Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned While Growing My Startup To 100 Million Users & Losing $78 Million

Great read for those in or thinking about getting into the start up world. This book takes you into the first hand perspective of young entrepreneurs working to build their business from the ground up. This is not just your run of the mill…story of starting from nothing, hitting stride and selling. This book depicts the real and often times raw experiences of what it takes to lead a company. It was fun to think back to a time where Facebook was still a start up and certain technology like adding images to an app were not developed yet. If you want a window into what it is like living through start up mode, the necessity of having to make decisions in real time with real consequences…good…bad…and everything in between…give this book a read.

Do you like extremely specific sports analogies applied to business practices? What about the ego of a hedge fund manager for 300 pages? How about a book written by a guy who started a software company with no software background and not the slightest idea how to do it?Well then, this is your book! Filled with tasty morsels of insights and ideas (like having a company massage day ... really page 206, right before the awe-inspiring unique suggestion of something called a "company newsletter" - groundbreaking stuff here!)The author also namedrops a bunch of recommended books, all by authors who happened to be living, giving public speeches, and promoting themselves ... I'm sure he wasn't expecting any kickback in the process ... no, not from a wall street hedge fund manager, that's not something he'd do. But don't expect any unique titles to hit this list. It's the usual suspects, Eric Ries, Peter Theil ... it'd be like going to a sci-fi conference and recommending Isaac Asimov to everyone ... gee thanks ...The one nice thing about this book (which is why it's a two star review!) is that since the text is so vapid of insight and depth, you can quite literally read it like some top graduate from Evelyn Wood's speed reading course. Don't worry, you're missing anything by going too fast, he'll repeat it again in 5 pages.But really, don't worry about it ... it's like 12 bucks ... won't be the worst 12 bucks you ever spent. Besides, he's not a bad author, the text actually is quite readable and there isn't much New Yorker style needlessly long stories without getting to the point.Not the worst the book I've read this year (and I'm writing this in February) but certainly not 5-star awesome, would read again!!!

Great book with a lot of insightful knowledge.

A superb book to read for anyone interested in witnessing the impact on a company's fortunes of truly understanding the troubles/ difficulties a customer is having in his or her life and solving that problem quickly and efficiently and 10x better than your competition.. The book gives you essential lessons to learn and take away and apply in your business. It will also give you a very clear understanding of how incredibly difficult it is to stay at the top of your game and be the number 1 performing business in your industry. You have to constantly be innovating, constantly asking customers what they think of your product and how you can improve it.An extremely worthwhile read with many great lessons to remember for yourself in business

First of all, this book is a must-read for entrepreneurs and growth marketers. It's also one of the best books I've ever read. Cliff walks you through his story of how he growth hacked his way to 100M users without spending a single dime. Best of all it feels like you're in Cliff's shoes while you're reading. You won't be able to stop reading once you start as his journey is quite a thrill ride. You're going to love it!

He disfrutado la forma en que este libro me hace plantear paralelos entre lo que estaban viviendo en SNAP Interactive y lo que vivimos en mi propio emprendimiento. Los tips hacen que la lectura sea fácil y rápida, y que se puedan extraer los aprendizajes rápidamente! Me llevo muchas ideas para continua creciendo mi empresa!

Explosive Growth dives into the truths of dating apps - one of the most honest reads I've leafed through in a long time! Def worth a read; dives into the BS of the apps we're all on, gives you stats about apps you'd never thought you'd care about (you do) and is an overall easy and entertaining read. Next time you're on your 7th glass of wine at happy hour, you'll be spewing out random (yet relevant!) dating app facts faster than Kim Kmarried Chris Humphries.

A fast and entertaining read, Explosive Growth by Cliff Lerner takes you on the real-life journey of the business leader that started the first successful Facebook dating app. Through Cliff’s honesty and experience, we learn invaluable business tips from both his successes and regrets. While at the same time, gaining fun insight on the world of online dating. Apparently single brunettes like myself, may want to consider moving to Denver Colorado. Fun and informative – it's a must read!

Because Lerner writes from experience and never preaches as much shares, this is an easy to read, almost “how to” book. As a start up founder myself, most things he says in the book just resonated no end with me (except for making $78 million in a week). Do I recommend it? Without a moment’s hesitation!

Awesome book! I loved it! It offers practical advice, tips and case studies that you can apply to your kind of business. I found the story telling very engaging and entertaining - this book is really easy to read in one go. Highly recommended!

Book that claims to be about startup growth, but is really the story of the rise and fall of the author's own company. After seeing his coworkers struggle to find dates online, he quit his job at Lehman Brothers to start an online dating company. In the early stages, especially since the product relies heavily on network effects, it's crucial to focus on the growth strategy -- it's not enough to have slightly better features than the competition, but you must have some killer feature that makes it 10x easier to do something.The growth was slow at first, but exploded once the author realized the potential of the Facebook ecosystem to leverage online dating within your social network. This was one of the first apps on Facebook, and they quickly gained a lot of traction and raised a lot of money. However, they were unable to keep innovating and made some questionable decisions, like switching to a subscription-based model, so that their primary differentiator was they were the only paid online dating platform in a sea of free ones. Their user share steadily declined until Tinder exploded in popularity, at which point the author decided to launch a spin-off product to compete with Tinder.The story is an interesting one, but the book doesn't provide many insightful takeaways, and I'm not convinced that the author's success can be replicated. The "explosive growth tips" only provide a shallow analysis of their decisions, when there are actually deep and complex tradeoffs involved. For example, he regrets in hindsight not taking investment from billionaires, and simply concludes to "always say yes to a billionaire". It is especially frustrating in the latter half of the book when the company is clearly failing, yet the author refuses to admit it, and non-ironically pushes trivialities onto his employees, like the "anniversary stapler".

The author is a successful entrepreneur. That's why I bought this book, to learn something from a person who has done it. But it does not offer anything new. If you are in marketing or have even basic knowledge of marketing, you can avoid this book.

I absolutely loved this good.It was very entertaining.I didn't expect it to be this good, especially about a startup. It was very well written as well.I didn't put this book down and think this is a book I'd go back to read again in the future to motivate myself while I'm working on my future business.Get it and read it! Solid 4 Star.LFE.