How To Build A Kick-Ass Growth Team(growthsensei.com) |
How To Build A Kick-Ass Growth Team(growthsensei.com) |
Seriously? This seems like him trying to retroactively explain why he has a good team. Even if his company and his team do their jobs excellently, that doesn't mean he can explain why, or even necessarily create a new team with the same level of success. Frankly, there are a lot of random factors in success.
More specifically, as other people have pointed out, the focus on academic credentials is ridiculous. I suppose if you create an insular team where everyone can pat each other on the back for having a 4.0 GPA, that's fine. But there are tons of good technical people without any credentials, or who didn't give a toss about school. Not only are you not willing to hire them, you've created a culture where even if you do find someone amazing without credentials, that person will be a second class citizen.
Similarly, it was the term entrepreneur before, for example, I have a huge list of dudes on my Facebook with titles like CEO, CTO for a <insert a dotcom domain with a wordpress blog with a free theme installed here>. Being an entrepreneur/hacker is one thing and abusing the terms is totally another!
I think the term hacker is very appropriate in this case. Growth hacking requires constant experimentation and a deep technical skill set (both of which are key to a "hacker"). Finally, from what I gather the term today is deliberately used to distinguish the discipline from more traditional online marketing.
* to cut, notch, slice, chop, or sever (something) with or as with heavy, irregular blows
I think it's quite fitting
A hacker is:
"a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity <a tennis hacker>"
But this can't be the definition that these people are citing - Because, on the contrary, they claim to be 'experts'.
So, the next (apt) definition is, w.r.t computers:
"an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer"
But they don't program either. And citing just 'solving problems with a computer' is a very vague definition for a hacker. By that definition, even a 'data entry guy' would become a hacker.
so you see, the term hacker has nothing to do with marketing. It would be more apt if people call themselves 'marketing experts', rather than just 'growth hackers'. Sometimes, it could be mis-leading. For instance, observe:
TOM: Hey, what did you do at your previous company?
HARRY: I used to hack stuff.
TOM: [Imagines: Wow, this guy must be a genius! wonder if he could find out Lena's Facebook password!]
I know Freelancer.com and the rate at which it has scaled. I know the tremendous growth rate you guys have achieved (kudos!). By no means am I questioning your ability nor your skills. I am just genuinely curious as to why people are so interested in using the term 'Growth Hacker' so much.
And I disagree that, even being data-driven alone is not the apt definition of a real hacker.
Willix - For those of us that aren't aware of freelancer, can you provide some numbers on the kind of growth this team has been able to achieve? Also, it will help to know some top performing growth tactics for you guys...examples as specific as the airbnb one would be great!
Second, I take issue with the "marketers are mathematical Neanderthals" line. This is a broad stereotype that does nobody any favors. As much as everyone likes to take swings at MBA types every so often, graduate-level marketers need to be highly proficient in statistics to be competent at their work. Few of them can code, I'm sure, so in as much as that's the case, they're probably not of tremendous value to an early-stage growth team. But a classical marketing training most certainly includes strategy, stats, data analytics, etc. It's not just advertising.
Now, if you're talking about "marketers" in the sense of Communications majors who've never so much as passed Calc B, I'd see your point. But those sorts of people fall into an entirely different category.
Why set your bar so low?
Is this satire?
On a side note: average age of 23??? What's with this concept that people in their 40s, 50s or 60s can't be as/more driven than youngsters?
Most of the time I have seen the "we only hire young, hungry people" statement, it translated to: we hire (on paper) qualified people who are still cheap and don't have enough experience to say no to the silliest requests we have. After hiring we just give them enoug work to have their first burn out with 30 and then we hire new people.
Most of the time someone in his 40s to 60s has more experience which means better connections to potential alternative employers and costs more money.
Please see this as a general statement, I don't know if this is the case with this company.
If you are trying to apply accents to specific words, you'd be much better off with an underline or the even subtler italization. The random caps and questionable word choice throw me off. Why, for example, does the author refer to his engineers as ninjas and what does that have to do with their qualifications? I thought we were done hiring rock stars and samurai and that we could return to the days where professionalism was important.
In short, I appreciate the message, but despise the delivery. If you can afford to hire PHDs, ninjas and other such elite folks, you can afford to hire someone to edit your writing, and you should.
Yet I think, that yes, it means they might be hardworking people, but does not guarantee much else.
Sometimes you find great people that are not even graduated, and I am not talking about "Bill Gates fake dropout", but people that never set a foot in college in first place.
Some people started their trade very early, sometimes in childhood, and when they reach 20, they are already masters of it.
Of course, these are rare, so if you want to risk less, hiring only the best of their classes is fine.
a) Working hard in a commercial environment is something different from studying hard. Many successful academics are motivated by acquiring knowledge, but find it very hard to motivate themselves to produce stuff, especially marketable end-products.
b) Laziness is not a major obstacle for a good hacker. Since there is a limited amount of time per day one can truly focus, laziness can be a great aid in picking your battles and avoid wasting energy.
Yes, hard to argue with that.
What I would say is that a top class might at least know how it is to work hard...
Maybe.
It seems like such arbitrary conditions you set in order ...wait a minute, I just noticed the website is "growthsensei.com", that's like Guru level 88?
Aaand that's all my time for the day.
For a site like freelancer.com (large number of users, entirely online, lifetime value very important) testing and data work very well.
So since marketing is growth, isn't this the approach that would be used by a good marketing department?
Obviously a bad marketing department would do things differently, but a good one would find the activities that gave the steepest growth curve
My biggest insight from this is that growth hackers need to be mathematical and not marketing gurus.
Great article! Keep em coming
im totally for data crunching and analytics but there's a human side of the business that gets overlooked when a team is so heavily decked like this.
These guys are experts at solving problems with a computer. Don't know whether or not they'd be classed as expert programmers
Generally, someone who understands the concepts will not use terms strung together like that unless forced. "machine-learning based classifier" with "company funnels" seems a bit suspect in this case, and probably needs a blog post to explain fully, not a simple one line rebuttal as above.
So yeah, it's not just you.