Obviously we have a marketing spend in the sense that we have a marketing team and I am fairly certain that they get paid
What we don’t do at the moment, is run specific paid campaigns to either advertise the product or for the sole purpose of customer acquisition / growth. Actually, we have deliberately not focused on growth for a while now in order to address economics and per user costs.
So really the term is referring to the fact that all of our growth is organic and through word of mouth. It isn’t a direct result of money spent in a certain way or place.
So whilst I agree that, in isolation, “no marketing spend” is a misnomer, it must be looked at in the context of the dialog and circumstances it’s referring to.
Man, did that article upset some people on Twitter.
I think we are reaching a point where startups can’t claim “we have zero marketing spend” with a straight face. Hopefully the various people from community members to journalists will challenge that statement whenever they hear it. I find @anon95680666’s post a particularly fun example.
@simonb’s answer is awesome as usual. You can only optimise “economics and per user costs” if you do have “economics and per user costs”. As an investor and customer, that’s good to hear.
Hands down complete response. No further questions your honour.
