Hacking Growth
Book

Hacking Growth

How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
Crown, 2017
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Businesses today can have fast-paced success, before growth suddenly grinds to a halt. Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown say that the secret to sustainable expansion lies in the adoption of a “growth hacking” philosophy. Learn how to create strong growth teams that create products customers love – and how to do so quickly. Whether you lead a start-up testing a new product idea or an established retail company, Hacking Growth offers concrete solutions aimed at helping you develop a strong growth strategy. For Brown and Ellis, the key to constant growth is bold, continuous experimentation.

Summary

Create cross-functional teams to overcome departmental silos hindering growth.

“Growth hacking” refers to taking a fast-paced, rigorous approach to experimentation, thus creating the conditions for sustainable break-out growth. It’s important to debunk myths about growth hacking:

  • There is no single, simple solution that will trigger growth. 
  • One person can’t create and implement a growth hacking strategy alone.
  • Growth hacking isn’t about finding “backdoors,” or ways to eschew the rules of existing websites and platforms. 
  • And finally, growth hacking is about much more than attracting new customers or users. Rather, growth hacking requires a concerted team effort to discover creative solutions to a broad range of problems, such as engaging, retaining and monetizing customers. 

Growth teams engage in a constant cycle of analyzing data and gathering insights, generating ideas, prioritizing those ideas, and experimenting rapidly.

Departmental silos create one of the biggest barriers to growth. McKinsey found that collaboration across departments was...

About the Authors

Morgan Brown is Facebook’s growth product manager, with 15 years’ experience in start-up marketing. Sean Ellis is GrowthHackers.com’s CEO and founder.

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