Aaron Ginn is the head of growth at StumbleUpon and previously worked as a growth hacker on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. He also has written about growth hacking for TechCrunch and The Next Web. He has a diverse background: in college he studied business administration, economics, and philosophy, and worked in finance and healthcare before moving into the tech industry. Aaron sums up the purpose of his career so far as “understanding why people do what they do and influencing behavior,” making him the perfect growth hacker.

His blog and other writing is full of thoughtful insights into the nature and potential of growth hacking, and it’s obvious that he doesn’t just follow the hype — he thinks about concepts from all angles, making him a great resource for anyone in the startup world who wants to learn more about growth (which should be everyone, btw). When I went through and read Aaron’s essays back to 2012, there were a few concepts that came up again and again, so I thought I’d summarize them here.

Growth isn’t sexy

Or at least it’s not necessarily sexy. Sure, some “hacks” that companies have come up with are pretty cool, but you have to optimize the basic elements of your product first, especially the parts that new visitors are seeing/using. Good growth hackers start with the simple wins that others overlook because it seems boring, but these fundamental ideas can have big effects. Growth is often over-complicated by those in the startup world but the best growth people focus on simplicity — on optimizing the basic elements that will have the most effect on creating and sustaining growth.

Growth is a mindset

Growth people understand how hard it is to grow (Aaron said it’s simple, not easy!), and they don’t expect magical results immediately. But they know that by staying focused on the data, sustained growth is absolutely possible (that is, if you already have product-market fit). As Aaron says, the best growth hackers have 3 things in common: they are data-driven, creative, and curious. They let their creative side loose but make sure to stay on the right track by tracking metrics. It’s vital to determine which metrics you are going to use to define usage before doing any work. Aaron sums this up nicely: “Do something but be smart about it.” See, it’s simple!

Growth hacking is objective

It’s easy to let your ego and your emotions get wrapped up in your work, but to sustain growth you have to keep perspective. Most tests will fail, but that means you are learning about your product and your users. Don’t let your ego get in the way of relaying your value to the user — the user doesn’t care about your product, the user cares about their own problems. You have to show them why they should choose you over other solutions to their problems, and that means dumping the ego-driven mindset “build it and they will come.” And above all, keep your work in perspective: absolutely everything you do should drive usage. If it doesn’t, it’s a waste of time.

This is just a simple summary of some of the main threads that show up in Aaron’s writing. For more in-depth insights, definitely follow him on Twitter and check out his blog.

I am a writer and growth marketer currently in the growth track at Tradecraft. Say hi on Twitter or check out my blog.