Growth hacking

Growth hacking

Every sales leader faces the same tension. Close deals faster to hit revenue targets, but maintain high standards to avoid bad fits, legal issues, or deals that fall apart post-signature. Push too hard on speed, and you end up with buyer remorse, contract problems, and unhappy customers. Move too cautiously, and competitors snatch opportunities while your team is still scheduling discovery calls.

Meadow Lane, a gourmet grocer in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood, opened Friday at 11 a.m., attracting quite the line of hopeful and hungry shoppers. The brainchild of former venture capitalist Sammy Nussdorf, the store had a cult following before it had a physical retail space. He's been posting about the storesince June 2024, and some of his taste-tasting videos of the menu have gone viral.

AI gave everyone speed - but that same speed flooded every distribution channel. Search traffic's down, inboxes are overrun, and even virality is harder when everyone's shipping quickly. In this episode, Emily Kramer reveals the strategy behind today's breakout companies: ecosystem. Instead of going direct, win through partners, creators, communities, and integrations that already have your audience's trust. If you're still relying on the old playbook in an AI-saturated world, this episode will help you rewire your strategy.

Emily Kramer has identified a pattern in how top AI (and non-AI) startups are able to break through the noise and grow unlike at any other time in history. Once you see it, you immediately rethink your growth strategy. I did! After reading the first draft of this post, I got a whole new level of understanding for why my product pass has been

No marketing strategy can save a bad product, especially in the long run. "It starts with a great product," Houston said at Stanford. "You're not going to push a rock above a hill." Houston said that having a great product comes down to quickly solving a customer's problem. The sooner a new visitor can recognize that your product or service can solve a problem, the better.

Airlines seem to have all the power algorithms, timing, and secret pricing strategies while travelers are left guessing. But what if there was a loophole hidden in plain sight? One that frequent flyers, expats, and even travel agents have quietly used for years to beat airline pricing systems at their own game? It's called the Reverse Booking Trick, and if you learn how to use it right, it could save you hundreds even thousands on long-haul flights, especially across Europe, Asia, and North America.

Strategic marketing for CEOs means aligning content, data, and distribution to drive measurable growth, including leads and revenue. Content is a huge part of any company's marketing initiatives, as it helps establish your brand voice and thought leadership. Think of content as any other type of media you're using to promote your business. You're probably focusing a lot on social media and online ads, right?

Relying on one gig is like putting all your eggs in one very fragile basket. The most successful gig workers I know have multiple income streams flowing at once. Think about it this way: If you're driving for Uber, you're already in your car. Why not deliver food between rides? If you're freelance writing, why not offer social media management to the same clients? The key is finding gigs that complement each other instead of competing for your time.

Social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have made it easier than ever to get noticed by the world. How does it feel when your business is at the centre of a viral trend? Spend any time on social media and it won't be long before you see footage of some holiday mishap accompanied by the ironic voiceover, "Nothing beats a Jet2 Holiday." The travel firm's upbeat theme music and tagline has become an internet meme unit.

Costco holds a unique place in American culture. With its famous rotisserie chickens, famous food court items, bulk products sold on pallets, affordable prices, eccentric product offerings, and warehouse design, Costco has captured the imagination, wallets, and hyper-fixation of Americans for years. Unlike typical grocery shopping, the sheer volume and variety of products available at Costco leave room for creative shopping styles.

Across the UK, digital businesses are racing to reduce acquisition costs, lift lifetime value, and build trustworthy brands in tighter regulatory climates. Few sectors have had to tackle all three with such intensity-and visibility-as online casinos. Study the mechanics behind today's top iGaming platforms and you'll find a masterclass in pricing discipline, real-time personalisation, and retention design that any growth-minded company can adapt.

Jumping into digital gaming as an entrepreneur? It's... crowded, to say the least, with the rules shifting beneath your feet. Something like 4,300 active online casino licenses popped up worldwide in 2023 (so says H2 Gambling Capital, anyway). The folks who seem to be doing okay-or pulling ahead, actually-might be those focusing on smarter tech and mixing up their strategy, not just sticking to the old playbook.

In 2023, Duolingo generated over $500 million in revenue with a deceptively simple feature at its core: a streak counter. This wasn't just any counter - it was the result of over 600 experiments conducted across four years, each one peeling back layers of human psychology to understand what truly motivates daily engagement. The numbers tell a compelling story: users who reach just a 7-day streak are 3.6 times more likely to complete their language course,

Pack your laptop and cancel your office lease. Some seriously successful entrepreneurs I know run their empires from Lisbon cafes, Bali co-working spaces, and Tokyo hotel rooms. They're not playing small. They're building bigger businesses than their desk-bound counterparts while living exactly how they want. Maybe you've been told you need stability to scale. Maybe you think serious businesses require serious offices. You're being lied to.

Business development is often framed as a numbers game: more dials, more emails, more sequences. But sheer activity without depth rarely builds trust, let alone a pipeline. That's why we stopped calling our entry-level salespeople "BDRs." In our organization, they are junior consultants. This change in title isn't cosmetic; it reflects a completely different approach to how we engage prospects and build meaningful conversations.

