Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
by Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown · 2017
In a nutshell
Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown's guide to growth hacking, revealing the methodology used by companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and LinkedIn to achieve rapid growth.
Overview
Hacking Growth reveals the growth hacking methodology used by the fastest-growing companies to achieve massive scale.
The Growth Hacking Process
- Build a growth team - Cross-functional collaboration
- Determine if product is must-have - Achieve product-market fit first
- Identify your growth levers - Find key metrics that drive growth
- Test at high tempo - Run rapid experiments
- Analyze and optimize - Learn and iterate
The Growth Hacking Cycle
- Analyze data
- Generate ideas
- Prioritize experiments
- Run tests
- Learn and iterate
Key Tactics
- Viral loops
- Referral programs
- Retention optimization
- Activation improvements
- Revenue expansion
Available for approximately $17-28.
Reference
Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success — publisher / official page. Summary adapted from the Awesome Startup Books collection.
If you like this, read
The Facebook Effect
David Kirkpatrick reveals Facebook's transformation from Harvard dorm project to global connector, spotlighting Zuckerberg's free-service commitment, platform launch, and privacy trade-offs. Founders draw lessons on leveraging network effects, rejecting premature exits, and scaling user bases while mitigating backlash risks. Vs No Filter's Instagram focus, it emphasizes early decisions; use for social platform inspiration and growth-balance pitfalls.
Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity
Frank Slootman outlines aggressive growth tactics for founders, focusing on raising performance standards, accelerating pace, and elevating execution intensity to scale teams and revenue rapidly. Key use cases include talent upgrades for higher density and cycle time reductions, as seen in Snowflake's path to the largest software IPO. Compared to Blitzscaling, it prioritizes cultural rigor over mere speed.
Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, Cheaper Than Yours
Salim Ismail presents tactics for founders to build ExOs using SCALE (Staff on demand, Community, Algorithms, Leveraged assets, Engagement) for 10x growth over linear scaling. Key use cases include rapid team scaling via external talent and metrics like MTP alignment for hypergrowth phases. Vs Blitzscaling, it emphasizes tech-leveraged attributes for sustainable exponential expansion.
Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown outline growth hacking tactics for founders, including cross-functional teams testing acquisition, activation, retention levers. Key metrics like viral coefficient and North Star Metric drive scaling teams via rapid experiments. Vs Blitzscaling, it focuses on data-driven efficiency over pure speed.
Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs
Reid Hoffman distills founder tactics like 'do things that don't scale' initially and building ally networks for explosive team and revenue scaling. Key metrics include pivot velocity and culture alignment scores during hypergrowth phases. Compared to Blitzscaling, it emphasizes counterintuitive strategies like letting small fires burn.
Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth
Ash Maurya's follow-up to Running Lean, this book teaches founders how to measure what matters, predict startup success using key metrics, and scale effectively. Includes traction models, customer factory frameworks, and real examples from Airbnb and Dropbox.