Sean Ellis
The man who named the discipline — then spent a decade explaining that he meant process, not tricks.
- Name
- Sean Ellis
- Coined
- Growth hacking (2010)
- Key work
- Hacking Growth (2017)
- Known for
- The 40% PMF survey
Forms & parts of speech
Who he is, in plain terms
Sean Ellis is the growth practitioner who ran early growth at Dropbox, LogMeIn, and Eventbrite, founded GrowthHackers.com, and co-wrote Hacking Growth (2017) with Morgan Brown. He is best known for two things — naming the discipline, and giving it its most-used survey question.
The key ideas
His July 2010 blog post "Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup" defined the role as "a person whose true north is growth." The Ellis test asks users how they would feel if they could no longer use the product — when 40% or more say "very disappointed," you have a signal of product-market fit worth scaling. And his core process is the high-tempo testing loop: rank ideas, run experiments weekly, keep what moves the North Star metric.
Why he still matters
Every growth team that runs a weekly experiment cadence against a single focus metric is running his playbook. The 40% benchmark remains the most-cited PMF threshold in startup writing, and his insistence that growth work starts AFTER product-market fit is the discipline's most ignored — and most expensive to ignore — rule.
Synonyms & antonyms
Synonyms
Origin & history
Coined "growth hacking" in his July 26, 2010 blog post "Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup" on Startup-Marketing.com, after finding "marketer" mis-described the testing-driven role he kept hiring for. The 40% survey emerged from his interim-growth work across dozens of startups.
Etymology: source.
Usage trends
Search interest for this term over the last five years:
Common questions
- Who is Sean Ellis?
- The growth practitioner who coined the term growth hacking in 2010, ran early growth at Dropbox and LogMeIn, and co-wrote Hacking Growth.
- What is the Sean Ellis test?
- A survey asking users how disappointed they would be without the product — 40%+ saying very disappointed signals product-market fit.
- What did Ellis mean by growth hacking?
- A disciplined, high-tempo experimentation process aimed at one growth metric — not a collection of marketing tricks.
Related tools & calculators
- toolCAC calculator
- toolLTV-to-CAC ratio
Resources & people to follow
- bookHacking Growth — Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown
- referenceGrowthHackers.com — community he founded
- referenceStartup-Marketing.com — the 2010 coining post
Curated, non-competitor resources verified per term.
Related training
Disciplines
Areas of marketing where sean ellis is a core concern: