In this presentation, Willix Halim, SVP Growth at Freelancer.com, talks about how to create A Full Company Growth Culture. Watch the full video at: www.Growthhackers.com

1. Create A Full Company Growth Culture

2. GROWTH
Willix Halim
Senior Vice President of Growth
freelancer.com
@willixh
willix@freelancer.com

3. POP QUIZ, HOT SHOT….

4. HOW MUCH DO THESE UNICORNS
SPEND ON MARKETING?
YoY Growth: 41%
MarketCap: $USD 1.6Billion
Founded: 2005
YoY Growth: 45%
MarketCap: $USD 1.9Billion
Founded: 2006
YoY Growth: 44%
MarketCap: $USD 1Billion
Founded: 2006
POP QUIZ

5. 104%
of Revenue
Founded: 2005
54%
of Revenue
Founded: 2006
80%
of Revenue
Founded: 2006
HOW MUCH DO THESE UNICORNS
SPEND ON MARKETING?
POP QUIZ

6. How much does UBER spend?
POP QUIZ

7. How much did Freelancer.com
spend in 1H15?
POP QUIZ

8. AVOID THE DEATH SPIRAL OF PAID
MARKETING WHERE LTV < CPA

9. Where should
your growth
come from?

10. GROWTH-­DRIVEN
COMPANY CULTURE

11. DATA
SCIENCE

12. FUNNEL OPTIMIZATION

13. GROWTH
Dos and Dont’s

14. FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1
#1:THE TEAM

15. LET’S START
WITH THE TEAM

16. Product Driven
ALWAYS HIRE THE BEST!!!
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•
•
Hire People Smarter Than You
A hires A, B hires C, C hires D …
DO NOT EVER COMPROMISE ON TALENT!!!

17. METRIC/GROWTH/
PRODUCT-­DRIVEN
TEAM
ProductManager
DataScientist
2-­3 SoftwareEngineersEngineering TeamLead
Designer
1-­2 Quality Assurance(QA)
Front EndDeveloper

18. THE PRODUCT GROUPS
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POTUS
MatchMaking
Office
Collaboration
Search & Discovery
The Freelancer Team
Membership
Special Task Force
International Growth
Contest
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Education
Freemarket
Analytics Infrastructure
Software Infrastructure
Platform Engineering
API & Services
Local Jobs
Mobile
Employer Success
Customer Experience
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Talent
Payments
Trust & Safety
Community & Showcase
Chat
Escrow
Warrior Forum
AI Team
SPEED
Product Driven

19. •
•
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They own these metrics: Projects, Users & Traffic
They are in charge of justifying their marketing budget (CPA < LTV)
It is led by an engineer with PhD in NLP & University Medallist in Computer Science
P.O.T.U.S.
POTUS stands for Projects, Organic, Traffic & User Growth. The goal is simple: to accelerate
awareness about Freelancer.com by growing Projects, Traffic & Freelancers. We achieve this by
amplifying word of mouth between users, driving more engagement on our users by sending more
relevant and personalised emails, SEM, SEO, Landing Page Optimisation, new ways to hire
freelancers and many more.
Product Driven

20. freelancer.com is revolutionising the way people work and get work done. We want to help our
millions of employers find the best freelancers to work with on any tasks they need done. There
is a fixed supply of freelancers, and as a result, marketplace matchmaking can be very difficult
•
•
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They are responsible for key metrics such as: award rate, accept rate & completion rate
When these metrics go down/up, we know who to go to (READ: RESPONSIBILITY &
TRANSPARENCY)
3 Data Scientists in the team
•
•
•
To understand completely how/why people hire and award freelancers
To understand the current supply and demand of our marketplace
AI-­based recommender system to make sure we know who the best freelancers for related
jobs are
MatchMaking
Product Driven

21. GROWTH-­DRIVEN TEAMS

22. • Transparency: All metrics incl. revenue is accessible for everyone in the company
• Monthly/Quarterly goals need to be in quantifiable metrics
• Every member in the team is accountable for their team’s metrics. Performance is strongly
rewarded based on that.
• SIT THE PRODUCT TEAM TOGETHER (NOT FUNCTIONALLY) !!!
Growth-­Driven Teams
Growth Driven

23. GROWTH-­DRIVEN TEAMS

24. • 30% University Medalists
• 50% PhD
• Mechatronics Engineers
• Quantum Physicists
• Mechanical Engineers
FREELANCER DATA SCIENCE TEAM
Product Driven
• Machine Learning Experts
• Electronic Engineers
• Australia’s Best Cash Game Poker Player
• Natural Language Processing Experts

25. DO NOT HIRE DONALD!!!
Our website is shit, we have to make it more usable!
OK, how? Do we have data to prove this? What metric
defines usability?
I can’t code. I can’t query the database. Can an engineer
find out how many users we have inAustralia?
NOPE. They’re busy.
We need our campaign to go viral
What defines virality? How much revenue will it make?
Where do you think the problem is?
Reads Wired.
Oops, is it 5pm already? I have to go to my hairdressing
appointment!

26. DO HIRE WARREN BUFFETT!
• CompSci, Maths, Economics, Stats or Engineering Degree
• Dashboard & data are their source of truth that they look at
and refer to regularly
• They also constantly query and add their own stats
• They can visualise and fit their core funnel perfectly with
DATA
• Can code (AND NO HTML IS NOT CODING)
• Always formulate his/her own hypothesis (mostly data-­
backed) , code and validate it him/herself
• SQL Gurus
• Reads HackerNews

27. • WE LOVE HIRING AWESOME GRADUATES
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Freelancer TLs lecture in universities
Targeted recruitment email to top engineers
Hackathon for Graduates
Referrals
OUR HIRING CHANNELS

28. #1: DON’T BE LIKE MOST COMPANIES!
MOST COMPANIES ONLY TRACK THREE THINGS
Traffic Users Revenue
Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5
Get
Traffic ?
Get
Users ? Profit
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

29. TRACK EVERYTHING!!!

30. TRACK YOUR FUNNEL!!!
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

31. TRACK YOUR FUNNEL!!!
CPA < LTV
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

32. ATTRIBUTION ANALYSIS
• FIRST INTERACTION
• LAST INTERACTION
• ASSISTED CONVERSION
• LINEAR ATTRIBUTIONMODELLING
• TIME DECAY
• POSITION BASED
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

33. HOW SHOULD YOU TRACK???
• Google Analytics
• Freelancer has its own internal tracking tool: QTS -­> RedShift
• Kissmetrics? Mixpanel? Why don’t you build your OWN?
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

34. TRACK YOUR
COMPETITORS!!!
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

35. CASE STUDY:
SHOWPO.COM
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#ITEMS SOLD
#ITEMS LISTED
$REVENUE MADE
BEST-­SELLING ITEMS
Many more
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

36. CASE STUDY:
SHOWPO.COM
•
•
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#ITEMS SOLD
#ITEMS LISTED
$REVENUE MADE
BEST-­SELLING ITEMS
Many more
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

37. MOST
COMPANIES
DO NOT
TEST
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

38. WE HAVE TO A/B TEST
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

39. WE HAVE TO A/B TEST
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•
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Correlation & causation can now be tested easily
Always form hypothesis and test it by linking it to
success metrics
• Almost all things have to be A/B tested including
your new features
A/B testing should be done on multiple metrics – NOT
just one metric
Mobile testing is a bit harder but we can still do it
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

40. FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #1

41. #2: Conversion Rate is
Everything and Everywhere
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #2

42. #2:CVR is everywhere
• Every pages/screens in your website/app should have
at least one purpose / CTA. Hence, you should plot
all your pages’ CVR
• Lowest hanging fruit for growth is to improve your
CVR
• Doubling your conversion rate will halve your CPA
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #2

43. CASE STUDY: AUTO-­TRACK FORM
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #2

44. #3: BE FAST!!!

45. FAST IS ALWAYS GOOD
• Page Speed (Refer to RAIL)
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

46. What about speed to perform CTA?
• How long does it take
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From discovery -> add to cart in eBay.com
To fill the check-out form
From add to cart -> successful payment
To fill the sign-up form
To list your items in ebay.com
To sell your first item
To buy your first item
etc
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

47. FAST IS ALWAYS GOOD
• Speed as a Habit should also apply in product development
• SPEED IS YOUR ASSET. IT IS HOW YOU WIN!!!
• A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week
– General George Patton
• READ: SPEED AS A HABITfrom Dave Girouard
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

48. INTRODUCING GROWTH SPRINT
500
STARTUP
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

49. RULES OF
GROWTH SPRINT
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

50. •
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Generate 50+ experiments for the product
• 50 in 50mins
Group experiments intoAARRRR
• Determine the ICE score for each experiment (with the team in a planning meeting)
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Impact (I) = Estimate of how impactful a feature will be (scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most
impactful)
Confidence (C) = How confident you are that the experiment will achieve the estimated
impact (scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most confident)
Effort (E) = The estimated amount of effort to develop and produce the experiment (scale of 1-10
with 10 being the least amount of effort)
• Rank experiments by ICE score to determine the experiments most worthwhile to tackle during the
sprint
• Ensure with the development team that all experiments are doable in one day (not strictly necessary
for all growth sprints). THREE SPRINTS THREE EXPERIMENTS EACH DAY -> 30 EXPERIMENTS
IN TWO WEEKS
PROCESS

51. PROCESS

53. AT FREELANCER,
EVERY QUARTER, WE HAVE
ONE FULL MONTH OF
GROWTH-­FOCUSSED TESTS
AND TWO MONTHS OF
DOING THE RIGHT THINGS
RIGHT
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #3

54. #4: GET THE MACHINES
TO HELP YOU!!!

55. Machine
Learning
FREELANCER PRINCIPLE #2

56. Amazon Recommender System
Freelancer Growth Principle #4

57. Machine Learning at Freelancer.com
Freelancer Growth Principle #4

58. Freelancer’s machine learning based fraud detection algorithm -­ Skynet
Freelancer Growth Principle #4

59. IN SUMMARY:
• KNOW YOUR AND YOUR COMPETITORS’METRICS!!!
DATA ALLOWS TRANSPARENCY.
• WHY ARE WE DOING IT? WWDS – What Does The Data Say?
• WHAT ARE YOUR SUCCESS METRICS? Always A/BTest!
• EXECUTE FAST AND FAILFAST!!!
• ALSO GET THE MACHINES TO HELP YOU WITH THE DATA!!!
Freelancer Growth Principle #4

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