Startup Growth Engines: Case Studies of How Today’s Most Successful Startups Unlock Extraordinary Growth

by Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown

Today's fastest growing startups all share one thing in common: a new approach to how they grow. Using new a way of marketing, called growth hacking, these startups have grown to millions of users and created billions of dollars in value, all without using the traditional marketing playbook.

So how have companies like Uber, Square, Snapchat, Evernote, Hubspot, Github and Yelp grown? See for yourself in this ebook packed with the most in-depth case studies on exactly what strategies these companies used to unlock massive growth.

Case studies included are:

Uber
Snapchat
Square
Upworthy
Yelp
GitHub
Hubspot
Evernote
LinkedIn
Belly

Each case study shows you the specific strategies (we call them "growth engines") that these companies used to grow, both in the early stages and later in their development. From the growth hacks they used, to the unique growth playbooks they employed, you won't find a more detailed look at how startups achieve growth than through these case studies.

Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Nonfiction, Technology

167 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 24, 2014

Reviews

[Mikal · Rating 4 out of 5]

First things first-- this book is clearly a compendium of blog post, musings and other write ups not intended for book publication.

Well it's in a book.
And it's still worth a read.

Each section of the book represents a case study on a different product and their approach to growth -- many of them focused on doing the hard things and while the basis of their strategies are often playbook, many took some rather novel approaches to tried and true practices.

Ultimately the book is a quick and fun read full of inspiring ideas about how you can position your product or service for break out growth.

[Brandon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just horrible

Just horrible

It's possible that I am being unkind with this review. My specific issue is that this book holds itself out as a thorough reporting and analysis of great growth hacking case studies, but in reality serves as a poor historical record of companies' founding and some stats. There is barely passable analysis of what actually was done by the founders. Instead, there is a reflective look back and product/market dynamics analysis that amounts to little more than "they grew." Kind of mad I wasted time on this one.

[Gisela Hausmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s an interesting book. Personally, I think the book’s weakest feature is the title; it does not define whether this book is geared toward tech savvy followers of start-ups or towards the general audience of people, who’d like to learn something about how they could drive more growth to their businesses. However, the book’s writing style is easy to understand and the examples are well chosen. For the purpose of this review I’d like to focus on two: Upworthy and Uber.

Absolutely everybody who spends a bit of time on FB knows Upworthy and what kind of content they feature. Uber has been in the news so often that even people who do not follow start-ups per se know something about the company.

Even though more than one reviewer stated that they knew all presented facts, I didn’t. This book is informative.

E.g. I did not know that originally Upworthy was really focusing on political content and how they made the switch to positive emotionally charged content that made them so successful. That even their ads feature only products which they deem “upworthy”. The book elaborates how Upworthy uses facebook to spread its content and find new fans. After detailing Upworthy’s ways of achieving their immense success the book asks the right questions, e.g. Will Upworthy last? It’s an excellent question. Though one of Upworthy’s success secrets is that they asked visitors to subscribe via pop-up window which popped up after emotionally charged videos, and I did do that, after about a year of looking at that pop-up window “Do you want more stories like this one?” I became so annoyed that I unsubscribed. The authors, Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown mention Upworthy’s many copycats… Yeah, they add to this feeling.

I also liked that the book tells readers about Uber’s beginnings and the logic behind their thinking.
“… Uber knew that launching in San Francisco meant they would be interacting regularly with the tech community who are continually looking for new tools and services that improve their quality of life. Uber took aim at those people by sponsoring tech events, providing free rides, and in general driving awareness among its audience….”

Indeed I had been wondering about Uber’s beginnings; now I can see how the company could spread their wings so quickly. Tech people’s words of mouth is faster than any other group’s.

In short this book is not an accumulation of technical data, stats and fact, but also very user-friendly for people, who are interested in concept thinking.

The book is excellently designed with pictures, graphics, as well as lots of links to websites, articles, footnotes; in fact rarely ever have a seen such an fabulously designed book. Readers who are not familiar with the one or other featured company can access every bit of information with the provided links.

While not all quoted examples will be equally interesting to everybody I recommend this book to everybody who is interested to read about growth strategies. 5 stars

Gisela Hausmann, author & blogger

[Jacek Bartczak · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept of this book is great but the execution is disappointing. Some parts are great but usually case studies could be deeper - some of them are just short histories of included companies. It is very hard to find in "Startup Growth Engines" secret sauce about sales/marketing/business models.

The chapter about Linkedin is excellent, I'd give it 5/5.

[Jose Papo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic and very fast read of case studies on how famous startups like Uber or Snapchat were able to grow so fast. A well worth addition to the growth hacking library.

