Making the Small Things Count

From low hanging fruit to quick wins

Written by Alessandro Raboni (Transak) and Qin En Looi (Saison Capital)

“The small things count”

As the Head of Growth of Transak, one of the leading crypto on/off ramps, Alessandro has deep conviction that large-scale growth is achieved through the minutiae. He was one of the early hires on Transak’s growth team, and played an instrumental role in riding the wave of crypto payments. In particular, the number of crypto wallets entering the market was explosive, and these players were looking for efficient on-/off-ramp solutions that Transak provided.

The small things that counted

The first “small thing” that turbocharged the growth? Adding a button to capture leads on Transak's widget. It turned out that a non-trivial number of users on Transak happened to also be builders. This small update, caught many eyeballs, which in turn became leads

Another “small thing” that Alessandro did was partnering up with upstart companies, especially in the early days. One of Transak’s first partners was Polygon. While a seemingly obvious choice today with Polygon as one of the most popular gas-efficient chains, Alessandro engaged the Polygon team when they were still establishing themselves in the space. Through “small things” like mutually helping each other to retweet, the synergistic partnership brought both Transak and Polygon growth in followers. 

Alessandro describes his approach, “In many ways, growth via partnerships is like a venture capitalist. You want to identify and attract startups early on, and grow with them. To do this, one needs to have a strong understanding of the market. We at Transak began to develop more specializations across the growth team in order to spot companies that are likely to succeed, and partner up with them from Day 1.”

These “small things” do not just stop at growth tactics within the company. It includes identifying “small things” that Transak can do for partners, helping them to unlock opportunities. Alessandro elaborates, “To help our partners succeed, we need to go beyond our core product and really understand what it takes for them to be successful. Many of our partners are wallets, and often one key challenge they face is regulatory and legal compliance. Since, Transak also acts as a compliance layer for Web3 apps, this enabled many of these decentralized apps to access incoming growth from traditional sources.” 

Yet another “small thing” Alessandro and his team experimented with was removing friction to experience Transak. As Transak facilitates the flow of money - both fiat and crypto - a layer of compliance and know-your-customer (KYC) checks are inevitable. Unlike most alternatives that necessitate the completion of these tedious processes prior to experiencing the product, Transak did the reverse - anyone can sign up on Transak and play around with the product without any hassle or checks. After comfort and familiarity has been built, Transak then prompts the partner to go through the necessary processes before the first dollar is processed. 

The end result? Higher activation rates, as prospective partners can test Transak out almost immediately, and the friction of compliance is only introduced when the partner has assessed that Transak meets their needs.

Prioritization of “small things” is key

While it is tempting to jump into a dozen of “small things”, Alessandro also emphasizes the need to focus and prioritize. In the early days, he conducted more than 300 calls within 2 months to speak with anyone and everyone. The mindset that “everyone could potentially be important” soon became unsustainable, and evolved into a framework to assess and prioritize inbound leads.

Transak today has automated this prioritization process - when a lead is captured, several factors are considered and the account is prioritized accordingly. One of the factors is website traffic - naturally, a partner with higher traffic is correspondingly prioritized. This became critical as there could be up to hundreds of leads flowing into Transak on a single day.

However, this does not mean that nascent or lower-trafficked sites are ignored. Alessandro shares his approach, “Even for solo developers who are looking to experiment with Transak, we have a Telegram group - Transak for Developers. This is a platform where they can ask questions, and both the team as well as community can provide answers. The long-tail remains important to us, and we want to ensure that anyone can integrate Transak.” 

Internally, Alessandro structures his team to prioritize effectively. One exercise they did was a market scan. He says, “We assign specific sectors to our team members, and tailor their growth goals accordingly. Within each vertical, we analyze the companies and define metrics based on the macro (e.g. how big is the market within the vertical) and micro (e.g. how did our historical pipeline convert). This is critical as we are a B2B2C model - unlike a B2B or B2C model where performance is easy to assess and feedback loops are short, our B2B2C model means it can sometimes take a while to see results. Hence, the key performance indicators of each team member should reflect the market realities so they can prioritize effectively.”

Develop your conviction

When it comes to “small things”, Alessandro also shares how it is important to develop conviction. “A strong thesis is important, because it helps create focus in crazy times - this could be extreme bull or bear market conditions. No matter what happens, conviction helps you keep the course and continue investing in doing the “small things” that add up and count.”

For Transak, the conviction began right from the founding days: we will live in a multi-chain world. Building on their chain-agnostic thesis, the company has been effective in tapping into many ecosystems and expanding to more than 70+ blockchains, resulting in market leadership in a highly competitive space.

This conviction also led them to build strong relationships with key infrastructure providers across multiple blockchains. From the foundations to venture capital firms and game studios within each ecosystem, Alessandro led the Transak growth team to establish numerous of these partnerships.

In summary, he reminds us, “Users are the most important asset. We operate in a competitive space where it is critical to be highly recognizable, especially when multiple providers are fighting for the same users. Instead of obsessing and over-analyzing towards the next big thing, a series of small things might just give you the advantage.”