You’re struggling to gain traction. You’ve been researching the competition, trying to reverse engineer the strategies and tactics they used to reach their dominant market positions. You’ve taken what you learned and carefully implemented it at your startup.
But all your hard work barely moved the needle, because you fell into the cargo cult growth trap.
Cargo cults
Wikipedia describes a cargo cult as “a belief system among members of a relatively undeveloped society in which adherents practice superstitious rituals hoping to bring modern goods supplied by a more technologically advanced society.”
Or to put it more simply: “We want what they have, so we'll do what they do, even though we don’t understand why they are doing it.”
The concept began with literal cargo, but it's a useful way to describe the growth initiatives of many early-stage startups. Founders search for the strategies and tactics used at larger, more successful companies, and attempt to apply them at their own company.
And the cargo culting begins.
The founders are attempting to copy the actions of the more successful company, but they don't understand the context that lies behind those actions. And like the original cargo cults, they will inevitably be disappointed when their efforts don't achieve the desired results.
Cargo cult growth: an example
Placing content behind a registration wall to increase user sign ups
Quora is a popular platform that allows users to ask and answer questions on a diverse range of topics. This content has historically ranked highly on Google search results pages (SERPs), supplying Quora with a large volume of organic traffic at relatively low cost.
If you visit Quora today, you'll soon hit a registration wall, a popup modal that forces you to sign up for an account to continue viewing content.
It’s easy to look at Quora's forced signup flow and think "That's a great idea. We'll get organic traffic via search, force people to sign up to view the content, then convert the free traffic into users".
But there's a problem.
Quora has a registration wall, and yes, they have been very successful at bringing in organic traffic via SEO. But placing the majority of their content behind a registration wall was not the strategy that led to their initial success.
Quora relies on a small subset of visitors to create the content that everyone else consumes – in this case, the questions and answers. In the early days of the platform’s life, this user generated content (UGC) was freely available for all website visitors to view – no account required.
Crucially, Google's web crawlers could also read and index the content. This wealth of user-generated, crawl-able content became a valuable SEO asset, helping Quora rank highly for a large number of keywords and providing the company with a steady stream of low-cost organic traffic.
How does this relate to the registration wall?
Quora's forced registration strategy was viable because they had already successfully leveraged an open content strategy to gain power in their market. If an early-stage founder copies the gated content strategy without also successfully implementing the open content strategy, they will likely be disappointed with the results, because the gated content requires a steady stream of organic traffic that can convert to users for it to work effectively.
How cargo cult growth damages startups
No-one wants to cargo cult, but it is especially damaging to early-stage startups. Startup life is tough, and time and money are usually in short supply. Cargo culting usually results in us wasting both when we can least afford it.
But the negative impacts can go even further.
It's frustrating to work hard and not see positive results. Over time, this frustration can turn into decreasing motivation and morale. I've experienced enough periods of flat or decreasing growth to know it isn't pleasant. You're working hard and feel like you're doing everything correctly – after all, you're "following best practices" – but it's not moving the needle.
When we add up the losses in time, money, morale and motivation, it’s easy to see how damaging cargo culting can be.
When inspiration becomes cargo culting
Looking to other companies for guidance or inspiration is not an inherently bad idea. Instagram successfully “borrowed” Stories from Snapchat and Reels feature from TikTok, and plenty of startups have grown through similar marketing channels as their competitors. What are the mistakes are we are making that lead imitation into cargo cult behavior?
We listen to the wrong experts
Cargo cult growth can arise from a lack of experience or expertise (more on this later), but also occurs when we take advice from the "wrong" experts.
When you feel pressure to grow, it's natural to look towards people who've successfully "been there and done it" already. But there are levels to the success ladder. Popular tech industry figures and experts tend to be well-known because of their prior successes and are often found working at large companies with a wealth of resources at their disposal.
The advice and expertise they share are often best suited to people and companies at similar levels of the ladder. It’s not that their advice is wrong, but if you're an early-stage founder, it may simply not be relevant. You need to apply a filter when listening to advice from experts to ensure it's applicable to your current situation.
We're playing different games
You're more likely to hear about strategies and tactics used at large, successful companies than those used at startups that are still in the early days of their journeys. But if you're an early-stage startup, it’s important to recognise that those large, successful companies have different goals, priorities and challenges than you.
