Growth Hacking Mindset and Framework

Sean Ellis coined the term "growth hacker" in 2010 while helping Silicon Valley startups scale rapidly without traditional marketing budgets. A growth hacker is someone whose true north is growth — every decision, strategy, and tactic is oriented toward growing the user base or revenue.

Traditional marketing focuses on brand awareness, campaigns, and broad audiences using established channels like TV, print, and display ads. Growth hacking is data-driven, product-focused, and experiments rapidly across acquisition, activation, and retention to find scalable, repeatable growth mechanisms at low cost.