Hacking growth

What Hacker News says

1. alephnerdMar 2024
   Are you Product Marketing or Content Marketing/Demand Gen?

   First - recognize that there is a significant difference between the two.

   Second - chat with peer PMMs, Field Marketers, Growth PMs, etc to get good tips and advice.

   Finally, I recommend reading Monetizing Innovation [0] in order to understand the Packaging and Pricing portion of Product Marketing. For Content Marketing/Demand Gen, I found Hacking Growth to be useful, but honestly there are a number of YC and adjacent podcasts that are fairly useful for that.

   Finally - if you feel you don't like the role or the space, make sure to let you CEO know ASAP and make a transition plan with them. In my younger days I burnt a bridge with a good friend when I became an inexperienced VP Marketing/Demand Gen at their startup.

   [0] - https://www.simon-kucher.com/en/insights/monetizing-innovati...

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2. lansteinMar 2023
   Advice to Founders and CEOs

   - Dear Founder (Maynard Webb) - The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - Straight Talk for Startups (Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman) - The Founders’ Dilemmas (Noam Wasserman) - The Entrepreneur’s Daily Nietzsche (Brad Feld and Dave Jilk) - Build (Tony Fadell) - Zero to IPO (Frederic Kerrest) - The Great CEO Within (Matt Mochary)

   Finance

   - Wharton's Introduction to Financial Accounting course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting](https://w... - How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers (Mihir Desai) - Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Karen Berman and Joe Knight)

   Open-Book Company (Employee Ownership, Financial Literacy, Goal-setting)

   - The Great Game of Business (Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham)

   Legal

   - Acceleration (Ryan Roberts) - The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Law and Strategy (Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchy)

   Company Strategy and Direction (post-product/market fit)

   - Crossing the Chasm (Geoff Moore) - Zone to Win (Geoff Moore) - Only the Paranoid Survive (Andy Grove) - Blitzscaling (Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh) - The Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton Christensen) - Good to Great (Jim Collins) - Playing to Win (A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin) - Tape Sucks (Frank Slootman) - Strategy vol. 1&2 (Harvard Business Review)

   Pricing

   - Monetizing Innovation (Georg Tacke and Madhavan Ramanujan) - Confessions of the Pricing Man (Hermann Simon)

   Startup Phase

   - The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) - The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Steve Blank) - Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

   Management/Leadership

   - The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker) - Managing Humans (Michael Lopp) - The Art of Leadership (Michael Lopp) - High Output Management (Andy Grove) - Managing Oneself (Peter Drucker) - Essentials: Management (First Round Capital) - The Making of a Manager (Julie Zhuo) - The Powell Principles (Oren Harari) - Radical Candor (Kim Scott) - Leading Matters (John L. Hennessy) (fantastic book list in the coda) - Turn the Ship Around (L. David Marquet) (this is THE book on delegation) - Principles (Ray Dalio)

   COO/Succession Planning

   - Riding Shotgun (Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles)

   People Performance/HR/Culture

   - Powerful (Patty McCord) - No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer) - Netflix culture deck - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) - Work Rules! (Laszlo Bock) - It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (DHH and Jason Fried) - The Culture Map (Erin Meyer) - The Talent War (Mike Sarraille and George Randle) - Great People Decisions (Claudio Fernández-Aráoz) - The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring (Ozzie Osman) - Punished by Rewards (Alfie Kohn)

   Purpose, Passion, and Self

   - Start with Why (Simon Sinek) - What You Do is Who You Are (Ben Horowitz) - Drive (Daniel Pink) - Mindset (Carol Dweck) - Grit (Angela Duckworth) - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric Jorgenson)

   Fundraising/VC

   - Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Scott Kupor) - Venture Deals (Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson) - Raising Venture Capital (Andy Sparks) - The Business of Venture Capital (Mahendra Ramsinghani) - Done Deals (Udayan Gupta) - The Power Law (Sebastian Mallaby) - VC (Tom Nicholas)

   Board

   - Boardroom Excellence (Paul Brountas) - Startups Boards (Brad Feld and Mahendra Ramsinghani)

   M&A

   - Winning (Jack Welch) - M&A chapter - Connecting the Dots (John Chambers) - M&A chapter

   Marketing

   - Data-Driven Marketing (Mark Jeffery) - Positioning (Al Ries and Jack Trout) - Scientific Advertising (Claude Hopkins) - Traction (Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares) - Behind the Cloud (Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler) - Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy) - Marketing High Technology (William Davidow)

   Psychology

   - Influence (Robert Cialdini)

   Negotiation

   First, read Influence (under Psychology), then, in order

   - Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke) - Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher and William Ury) - Never Split the Difference (Chris Voss) - The Bald Truth (David Falk)

   Self

   - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey)

   Design and UX

   - Creative Confidence (Tom Kelley and David Kelley)

   AI (Machine Learning, Deep Learning/Neural Networks)

   - Andrew Ng's AI for Everyone course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone](https://www....

