Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

Fascinating look at one of the fastest growing fields in tech. From a couple of very experienced GHs who have plenty of deep domain expertise and can shed light on what is often considered a dark art. From Airbnb, Facebook, PayPal, and Etsy through to your more mundane physical channels like Walmart, there is always an interesting fact or story as to how they cracked some truly amazing growth statistics. The book works on the premise of being a handbook for people looking to get started in the space. With walkthroughs of what is involved, who should be involved, metrics to target and more. Plenty of past experience from the authors show that all growth metrics aren't equal. Growth hacking efforts need to focus on those areas of importance. That might be user growth but it also might be conversion from a freemium to paid user, or simply getting a user from 10 to 30 connections to increase the chance they remain active. Data must lead this decision making. Leave bias and passion at the door. Find the North Star metric and keep focus on it. The author breaks the growth hacking cycle into four simple steps (1-2 weeks per loop): Data analysis and insight gathering Idea generation Experiment prioritisation Running the experiments This process allows an organisation to quickly identify which tests and therefore changes are moving the needle. Tying the above measure, test, measure, test loop, with loyalty and recognition programs can generate huge stickiness for users leading to a drop in churn, increase in retention, and therefore a big jump in base line profits. Stories from a variety of different companies with different goals, tests, and outcomes highlights the ongoing need to test different models to ensure what they measure and what they concentrate on improving are right for their organisation specifically. Overall a really interesting insight into one of the lesser known weapons being used by many of the quickest growing companies on the planet.

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