Welcome to the 18th edition of GrowthDeck! If you enjoy reading deep dives like this, please share it with your friends or colleagues who would appreciate it. Now, let's dive in!

Recently, there's been a lot of buzz about Loom. Especially since Atlassian bought it for a whopping $975 million.

It's a big success, but the journey to get there wasn't easy. They used some really smart strategies to grow so quickly, even when they only had enough money to just last for two weeks. Loom has achieved incredible things, going from just two weeks of runway to being valued at $975 million.

What is Loom?

Loom is basically a video messaging tool that helps you get your message across through instantly shareable videos.

With Loom, you can record your camera, microphone, and desktop screen simultaneously. And instantly share your video message.

Here is a short video on Loom about Loom.

Journey of Loom

Loom's journey started with a different product than what we know today. After a brief 30-minute meeting, co-founders Joe Thomas, Vinay Hiremath, and Shahed Khan launched Opentest, A marketplace for usability testing.

It began as a network of their "expert" friends providing product feedback to other companies. Despite the team's efforts and personal financial investments, Opentest was unable to gain traction. It only brought in $600 in 7 months.

The friends of the founders were not what Opentest's customers were exactly looking for. Vinay remembered this early period as a mix of great joy and intense anxiety. However, there were some major issues:

• Opentest was not gaining traction.

• The founders had reached the credit card limits on their cards.

• Within 7 months, they changed their strategy 4-5 times but nothing worked.

They were only two weeks away from calling it quits and closing down the business. What ultimately kept them going was their trust in one another and their shared determination to succeed. They put in long hours, working 16-hour days but making Opentest work was still a challenge.

Finally, they decided to Pivot and launched OpenVid - An extension that helped people record feedback videos showing their screen and face focused towards usability testing and launched it on ProductHunt.

The first post to Product Hunt gained the team 3,000 users just after launching. Just 100 days and 12,800+ users later, Shahid posted an iteration, Openvid 2.0, which then became Loom.

Soon after their Pivot, they realized that this was not just limited usability testing but had a wider use case. They realized, there are around 300b emails sent in a day. And around 90b emails were of words >100 words.

They decided that even if they could target 1% of that user and make them convert their long emails into a short video format, they would have 3biliion looms created daily and it would be a massive success.

Openvid was a massive success. They grew from 0 → 10k customers in just 3 months. Later on, Openvid was renamed to Loom.

Loom today has around 25+ million registered users who have recorded ~1.5 billion minutes across 200k+ paid customers globally.

Here is a brief overview of their journey from origin to acquisition by Atlassian.

Loom’s Growth Drivers

🛹 1 - Transition to Product-Lead Go-To-Market Strategy

Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a critical factor in the success of any startup. However, when attempting to expand market reach, additional strategies are frequently required. Loom recognised the need to broaden their horizons after initially limiting themselves to video messages.

Loom has recently undergone a significant transformation in their go-to-market strategy, shifting from a Product-Led Growth (PLG) model to a Product-Led Go-To-Market (PLGTM) strategy. This strategic shift was motivated by a single goal: to entice major global brands looking for video based internal communication solutions.

Key Elements of the Transition:

1. Repositioning and Messaging:

   • Before 2020, Loom was primarily known as "free screen & video recording software." However, to target business and enterprise teams, Loom refined its messaging to "video messaging for work." This change in positioning instantly communicated the enhanced value proposition of Loom as a comprehensive communication tool.

   • They even changed their landing page and completely redefined what Loom was.

2. Launch of Loom for Teams:

   • In May 2020, amidst the pandemic, Loom introduced the beta version of "Loom for teams." This new offering included a centralized video library, enabling seamless collaboration, sharing, and viewing of videos within a single platform. It also introduced additional features like call-to-actions, file attachments, video archiving, and password protection.

     

3. Timely Market Entry:

   • The launch of Loom for teams was impeccably timed, as companies were actively seeking ways to enhance team communication and collaboration during the pandemic. The centralized video library addressed this need, providing an invaluable resource for organizations to align teams and communicate effectively.

🏝️ 2 - Leverage Successful Features from Other Platforms

Loom always looked up to other successful companies and tried to integrate their features into Loom.

For instance, Linkedin has a very cool features which allows you to check who viewed your profile. This feature has been a significant contributor to LinkedIn's growth, and the Loom team saw its potential for their platform.

As a result, Loom implemented anonymous notifications akin to "someone has viewed your video" effectively encouraging more use of the tool. They also took advantage of the network effect by establishing collaborative workspaces that allowed entire design teams to collaborate in a shared environment.

🔔 3 - Focus on Leveraging Viral Nature

Loom recognised their product's inherent virality - users recording and sharing videos. They strategically leaned into this aspect to drive growth. They mapped out key steps in the growth process, allocating resources and addressing potential stumbling blocks.

They harnessed the potential of this viral loop to naturally propel their user base by focusing their efforts on improving it. This strategy is especially important for early-stage startups, as it allows them to maximise growth through a targeted and focused distribution strategy.

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