Comment by RichardPrice | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RichardPrice | Hacker News Reader

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Every company at the conference was an example of the effectiveness of growth teams. Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, Twitter and so on have all found that being rigorous about optimizing their growth models has increased growth and engagement.

They were also at pains to mention that you cannot A/B test your way to a great product. You need deep insight and intuition to build a great product. But once you have a great product, you can help it grow faster by being rigorous about optimizing the drivers of growth.

  "If, on a graph, the plotted data does not match the 
   initial hypothesis, make the line fatter."
   -- J. Meals

Or, to repeat myself, yes, it's rather easy to come up with these models and tweak them to sell your team|book|conference|etc.

I'm still waiting for an example where such a model predicted something non-obvious.

An amusing quote, but I don't think Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Pincus, and the CEOs of the other companies are all being deceived by fatter lines on a graph!

Well, since you seem reluctant to provide an example, I'll try it with a question:

Did Myspace have growth hackers?

Reluctant to provide an example? In my comment above I said that all the companies at the conference were examples of effective growth teams.

I suggest that we respectfully agree to disagree.

Except I didn't ask for "effective growth teams" but for instances of successful "growth hacking" (where the conclusions were not utterly obvious to begin with).

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