Growth hacking 101 - Matt Lerner

Growth Hacking 101 Matt Lerner

About Me §  17 years Marketing & GM at PayPal

and 3 startups (not Adobe)

§  Built & ran 3 Growth teams

§  Mentored over 40 startups

§  500 Startups Distro team in London

§  Early jobs as a chemist, speech writer, ham salesman and valet parking attendant.

http://twitter.com/matthlerner http://500.co/team/matt-lerner/

Agenda §  Introductions (Done)

§  Background

§  Case Study §  The Process §  The Mindset §  Conclusion §  Q&A

Is Growth Hacking Bullshit?

Is Growth Hacking Bullshit?

§  Hotmail §  PayPal §  Twitter §  YouTube §  Dropbox §  Facebook §  LinkedIn

§  Air BnB §  Zynga §  LivingSocial §  Instagram §  MoveOn.org §  Pinterest §  MySpace

§  Hubspot §  Mint.com §  Groupon §  Whatsapp §  Snapchat §  Meerkat §  Quora

Origins of the Term

Sean Ellis Marketer & Entrepreneur Coined the term in 2010

Andrew Chen Blogger & Marketer

Popularized the term in 2012

Defining “Growth” and “Hacking”

“Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of ‘How do I get customers for my product?’

Andrew Chen

Growth: Make Hockey Sticks Acquire (Signups)

Ac/vate (Users)

Ac/vity (Engaged Users)

Reten/on (Churn)

Referrals Revenue

Magic Moment

Like a Pirate

“AAARRRGH!”

Defining “Hacking” “A hacker is one who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming and circumventing limitations of systems.”

Verna Gehring, The Internet in Public Life

Marina Gorbis, Harvard Business Review

“Things are hack-able — the way we’ve designed various systems is not pre-ordained or immutable. We can tinker, re-design, and play with them.” … [Hackers] “don’t ask for permission to do what they do… They are less interested in technologies per se than in playing with established ways of doing things and conventional ways of thinking, creating, learning, and being.”

Growth Hacking §  A collection of tactics §  Focused on getting clicks, views or signups

Growth Hacking is a mindset and a process that run deep into the funnel.

The Process – Key Questions 1.  Clarify your goals 2.  Choose your key metric 3.  Understand your customer &

product market fit 4.  Understand the system 5.  Generate Ideas 6.  Test & Iterate



1. What is our end goal?

2. Where should we focus first?



1. Can it be measured quickly?

2. Deep enough in the funnel?

3. Does this create perverse incentives?

4. Causation or correlation?

5.  Right level of precision?

6.  Is it clear, simple and memorable?



1.  Where do they get information?

2.  What’s their decision process?

3.  What are their pain points?

4.  How do they experience your product or service?

PMF: “The Sean Ellis Test”

1.  Do people love using this?

2.  Why?



1.  What are people’s incentives and how do we align with them?

2.  Are there 80/20’s or network effects you can exploit?

3.  Where are the viral loop opportunities?

4.  Any existing two-sided platforms we can scale on? (e.g. eBay, Craigslist, Facebook)



1.  What are the right channels?

2.  Is the onboarding experience frictionless?

3.  Where can you add virality?

4.  Who else has done something like this before, and how?



1.  Which test(s) should we run? (Biggest impact, crazy stuff)

2.  What worked well?

3.  What surprised us?

4.  Which numbers do and don’t make intuitive sense?

5.  Are we measuring this right?

6.  What new hypotheses emerge?

7.  What should we test next?

The Mindset §  Fucks up constantly: 2/3 of tests fail. Failure à learning! Embrace failure! §  It’s a science: Systematic thinker, curious, keen observers, understands

experimental design, causation and correlation. §  It’s an art: Obsessed with simplifying the customer journey. §  Systems thinker: Use existing momentum, find the lever points. Always

looking for the 80/20’s or better. §  Curious: Ask a lot of questions, ask great questions. §  Optimistic: Comfortable with ambiguity, hopeful but not patient. §  Irreverent: Cross-disciplinary, would sooner ask forgiveness than

permission. (Move fast, break things). §  Tenacious: Persistent with a bias towards action.

Conclusions §  This is definitely a thing. But… §  Many of the best are not marketers §  Includes the whole (pirate) funnel §  Much of the action is in the middle of the funnel §  Not tactics, it’s a process and a mindset

–  Art and a science, causation & correlation –  Understand customers & system, look for angles & leverage

§  Don’t just hustle, work smart

Any Questions?

Growth hacking 101 - Matt Lerner

Marketing

Transcript of Growth hacking 101 - Matt Lerner