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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.

17statements → 12claims → 5claims resolved → 80%fully supported → 3.88/5average certainty → 1.47/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

4 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 7 not checkable as stated how the 12 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

12 assertions · 4 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 12 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 7 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.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Ellis: Dropbox was the fastest SaaS business to hit $1B ARR
“They're the fastest company, fastest SaaS business to ever get to the one billion dollar revenue run rate”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 25:11 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
88% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

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 Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Ellis: Growth hacking is rapid testing, not creative slam dunks
“Most things that I think of don't work. That's the reality. And that growth hacking is really more about testing a bunch of stuff and doubling down when something works. And so it's more about kind of just that, that rapid testing process.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 18:40 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Supported
Ellis: Dropbox was the fastest SaaS business to hit $1B ARR
“They're the fastest company, fastest SaaS business to ever get to the one billion dollar revenue run rate”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 25:11 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Insight
Ellis: Viral growth is unsustainable without strong foundational product value
“If you don't have a lot of value at the foundation of that growth, it's not very sustainable.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 2:47 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis: Dropbox had strong referrals before launching its referral program
“Referrals were strong before the referral program went in place. People love the product. We're spreading the word about the product.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 4:55 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Insight
Ellis: Referral programs cannot fix poor product value or experience
“You can't bandaid kind of a crappy product experience and a crappy product value with a referral program, for example.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 5:00 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis: Eventbrite relied on inherent product virality rather than referral incentives
“Eventbrite actually did not have an incentive. Eventbrite's just a natural, a really natural kind of viral product in itself, that an event organizer sets up an event among their attendees at that event, who then come through the system and buy tickets and hav…”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 6:40 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis secured a $1M book advance for Hacking Growth
“If you take international rights, it's at about a million.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 14:05 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Supported
Ellis: Selling 5,000 to 10,000 books weekly can reach NYT bestseller list
“It's probably somewhere between 5010 thousand books in that first week that can get you on the list.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 17:56 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Insight
Ellis: Scaling to $1B Requires Integrated Teams, Not Isolated Growth Hacks
“You can't scale to that level on just clever growth hacks that one or two people are doing. You need to have a very integrated, coordinated team, and the best time to build that into your business is early when the culture is still malleable to do it.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 24:57 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Supported
Ellis: Dropbox built its famous referral program with under 10 employees
“There was less than 10 of us at the company at the time. I was the only non-engineer at the company”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 3:32 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Supported
Ellis: Ring founder Jamie Siminoff's PhoneTag inspired Dropbox referral program
“Jamie Siminoff, the guy that runs Ring, the super hot video doorbell company now, but he you know, prior to that, he had a company called PhoneTag, where he had basically done a ton of testing and came up with this double-sided incentive as being really effect…”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 3:51 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis: 80% of LogMeIn users came through word of mouth
“By the time I left LogMeIn, 80% of our users were coming in through word of mouth.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 8:09 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis: LogMeIn spent over $1M monthly on CAC with 3-month payback
“We were spending, you know, more than a million dollars a month, three months payback on acquiring customers.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 8:14 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Partly supported
Ellis: LogMeIn stayed cashflow positive throughout its growth scaling
“Unlike most BC backed businesses. It was cashflow positive the whole time we were scaling growth there.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 9:54 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis acquired Qualaroo from KISSmetrics in 2012 for under $1 million
“Less than a million dollars.”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 11:44 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Disclosure
Sean Ellis: Qualaroo was sold in an asset sale to Xenon
“A company called Xenon. They basically, it was a very cashflow positive business. We were using a lot of the cash to fund what we thought as our, as kind of our long-term, what really interested us on the growthhackers.com side. And so it was an asset sale of …”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 12:26 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ellis: GrowthHackers sees one million quarterly visitors and 400,000 social followers
“In, in the per quarter, we're probably a million people coming through growth hackers and another like 400,000 across our different social accounts, followers”
Sean Ellis May 1, 2017 ▶ 20:29 646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launching Book "Hacking Growth" with Sean Ellis

The other half of the tape: Sean Ellis's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112017episodesmentions
0112017episodes it came up in
000.50.5112017episodesmentions per episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
646: He Coined Term "Growth Hacking" After DropBox, EventBrite, LogMeIn Work, Now Launchin May 1, 2017 20m
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