[Boni Aditya · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author could have gone deep, the author could have analyzed the growth strategies used by each company. If the author thought that there is no space in the book for all of them, then he could have just dealt with one company in this entire volume and then deal with another company in a follow up sequel.

Instead the author just make the entire book shallow.

I could have just googled and found out these things, the book is so shallow that it does not delve deeper into the growth strategies. The biggest disappointment is when I realized that i can't really make use of the strategies that were mentioned in the book, because all the author did was, throw around growth jargon and keywords. I would say it was such a lazy job from the team.

An unfinished and a semi finished job is the politically correct way to describe this book.

[Mauricio Carvalho · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a collection of case studies of how we’ll know companies started and grow. It is inspiring to visualize that GitHub was a weekend project someday.

Don’t expect to learn a lot. The book narrates what happened to the companies and not exactly how to do it with different variables. Although it’s worth readings.

[Roman Mastalir · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this book very much. It is basically just a bunch of blog posts put together without any deeper context. Also the content is outdated and mostly irrelevant in 2020. Most of the references in this book is dated to 2012.

[Daniel Bender · Rating 3 out of 5]

O livro é bacana e bem escrito, mas falha em apresentar cases muito similares de forma muito superficial.

Recomendo, mas com ressalvas.

[Kislay Chandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a nut shell, this book present case studies on the growth of ten technology companies. Some useful nuggets of information can be found here and there, and the case studies are decent enough.

[Amir Jabbari · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best books on growth hacking

[Magidc · Rating 1 out of 5]

Outdated strategies

[Victor Muthoka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book came my way as I was contemplating forming a start up & it couldn't have come at a better time.

Sean Ellis highlights several tech start ups that have grown to be big business. He chronicles their growth while paying particular attention to their DNA as an entity & analyzes what made them evolve from just being another tech start up to notable tech firms. He then summarizes the lessons learnt for the reader's benefit.

A common theme that runs through all of these start ups is the fact that they were all formed to solve real world problems, they all live on constant innovation to stay ahead of the curve, they all adapt to changes along the way to best pivot when needed & that in all cases sheer luck played a part in their success.

I recommend this book to:
Anyone interested in learning the story behind companies like Uber, Square etc & delving in depth to analyze catalyst for their success.
Any entrepreneur.
Any tech enthusiast.

[Mathias Meyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a collection of blog posts trying to analyse how several big companies have grown their business, compiled into a book trying to wet the appetite for another upcoming book from the authors.

The information was mostly derived from publicly available source, and the authors have drawn their own conclusions based on it, making this book highly interpretive and speculative, yet they do a very good job at hiding that, only mentioning the speculative nature of every analysis at the end of each blog post.

The selection of companies is very onesided, focusing on outliers rather than on more common growth tactics, and is very much driven by buzzwords, making this book part an interesting story, but for the most part a very speculative analysis of companies you'll unlikely be able to replicate yourself.

[Youghourta · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب يحتوي مجموعة "دراسات حالة" لشركات ناشئة حقّقت نموًا سريعًا.
الكتاب هو على ما يبدو تجميع لمقالات / تدوينات ويبدو ذلك بشكل واضح وجلي من أسلوب الكتابة (إضافة إلى وجود
عبارات لا يفترض أن تُرفق في كتاب، كأن تطلب من القارئ أن يُعلّق في نهاية كل فصل، وهو أمر نجده في التّدوينات فقط).

هل الكتاب مفيد؟ بشكل ما، خاصّة إذا لم تكن لديك أيّة فكرة حول كيفية نمو الشّركات النّاشئة.
هل تجب قراءة الكتاب؟ لا أعتقد ذلك، إن كان لديك اطّلاع سابق حول الموضوع فلربما لن تستفيد شيئًا جديدًا.
بعبارة أخرى، إن كنت تعاني من ضيق الوقت وتبحث عن كتب حول ريادة الأعمال لتخرج بها بفوائد عملية مُباشرة لتطبيقها، فليس هذا هو الكتاب الذي يجب أن تشرع في قراءته.

أفضل دراسة حالة أعجبتني في الكتاب هي حالة لينكد إن، والتي تعطيك بعض الأفكار التي يُمكن تطبيقها.

[Jorge Reyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Los casos de estudio son atinados y bien desarrollados, el conocimiento del autor sobre el nuevo movimiento emprendedor y de startups enfoca al lector en lo necesario para comprender el ecosistema donde se han colocado muchas expectativas, sobre todo económicas y sociales con la esperanza de cambiar el mundo corporativo e inflexible de las grandes empresas. Aunque las Startups son una realidad, hoy están en proceso de consolidarse como empresas, y aquí todavía hay incógnitas.
Un libro que contiene un lenguaje con estructura, fluido y "ligero", totalmente recomendable para todos los ávidos de conocimiento en estas dimensiones de la empresa.
Mi twitter: emorar

[Kritika Swarup · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's my take:

1. When you go to a book to read startup growth accounts, you expect minute insights. What the book offers is less than what you will find in blogs about the companies covered.

