I wonder why "growth hacking" is so in vogue. It might be that more people know how to build products well, so getting distribution is more of an issue. It might be that more companies have taken a rigorous approach to things, shining as examples for the others. It might be that the avenues for growth are more democratized than ever, so instead of having a good rolodex for PR or BD, anyone can hack it.
Either way, it is a good thing and I look forward to reading some interesting stuff on this blog. I've found the most interesting stories are told privately, but hopefully Danielle can divulge more about Twilio & Referly internals because she left the former and runs the latter.
Maybe Peter Thiel's lecture on distribution has gotten the ball rolling. (To those of you who missed it: http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels...) The reason I say this is that just a month ago I wrote a blog post about how inefficiency is an indicator of marketing opportunity, and his lecture was the inspiration.
I suspect we're all looking at the same startup reading material, and it's shaping our thoughts similarly.
I think there is some fascinating skill set collision happening. Marketers are saying, "oh I can learn to code - its not actually that hard". Developers are saying, "oh I can learn to do marketing - its not actually that hard". Arguing whether one is harder than the other would be missing the point, its the cross-disciplinary magic that is happening that I want to capture. I think we had a lot of that at Twilio, and I'm trying for even more of it at Referly, and I want to encourage this to continue in other people's companies.
Either way, it is a good thing and I look forward to reading some interesting stuff on this blog. I've found the most interesting stories are told privately, but hopefully Danielle can divulge more about Twilio & Referly internals because she left the former and runs the latter.