How My Biggest Growth Mistake Got Me To ~1 Million Active Users
And Taught Me Everything About Growth.
In this edition
✅ A simple breakdown of the 3 core growth strategies
✅ 5 key criteria to help you choose the right strategy for your startup
✅ My own learnings of how choosing the wrong growth path led to real traction
Ever launch something and realize you’re pushing hard… in the wrong direction?
When I started my first company, Fankoosh Studios in 2021, I did exactly that.
I leaned into marketing to grow from day one.
Why? Because it’s what I knew. I’d just left a role at Google, and paid media was my playground.
So we ran campaigns, spent the budget, pushed hard…
And then hit a wall.
We were driving traffic, but there was no real engine behind it.
No loop. No compounding.
So, which growth path should you choose?
In early-stage startups, I see many founders fall into the same trap I did:
They default to what feels comfortable instead of what fits their product, audience, and market.
So before jumping into what’s familiar, know that there are three core growth paths, and choosing the right one depends on your context.
Product or Marketing or Sales?
1. Product-Led Growth (PLG)
In a nutshell, you let the product do the selling.
Your product has embedded features in it that can create UGC, virality, referrals or other types of virtuous loops, that get users to invite others users to join.
Best for: SaaS products (B2B or B2C) that are intuitive, shareable, and have a low setup barrier.
Think: Slack, Dropbox, Zoom.
✅ Users invite users
✅ Growth is built into the experience
✅ Low cost of acquisition (if done right)
2. Marketing-Led Growth (MLG)
You build awareness, reach, and trust through strong content, brand, and performance.
A longer term investment that allow you to build equity and acquisition channels over time.
Best for: Competitive or commodity markets where distribution is key.
Think: HubSpot, Ahrefs.
✅ You control the narrative
✅ You build top-of-funnel at scale
✅ Great for educating customers
3. Sales-Led Growth (SLG)
A sales team does the heavy lifting.
You build a stellar team that does outreach, cold calling, demos, follow up, all the way to closing.
Best for: Service based companies. Complex, high-ticket solutions with long decision cycles.
Think: Oracle, Microsoft, AWS.
✅ Personalized buying journey
✅ Great for enterprise sales
✅ You build real customer relationships
What happened with Fankoosh?
That wall we hit forced me to explore other growth paths for us to scale.
That’s when we pivoted to product-led growth, and it changed EVERYTHING.
Over 4 months, we improved the product based on usage, and built features into it that naturally encouraged users to invite others.
We created 3 loops that powered SEO, Google Discover, and Word of Mouth.
The result?
We scaled to nearly 1 million monthly active users (970k to be exact), without an acquisition team whatsoever.
So how do you decide?
Here are a few questions to guide your choice:
Is your product simple or complex?
Are you selling to individuals or businesses?
Is your market greenfield or saturated?
Do you have budget for marketing or sales?
How fast do you need revenue?
In my case, we started with the wrong approach and pivoted. And that’s okay.
The best startups evolve their growth strategy as they learn.
Finally, remember this, you will start with one approach , and over time layer in others to scale further.
That’s how you go from early traction → to compounding growth → to a real engine.
Try this today:
Map your startup across the 5 key criteria
Identify which strategy fits best right now
Sketch one experiment to validate it
Finally, be ready to adapt once data starts coming in
Which growth strategy are you using now, and is it really the one your startup needs?
Hit reply and let me know. I’d love to hear what’s working (or not) on your end.
Let’s get to work, Majd
More?
Hi, I’m Majd. I help early-stage founders build, go-to-market, and fundraise for their ventures. Here’s how I can support you:
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