
A Post Mortem on Growth Hacking - andygcook
https://andyjohns.co/a-post-mortem-on-growth-hacking/
======
AznHisoka
I would caution against making conclusions solely on Google Trends. Less
people may be googling growth hacking because more and more people are
becoming familar with it.

However that doesnt mean the _demand_ for growth hackers is declining. People
may already know what it is but the need for growth hacking may still be
increasing. Or it might have different names that people call it by now.

~~~
nickm12
I think this topic is an interesting one and I'd love to read about from
someone who could speak authoritatively about industry trends. But trying to
do the same by reading Google Trends tea leaves is just awful.

~~~
uclacademix
Hi there. I wrote the article. You bring up a fair point but unfortunately
there isn't any other public data of high quality that can be referenced. I
hit LinkedIn's APIs to try and get data on historical job postings for new
roles containing "growth hacker" in it but the data is really poor and not
useable. I'm also writing from experience + anecdotes having worked on growth
for 10+ years and advised a variety of consumer companies on growth. The
anecdotes suggest to me it is falling out of favor. I wish there was more data
to reference otherwise I would have.

~~~
AznHisoka
Hmm... why was the Linkedin data poor?

~~~
uclacademix
Not sure. Chatted with a few other devs and they shared similar experiences
when working with their APIs. The biggest issue is that prior job postings
data isn't expose on the API so you can only see current postings, which
wouldn't be useful in terms of showing trends, which is what I hoped for.

------
avip
This post sidesteps the main issue: growth hacking becomes irrelevant because
most involved parties are now aware of the breadth and depth of fraud
involved. Fake users, paid download farms, automated registrations. VCs
learned the lesson.

------
fizx
For those who don't know, Andy was one of the early growth hacker leads at FB
& Twitter.

------
contingencies
_Marketing is what you do when your product is no good._ \- Edwin Land,
founder of Polaroid

... via
[http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

~~~
davidivadavid
And yet Polaroid has spent considerable amounts of money on marketing.

That statement is often quoted, but it's exactly backwards, and I'll raise you
one more sensible quote:

"Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster." — David Ogilvy

~~~
contingencies
Ogilvy found public, untargeted advertising essentially immoral.

 _Man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison
Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will
travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the
dark of the moon._ \- David Ogilvy

... via
[http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

------
lqet
I was not familiar with this term until now. You can read very far into this
article without realizing that the topic is not some technique to gain a few
inches in height.

> There are now several growth hacking bootcamps and large conferences.

------
skilled
OK...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19062698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19062698)

------
devconsole
Growth hacking is _hard_. We had to learn a few tricks to grow our Hacker News
alternative ([https://laarc.io](https://laarc.io))

Suppose you were to start a site similar to HN. How would you get the word
out?

The most reliable way to grow is to have an audience (or access to one). But
they have to be interested in what you're showing, else you're little better
than a spammer.

Looking over the traffic for the last month
([https://imgur.com/a/O1wtzav](https://imgur.com/a/O1wtzav)) the spikes were
from comments posted to lobse.rs:

[https://lobste.rs/s/jqkqwb/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend#c...](https://lobste.rs/s/jqkqwb/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend#c_v1rpuv)

[https://lobste.rs/s/kx4ojt/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend#c...](https://lobste.rs/s/kx4ojt/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend#c_wivai7)

This won't keep working, but it might have been enough. The site seems to be
spreading through word of mouth now, and about 400 people show up each day.

Communities are also a strange thing to grow. Grow too fast, and you'll spoil
it. Ditto if you grow from the wrong source of people.

Fundamentally, you have to have a product that users love so much that they
spontaneously tell their friends about it. But press coverage – or at least
social media coverage – seems to matter a lot. You probably need both.

We've been using
[https://playbook.samaltman.com/](https://playbook.samaltman.com/) as a
mantra, and it's been effective so far. But it's only been a month. We'd like
to try Michael's advice next: [http://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/getting-
press-for-your-sta...](http://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/getting-press-for-
your-startup)

~~~
factsaresacred
Why use the alternative when here we are on the perfectly fine original?

Maybe it can't grow because it's an unnecessary and inferior substitute. I
don't mean to sound harsh but if it's difficult to gain traction there's
likely a reason.

Which gets to the main point of the original article: you can't 'growth hack'
a product that has no market from which to grow from.

 _Build something people find valuable and it will grow_ is the only "hack"
that truly works.

~~~
anongraddebt
I agree with you, but would add one caveat. You may have built something
valuable, but have yet to find the proper distribution channel. In which case,
you experiment selling through different channels until you either grow, die,
or pivot.

