Thank you Brian Balfour, Lindy Drope, Sean Ellis, Nikunj Kothari, Max Marchione, Lenny Rachitsky, Ben Shanken, Jessi Craige Shikman for readin

The rise of the Growth Founder - by Gaurav Vohra

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2025-01-09 18:00:07

Thank you Brian Balfour, Lindy Drope, Sean Ellis, Nikunj Kothari, Max Marchione, Lenny Rachitsky, Ben Shanken, Jessi Craige Shikman for reading drafts and sharing feedback, and Hannah Ahn for visuals.

Facebook pioneered one of the earliest growth teams in the late 2000s. Chamath Palihapitiya and the growth team he led from 2007 to 2011 solidified a repeatable approach to acquiring users and having them rapidly and repeatedly experience core value.

Sean Ellis — entrepreneur, author, growth leader at companies like Dropbox and LogMeIn — popularized the term Growth Hacker in 2010.

Andrew Chen — investor, a16z partner, ex-Uber — emphasized growth’s importance with Growth Hacker is the New VP Marketing in 2012.

Hastening the zeitgeist, Paul Graham’s 2012 essay Startup = Growth articulated the very definition of a startup as a company that is able to achieve sustained and rapid growth.

There’s a multitude of resources on running growth teams of various shapes and sizes. But there’s a huge gap in clarity on the most foundational growth role.