Nearly every single web business I’ve worked in that grew to considerable size pushed the turbo button at some point.

The turbo button is my way of saying something that grows the company fast. Something that takes you from growing to grown.

Some quick examples to emphasize my point;

• Skype – bundled with Kazaa to get it’s first couple of hundred 1,000 installs.
• Spreets – partnered with Brands Exclusive to grow from 10,000’s to 100,000’s.
• Google – partnered with Yahoo to provide their backfill of search results.
• Youtube – was the embedded video default for Myspace.

Viral marketing, word of mouth, SEO and PR are excellent starting and supporting customer acquisition methods, but it is very hard to control and really accelerate them fast. Interestingly, businesses like Facebook accelerated word of mouth by physically restricting their focus – i.e. only Harvard, only US colleges, etc.

Important: Do not press the turbo button before you are ready.

If you try and grow before you’ve got a working, scalable business model then you just have a lot more unprofitable customers and your bounce rate is going to be huge. This is often the effect of Techcrunch coverage. 10,000 visitors but no customers.

Also Important: Do not wait forever or for perfection to hit it.

Equally you can’t put it off till everything is 100% done. It’s too late. My rough rule of thumb is to be 30% confident before you start customer development, 60% confident before you start product development and 80% confident before you hit the turbo button.

It’s tough to plan for early, because there is a lot to do before your ready to ‘push the button’. But it’s good to think of some options, here are some to start you off;

1. Google, Facebook, etc ads – these can be highly targeted and ramped up and down very quickly. Expensive but can get you big fast.
2. Distribution partnerships – find someone who has a very large number of your customers and do a deal with them. You’ll either have to give them a big cut or pay them a lot – because they are big and you aren’t. This could take the form of:
   1. Promotion – giving you lots of ad inventory.
   2. Email – a big list that you get promoted to.
   3. Downloads – a bundled offer.
   4. Upsell – add your product as a ‘would you like fries with that’ option in the sales process.

So get out there, get it working and then get ready for super growth. It’s hard before you get there (getting it working), then it’s hard after you hit the button (dealing with lots of customers). Welcome to the job.