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Hacking Growth book cover
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Hacking Growth

by Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown

Hacking Growth

Growth Hacking Fundamentals

Growth hacking is continuous, methodical rapid-fire experimentation combining product, marketing, and data analytics. Success comes from accumulation of small wins, not just breakthrough ideas.

“The companies that grow the fastest are the ones that learn the fastest. The more experiments you run, the more you learn.”

Growth is too important to delegate—requires dedicated cross-functional teams.

Building Effective Growth Teams

Compose teams with product managers, engineers, data analysts, marketers, and UX designers. Growth leads require fluency in data analysis, product management, and experimental design.

Weekly growth meetings keep teams on track and focused on results.

The Growth Cycle

  1. Data analysis and insight gathering
  2. Idea generation
  3. Experiment prioritization
  4. Running experiments and reviewing results

Key Growth Concepts

Aha Moment: When users truly understand product value; critical for retention and engagement

Product/Market Fit: Stable retention rates showing product worth continuous use

North Star Metric: Single important metric reflecting company growth strategy

Viral Coefficient: Mathematical formula for measuring instrumented virality in products

Critical Success Factors

  • Build marketing into product itself (PayPal’s AutoLink on eBay tripled usage)
  • Test messaging and marketing in addition to product changes
  • Focus on customer retention, not just acquisition
  • Use data lakes/warehouses to uncover distinctive user segments
  • Minimum viable tests (MVT) reduce costs and increase velocity

Practical Tactics

  • 60% of acquisition spend often underutilizes conversion optimization
  • Progressive onboarding improves activation rates significantly
  • Cohort analysis reveals user segmentation opportunities
  • Channel diversification matters only after optimizing core channels
  • Small 5% monthly improvements compound to 80% annual improvement

Notable Examples

  • Dropbox: Referral program grew users from 100K to 4M+ (1/3 from referrals)
  • Twitter: Following 30+ people became aha moment driving engagement
  • Slack: 2,000+ messages exchanged = commitment to paid upgrade
  • Instagram: Identified photos as core aha experience, pivoted around it

“Growth hacking is not about throwing ideas against the wall as fast as you can to see what sticks, it’s about applying rapid experimentation to find and then optimize the most promising areas of opportunity.”