Sean Ellis coined the term "Growth Hacking" and is considered the founder of the worldwide Growth Hacking movement. He developed and applied Growth Hacking in the early days at companies like Dropbox, Eventbrite, LogMeIn, Uproar, and Lookout, which led to breakout growth for these companies (all went on to exceed billion dollar valuations). When Dropbox reached a $1B revenue run rate, it achieved this milestone faster than any SaaS startup before it.
Sean is also co-author of "Hacking Growth", which has been translated into 16 languages.
Sean is an experienced entrepreneur. He founded Qualaroo (a customer insight company with clients such as Uber, Intuit, Starbucks, Amazon) and served as CEO until its acquisition by a private equity firm. He also founded and led GrowthHackers.com until its 2018 acquisition.
Today Sean helps companies worldwide accelerate customer and revenue growth through workshops, keynote presentations, select advising roles and occasional Interim VP growth roles. His most recent Interim VP Growth role was with Bounce (2022 - 2023), which is now one of the fastest growing consumer network-effect startups in the world.
When Sean is not growing startups he teaches growth at leading business schools such as Harvard, Penn, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Oxford, CKGSB (Beijing), INSEAD (France), and through the GoPractice Immersive Simulator Program. Sean also hosts The Breakout Growth Podcast, where he and co-host Ethan Garr interview business and growth leaders to understand all facets of their breakout growth engines.
Sean's work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, Fast Company, Inc.com, TechCrunch and on MSNBC.
Sean is also co-author of "Hacking Growth", which has been translated into 16 languages.
Sean is an experienced entrepreneur. He founded Qualaroo (a customer insight company with clients such as Uber, Intuit, Starbucks, Amazon) and served as CEO until its acquisition by a private equity firm. He also founded and led GrowthHackers.com until its 2018 acquisition.
Today Sean helps companies worldwide accelerate customer and revenue growth through workshops, keynote presentations, select advising roles and occasional Interim VP growth roles. His most recent Interim VP Growth role was with Bounce (2022 - 2023), which is now one of the fastest growing consumer network-effect startups in the world.
When Sean is not growing startups he teaches growth at leading business schools such as Harvard, Penn, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Oxford, CKGSB (Beijing), INSEAD (France), and through the GoPractice Immersive Simulator Program. Sean also hosts The Breakout Growth Podcast, where he and co-host Ethan Garr interview business and growth leaders to understand all facets of their breakout growth engines.
Sean's work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, Fast Company, Inc.com, TechCrunch and on MSNBC.