The idea of a VC having its own news aggregator was a bit outlandish in 2007. But Y Combinator was in an unusual position in those days anyway. Startup accelerators had been a highly visible part of the dot-com crash, and Silicon Valley was still skeptical of the concept nearly a decade later. So YC set out to be something different — a community of hackers building companies on their own terms.
Hacker News was initially built by YC co-founder Paul Graham as a demonstration of Arc, a new programming language he’d been working on. He quickly realized that it could help bring together the companies he was supporting and the rest of the folks who wanted in. With 1.6 million page views and 200,000 unique visitors on a given weekday, it’s now a key part of the venture firm’s success.
Thomson Reuter’s Deputy Editor of Social Media, Matthew Keys, 
Editor’s note: Aaron Ginn is currently Head of Growth at 
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In this series titled “Defining a growth hacker,” I will be exploring the meaning and practical application of growth hacking through a number of interviews with prominent growth hackers. This is the fourth post of the series. The previous posts are as follows: common characteristics here, growth hacking’s impact on marketing here, and impact on product here. Paul Graham reminded the startup community that it is in the business of growth. “A startup is a company designed to grow fast,” Graham writes. Though growing a business is a universal desire, implementing growth is unique to the product, the market, and the company. Nabeel Hyatt, venture partner at Spark Capital, said that there is no single way to grow a company. Execution is a startup’s fingerprint: distinctive and hard to replicate. A growth hacker’s role is not static but constantly adapting to the organization’s needs. Building growth into a team starts with adopting a culture of growth, recruiting the right team, and implementing with the right corporate mindset. Adopting a culture of growth Valuing “growth” is more than just filling a position. It operates like a fundamental value or a “creed” that the rest of the organization uses to prioritize decisions. “Growth is not just the concept of ‘how do I market this?’. Rather, it is a company belief and value,” said Hiten Shah, co-founder of KISSmetrics. From day one, company culture is being fastened and formed. Inserting growth creed at a later point in time requires more energy and time to implement, which slows down learning. “At the founder level, a growth hacker designs product around inherent distribution and sets a data-driven culture,” said Matt Humphrey, co-founder of Homerun. “This is probably the most important phase of a company.” Adopting a growth creed at any point in time requires trust in the process and continuous internal advocacy. When it comes to growth, results require patience. The founder is the best person to integrate the creed into the organization, allocate resources and establish the organization’s vision on growth. “Growth has to be part of the culture from day one,” said Jim Young, co-founder of HotorNot and Perceptual Networks. “It is much harder to staple on a growth team when there is an entrenched development process that is not as metrics oriented or fast-paced. A growth hacker works best as a founder, since they will be able to establish the culture for
In this series titled “Defining a growth hacker,” I will be exploring the meaning and practical application of growth hacking through a number of interviews with prominent growth hackers. This is the third post of the series on product. You can find the first post on common characteristics here and growth hacking’s impact on marketing here. “Viral marketing is not a marketing strategy,” Andrew Chen wrote back in 2007. “Successful viral products don’t have viral marketing bolted on once the product has been developed. It’s not a marketing strategy. Instead, it’s designed into the product from the very beginning as part of the fundamental architecture of the experience.” While growth hacking has changed the worldview of many great marketers, growth hackers are also rethinking and redesigning the way products are developed and analyzed. Today, successful growth implementation starts at the product level because growth hacking at its core is a product-based role. A growth hacker is a product-based role for four reasons: growth hacking is a sub-specialty of both marketing and product, engagement is central to growth hackers, growth is a form of product “R&D,” and growth hackers are empowered in a product role. Growth as a sub-specialty Growth is a blend of both marketing and product. While both specialties contain a partial growth perspective, growth hacking is a sub-specialty with the sole focus on pushing metrics and designing outcomes around growth. Matt Humphrey, co-founder of HomeRun, explained that growth hacking is not a new role that fits within marketing. “It’s an entire product and business level understanding of what drives users to the product, back to the product, and into their wallets,” said Humphrey. Growth hackers have a much deeper technical understanding of product as it relates to marketing. This technical and scientific perspective on marketing pushes for a different attitude towards distribution and getting in front of customers. “Growth hacking is definitely more than direct marketing, quantitative analysis, and engineering,” said Jesse Farmer, co-founder of Everlane. “For example, Tumblr just updated their API to permit user-to-user following via HTTP POST. That sentence is a Bat Signal for any growth hacker but probably means nothing to the average marketer.” On product, growth hackers zero in on the distribution and engagement side of product. Growth hackers are “syncing with product teams to ensure the product is built around distribution or core features are put in place with distribution as a
Here’s a heartwarming story for a Hackathon Saturday: Chad Ruble’s mother suffers from aphasia due to a stroke. She hasn’t been able to use a keyboard for years because she is simply unable to recognize text. In order to help her, he built a Kinect-enabled interface that lets her move her hand around a series of simple icons – happy, sad, upset, etc. – and other icons that signify degree.
The Internet has been the most disruptive vehicle in modern memory, from buying shoes to connecting with friends. The profession of marketing was no less transformed over the last two decades. Marketing has evolved from rules of thumb to data-driven decisions with the adoption of lean. 
In this series titled “Defining a growth hacker”, I will be exploring the meaning and practical application of growth hacking through a number of interviews with prominent growth hackers. This is the first post the series and will outline the common characteristics of a growth hacker.
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