Who coined the term “growth hacking” in 2010?

Sean Ellis coined the term “growth hacking” in 2010.

Ellis used the phrase while describing a different approach to startup hiring and marketing. Rather than looking for a traditional marketer focused mainly on channels such as advertising or public relations, he wanted someone whose central objective was growth and who would experiment across the entire customer funnel.

The expression spread through startup communities because it captured the urgency of companies seeking rapid user acquisition with limited budgets. Growth hacking later became associated with analytics, product experiments, referrals, onboarding improvements, and other tactics intended to increase measurable growth.

The term is sometimes used as a synonym for any clever marketing trick, but its original idea was broader: growth should be a primary responsibility, and teams should test the complete path from attracting users to retaining them. Ellis later founded GrowthHackers, a community and software business focused on experimentation.