Hacking Growth

How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

By: Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown

Narrated by: Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown

Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

The definitive playbook by the pioneers of Growth Hacking, one of the hottest business methodologies in Silicon Valley and beyond.

It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Airbnb was the best-kept secret of travel hackers and couch surfers, Pinterest was a niche website frequented only by bakers and crafters, LinkedIn was an exclusive network for C-suite executives and top-level recruiters, Facebook was My Space's sorry step-brother, and Uber was a scrappy upstart that didn't stand a chance against the Goliath that was New York City yellow cabs.

So how did these companies grow from these humble beginnings into the powerhouses they are today? Contrary to popular belief, they didn't explode to massive worldwide popularity simply by building a great product then crossing their fingers and hoping it would catch on. There was a studied, carefully implemented methodology behind these companies' extraordinary rise. That methodology is called Growth Hacking, and its practitioners include not just today's hottest start-ups, but also companies like IBM, Walmart, and Microsoft as well as the millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, managers, and executives who make up the community of GrowthHackers.com.

Think of the Growth Hacking methodology as doing for market-share growth what Lean Start-Up did for product development, and Scrum did for productivity. It involves cross-functional teams and rapid-tempo testing and iteration that focuses customers: attaining them, retaining them, engaging them, and motivating them to come back and buy more.

An accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share, this book walks listeners through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must listen for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manager looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.

©2017 Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"In an increasingly erratic business landscape where new competition can emerge overnight, customers' loyalties can shift unexpectedly, and markets are constantly being disrupted, finding growth solutions fast is crucial for survival. Hacking Growth provides a compelling answer to this urgent need for speed, offering companies a methodology for finding and optimizing new strategies to increase their market share and quickly." (Eric Ries, best-selling author of The Lean Startup)

"Two of the best marketers I know, Morgan Brown and Sean Ellis, have written a fun and accessible guidebook to growth hacking and marketing. If your mandate is to drive high leverage growth, then is book is your new best friend." (Patrick Vlaskovits, New York Times best-selling author of Hustle and The Lean Entrepreneur)

Prtty great growth primer, just a bit redundant

Good points overall, but a bit long and redundant at times on some of the points. I'd recommend it to anyone new to growth, though.

Amazing Book!

What did you love best about Hacking Growth?

Just listened to Hacking Growth. Very well written and easy to follow. Narration by one of the authors, Morgan Brown was a great bonus. Recommend getting this book.

What other book might you compare Hacking Growth to and why?

Platform Revolution because it covers the same industry but better written.

What does Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Morgan has an easy to follow voice.

A must read for every startup

Because I consume 60-80 books per year, I typically judge a book by the notes I take. If I don't take a lot of notes, I didn't take away very much or the content didn't provoke many new ideas. Not only did I take lots of notes but I took away a laundry list of new ideas and concepts to test with our own startup. I'll be ordering the print version as well to keep as a desk reference. Well done, guys and thank you!

Jam Packed - No Fluff

This is the best Internet marketing boom I've read. It's full of wisdom and covers topics and ideas that you probably wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Highly recommend it.

How to grow a startup

Many books take a small idea, add an elaborate introduction, throw in anecdotes from multiple companies and fluff up what ought to be a one-pager into a 200 page book.

Not this one!

There is enough information here to read and re-read. This book might as well have been titled “How to grow a startup into a large, vibrant business”

Buy now and read. Read again every year.

A crucial playbook. Highly recommended.

As a consultant in the software industry, I'm always looking for new ways to help my clients. Two weeks ago, before I started this book, I actually thought I knew a decent amount about growth hacking. I'd read one book on the subject (Ryan Holiday's "Growth Hacker Marketing"), run several A/B tests, and incorporated a few basic growth hacking strategies into some of the products I'd built in the past. After reading this book, however, it's now obvious to me that I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did.

In my opinion, this book is like Holiday's, but on steroids. It goes way deeper and gives you everything you need to know on the subject. Specifically, the authors go into immense detail on how to: build a growth team, develop a "must-have" product, test your product in order to achieve growth, acquire and retain customers, and monetize your product — just to name a few.

Within each category, Brown and Ellis provide countless strategies as well as real-world examples of companies that have implemented said strategies and succeeded with them. As you read it, I think you'll find that the examples are so clear and simple that you could see yourself adopting the experimentation mindset the authors advocate and fostering growth for your product or business, yourself.

By the end, it really seems like they've covered everything there is to know about growth hacking and product development. Though the book may start with forming a team, coming up with ideas, testing, and iterating, it goes so much deeper than that. The authors know that growth hacking isn't just one or two A/B tests — it's changing the way you and your team think and run your entire company. And, thankfully, that comes across in the writing with straightforward, implementable tactics that you or I could tackle (with the right team, of course).

My only complaint with this book, and I say this with tongue in cheek, is that I took so many notes while reading it that it took me much longer to get through than the average book of the same length. I'm excited to share these notes with my team as I think they will be very valuable. If you read it, I think you'll likely be saying the same thing afterward.

-Brian Sachetta
Author of "Get Out of Your Head"

Nice insights about growth hacking

Nice insights about growth hacking, good overview, nice samples.

great audio quality, probably will listen it again.

Inspiring

inspiring and action-able for startups growth teams and founders. Great ideas especially for B2C stsrtups and some for B2B.

Think outside the box

We live in an age where performance and growth in business is the only success game there is. Gaining a competitive edge, driving shareholder value, building sustainable success and value for your business requires a new way of thinking. Hacking Growth is an excellent book to get the creative juices flowing on how to build a new success path going forward. Don't be happy with predictable results strive for breakthrough results that will catapult you business to the top.

Muy interesante

Este libro es como una maestría. Te enseña la generalidad y luego te muestra casos de la vida real que complementan muy bien el conocimiento.