Why Hacks Are Not Enough for Growth Anymore

Episode details

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about why hacks are not enough for growth anymore.

Growth hacking is a term that is used a lot in the startup world, but what does it really mean and what should you really care about when it comes to measuring it?

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about what growth hacking means, how the term growth hacking came about, things to avoid when it comes to growth hacking and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About the topic of today’s episode

01:56 Why this topic was chosen.

02:24 How the term growth hacking came about.

03:41 Things to avoid when it comes to growth hacking.

04:00 The biggest mistake I think people make.

04:47 The best subject line hack.

06:01 How lying is a very bad idea when creating subject lines.

06:44 Why the open rate is not the end goal.

08:39 Hiten’s number one growth hack.

08:58 The real question to be asking about growth hacking.

3 Key Points:

The biggest mistake I think people make is not looking at the entire customer journey and the relationship you’re creating with your customer.When you lie to me to get you to do something, I don’t want more of you in my life. The open rate is not the end goal.

[0:00:00]

Speaker 1: Come on in, from the startup chat, Steli Efti and Hiten Shah.

[0:00:06]

Hiten Shah: Here we like talking about more than just sales and marketing.

[0:00:08]

Steli Efti: We just want to bullshit and chat about business and life. And hopefully while we're doing that we'll provide a lot of value to people.

[0:00:13]

Hiten Shah: The world's best business podcast.

[0:00:14]

Steli Efti: Oh shit, we got it.

[0:00:17]

Hiten Shah: For people trying to get shit done.

[0:00:19]

Steli Efti: Done, yeah. We don't want to give you feedback that's bullshit.

[0:00:22]

Hiten Shah: We want you to do your best. Hi, I'm Hiten Shah.

[0:00:25]

Steli Efti: And I'm Steli Efti.

[0:00:43]

Hiten Shah: What are we doing here?

[0:00:44]

Steli Efti: I don't know. Apparently, we're talking about why hacks are not enough for growth anymore.

[0:00:49]

Hiten Shah: That wasn't the topic we suggested.

[0:00:51]

Steli Efti: What was the original topic?

[0:00:54]

Hiten Shah: Why growth hacks don't work anymore.

[0:00:57]

Steli Efti: Don't exist anymore.

[0:00:58]

Hiten Shah: Oh yeah, don't exist, right.

[0:00:59]

Steli Efti: Yeah.

[0:00:59]

Hiten Shah: Yeah. It was a little aggressive. First of all, how many of you listen to our podcast already?

[0:01:04]

Steli Efti: Raise your hand.

[0:01:06]

Audience: Woo.

[0:01:07]

Steli Efti: Woo. We appreciate you, wooing person. You are awesome, great taste in podcast. Who here has no fucking idea who we are? Just raise your hand real high.

[0:01:15]

Audience: Woo.

[0:01:15]

Steli Efti: Ouch.

[0:01:17]

Hiten Shah: Perfect.

[0:01:18]

Steli Efti: Ouch.

[0:01:18]

Hiten Shah: You can Google us. Our names are so original, you can just Google us. So Google us, but pay attention to us right now because we're going to say all kinds of dumb shit. I can cuss, right?

[0:01:29]

Steli Efti: Yes, [inaudible 00:01:30].

[0:01:30]

Hiten Shah: Kind of, sort of?

[0:01:31]

Steli Efti: It's not my conference, but you can cuss.

[0:01:33]

Hiten Shah: Okay, thanks. I need people's approval. [crosstalk 00:01:35].

[0:01:35]

Steli Efti: There you go. You got my approval.

[0:01:37]

Hiten Shah: All right, so where do you want to start with this thing?

[0:01:40]

Steli Efti: Well,