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After his first startup, Rapportive, was acquired by LinkedIn, Rahul Vohra reported directly to LinkedIn’s Head of Growth, Elliot Shmukler. Elliot was responsible for scaling LinkedIn from 25 million users to over 250 million by the time Rahul joined.
During their first 1-on-1, Rahul asked Elliot to teach him everything he knew about virality. Elliot responded:
“I hate to burst your bubble, but there is no such thing as a truly viral product. No app has sustained a viral factor greater than 1 for any significant period. Even Facebook in its heyday had a viral factor of about 0.7, and that lasted for only a year — one person was creating about 0.7 new users.”
Rahul then asked about LinkedIn’s famous address book import feature, which invited all of a user’s contacts to LinkedIn. Surely that had a viral factor greater than 1? Elliot responded:
“That’s an amazing feature, but you have to remember that not everyone is going to use it all the time. Even that feature had a lifetime viral factor of about 0.4, and that’s considered good. 0.6 is great. And 0.7 is incredible — you’re in the stratosphere with Facebook.”
Given that viral mechanics eventually plateau, Rahul asked: “What then is the true secret to virality?”
Elliot replied:
“It is word of mouth. It’s the virality you can’t measure, the kind that’s not driven by a feature or mechanic. It’s when one user spontaneously tells another user about your product.”
Elon Musk offers similar advice:
“I think the real way to sell any product is through word of mouth. The key is to have a product that people love. If you just like something and it’s okay, you’re not going to care much. But if you love it, you’re going to talk about it. And that generates word of mouth. That’s basically how our sales [at Tesla] have grown. We don’t spend any money on advertising or endorsements.”