For almost 20 years, Google's search engine has been the go-to source for researching anything. But with the rise of generative AI, its stronghold is slipping. Consumers are increasingly turning to AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity when they have questions. According to a 2024 Ignite Visibility study, 62% of people now use ChatGPT or Google Gemini to explore products and services, showing that AI answers are quickly becoming the starting point for decisions.

Getting ready for a new business year is a crucial time. It presents the opportunity to reflect and make a list of a strategic changes to the way your company works. Small and simple tweaks in your approach can set your business up for sustainable growth and success. With so much in the pipeline and a lot to play for, it's worth getting the early preparations off to a strong start.

When you think about growing your business, it's natural to picture new customers, more sales, and bigger teams. But growth today looks a little different than you might be used to because it also involves making sure your people can work effectively with the systems you put in place. That balance is what makes the difference between growth that feels sustainable and growth that leaves everyone stretched.

Traditional marketing metrics can tell you what happened last month, but they're like my tarot cards when predicting the future-confusing, vague, and not always accurate. Fortunately, some marketing KPIs predict future growth, and the companies achieving 10x revenue growth have figured out which ones matter. In this deep dive, I'll share the 10 marketing KPIs that leading subscription businesses use to predict and scale revenue growth.

Some innovative products are designed to solve a specific pain point for consumers, while others will address a problem they don't even realize they have. Take soggy sandwiches, for example. A focus group wouldn't necessarily highlight the need for a cooler that keeps sandwiches from getting soggy-but once the problem was identified, it helped inform the design of Ninja's line of FrostVault coolers, according to Michelle Crossan-Matos, the chief growth officer of SharkNinja.

Most people give up too early, assuming that if they don't see numbers move right away, it means they're doing something wrong. James had been posting casually for years with little to show for it, but two focused months of daily posting flipped the switch. That's the power of consistency: It feels invisible at first, but eventually it snowballs in a way you can't predict.

Every marketing budget should have waste in it. If there's zero waste, the company isn't trying anything new - not experimenting with new channels, formats, measurement, tech or audiences. The team isn't creating the conditions where something new and valuable can emerge. The kind of growth that only shows up once outside of comfort zones, where things feel unfamiliar, risky, even a little scary.

For many SaaS leaders, the growth playbook feels stuck on a single page. It is to pour more money into paid ads. But what happens when that well starts to run dry? With research showing that customer acquisition costs have jumped by over 60% in the last five years, relying solely on paid channels is becoming an unsustainable gamble. The moment you cut the budget, the leads disappear.

Here's the reality entrepreneurs don't want to hear: sales need fixing first. Mike Michalowicz covers this in his book "Fix This Next." The majority of businesses have decent products and people, but they're not selling effectively. This truth became even more stark during the pandemic. McKinsey found that 70-80% of small businesses experienced 30-50% revenue drops between 2020 and 2021.

Discover how to run a growth workshop that equips your product team to map key drivers, identify levers, and plan experiments that matter. Kimberly Shyu Sep 9, 2025 6 min read Streamline your product stack with a six step guide to tool consolidation. Cut costs, reduce silos, and boost team efficiency. Sara Nguyen Sep 2, 2025 4 min read

Startups often make the mistake of hiring a growth team far too soon, said Meta's chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz. Schultz, speaking on an episode of the "Twenty Minute VC" podcast published Saturday, said that founders often rush to delegate growth when it should be their top priority. At companies with only a few hundred employees, the entire team should be focused on driving growth - not a specialized unit.

Trade shows and print ads brought in a trickle of interest, but most of those leads were unqualified. Follow-ups were slow, spreadsheets were messy, and opportunities were slipping away. But what if, within 90 days, that brand was able to sign franchise agreements in three new states without a single in-person meeting? By combining targeted social media lead generation with an automated CRM system, that outcome could be possible. Why? Scattered efforts would turn into a predictable, scalable growth engine.

You're known as the systems guy. Do you have a system for generating ideas when a business is stuck, or even starting to flatline? How can someone replicate that to breathe new life into their own business? Michalowicz: Absolutely. Idea generation is a skill, not a talent. And like any skill, it gets better with practice. The best way to start is by using a method to structure your brainstorming, especially when you're learning to flex that creative muscle.

One of Airbnb's most underappreciated competitive advantages is how it has quietly become a home for long-term travelers. In 2024, stays of 28 nights or more made up 18% of gross nights booked, according to company filings. That's not a small niche -- it's nearly one in five stays. This trend aligns with broader shifts in how people work and live. Remote and hybrid work have unlocked new flexibility, allowing millions to combine travel with their professional lives.

Every new idea depended on our engineers, and our internal requests were piling up faster than we could clear them. We were adding new people to our company every week, but our engineering team was underwater. Every new feature, every minor internal tool, every process tweak depended on our developers. We were hiring as fast as we could, but it felt like shoveling sand against the tide.

Big companies have full teams: marketing departments, content writers, designers and salespeople all working together to grow the brand. But solopreneurs and small business owners don't have that kind of support. Sometimes it's just one person, or maybe a part-time virtual assistant or freelance copywriter. That's why using AI tools isn't just helpful - it's necessary. With the right AI systems in place, small teams can get more done, move faster and compete with bigger players without needing a big budget or staff.