I've started focusing more of my time and attention lately on the concept of growth and specifically growth hacking. I came across this Udemy course from the Growth Hackers Conference in San Francisco in 2012. The opening keynote presentation is by Chamath Palihapitiya who was the VP of Growth at Facebook. His presentation is very entertaining and struck a cord after reading a ton of information about "optimizing for virality (k factor)" and feeling that this wasn't the right place to focus on.
Chamath emphasizes many times that ultimately its about building a product people actually want to use instead of some shitty concept that sounds (and maybe looks) good but is poorly executed. This can be very challenging but when done right its incredibly rewarding. His full presentation is available on YouTube and is just under 40 minutes long. His presentation really helps to refocus on building quality products and cut out much of the so called "lore" and "gut feeling" that is common place in many organizations.
He also mentioned a simple growth framework that originally started at Ebay and it looks like the following:
Chamath was adamant that his team (or anyone else's for that matter) should not focus on the last element, virality, as that element happens organically if you've focused and executed correctly on the first 3 elements of the growth framework. Given that Chamath and his team were instrumental in Facebook reaching 1 Billion users in 2012, this strategic approach for growth is well worth paying attention to.
I'm heading to the Growth Hackers Conference in San Francisco on May 3rd, 2013. If you're heading there yourself get in touch and we can meet-up.
