Even masters of their craft never stop learning.
For anyone looking to become an expert in growth, keeping up with the latest experiments, while building a solid foundation in strategy is crucial. As the discipline of growth hacking continues to mature, there’s more and more advice out there.
To help you brush up on the fundamentals and stay on top of new ideas in the field, we put together this guide to over 40 growth hacking resources.
Build your own curriculum from these trusted sources. To make the most of this guide, skip ahead to the resources most valuable to you:
Growth hacking books
100 Days of Growth
100 Days of Growth is an ebook with 100 growth tactics by Sujan Patel and Rob Wormley. Learn how to increase acquisition from techniques used by companies like Mint and Square. Tactics come with the real life story behind how they were used. Sujan’s blog is also a great resource for marketing strategy.
Hacking Growth: How Today's Fast-Growing Companies Drive Break-out Success
Written by growth hackers Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown, Hacking Growth is a practical toolkit for teams that want to learn from strategies used by LinkedIn, Airbnb, and Pinterest. The book is filled with actionable advice for increasing your company's customer base and market share. (And if you pre-order before April 24, 2017, you'll get $7k in software discounts.)
Growth Hacker Marketing
Ryan Holiday, former marketing director at American Apparel and a prolific writer and blogger, examines what it means to be a growth-focused marketer in Growth Hacker Marketing. It’s a good primer for marketers getting started with growth.
Hooked
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products is a best-selling book on customer engagement by Stanford psychologist Nir Eyal. It is a great read for anyone interested in the intersection of psychology and business. For more insights from Nir, check out his blog Nir and Far.
The Lean Startup
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is known for revolutionizing product development, but its experimental approach can be applied to all kinds of growth strategies. He also maintains his popular blog Startup Lessons Learned, which contains a lot of wisdom about lean methodology applied to different industries and companies of all sizes.
For more reading material, check out the 20 best growth hacking blogs to follow now.
Growth hacking courses
Reforge
Reforge is Brian Balfour’s latest initiative to help more people become experts in growth. His growth programs are geared towards experienced professionals who are eager to level up.
Gimme Growth
Gimme Growth offers growth sessions—in the form of online libraries and playbooks—from some of the top growth hackers in the business. 1:1 coaching sessions from Dominic Coryell, a former DistroPartner at 500 startups and two-time co-founder, are also available.
Growth University
Growth University is one of GrowthHackers’ growing number of solutions to help teams achieve massive growth. The featured course is currently a GrowthMaster Training Course, taught by Sean Ellis himself.
GrowthX Academy
One of GrowthX’s offerings is GrowthX Academy, a 12-week bootcamp in San Francisco for salespeople, growth marketers, and UX designers.
Clarity
Not quite a course or agency, Clarity simply provides phone consultation sessions with some of the biggest names in growth hacking and marketing. For anywhere from $2/minute to $16.67/minute, you can pick the brains of smart folks like Siqi Chen and Danielle Morrill.
Growth hacking conferences
Growth Marketing Conference
Growth Marketing Conference hosts a few conferences in major cities worldwide. Some may have specific focuses, such as B2B or advanced workshops. This year, the San Francisco conference features marketing leaders like Rand Fishkin and Neil Patel.
GrowthHackers Conference
The GrowthHackers Conference features growth leaders from Google, Pinterest, Pandora, Instagram, and more. It’s designed to help people learn about creating a highly effective growth team, as well as driving a growth mindset across different departments in your organization. Takes place in Los Angeles this year.
CXL Live
ConversionXL Live is a 3-day conference focused on growth and optimization with content that is “less inspiration and more how to.” CXL also emphasizes networking and spending time together, with all attendees spending the full three days in the same place on the outskirts of San Antonio.
MozCon
MozCon is Moz’s annual conference on SEO, CRO, analytics, content marketing, and more. This year’s panel features marketing leaders from ClassPass, Etsy, and Unbounce. MozCon takes place in Seattle.
Traction
Traction is a growth, marketing, and entrepreneurial conference. Last year’s speakers included several CEOs, including Kenneth Lin of Credit Karma, Sarah Bird of Moz, and Michael Pryor of Trello. The conference takes place in Vancouver this year.
The Startup Conference
Geared more towards founders, the Startup Conference brings together 1,500 entrepreneurs in Redwood City. Attendees learn about raising money, growth tactics, and tech trends.
Local Meetups
If you live in a major city, there may be a Meetup group for growth hackers, marketers, and entrepreneurs. If not, you can always start one.
Growth hacking podcasts
The Startup Chat
Steli Efti and Hiten Shah discuss topics that affect startups' growth. The vibe is chatty but there's always a core value, often breaking down and rethinking buzz phrases and hot trends into useful, actionable strategies.
StartUp
StartUp is a podcast that announced Gimlet, a startup and podcast network. Its first season provided a narrative account of what it was like to start Gimlet. It has since followed different story formats for subsequent seasons, with an emphasis on growing a business every time. StartUp has superb reporting and storytelling.
Jobs-to-be-Done Radio
This podcast hasn’t been updated for a while, but its archives are worth listening to. Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek have smart discussions about the JTBD framework, applying it to product design, business strategy, and more.
