The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
Ellis secured a $1M book advance for Hacking Growth
“If you take international rights, it's at about a million.”
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.”
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.”
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”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Ellis acquired Qualaroo from KISSmetrics in 2012 for under $1 million
“Less than a million dollars.”
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 …”