20 Best Growth Hacking Books

Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares examine nineteen channels for acquiring customers. Drawing on founder interviews, they introduce the Bullseye framework for testing options, identifying promising channels, and building a repeatable approach to startup growth.

Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown explain growth hacking as a process of experimentation centered on customers. Their guide connects acquiring, retaining, engaging, and monetizing users with coordinated teamwork and repeated testing, showing how companies can investigate opportunities for growth.

Nir Eyal explains a four-stage model for designing products that encourage repeated use. Examples and practical guidance help founders, designers, marketers, and product managers examine how technology influences behavior and how customer habits develop.

A primer on the new rules of marketing for startups and creators. It explains how companies like Dropbox and Airbnb built massive user bases not with traditional ads, but by building viral features directly into their products.

Raymond Fong and Chad Riddersen explain growth hacking through a framework developed in their consulting work. Examples connect creative marketing approaches with business growth, offering a blueprint for selecting and applying scalable tactics across companies in different industries.

Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz explain how startups can choose useful metrics for their business model and stage of development. Case studies and frameworks cover validating assumptions, distinguishing actionable data from vanity measures, and focusing experiments around a central metric.

Wes Bush explains how software businesses can use the product itself to acquire, convert, and retain customers. Examples and practical guidance address free trials, freemium offers, pricing, and growth teams, connecting customer access to product value with a broader business strategy.

Adam Penenberg investigates businesses whose products spread as customers use them and invite others. Stories of internet entrepreneurs explain how these self-reinforcing networks develop, examining the design choices and customer behavior behind rapid online growth.

Jonah Berger investigates why certain products, ideas, and stories spread through word of mouth. Research and examples explain how social motives, emotions, everyday reminders, and other factors influence what people share and what others choose to pass along.

Steve Krug explains how to design websites people can navigate and understand with little effort. Using practical examples, he examines information design, scanning, usability testing, and mobile experiences, emphasizing clarity in everyday interactions.

Cliff Lerner recounts the growth of his startup and the costly lessons that accompanied it. Personal stories and case studies connect product decisions, experimentation, and marketing tactics with the experience of building apps and navigating a rapidly expanding business.

Daphne Tideman and Ward van Gasteren examine the consulting skills involved in helping clients pursue growth. Their process runs from initial contact through project reflection, addressing stakeholders, goals, meetings, deliverables, and difficult results within complex organizations and client relationships.

Ross Davies adapts growth hacking ideas for companies that sell services to other businesses. Drawing on experiments in his own company, he presents a step-by-step approach to testing growth tactics and applying an experimental mindset beyond software and technology startups.

Andrew Chen examines how products build network effects, gaining value as more people use them. Drawing on technology companies and startup experience, he offers frameworks for attracting an initial network, sustaining growth, and competing with established services.

Sujan Patel and Rob Wormley collect one hundred business growth tactics with examples and implementation guidance. Short entries explore approaches such as guest posting, offers, and homepage testing, giving marketers a range of ideas to adapt and evaluate in their own businesses.

Steve Portigal explains how to plan, conduct and interpret user interviews. The updated edition covers questioning techniques, fieldwork, documentation, bias and remote research, helping teams turn conversations with users into findings that can inform business and product decisions.

April Dunford provides a process for positioning products so customers understand their distinctive value. She connects competitive alternatives, unique capabilities, customer needs, and market categories, showing how these choices support marketing and sales.

Nader Sabry introduces growth hacking through a sequence of mindset, strategy, experimentation, and scaling. Tools and examples accompany practical guidance for identifying growth problems and testing opportunities, giving beginners a structured approach to developing and evaluating ideas for their organizations.

This collection brings together essays and excerpts from business growth practitioners on acquisition, activation, retention, monetization, experimentation, and measurement. Contributors examine common challenges in connecting customers with product value, offering perspectives on building more sustainable paths to growth.

Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh examine how companies pursue rapid growth under uncertainty, sometimes prioritizing speed over efficiency. Case studies illustrate the changes in business models, hiring, management, and company culture required at successive stages of expansion.