The Top
Nathan Latka is a high-energy interviewer who is not afraid to ask hard questions. In the Top, he talks to top entrepreneurs in their field or industry about their financials and plans for growth.
Growth Everywhere
The Growth Everywhere podcast hosts power players who share their best growth stories. If you like high-level growth case studies from big players, this podcast is for you.
For more recommendations, check out 24 Business & Marketing Podcasts to Listen To in 2017.
Growth hacking newsletters
Grow.co
Grow.co hosts communities for marketers to discuss strategies and growth tools for acquisition, retention, and monetization. They also have an informative weekly newsletter, filled with curated content from around the web, original content, meetup postings, and marketing job postings.
Growth Bakery
The Growth Bakery sends a weekly curated newsletter with articles about all things marketing, including content marketing, customer acquisition, advertising, and organizational structure. The audience is marketing and growth folks at startups.
Startup Curated
Startup Curated is the Startup Foundation’s curated newsletter with content from and designed for startup founders.
Growth Hacking Digest
A well-sourced weekly list of interesting marketing and startup articles. This newsletter is divided into different areas of marketing and growth and offers a helpful perspective.
SaaS Weekly
Hiten Shah’s SaaS Weekly is a must-follow for anyone working in SaaS. Hiten curates a weekly email, along with well-written original content.
Mattermark Daily
Mattermark Daily is a curated newsletter with articles from investors and operators. It’s another must-follow for people who have limited time to shift through all the content out there. Mattermark also has a daily Raise the Bar newsletter with posts that are specifically focused on sales and marketing.
Growth hacking slideshares
10 Classic Growth Hacks (Ryan Holiday)
A round-up of the classic growth hacks you may already know and love.
10 Classic Growth Hacks: Hints at the Future of Marketing from Ryan Holiday
The Scientific Method: How to Design & Track Viral Growth Experiments(Brian Balfour)
A step-by-step guide to implementing a sustainable process for growth.
[500DISTRO] The Scientific Method: How to Design & Track Viral Growth Experiments from 500 Startups
Growth Hacking (Mattan Griffel)
Growth Hacking from Mattan Griffel
For more slideshares, take a deeper dive into influencers’ accounts. Ryan Holiday has another popular one on 19 growth hacker quotes. Sean Ellis has a few great slideshares, including Setting and Achieving Growth Goals.
Growth hacking agencies
Grow and Convert
Grow and Convert offers 1-day strategy sessions to improve your company’s content marketing efforts. They will come to your office and help your marketing team identify best-fit customers, develop a content marketing strategy, and set up analytics properly. They also have a great blog for marketers.
GrowthX
GrowthX has a few offerings to help founders and growth-focused teams, including venture capital and advisory services. Their Market Acceleration Program is only available to select portfolio companies, while their GrowthX Corporate package provides broader consultations to startups.
Conversion Rate Experts
Conversion Rate Experts helps startups and enterprises with CRO efforts. In fact, they coined the term “CRO” and have an impressive client list that includes Google, Apple, and Facebook.
Best growth hackers to follow
Casey Winter
Casey Winter helped grow Pinterest and Grubhub. His blog, Casey Accidental, is a practical resource for active growth people.
Brian Balfour
Brian Balfour is a master of growth philosophy and one of the best teachers in the discipline. His blog, Coelevate, examines growth on the industry, team, and individual level.
Morgan Brown
Legendary growth hacker Morgan Brown created Growth Strategies Daily to share everything he knows about startup traction. Morgan shares strategies from the fastest growing companies to help growth-oriented marketing and product teams.
Sean Ellis
Growth hacking began with Sean Ellis. He was the first marketer at Dropbox. He has since led growth at Eventbrite, Lookout, LogMeIn (IPO), and Uproar and served as CEO at Qualaroo. He’s currently CEO at GrowthHackers.com.
Josh Elman
Josh Elman ran growth at Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. His Medium blog continues to build on his experience with insights as a product-focused VC..
Andrew Chen
Andrew Chen runs growth at Uber and writes novel essays on the growth mindset, growth pitfalls, and more.
Pierre Lechelle
Pierre Lechelle is a growth marketing consultant for SaaS companies who uses his blog to share learnings and drive leads.
Growth hacking communities
GrowthHackers
GrowthHackers now extends far beyond its community and newsletters, but it is still the go-to place for the latest articles about growth. Their daily #GrowthIdeas email and weekly top 10 posts from the community are some of my favorite resources for ideas.
Reddit Groups
There are dedicated Reddit groups for growth hacking, marketing, entrepreneurs, technology, user experience, startups, and more.
Slack Channels
Online Geniuses is great for growth and CRO. Mind the Product is one of the best groups for growth-orientated PMs. UpLabs has several groups, most with a focus on design.
For more online communities, check out 10 essential growth hacker communities.
More resources
Here at Appcues, we read a lot of content about growth, product management, and marketing and tweet out the best content we find. Give us a follow if you’re interested in keeping up with the latest growth content.
Are there any growth hacking resources you love and don’t see here? Let us know in the comments. We hope to keep this resource up-to-date.
.png)