Making Sense of Growth Hacker Marketing

Abstract: After the Dotcom bust, high-technology startups are faced with the challenge in funding, particularly in Silicon Valley. Most of the entrepreneurs have technical skills but lack of marketing experiences. In order to survive, they turn to an alternative approach that highly relies on scientific experimentation to pursue rapid growth in number of users at next to zero cost within short time. It is then termed as Growth Hacker Marketing in 2010 and receives wide popularity among startups in the world. Yet, in the academic world, there is limited discussion on the topic while the similar concepts can be shown in the fields of product development and marketing. Thus, the purpose of the thesis is to develop a framework of Growth Hacker Marketing from the two perspectives. The author will study the eight representative startups and provide an integrative view on i) What differentiates Growth Hacker Marketing from other marketing approaches? ii) How do they implement Growth Hacker Marketing? To that end, a framework illustrating the basis of product development and marketing, the close interaction between them and the continuous optimization and retention will be suggested.