is important to remember that data is not a purpose
on it’s own
We use data to validate our conviction is certain things
There is rarely a need to test every decision you make.
In fact, over testing might affect the speed of change

87. Testing that your customers care about the language
your product speak to them is fine
Measuring historical language launches to prioritise
next steps is good
Doing and a/b test for every language and running it
for 6 months might be worthless
EXAMPLE

88. WE IGNORE
Personal sentiment. YOU are not your customer
4

89. WE IGNORE
Things we cannot or do not know how to measure
5

90. Our team does not know how to
measure convenience (yet)
That is why - we focus on speed
EXAMPLE

91. WE IGNORE
Things we cannot change within the cycle
6

92. We cannot
cover more countries this quarter
That is why -
we forget about them until the next cycle
EXAMPLE

94. NEW KIND OF A PRODUCT ROUTINE

95. 1. ASK YOUR CUSTOMER

96. “The speed of the transaction depends on the exchange rate developments. I find it quite
dodgy!”
“I think Transferwise is increasing the transaction time to
profit from the exchange rate fluctuations.”
“Just Improve speed, thank you”
“schneller! Das ist doch wohl ein Witz!?! In der Zeit hätte ich
das Geld schneller mit dem Fahrrad abgeliefert!”

97. ALL OF THEM ARE PROMOTERS

98. 2.GATHER QUANTITATIVE DATA

100. 3. CREATE REPRESENTATIVE AGGREGATE
METRICS

101. 4. EXECUTE TIRELESSLY

102. 5. REEVALUATE

103. HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOMER-DRIVEN PRODUCT
1) Choose NPS as your core product metric
2) Identify product pillars by categorising NPS sentiment.
3) Validate convictions through different kinds of testing (A/B, user testing)
4) Be comfortable with doing things that you believe in (even though they hurt
sometimes)
5) Identify valid aggregate metrics that will drive the improvement of your product
pillars (by qualitative and quantitative data)
6) Execute tirelessly
7) Ruthlessly prioritise and re-evaluate in a cycle-based routine

104. EMBRACE THE VOID

105. TRUSTED ALL OVER THE WORLD
CAN SEND MONEY TO

106. TALLINN
LONDON
TAMPA
NEW YORK
REVOLUTION SUPPORTED FROM
BUDAPEST CHERKASY
TOKYO
SINGAPORE

107. This isn't just a job.

108. It's a revolution

109. Let us change money transfer forever.
Together.
https://transferwise.com/jobs/

110. ONWARDS