Sign up for my email newsletter

Get new updates, usually once a week – it features long-form essays on what’s going on here in Silicon Valley.

I’ve written 550+ essays which have been featured and quoted in The New York Times, Fortune, Wired, and WSJ. The topics range from mobile product design to fundraising to “growth hacking.”

Thanks for reading. -Andrew

Close

@andrewchen

Subscribe · Featured · Recent essays

How do I learn to be a growth hacker? Work for one of these guys :)

 

After writing my recent article on Growth Hackers, I’ve been asked by quite a few folks on how to learn the discipline. The best answer is, learn from someone who’s already good at it – if you’re technical and creative, it’s well worth the time.

I would encourage everyone to also read Andy Johns’s Quora answers on What is Facebook’s User Growth team responsible for and what have they launched? and
What are some decisions taken by the “Growth team” at Facebook that helped Facebook reach 500 million users?- it lays out a lot of the key activities used in a well-run growth team.

The list below includes some of these folks I know personally, some just by reputation- but collectively they’ve grown products up to millions, 10s of millions, and in some cases, 100M+ users. Typically they use quantitatively-oriented techniques centered on virality across different channels such as iOS, Facebook, email, etc. There’s lots of iteration, A/B testing, and experimentation involved. There’s also really great growth hackers centered around SEO, SEM/ad arb, and other techniques, but for the most part I’m just listing out the folks around quant-based virality. The important thing about virality is, it’s free :) So it’s an important skill for startups.

Missing from this list are many unsung heroes over at Zynga, Dropbox, Branchout, Viddy/Socialcam, lots of ex-Paypal/Slide people, etc., etc. Also, all of these guys typically have co-founders or entire growth teams around them that are experts, even if I don’t know them by name.

If others in the community would like to make suggestions, tweet me at @andrewchen or just reply in the comments.

Name Background Twitter
Noah Kagan AppSumo, Mint, Facebook noahkagan
David King Blip.me, ex-Lil Green Patch deekay
Mike Greenfield Circle of Moms, ex LinkedIn mike_greenfield
Ivan Kirigin Dropbox, ex-Facebook ikirigin
Michael Birch ex-Bebo, BirthdayAlarm mickbirch
Blake Commegere ex-Causes/Many games commagere
Ivko Maksimovic ex-Chainn/Compare People ivko
Dave Zohrob ex-Hot or Not, MegaTasty dzohrob
Jia Shen ex-RockYou metatek
James Currier ex-Tickle jamescurrier
Stan Chudnovsky ex-Tickle stan_chudnovsky
Siqi Chen ex-Zynga blader
Ed Baker Facebook esbaker
Alex Schultz Facebook alexschultz
Joe Greenstein Flixster joseph77b
Yee Lee Google yeeguy
Josh Elman Greylock, ex-Twitter joshelman
Jamie Quint Lookcraft, ex-Swipely jamiequint
Elliot Shmukler LinkedIn eshmu
Aatif Awan LinkedIn aatif_awan
Andy Johns Quora, Twitter, Facebook ibringtraffic
Robert Cezar Matei Quora, ex-Zynga rmatei
Nabeel Hyatt Spark, ex-Zynga nabeel
Paul McKellar SV Angel, ex-Square pm
Greg Tseng Tagged gregtseng
Othman Laraki Twitter othman
Akash Garg Twitter, ex-Hi5 akashgarg
Jonathan Katzman Yahoo, ex-Xoopit jkatzman
Gustaf Alstromer Voxer gustaf
Jon Tien Zynga jontien

UPDATE: My friend Dan Martell’s new company, Clarity, provides a way to access experts like this via phone and email. Here’s the directory of folks with expertise on growth.

Like this post?
Get new updates via newsletter..

  • http://theleanstartupmachine.com Trevor Owens

    Hey Andrew, any New Yorkers you can think of?

  • http://twitter.com/Pv Patrick Vlaskovits

    Andrew, I think you’re missing Sean Ellis (the guy who coined & defined the actual term “growth hacker”) and Noah Kagan.

    Also, Alex Schultz of FB.    

  • http://blog.calbucci.com/ Marcelo Calbucci

    Zero women!?!

  • http://andrewchenblog.com Andrew Chen

    Actually Noah/Sean are really most expert at ad arb – they are amazing at that, but as I caveated in the post, just focusing on data-driven virality for the list. Great suggestions though.

  • http://andrewchenblog.com Andrew Chen

    I’m sure there are plenty, but I don’t spend enough time out there to add them to the list.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1206827 Jon Tien

    Hey Andrew, it’s Jon Tien – we’ve never met, but honored to be on the list, so thanks :). Anyone else – we’re hiring, so hit me up at jtien@zynga.com if you’re interested.