Let’s say you’re trying to gain traction or find product/market fit, while your most established competitor is busy building moats to secure their market-leading position. It wouldn’t make sense to 'cargo cult their strategy, as a moat is only valuable when you have something to protect – and you haven’t reached that stage yet.
When an early-stage startup mimics the growth activities of a larger, more successful company, it is making a mistake of scale. It is not copying the actions that made the larger company successful; it is copying the actions the larger company is taking when it is already large and successful. It’s similar to copying Warren Buffet's current financial manoeuvrings in the hope they will make you equally rich, when the vast majority of his wealth stems from decisions and actions that he made decades ago.
But looking back doesn't always help
Okay you say – time for another approach. You’ll spend time researching and discovering the strategies and tactics used by successful companies when they were early-stage startups, and then apply them in your company.
Unfortunately, this approach still risks becoming cargo cult behaviour.
The value of marketing channels and tactics decays over time. Strategies and tactics that worked in the past generally won't work as well now or in the future. Andrew Chen, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, calls this the law of shitty clickthroughs, and you run into it frequently in marketing and growth.
Google Ads were much more effective when they launched, with low competition and cheap clicks for early adopters. Similarly, the first websites to add newsletter signup popup modals converted a huge percentage of visitors because people weren't already overexposed to the behavior. And so on.
It’s not that older strategies, tactics or marketing channels are now useless. But if we use them, we need to set realistic (which ofter means low) expectations for the results.
We make assumptions about outcomes
Cargo cult behavior often comes with a huge – and frequently wrong – assumption: that the strategies/tactics/growth activities we are imitating actually achieved a positive outcome.
We can't see "under the hood" at the companies we imitate. It's easy to assume that everything is always “up to the right”, but while the public perception of their strategies and tactics may be positive, behind closed doors they may have failed.
This is especially true with the tech giants. Their massive scale allows them to hide the negative impact of failed experiments to a certain extent. They can throw millions at an idea, promote it widely, then shrug their shoulders and move on if it doesn't work. As an early-stage founder, you can't afford that luxury.
Why do we do cargo cult?
We've discussed some of the reasons why attempts at imitation can turn into cargo cult behavior. But what causes us to cargo cult growth in the first place?
Lack of knowledge
Often, it’s simply a lack of knowledge about marketing and growth. And since knowledge often comes from experience, if you haven’t worked in these areas before then it would be unfair to expect you to become an expert while you're also busy building your product and running your business.
It’s only natural to look around to see what other companies are doing. Unfortunately, if you are not able to determine which strategies and tactics apply to your business, you can easily fall into the cargo cult trap.
The need to succeed
The intense pressure to succeed can also drive cargo cult behavior. Taking your startup from 0 to 1 is an incredibly stressful process, and it’s even worse when things aren't going to plan. You know your employees, investors and family are relying on your success. You can reach the point where you are willing to try anything, and this can lead to following strategies or advice that aren’t helpful – or worse.
Avoiding the cargo cult trap
If we want to avoid the negative outcomes of cargo culting, we need to prevent ourselves from falling into its trap. Before diving headfirst into new marketing or growth initiates, ask yourself these questions:
- Why are we doing [this strategy/tactic/activitiy]?
- Make sure you have a better reason than "Because Company X has done it".
- What are we hoping to achieve?
- Define out your current priorities, then make sure any new initiatives will actually help you achieve your goals.
- Do we really understand what we are doing?
- You should be able to outline a path that leads you to your intended outcome. If you do decide to follow another company's lead, make sure you understand why they made any decisions they’ve made.
- Is this advice/expertise relevant in our current situation?
- Keep your filters on while listening to advice from industry leaders and experts. Ask yourself: Is the information relevant? And is it helpful in your current situation?
Finishing up
We need to be vigilant to avoid falling into the trap of cargo cult growth. The allure of emulating success is strong, and it's easy to get carried away with implementing strategies and tactics that have worked for others.
But there’s more to growth than simply mimicking what’s worked for others. Successful strategies are born from a deep understanding of our customers, our market, and our unique value proposition. Growth should be a thoughtful, deliberate process, and not just the blind application of someone else's playbook.
