147: Lessons from the Master Growth Hacker of Dropbox, LogmeIn, Eventbrite & Many more with Sean Ellis of Growthhackers.com
Sean Ellis is not just another marketer. In fact, he's something entirely different. He's the world's first growth hacker. Originally selling advertising in the print industry in Budapest, Ellis found his calling when a friend began building a new company on this relatively new thing called the internet. Despite not knowing that much about it, Ellis immediately recognized the opportunities that online marketing presented. "Nobody knew much about the internet at the time. But because I was selling advertising, I really liked the idea of being able to target specific ad messages to specific people," Ellis says. In the years that followed, Ellis continued to stay ahead of the curve. While the rest of the world was still trying to grow their startups the traditional way, by pounding the pavement and paying for advertising with little understanding of the results they were getting, Ellis was already breaking the rules and experimenting with every possibility that the internet offered. Instead of just focusing on marketing as something separate from the product that was being built, Ellis wanted to experiment and see if he could combine both product and marketing together. The result was a method he called "growth hacking," a term he coined in 2010 that would come to revolutionize how startups looked at marketing, and eventually become the name of his company Growth Hackers. He tested his methodology over the years and played a key role in successfully growing companies like Dropbox, Lookout, and Xobni, eventually becoming the go-to guy in all of Silicon Valley for startups looking to grow as fast as possible. Today, you'll be hard pressed to find anyone with more experience, knowledge, or passion about the power of growth hacking. In this week's episode, you'll learn: The definition of growth hacking Ellis's early experiments with growth hacking and how they still work today A behind-the-scenes look at what powered the rise of companies like Dropbox and Lookout The framework Ellis uses for growing any business How to identify the right strategies for you to become a fast-growth startup & much more!