  • http://andrewchenblog.com Andrew Chen

    Our mutual buddy Nabeel nudged me :)

  • http://bojanbabic.blogspot.com bojanbabic

    I’ve gathered list of twitter handles into growth hacker list on twitter http://bit.ly/growth-hackers  , so others do not have to hustle and adding them manually. also, I’ve added sean ellis and noah kagan as well. will return later to post and update list with names 

  • http://nabeelhyatt.com nabeel

    I’m in NY almost every week, just drop me an email. First name at sparkcapital

  • http://www.facebook.com/ajohns Andy Johns

    Woah! Thanks for the shout out Andrew :)

    Coincidentally I also just answered another question on Quora about what the FB team did to spur growth. It sheds more light on the operations, hiring and culture needed to support a growth team: http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-decisions-taken-by-the-Growth-team-at-Facebook-that-helped-Facebook-reach-500-million-users/answer/Andy-Johns?__snids__=41269531#ans1209317

  • http://www.facebook.com/williamwaiwong William Wai Wong

    I don’t know her, but I remember glancing over this on TC in the past, Padma Rao from Zynga:

    http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/10/zynga-marketing-master-padma-rao-joins-foundation-capital-as-an-entrepreneur-in-residence/ 

    Not sure where she falls on the traditional – hacker spectrum.

  • http://gustafalstromer.com Gustaf Alstromer

    Thanks! You should add Ivan Kirgin @ Dropbox and Paul Mckellar @ SV Angels / Square founding engineer. 

    Voxer is also hiring growth hackers: http://voxer.com/jobs

  • http://andrewchenblog.com Andrew Chen

    Great answer on Quora, Andy. Upvoted.

  • http://andrewchenblog.com Andrew Chen

    Thanks, Added Ivan and Paul. How could I forget them?

  • http://twitter.com/noahkagan noah kagan

    Drew

    Do you remember Dropbox contest, Oregon Trail on FB, Tattoos on FB, etc…?

    :)

  • http://blog.jamiequint.com jamiequint

    I’m moving to NY this summer for my new company.

  • http://twitter.com/dmitri Dmitri Leonov

    I would add Andrew Skotzko, head of growth at Chill.com.  Every time I talk to him, I learn something new that I end up implementing myself.

  • http://www.facebook.com/etaymor Emerson Taymor

    +1 to this, Andrew Skotzko and the rest of the team at Chill.com have done an incredible job fostering a community and gaining consistent users over the past year.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Uchôa/100001771345898 Daniel Uchôa

    Hi Andrew, nice post! Do you think that an audience-based video analytics able to show you the history of each viewer, grouping them into behavioral clusters, could help to improve the chances of viral success? We are developing one: http://bit.ly/LJ8eo1 . We would love some feedback, tell us your first impressions. Thank you!

  • http://www.facebook.com/ajohns Andy Johns

    Alex Schultz of Facebook for sure! Best internet marketer I’m aware of and he’s been with FB on growth for 4+ years now. 

  • editorfs

    Are there specific strategies that young startups could learn from? I am more interested in HOW one gets from 10 users to 1000 to 10 million. Would love a couple of posts realted to this.

  • http://twitter.com/jayweintraub Jay Weintraub

    Don’t forget to add John DeMayo. One of the true OG’s. :)

  • http://www.hitomers.wordpress.com Keyra

    This article, as well as your previous one growth hacker becoming the new VP of marketing, gives me an idea of where to get started! Thank you so much for putting this together!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=10218694 Nicholas Abramovic

    Clearly I need to move back to the SF tech circles given my name isn’t here :P 

  • Tim Homuth

    Andrew, you inspired me to give a talk on the topic… Just discussing the idea of the growth hacker helped my audience expand their way of thinking. I posted the slides from the talk here… http://www.slideshare.net/timhomuth/think-like-a-growth-hacker

    Thanks!

  • http://pralbin.com/ Albin Stoop

    Cool list Andrew, those are some big names there.

    I’m a Growth Hacker myself (with extra passion in SEO & SEM). What do you call a Growth Hacker like that? ;)

  • http://twitter.com/danbarker dan barker

    hi, Andrew, you might want to add Rowan Gormley of Naked Wines to the list. (@rowbags). Web-only brand that grew from nothing to 100,000 *paying* customers in the UK over a couple of years. They just launched in the US so will be interesting to watch. 

  • http://twitter.com/danbarker dan barker

    I made a twitter list of ‘growers’ here: http://twitter.com/danbarker/customergrowers .

    (tiny note: ‘metatek’ should be ‘mekatek’ in the post).Thanks again for the list,dan

Want more? Featured essays and book recommendations