Why do we want to hack growth?
A brand-new approach towards experimentation and user testing.
This is the third article of our Monday session series where we share our intern’s experience from Red Brick Accelerator’s weekly coaching sessions.
Find the previous articles here:
1. What I learned about startups in just one evening
2. The mindset of an entrepreneur and methods of experimentation
Last Monday the Red Brick team and I met with our coach Maria Krajewska-Olkkonen who talked to us about growth hacking. I had been looking forward to this workshop. Growth hacking is a new term, I come across it every now and then, but I had never understood it entirely. Maria is a very dynamic and time-efficient coach, and it took her roughly an hour to get things straight in our heads. It was a strong education shot!
Why do we hack growth?
It is not growth digging or growth mining, it is growth hacking — and the term used to bewilder me. Hacking is not a word I usually come across in a good context. But our workshop and later thinking brought me to a better understanding of this process and one important realisation about growth hacking.
I am sure everybody is more or less familiar with experimentation and user testing. I wrote about experimentation in my previous articles (here and here). Running experiments is no longer for the highly progressive, experimentation is the key to the success of any startup. There are a lot of different ways and methods to do it, and I view growth hacking as a process of pulling many different experimentation practices together for a joint application. I could best describe it as a brand-new approach to experimentation — a lot more aggressive and dynamic. The dawn of growth hacking is a testimony to the importance of experimentation.
Having learned about growth hacking during the workshop, I was still thinking about the name. Why is it hacking? I think that the term actually makes sense considering that growth hacking is a continuous process and that it accepts mistakes. It is about finding smarter ways of growth through continuous experimentation. I think that continuation is what makes growth hacking so distinct — it happens all the time, and this is important to consider what it really means. I believe that growth hacking is a fully-fledged business process in the making, and we need to take notice. Growth hacking has the potential to become just as essential as good quality customer service.
Newly-found love for mistakes
I think that apart from the general knowledge of growth hacking, our workshop changed my attitude towards making mistakes. There is a simple fact: some people are successful, some are not. Maria suggested that this is all to do with how we approach mistakes, and it applies directly to startups. The point she was making is that many people are swayed by the mistakes they make when pursuing something, and they see them as an indicator of the inevitable failure of their undertakings. In reality, a successful startup requires lots of mistakes at the beginning. Therefore, growth hacking requires a different approach towards making mistakes: when we run an experiment, we should expect to make a mistake and not to take it as a sign of final failure.
My takeaway:
Growth hacking is continuous experimentation. We must take notice of its rising prominence — growth hacking is fast becoming a separate business process. I believe it will bring experimentation to a new, much more professional level. Most importantly, growth hacking requires a new approach towards mistakes: not dreading them but expecting them.
- Growth hacking is the process of continuous experimentation
- Growth hacking is fast becoming a business process in its own right
- Growth hacking requires a fearless approach towards making mistakes
Red Brick Accelerator offers intense coaching and mentoring for your idea and early-stage startup. Go see here when the next application period starts!
