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Hacker in this context means someone who quickly and cheaply creates new things, as in "it's hacked together". Like how we're on Hacker News, it's not a securit

Hacker in this context means someone who quickly and cheaply creates new things, as in "it's hacked together". Like how we're on Hacker News, it's not a security website, it's a website for people interested in startup news. Growth hacking basically means any form of growth that doesn't come from a fat marketing budget or traditional brand growing methods. I definitely think their method counts.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I disagree. "Growth hacking" refers to "hacking" as in "the thing programmers do that make them oh so important in the XXI century". It's marketers doing collective "me too", they want to bask in the same glory, capture some of that positive halo that was created by IT companies that diluted the meaning of word "hacker". The word that itself doesn't mean much anymore within the commercial world.
- Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
  Not really. The programming part of "growth hacking" is, well, a part of it, but the general definition of the term is much closer to "using creativity and analytical thinking/practices to market a product/service." It's kind of glorified word of mouth marketing, but with landing pages and A/B tests. [All that said, as a startup growth guy, I pretty much detest the term.]
- digbyloftus 11y ago
  Plenty of what programmers are doing isn't hacking. A team of top cs men making some process in google 0.1% more efficient doesn't seem very hacky even if it results in oodles of profit. What's more is this type of marketing is very much the result of hacker programming. Scraping social media profiles and then automatically email spamming the recipients is a system that was programmed, they aren't manually doing it (I hope!).
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Of course! Most programming, and especially most professional programming, has nothing to do with hacking. It's a different culture. But it's also totally different culture to what "growth hacking" is doing to marketing. Astroturfing the hell out of your service doesn't make you a hacker. It makes you an unsophisticated asshole.
    - digbyloftus 11y ago
      I mean, if all you do for a living is email spam then I wouldn't call that hacking, but seeing as this is a programming based startup and the marketing attempt required programming skill, I'm imagining this was put together by the same guy/guys that are on other days making new product features. If slapping together a marketing scheme that quickly lets you reach a lot of people without you needing to spend a lot of time optimising or upkeeping it isn't hacking then I just straight up don't understand how the day setting up a new feature and a day setting up the new spam bot are different conceptually. I don't think being an unsophisticated asshole and a hacker are mutually exclusive. Plenty of hacking is unsophisticated and most people are assholes, hacker or otherwise.
  - purpled_haze 11y ago
    > Plenty of what programmers are doing isn't hacking. and plenty of hackers aren't programmers. In Eric Raymond's definition of a hacker http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html it states: "There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker." I mention this because Merriam-Webster's definition on the other hand is somewhat flawed: 1: one that hacks 2: a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity <a tennis hacker> 3: an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer 4: a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system In particular, #3 doesn't mention hackers that aren't experts in programming but might solve problems with hardware/networking. A better #3 definition would be: "A person that computer programming, computer networking, or other technology at an expert level to come up with an innovative solution."
    - digbyloftus 11y ago
      None of his article seems to try to defend his assertions at all so it seems odd to link to it unless this is an appeal to authority. In which case, what makes Eric Raymond an authority on the English language? "-er" is a suffix used to turn verbs in to nouns. A kicker is one who kicks, a stabber is one who stabs, a hacker is one who hacks. While you can certainly create a stereotype of the general "stabber", it shouldn't and doesn't really come in to whether or not a specific act was a stab. If most people who stab others are large, hooded men, but a petite, bow tie in hair girl thrusts a knife through someones torso, she stabbed them. Talking about the incident? She was the stabber. She does it regularly enough for it to be part of her general description as a person? She is a stabber. Now, seeing as two very common definitions of the word hack are: A: to cut or sever with repeated irregular or unskillful blows B : to cut or shape by or as if by crude or ruthless strokes <hacking out new election districts> it seems both odd to take people whose relationship with programming could be describe this way and not call them a hacker, and to call people who program out of a love of freedom and voluntary mutual help hackers. How the hell do freedom and voluntary mutual help relate to the word "hack" at all other than just by correlation? People who made programs in a non-professional environment were and are more likely to hack together their programs. This group of people historically has had some values as mentioned in your article there. But to say those values are now the requirements or the defining characteristics of the term? Ridiculous. Most people who bowl do it for the fun of it. If bowling suddenly becomes a lucrative sport and I take it up simply to chase the money and don't intrinsically care for rolling a ball at some pins, am I not a bowler? One who is partaking in bowling? Who goes to the bowling club to bowl?
- the_watcher 11y ago
  A question in the YC application asks about a time you hacked a system to your advantage, and is explicit that hacking does not solely refer to programming
ThomPete 11y ago
Growth hacking as I understand it means doing non-obvious ways to grow your company. I.e. finding ways to spread that aren't following the normal user acquisition channels.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Sadly, the easiest way to do something non-obvious to grow your company is to do something unethical. Like using "user acquisition channels" that are not meant for user acquisition.
ekianjo 11y ago
> cheaply creates new things, as in "it's hacked together" In other words it's marketing without much resources. Nothing much to do with hacking. When you repair your car with a used part or a part from a different model, are you "hacking your car" ?　 This word is getting way too much abuse, soon it won't mean anything anymore.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > When you repair your car with a used part or a part from a different model, are you "hacking your car" ? If you follow a popular on-line tutorial for that, then not really. But if you find yourself with a broken car, and you figure out yourself that you can fix it by duct-taping some otherwise unrelated component into it, and the resulting solution somehow works better than original, then yes. Hacking is about playful cleverness.
- digbyloftus 11y ago
  If you fix your car by slapping together a bunch of junk then yes you most certainly have just "hacked it together". I don't see how you can call this abuse, crudely modifying and creating things is the original and primary use of the term. If anything it's the "high quality, open source programming in pursuit of interesting problems" crowd that's butchering it. "It's just something I hacked together" has never meant "I carefully crafted the shit out of it" except for maybe in a dishonest humblebrag sort of way.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I disagree. "Growth hacking" refers to "hacking" as in "the thing programmers do that make them oh so important in the XXI century". It's marketers doing collective "me too", they want to bask in the same glory, capture some of that positive halo that was created by IT companies that diluted the meaning of word "hacker". The word that itself doesn't mean much anymore within the commercial world.

Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
Not really. The programming part of "growth hacking" is, well, a part of it, but the general definition of the term is much closer to "using creativity and analytical thinking/practices to market a product/service." It's kind of glorified word of mouth marketing, but with landing pages and A/B tests. [All that said, as a startup growth guy, I pretty much detest the term.]
digbyloftus 11y ago
Plenty of what programmers are doing isn't hacking. A team of top cs men making some process in google 0.1% more efficient doesn't seem very hacky even if it results in oodles of profit. What's more is this type of marketing is very much the result of hacker programming. Scraping social media profiles and then automatically email spamming the recipients is a system that was programmed, they aren't manually doing it (I hope!).
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Of course! Most programming, and especially most professional programming, has nothing to do with hacking. It's a different culture. But it's also totally different culture to what "growth hacking" is doing to marketing. Astroturfing the hell out of your service doesn't make you a hacker. It makes you an unsophisticated asshole.
  - digbyloftus 11y ago
    I mean, if all you do for a living is email spam then I wouldn't call that hacking, but seeing as this is a programming based startup and the marketing attempt required programming skill, I'm imagining this was put together by the same guy/guys that are on other days making new product features. If slapping together a marketing scheme that quickly lets you reach a lot of people without you needing to spend a lot of time optimising or upkeeping it isn't hacking then I just straight up don't understand how the day setting up a new feature and a day setting up the new spam bot are different conceptually. I don't think being an unsophisticated asshole and a hacker are mutually exclusive. Plenty of hacking is unsophisticated and most people are assholes, hacker or otherwise.
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  > Plenty of what programmers are doing isn't hacking. and plenty of hackers aren't programmers. In Eric Raymond's definition of a hacker http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html it states: "There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker." I mention this because Merriam-Webster's definition on the other hand is somewhat flawed: 1: one that hacks 2: a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity <a tennis hacker> 3: an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer 4: a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system In particular, #3 doesn't mention hackers that aren't experts in programming but might solve problems with hardware/networking. A better #3 definition would be: "A person that computer programming, computer networking, or other technology at an expert level to come up with an innovative solution."
  - digbyloftus 11y ago
    None of his article seems to try to defend his assertions at all so it seems odd to link to it unless this is an appeal to authority. In which case, what makes Eric Raymond an authority on the English language? "-er" is a suffix used to turn verbs in to nouns. A kicker is one who kicks, a stabber is one who stabs, a hacker is one who hacks. While you can certainly create a stereotype of the general "stabber", it shouldn't and doesn't really come in to whether or not a specific act was a stab. If most people who stab others are large, hooded men, but a petite, bow tie in hair girl thrusts a knife through someones torso, she stabbed them. Talking about the incident? She was the stabber. She does it regularly enough for it to be part of her general description as a person? She is a stabber. Now, seeing as two very common definitions of the word hack are: A: to cut or sever with repeated irregular or unskillful blows B : to cut or shape by or as if by crude or ruthless strokes <hacking out new election districts> it seems both odd to take people whose relationship with programming could be describe this way and not call them a hacker, and to call people who program out of a love of freedom and voluntary mutual help hackers. How the hell do freedom and voluntary mutual help relate to the word "hack" at all other than just by correlation? People who made programs in a non-professional environment were and are more likely to hack together their programs. This group of people historically has had some values as mentioned in your article there. But to say those values are now the requirements or the defining characteristics of the term? Ridiculous. Most people who bowl do it for the fun of it. If bowling suddenly becomes a lucrative sport and I take it up simply to chase the money and don't intrinsically care for rolling a ball at some pins, am I not a bowler? One who is partaking in bowling? Who goes to the bowling club to bowl?
the_watcher 11y ago
A question in the YC application asks about a time you hacked a system to your advantage, and is explicit that hacking does not solely refer to programming

ThomPete 11y ago

Growth hacking as I understand it means doing non-obvious ways to grow your company. I.e. finding ways to spread that aren't following the normal user acquisition channels.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Sadly, the easiest way to do something non-obvious to grow your company is to do something unethical. Like using "user acquisition channels" that are not meant for user acquisition.

ekianjo 11y ago

> cheaply creates new things, as in "it's hacked together" In other words it's marketing without much resources. Nothing much to do with hacking. When you repair your car with a used part or a part from a different model, are you "hacking your car" ?　 This word is getting way too much abuse, soon it won't mean anything anymore.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> When you repair your car with a used part or a part from a different model, are you "hacking your car" ? If you follow a popular on-line tutorial for that, then not really. But if you find yourself with a broken car, and you figure out yourself that you can fix it by duct-taping some otherwise unrelated component into it, and the resulting solution somehow works better than original, then yes. Hacking is about playful cleverness.
digbyloftus 11y ago
If you fix your car by slapping together a bunch of junk then yes you most certainly have just "hacked it together". I don't see how you can call this abuse, crudely modifying and creating things is the original and primary use of the term. If anything it's the "high quality, open source programming in pursuit of interesting problems" crowd that's butchering it. "It's just something I hacked together" has never meant "I carefully crafted the shit out of it" except for maybe in a dishonest humblebrag sort of way.