Startup Growth Engines Book Summary - Startup Growth Engines Book explained in key points
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Startup Growth Engines summary

Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown

Case Studies of How Today's Most Successful Startups Unlock Extraordinary Growth

4 (83 ratings)
15 mins

Brief summary

Startup Growth Engines by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown is a comprehensive guide to building a successful startup. The book combines practical advice, case studies, and expert insights to show how to create growth strategies that can help new businesses scale and succeed.

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    Startup Growth Engines
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    Growth hacking is a new type of marketing inspired by the dazzling successes of Silicon Valley start-ups.

    Chances are you’ve heard of Silicon Valley as being home to many innovative and successful start-up companies. But you might be impressed to learn just how successful these companies are.  

    The figures are truly astonishing: in a very short period of time these start-ups have generated billions of dollars in revenue and attracted hundreds of millions of customers.

    Take Uber, for example. The transportation service officially launched in 2011 and in less than five years has achieved worldwide fame; as of 2015, the company is valued at $62 billion. What’s remarkable is how fast the growth was in comparison to the traditional economy.

    Start-ups achieve this kind of success by largely avoiding traditional growth techniques.

    For instance, Uber didn’t rely on typical marketing tools like costly paid advertisements. Instead, they targeted their clients using data analytics and relied on viral and word-of-mouth marketing to expand their customer base.   

    This new way of doing business became known as growth hacking.

    This approach to marketing is focused on quickly maximizing growth and isn’t limited to one specific sector. Growth hacking can work for mobile applications, business-to-business services or marketplaces and social networks alike.

    And there isn’t one simple formula for successful growth hacking, either. It involves a wide range of factors that are combined to achieve excellent performance through attracting, retaining and generating revenue through new customers.

    To achieve this, growth hackers lead teams of experts in multiple fields who are just as familiar with scientific thinking as they are with data, statistics and creativity.

    In the following blinks, we’ll look at some of the best growth hacks and how they were put to use by some of today’s most successful start-ups.

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    What is Startup Growth Engines about?

    We’ve all heard success stories of start-ups attracting millions of users and earning billions of dollars virtually overnight. Startup Growth Engines (2014) shows us what all these companies have in common: a new approach called “growth hacking”. These blinks reveal how your business can use viral marketing techniques, freemium business models and other growth engines to rapidly achieve business success.

    Who should read Startup Growth Engines?

    • Business students eager to learn more about start-ups
    • Aspiring entrepreneurs looking for inspiration
    • Business owners hoping to boost growth

    About the Author

    Sean Ellis is an entrepreneur, investor and business advisor with extensive expertise in start-ups. He is also a frequent contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

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