#2: If you can’t distinguish the hacks from the hackers

Stan Chudnovsky, VP of Growth for Paypal (until Facebook claimed him for the dark side in December) spells out this very problem with the onslaught of self-proclaimed growth hackers quite candidly:

“In many cases, growth hackers are people looking for little tricks here and there or people just looking for a niche they can apply themselves to, like data scientists were a year ago.” ~Stan Chudnovsky

Consider this: growth hackers are quite similar to Paul Graham’s analogy comparing startups to actors (a must-read for anyone involved in startups). Anyone can decide to be an actor, with no guarantee they’ll be a successful actor. Growth hackers are very similar.

Growth Hackers Are Measured By Past Success

Some startups have begun recruiting for the role as early as their founding team, all wanting their own success story. But the role was popularized by people who could already prove their methods because of their past success “hacking” quantifiable growth. This leads us to a conclusion that growth hackers themselves sometimes forget:

Untested growth strategies are not valid ‘hacks’.

The statement above should be a guiding principle that drives this entire way of thinking about growth strategies. Growth hackers traditionally claim to be familiar with a cross-section of product planning, development and marketing skills. All of these disciplines thrive on the analysis of & interaction with data. Claiming that a tactic is a ‘hack’ before testing it with quantifiable results is a red flag of inexperience. This would also suggest that growth hackers without proof of past growth success are the much nerdier counterpart to actors before their breakout role.

Entry-level growth employees may often have all of the necessary product, marketing & technical skills to make an excellent growth hacker. Asking the entrepreneurs they work with to simply believe them—without a record of success—is still a bad start to the relationship and contradicts the very nature of growth hacking.

You don’t need an AirBnB or Dropbox-level growth story of your own to be a growth hacker—but you do need to be honest about the type of growth you’ve proven yourself capable of so far. If you’re a rookie, say so—I enjoyed watching Aaron Upright’s journey through the growth hacking communities that he later shared as a great read for would-be growth growth hackers:

When talking to founders, I never compare myself to more famous growth hacks & their hackers-it’d be completely ridiculous, my successes simply haven’t been at high-publicity growth giants like PayPal, Facebook, or Twitter. Instead, I rely on my own quantifiable success stories of user growth, or my track record with startups that have met their exit goals through acquisition or established early-stage traction.