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Sean Ellis

Author, Hacking Growth · 1 appearance on the record.

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authorfounderexecutiveoperatorhostinvestor@seanellis ↗LinkedIn ↗seanellis.me ↗Wikipedia ↗

Sean Ellis coined the term "growth hacking" in 2010 and co-authored the international bestseller Hacking Growth. He served as the early head of growth or marketing at Dropbox, LogMeIn, and Eventbrite, and developed the widely used "Sean Ellis test" for measuring product-market fit.

11statements → 4claims → 0claims resolved → 3.91/5average certainty → 2.18/5average debate potential → 7said about them ↓

4 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 7 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Sean argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Sean Ellis on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Sean Ellis said on A Product Market Fit Show that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Ellis: 40% 'Very Disappointed' User Threshold Sets Startups Up for Success
“Over time, I started to hone in that it's probably around 40% saying they'd be very disappointed that would make Yeah. We would essentially set that company up for success.”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 8:00 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Insight
Ellis: NPS measures operational experience rather than core product need
“I think NPS is a great survey as well, but I think it's more of an operational, it's like kind of an operations feedback. Like let's say I have a product that's a must have, but their customer service is terrible. Like the person yelled at me in customer servi…”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 12:07 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Insight
Ellis: A/B testing messaging solely for conversion volume attracts wrong users
“That's a really typical mistake. I see a lot of companies make is that they AB test their messaging for maximum response, where ultimately if people are converting on something, the product's actually not good at doing or something that's not that important, y…”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 16:35 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Insight
Ellis: Referral incentives will not fix products lacking organic word of mouth
“Best practices of having a double-sided referral incentive can be effective, but I don't think it will, would improve referral rate on a product that has almost no referrals.”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 44:52 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Insight
Sean Ellis: Fixing products for lukewarm users risks breaking them for lovers
“My fear is always that like, if I try to fix it for the people who don't love it, I'll break it for the people who do love it.”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 19:38 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Insight
Ellis: Startup budgets cannot break through daily ad noise to build awareness
“The average person sees 4005 thousand advertisements a day. There is no startup budget that is going to break through 4000 to 5000 advertisements and actually, actually create some awareness for your product.”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 27:39 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis: Early Dropbox Scored 50% and Eventbrite 80% on PMF Test
“And when I went to Dropbox and I ran the question, I was like, 50% of people said they'd be very disappointed without the product. And then and then I went to Eventbrite after that. And at the 80% of the people said they'd be very disappointed if they could no…”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 8:15 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Insight
Ellis: Companies can boost PMF scores by increasing user investment
“You can actually Boost the score by having people kind of become more invested in a product.”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 10:54 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis: Lookout raised PMF survey score from 7% to 40% in two weeks
“I ran the survey and only seven percent of the people said they'd be very disappointed without the product... We were able to get it to 40% in two weeks. So, so based on what we learned from the seven percent who said they'd be very disappointed, the changes t…”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 13:35 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis: LogMeIn lifted activation from 5% to 50% before $4.3B sale
“We improved it from five percent to 50% of all users having a remote control experience after signing up and the entire business. I told you that that business ended up selling for sure, 4.3 billion dollars.”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 37:52 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show
Assertion Not checkable as stated
LogMeIn Scaled to $1M Monthly Marketing, Yet Word-of-Mouth Drove 80% Growth
“After those changes, I went back and tried the exact same things. Now they scale to over a million dollars a month with a three month payback on marketing dollars invested. But they own, that whole thing only accounted for 20% Of the new users we acquired. 80%…”
Sean Ellis Aug 15, 2024 ▶ 42:51 Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide.... · PMF Show

The other half of the tape: Sean Ellis's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 6 times in 4 episodes on A Product Market Fit Show. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Pablo Srugo 4Neil Patel 2

Statements about Sean Ellis, by other people (1)

Insight
Srugo: NPS yields false positives by measuring service instead of product need
“That NPS score, oftentimes you think you're measuring how much people love your product, but you're equally, if not more, you're measuring how much people like customer, your customer success, your customer service, because if people are treated in a really go…”
Pablo Srugo Mar 20, 2025 ▶ 25:54 How to tell if you have true product-market fit—& what to do if you don't. | Matt Watson, Host of... · PMF Show

Every mention by year

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2025 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth Aug 15, 2024 37m
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