2. A book is supposed to be well researched. I assume that is why you will need a book, instead of just a blog. Even if I had to do a blog on the companies covered, I think I would have made a more extensive research and tried to go beyond what the first source tells me.

So as a book, this fails. At best, it is an attempt to sell a work, in a different format, so that it can sell. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This booklet is cases, cases & ... only cases.
Cases of successful start-ups, how they'd found their niche & how they've exploited it.

Unfortunately, it's far from being truly comprehensive - there are very few interesting internals, very little information on pivoting, exploring, etc. There are also no counterexamples of companies that failed, even if they had great idea/market/engineering, etc. That makes whole book not bad in terms of general inspiration, but of very limited use for actually learning something.

[Amandeep Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

First couple of chapters were really good in content - it has case studies on startups like github, yelp, upworthy, hubspot which goes in decent detail on facts and analysis on what worked in specific situations. My rating is basically based on those first 4 studies after which the book went downhill. I had great expectations from the book since it went by name growth engines which should have a engineering heavy content. Well the title is misleading for sure, and book should have been written with more facts. Still an informative beginner's read.

[Christophe Addinquy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really pleasant book about growth hacking. In fact, the authors coined the expression "growth hacking". This volume deliver very pleasant story tellings about startups, very well known for most of them, about how they ramp up their "hockey stick" scaling curve. The analysis of their stories is very instructive too. However it's not an "how to" book. This is the purpose of another one.
Ma note de lecture en Français ici

[Rrrrrron · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good number of case studies showcasing key elements of growth hacking. Somewhat repetitive. Better to skim and read Sean Ellis' other book Lean Startup Marketing or, even better, the Lean Analytics by Alastair Croll. The problem with the case studies is that it does not bring together the feedback loop between analytics, choosing which growth ideas to try out, how to implement the idea in the context of your product and team and deciding how to measure/observe when you are right or wrong.

[joao · Rating 4 out of 5]

growth marketing - what is growth and how do you reach growth

You'll find case studies of some of the fastest growing companies in the world, where the authors present us with strategies used to reach growth. This is a book for a person with some marketing knowledge. But if you already know a lot about marketing, you'll get bored at times, but it still be interesting as you'll learn about the growth history of the biggest startups in the world.

[Luca Pennisi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book explains how the most successful startups have grown. It is like reading a collection of typical economic articles, saying obvious things or giving information just found on the internet. The idea of writing about these companies it is good only by having complete access to the founders and to really "hot" information. This wasn't the case. I would have apreciated deeper analysis on growth engines rather than random facts about the "winners" of the startup ecosystem.

[Diogo Mello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though the book's content seens that have been taken from articles and researches done by the author I enjoyed the content and the manner its has been presented to the reader. I definetly recommend the book as it shows ideas of how to grow a startup using technics used by great companies nowadays.

[Antonios Hadjigeorgalis]

http://firstround.com/article/WhatsAp...
If you’d like to read more case studies like this on fast-growing tech companies, check out our book Startup Growth Engines. It’s a collection of deep dives into how the smartest companies in the world are growing today, including LinkedIn, Snapchat, Square, Evernote and more

[Abe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent collection of growth stories

A good collection of individual essays that describe the paths that several well-known startups went through to get where they are today. A lot of food for thought if you're in charge of growth at your own startup, but would be even better if there was a narrative being woven around these, connecting them and providing best practices.

[Adriano De almeida · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plenty of good growth stories and good insights from well know startups such as Uber, HubSpot and SnapChat. Polemic topics, like Freemium vs non-fremium, are discussed even though not deeply. The drawback is that after 60% of the book the stories becomes somewhat repetitive. Missed some numbers to corroborates several discussions too.

[Alex Devero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Traditional marketing strategies are no longer relevant in the new economy. A successful start-up needs to find new ways to compete by using growth hacks. Top performing companies are using new and efficient methods to maximize growth, expertly target customers and put themselves on the fast track to success.

[John Collins · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an easy read. I didn’t find it full of great insights, but there were some nice statements about the importance of quality, experience, and content. There was an interesting idea for simple A/B testing via bit.ly links, which I may try for fun. I’d say that since it’s such an easy book to read, it may be worth your time if you're interested in business, startups, tech, and such things.

[Pete Roome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting case studies on the growth hacking techniques of some of the biggest Sillicon Valley companies but no real analysis. Worth a read to see some different approaches and techniques though.