Typeform is a $935 million company that competes with Google and Mailchimp. This year, they will join the unicorn club. But how did they grow so quickly? I want to reveal the secret to their success.
Typeform embodies the concept of building the product you want from scratch. Founders David and Robert run their own design agency in Barcelona and collaborated on a project. Their goal is to build a stylish contact form to collect leads. Thus, Typeform was born. David and Robert looked for a solution, but they didn't like what they found. So they decided to completely redesign the information gathering experience. They follow a simple creed: Make filling out forms an enjoyable experience, like having a real conversation.
Positioning and Design Typeform stands out through its positioning and user-centered design. Typeform is positioned to enable anyone to create a form that their audience will love filling out. With this and user-centered design, Typeform quickly rose to prominence.
In October 2012, Typeform released a trailer video on Betalist. The video went viral, attracting Typeform's first 1,000 users. Typeform took advantage of growth cycles very early on. Users create Typeforms and then share them with their community. Each form has a "Powered by" button and is hosted on a subdomain of Typeform. The growth flywheel started, and by February 2014, Typeform had 50,000 users.
In 2013, Typeform completed a seed round of financing and established a paid package. The annual fee is $120 and the monthly fee is $25. They offer a 50% discount to anyone who upgrades to an annual plan. In the first month, Typeform had 1,000 paying users, and it was time to accelerate growth. Typeform expands its team with the goal of 10x impact on their growth cycle.
Their viral coefficient is impressive. Every two new registered users brings one additional registered user. So the next step is to optimize your onboarding funnel for new signups. Through A/B testing with the “Powered by” CTA, Typeform ended up targeting the copy to “Create your own Typeform.” With just this small CTA change, they gained 200% more users. Typeform has optimized their “Thank you” page and included a new CTA “Create your Typeform”. Users can now create a Typeform without even logging in, reducing friction in the user journey. They started creating Typeform templates, which brought them significant long-tail SEO benefits.
At this time, Typeform had more new users, but there was no growth in active users. So David and his team worked hard to build the Typeform brand. They quantify their marketing efforts and operate by a simple credo: increase brand awareness and increase registered users. Typeform has built brand awareness by: 1. Investing heavily in organic and paid search 2. Creating editorial content and social media 3. Doubling down on growing their template library and becoming the focus of their product-led growth efforts 4. Creating tutorials, Guides and resources.
Collaboration with agencies and technology stakeholders is an important part of Typeform's growth efforts. In 2019, Typeform hired a new chief revenue officer (CRO) to lead their sales efforts. They moved upmarket, grew with bigger clients like Hubspot, and had better retention rates.
Typeform has launched an in-house product design and development studio called Typeform Labs. This is where they try out new products under the Typeform brand. They have launched two products - VideoAsk and Formless - that bring in millions of dollars in revenue annually. Typeform Labs’ VideoAsk, a video-driven data collection product, achieved $1 million in revenue in its first year. Formless, an AI-driven form building tool, is also gaining momentum.
5 lessons learned from Typeform: 1. Growth cycle + low registration friction + social sharing = virality 2. Build a product to solve your own needs 3. Build a product/brand that is both functional and aesthetic 4. Chief Marketing Officer Closing is 80% of the equation 5. Build with the customer and their users in mind
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