Hacking growth
by Sean Ellis · first published 2017
70% recommend20% neutral10% critical
Why HN recommends it
Presents a practical framework for building a growth function, covering experimentation and channel testing. It is suited to marketers and product people moving from traction to scaling acquisition.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Doing for market-share growth what Lean Start-Up did for product development, and Scrum did for productivity, Hacking Growth involves cross-functional teams and rapid-tempo testing and iteration. But, the key difference is that it drives rapid growth by focusing on the maximizing the potential of each product by working on just the things that matter to customers: attaining them, retaining them, engaging them, and motivating them to come back and buy more. An accessible and practical toolkit that that teams and companies in all industries can use to grow their customer base and increase marke
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…That book outlines typical channels you can try and acquire customers from. The book advocates casting reels in many lakes, seeing where the easy bites come from and then focus on those. After traction, Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown is a great next step. That book advocates continuous experimentation to find compounding improvements, e.g. once you find a good acquisition channel, how do you approach…
on “Digital marketing: a free curriculum” ↗Traction is brilliant. Also Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis (formerly Dropbox) is worth reading. And checkout this course >> https://justinjackson.ca/marketingforproductpeople/
on “Ask HN: As a dev, how have you built up your online marketing skills?” ↗…Understanding Michael Porter [1] 2. One of the things that really applies well to tech businesses has been Platform Business Model. This book [2] is a good starting point 3. The Lean startup [3] and Hacking Growth [4] round up the tech books that I have benefited from. 3b. Warren Buffet's letters are a classic to learn about businesses and help when you are dealing with CXOs. 4. With these basics in place, I…
on “Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn business administration/finance?” ↗…David Kelley) AI (Machine Learning, Deep Learning/Neural Networks) - Andrew Ng's AI for Everyone course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone](https://www.... Growth (Data Science, etc.) - Hacking Growth (Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown) Graph Theory Product - Inspired (Marty Cagan) - Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky) Customer Loyalty/Customer Success - Delivering Happiness (Tony Hsieh) - Setting the Table…
on “Ask HN: What books helped you in your entrepreneurship journey?” ↗…I'm enjoying a lot. Haven't finished reading them yet, but so far they're brilliant(and very easy to understand, authors do an amazing job explaining complicated things in a simple, accessible way). - Hacking Growth - an AMAZING book on "growth hacking". It provides a framework for marketing a startup, gives a ton of practical advice and specific tactics. It breaks down step by step how startups and big tech companies…
on “Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?” ↗…fiction/nonfiction by Ayn Rand, Story by Robert McKee, Save the Cat, Step by Step to Standup Comedy. - Other: The Selfish Gene, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Serious Creativity, Hackers & Painters, Hacking Growth, Angel (on angel investing, by Jason Calacanis). Also collections of essays by Paul Graham [1] and Scott Alexander [2]: [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%... [2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of...
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite non-fiction books of all time?” ↗…to Mathematics, Master Algorithm - still reading these books, but they look REALLY good. - Other: The Selfish Gene, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Serious Creativity, Hackers & Painters, Hacking Growth, Angel (on angel investing, by Jason Calacanis). Also collections of essays by Paul Graham [1] and Scott Alexander [2]: [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%... [2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of...
on “Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?” ↗…get good tips and advice. Finally, I recommend reading Monetizing Innovation [0] in order to understand the Packaging and Pricing portion of Product Marketing. For Content Marketing/Demand Gen, I found Hacking Growth to be useful, but honestly there are a number of YC and adjacent podcasts that are fairly useful for that. Finally - if you feel you don't like the role or the space, make sure to let you CEO know ASAP…
on “Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?” ↗…strategies, such as launching public products built with Parse.ly's data, or layering growth features into our existing products. To be a fit for this role, you are the kind of person who’d enjoy the books "Hacking Growth", "Traction", and "High Growth Handbook". If you are a former startup founder seeking to relocate to an established startup, but want to continue the path of deploying lean growth techniques, this role…
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2018)” ↗…such as launching search engine optimized public products built atop Parse.ly's data, or important sharing features in our existing sites and products. You are the kind of person who'd enjoy the books "Hacking Growth", "Traction", "Four Steps to the Epiphany", and "High Growth Handbook". For bonus points, you also care about SaaS enterprise sales. For example, you are the kind of person who enjoyed Dan Pink’s "To…
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2018)” ↗Hacking growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Browne? Just want to check I'm buying the right book!
on “Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?” ↗Lots of knowledge on technical subjects, but what about books on running the business? Ones I've heard Zero to One Hacking Growth Ycombinator-stuff
on “Ask HN: Best Books on Running the Business?” ↗I read Traction and Hacking Growth. Traction is a great book, HG is uninspiring - too repetitive and generally is about setting up growth hacking team in your company with emphasis on "developers are important they should contribute to…
on “Ask HN: 2018 Summer Reading List?” ↗