   Growth (Data Science, etc.)

   - Hacking Growth (Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown)

   Graph Theory

   Product

   - Inspired (Marty Cagan) - Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)

   Customer Loyalty/Customer Success

   - Delivering Happiness (Tony Hsieh) - Setting the Table (Danny Meyer)

   Finding a Startup Job

   - Entering StartupLand (Jeffrey Bussgang)

   CIO as ICP

   - The CIO Paradox (Martha Heller) - Be the Business (Martha Heller)

   Stories

   - Made in America (Sam Walton) - Shoe Dog (Phil Knight) - The Everything Store (Brad Stone) - Built from Scratch (Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank) - Hard Drive (James Wallace) - Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson) - Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) - Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull) - The Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger) - Valley of Genius (Adam Fisher) - The Idea Factory (Jon Gertner) - Dealers of Lightning (Michael Hertzik) - Idea Man (Paul Allen) - Pour Your Heart Into It (Howard Schultz)

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3. vmurthyJul 2020
   The second part of your need is interesting. I'm being a bit generic but to speak with CEOs, it would greatly help to know about strategy and competition. It's a loaded term and here's what I would recommend:

   1. Michael Porter's Competitive Advantage [0] or Understanding Michael Porter [1]

   2. One of the things that really applies well to tech businesses has been Platform Business Model. This book [2] is a good starting point

   3. The Lean startup [3] and Hacking Growth [4] round up the tech books that I have benefited from.

   3b. Warren Buffet's letters are a classic to learn about businesses and help when you are dealing with CXOs.

   4. With these basics in place, I would recommend Stratecherry - the blog and Economist for keeping up with the current developments in the field.

   Good luck!

   [0] https://www.amazon.com.au/Competitive-Advantage-Creating-Sus...

   [1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Understanding-Michael-Porter-Essen...

   [2] https://www.amazon.com.au/Platform-Revolution-Networked-Tran...

   [3] https://www.amazon.com.au/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful...

   [4] https://www.amazon.com.au/Hacking-Growth-Fastest-Growing-Com...

   FYI, I come from a similar background. Was a techie for 9+ years before switching to an MBA and can personally attest to the materials given above :)

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4. rayalezDec 2018
   - "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" - probably the most influential book I've read in my life, profoundly changed the way I think. It's a collection of LessWrong essays on science and rationality.

   - "On Intelligence" and "I am a Strange Loop" - how mind works.

   - "Rework", "Zero to One", "Start Small, Stay Small" - insightful startup advice.

   - "Atomic Habits" - by far the best book on developing habits. Thought it was just another one of those self-help books, but turned out to be very insightful and well written.

   - "The Obstacle Is the Way" - amazing introduction into stoic philosophy, by Ryan Holiday (author of Trust me I'm lying). He summarized everything I wanted to learn about the subject, and explained it extremely well. Absolute best book to read in hectic/stressful situations, audio version is great too.

   - Fun autobiographies: Ghost in the Wires (Kevin Mitnick), iWoz (Steve Wozniak), Catch me if you can (Frank Abagnale), Just for Fun (Linus Torvalds), Elon Musk, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

   - How companies work: Creativity Inc (Pixar), In the Plex (Google)

   - On writing: Art of fiction/nonfiction by Ayn Rand, Story (and Dialogue) by Robert McKee, Save the Cat, Step by Step to Standup Comedy.

   - Grokking Deep Learning - by far the simplest and clearest introduction into deep learning, starts from scratch and takes you through the whole thing, without any of the scary/overwhelming math.

   - Refactoring UI (design tips), Programmer’s Introduction to Mathematics, Master Algorithm - still reading these books, but they look REALLY good.

   - Other: The Selfish Gene, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Serious Creativity, Hackers & Painters, Hacking Growth, Angel (on angel investing, by Jason Calacanis).

   Also collections of essays by Paul Graham [1] and Scott Alexander [2]:

   [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/2no0sqybnxurpcd/Paul%20Graham%20-%...

   [2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/i43lqpdyd4qa255/The%20Library%20of...

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5. pixelmonkeyNov 2018
   Parse.ly | Growth & Data Lead | Remote | Fully Distributed Team | https://parse.ly

   Parse.ly is the web's attention engine. As a measurement layer running across the web, Parse.ly quantifies how visitors respond to online content. Our products are then used by the web's biggest brands and publishers to understand audience attention across the internet in real-time. Our flagship product is Parse.ly Analytics (https://parse.ly/analytics), and is already used by over 400 enterprise customers (https://parse.ly/customers).

   But, Parse.ly is just getting started. We just launched Parse.ly Currents (https://parse.ly/currents), a new product that helps people understand internet-wide trends and how content/attention flows online.

