There are two primary methods for growing the Guides platform:

• Strategic Partnerships
• Network Effects

Strategic Partnerships

To achieve industry and social transformation at scale requires strategic partnerships with organizations, institutions, and governments that will invest in building knowledge mobilization ecosystems and can help onboard partners to participate in knowledge creation and distribution.

These organizations include:

• Trade & Industry Associations
• International foundations & non-profits
• All levels of government & departments
• Industry leaders working with large value chains (ex: suppliers, partners)
• Large education & health institutions / boards

Many of these organizations struggle with efficient knowledge collaboration and distribution in the face of complex and constant changes that have widespread impact. By partnering with these organizations we can help develop a network that enables everyone to share and curate knowledge collectively.

These organizations help develop strong network connections and provide a platform for each stakeholder to participate.

Network Effects

Groups	Publishers	Users

To achieve rapid, exponential growth, Guides needs to create "viral loops" and leverage network effects - a growth model used by social networks and the software companies like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Trello, and Dropbox. Many of these platforms have a primary stakeholder that drives growth: for social networks, it's users who invite other users; for media sites like Youtube, it's creators; for marketplaces, it's usually "primed" by supply-side focus (Airbnb rooms). Unlike these models, Guides has multiple models and therefore requires a multi-stakeholder approach to growth.

There are four ways new users (individuals and organizations) join the Guides.co platform, and therefore provide the fuel to grow our network:

1. Invitations: When existing users and organizations invite employees, partners, customers, and collaborators to participate with them on the Guides.co platform.
   
2. Guide discovery: When creators publish their guides on the platform and new people and organizations discover them and join the network to "subscribe" to them.
   
3. Referrals: When people join based on a service partner or referrals.
   
4. Media: Users discover Guides through stories told by the media.

We've identified the following stakeholders who influence this growth:

Role	Action
Users	Invitations
Creators & Curators	Guides
Ambassadors & Partners	Referrals

1. Users

This is the primary growth method for network platforms as the value of the platform increases for each user the more people join ("network effect"). User invitations are a critical driver for how social media networks grow (ex: Facebook, Linkedin) as well as group messaging apps (Skype, WhatsApp, Messenger).

2. Creators & Curators

The greater quality and volume of guides on the platform, the more "consumers" will discover and want to use the platform. Creators (and content) are a critical driver for growing media platforms (Youtube, Medium, Instagram, Pinterest).

Curators play an important role in ensuring content is high quality through content review, while promoting the best guides, and recruiting high-quality creators.

3. Ambassadors & Partners

The best and most effective way to scale sales and marketing for SaaS products is through referral programs. In a world with seemingly unlimited apps and new tech products, referrals have become critical for adopting new software. Individuals and organizations that participate in referral programs are a critical driver for growing software companies (Dropbox, Paypal, Shopify, Uber, Evernote, AirBnB, Google) and partners help onboard larger organizations that require assistance setting up the platform (Wordpress).

And while not represented in the graphic or chart above, the core team also drives growth by supporting the stakeholders, through marketing and user experience, and product design.

4. Core Team

The team is responsible for ensuring a high-quality user experience for users, organizations, and creators and making it easy and beneficial to participate in growth activities. They are also responsible for supporting stakeholders by developing programs and providing marketing material.

Stakeholder Growth Model

SaaS (software as a service) and social media products - often referred to as "platform" businesses - are very different from other industries. Unlike retail, housing, or healthcare in which every month requires customers to sell to, platforms start each month with the number of customers they ended with the month before - each new customer is cumulative.

Software product managers and marketers model growth of a platform using a calculation called a "viral coefficient" which is:

(i) invitations sent per user x (c) conversion rate = (K) viral coefficient

So if each user invites 10 other users (on average), and 25% of those invites sign up, then your viral coefficient is 10 x 25% = 2.5. This means for each new user that signs up, they will bring on 2.5 more users (1 x 2.5), who, cumulatively, will bring on 6.25 users (2.5 * 2.5), who will bring on 15.6 users, then 39, 97.5, 244, 610, 1525, 3812, 9530, 23825, 59562, 148905, 372262, 930655. After 15 "cycles" of invitations, that original user has created a chain reaction resulting in over 1.5 million users. And the faster the cycle, the faster the growth.

Below is the model we have created to estimate the growth per stakeholder per month for first year of Guides:

Acquisition by...	Users	Hubs	Creators
Staff (Marketing)	4,000	800	10
Users	0.20	0.04	0.005
Hubs	3	0	0.1
Curators	50	10	5
Creators	10	2	0
Ambassadors	100	20	0.5

This means that the staff, cumulatively, will cause 4,000 new users, 800 new hubs, and 10 new content creators to join the Guides platform each month (which is consistent with current signups). Each individual user will cause, on average, 0.2 users, 0.04 hubs, and 0.005 new creators, or put another way, every 1,000 users will cause 200 new users, 40 new hubs, and 5 new creators to join each month. Each group hub will invite 3 new users, on average, to join, and 0.1 new creators per month. And so on...

Using these average monthly growth targets (that will evolve over time), we have modeled growth over the next six years according to the table below:

	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Users - Free	131,752	753,969	2,209,945	9,087,184	36,186,915	153,940,162
Hubs - Free	47,961	359,013	1,312,582	4,946,532	19,067,155	77,553,866
Hubs - Paid	760	5,428	13,878	52,575	168,404	595,051
Hubs Enterprise	45	275	695	2,629	8,420	29,753
Creators	8,196	41,354	142,818	499,942	1,824,843	7,137,062
Guides	15,794	65,531	217,727	753,413	2,740,765	10,709,094