Around 30 founders from our portfolio companies gathered at Index in London last week to hear Qualaroo marketing gurus Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown on growth hacking.
Ellis — who first coined the term ‘growth hacker’ in 2010 and ran early growth marketing at Dropbox, Eventbrite, LogMeIn and Lookout – has written extensively about why startups, when scrambling for meaningful growth, need to change the rules of traditional marketing channels or innovate outside them. In other words, growth hack.
He kicked off with a caveat: “Growth hacking is experiment-driven, and the things that are working today aren’t going to work tomorrow, and things that worked yesterday, aren’t working today, which is kind of what makes it fun and exciting.”
There are, however, some basic governing principles, he said. “To me, being a marketer in an early-stage startup is all about tapping into the full potential of the business.
“Particularly when you are coming from the outside, you can be a really good marketer on the wrong product, and not be very successful, and you can be not that great of a marketer on a good product, and do really well. So the important thing is to make sure you’re aligned with something that’s got a lot of potential,” he said.
10 Things You Need To Know About Growth Hacking Your Startup