   As the Growth & Data Lead for Parse.ly, you're someone who loves data, growth, and marketing, and you want to take a B2B software company out of its successful niche and across the chasm into the broader market. You are comfortable with remote & fully distributed teams. To excel here, you'll work with designers and web developers as collaborators, and be able to leverage data-oriented growth marketing strategies, such as launching search engine optimized public products built atop Parse.ly's data, or important sharing features in our existing sites and products.

   You are the kind of person who'd enjoy the books "Hacking Growth", "Traction", "Four Steps to the Epiphany", and "High Growth Handbook". For bonus points, you also care about SaaS enterprise sales. For example, you are the kind of person who enjoyed Dan Pink’s "To Sell is Human".

   In this role, you'd run a small team of designers and developers that owns the core experience of Parse.ly’s public website, technical documentation, knowledge base, emails/newsletters, data studies, and blog. You'll have an opportunity to ship new features to any of these projects, with a goal of growing sign-ups (and customers) for these products. From a technical standpoint, you'll be data savvy, know some SQL, and be comfortable working with designers/developers, who themselves are comfortable with a modern JavaScript and Python development stack. You'll also use analytics tools like Google Analytics, MixPanel and yes, even, Parse.ly itself, to understand engagement of our visitors, and to position us for more growth in new channels like organic search, social sharing, data-driven press, and free (self-service) data products.

   If you're someone who loves data, growth, and marketing, this job is for you. If you are a former startup founder seeking to relocate to an established startup, but want to continue the path of deploying lean growth techniques, this role may be especially suited for you.

   Apply here:

   Email work@parsely.com with a couple paras describing why you're interested, a link to any portfolio/projects you think may be relevant, and/or your resume or LinkedIn profile. Make sure to mention HN and the "Growth & Data Lead" role. Also, please list your timezone, working hours, and location. Note that though we can hire from most locations, we will prioritize those near US/Eastern timezone, due to the timezone makeup of this team.

   ^ A note on our fully distributed team. The mission of our lean distributed team is described here: https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission. We happily skip commutes by working out of our ergonomic home offices. We expect you to be comfortable with this setup, and collaborating with people primarily over Zoom/GMeet, GitHub, Slack, and email. The cool thing is, this lets you set up your ideal work environment; here's a photograph of mine running two full-screen Parse.ly Analytics dashboards on my monitors: https://flic.kr/p/v1NZ73.

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6. pixelmonkeyOct 2018
   Parse.ly | Growth & Data Lead | EST, CST Preferred | Full-Time | Remote | https://parse.ly

   What's Parse.ly? A real-time content measurement layer for the entire web.

   Parse.ly is trusted by over 400 enterprises, used by over 3,000 high-traffic websites, and has tens of thousands of active user seats. We are an established, but quickly-growing, company with a 30+ person product + engineering + design team, sitting inside a 70+ person company. We have millions of dollars in revenue.

   We have two products. Parse.ly Analytics (https://parse.ly/analytics) is our flagship product, which measures first-party content engagement and audience attention on sites and apps. Just recently, we launched Parse.ly Currents (https://parse.ly/currents), which showcases aggregate attention trends from over 1 billion monthly internet readers in a novel, privacy-safe way.

   The mission of our lean distributed team is described here:

   https://blog.parse.ly/post/4736/mission/?utm_campaign=oct201....

   We happily skip commutes by working out of our ergonomic home offices. Here's a photograph of mine running two full-screen Parse.ly Analytics dashboards on my monitors:

   https://flic.kr/p/v1NZ73

   As our first Growth & Data Lead, you'll run a small team of designers and developers that owns the core experience of Parse.ly’s public website, technical documentation, knowledge base, emails/newsletters, data studies, and blog.

   You'll have an opportunity to ship new features to any of these projects, with a goal of growing sign-ups (and customers) for these products. From a technical standpoint, you'll be able to use modern web development tools atop a simple and agile JavaScript and Python stack, and to work with designers/developers comfortable with that stack. But you'll also use analytics tools like Google Analytics, MixPanel and yes, even, Parse.ly itself, to understand engagement of our visitors, and to position us for more growth in new channels like organic search, social sharing, data-driven press, and free (self-service) data products.

   If you're someone who loves data, growth, and marketing, and you want to take a B2B software company to the next level, this job is for you. To do this, you'll have designers and web developers as collaborators, and be able to leverage data-oriented growth marketing strategies, such as launching public products built with Parse.ly's data, or layering growth features into our existing products.

   To be a fit for this role, you are the kind of person who’d enjoy the books "Hacking Growth", "Traction", and "High Growth Handbook". If you are a former startup founder seeking to relocate to an established startup, but want to continue the path of deploying lean growth techniques, this role may be especially suited for you.

   Apply at work@parsely.com with a couple paras describing why you're interested, a link to any portfolio/projects you think may be relevant, and/or your resume or LinkedIn profile. Make sure to mention HN and the "Growth & Data Lead" role. Also, please list your timezone, working hours, and location. Note that though we can hire from most locations, we will prioritize those near US/Eastern timezone, due to the timezone makeup of this team.

   Show morethread