Startups operate under conditions of extreme uncertainty, limited resources, intense competition, and constant pressure to achieve rapid growth. Unlike established corporations with large marketing budgets, successful startups often rely on creativity, experimentation, data-driven decision-making, customer psychology, and scalable systems to acquire users and expand efficiently. This disciplined approach to rapid and sustainable growth has become known as growth hacking—not as a collection of shortcuts, but as a strategic methodology that combines marketing, product development, analytics, behavioral science, and innovation.
Growth Hacking for Startups is a practical, executive-oriented course designed to equip Junior MBA students with the mindset and frameworks used by high-growth companies to identify opportunities, accelerate customer acquisition, improve retention, optimize conversion, and create scalable business models. Rather than emphasizing isolated marketing tactics or temporary trends, the course focuses on building repeatable growth systems grounded in experimentation, customer insight, and long-term value creation.
Students will explore growth strategy, product-market fit, customer psychology, viral marketing, growth loops, experimentation frameworks, digital acquisition channels, data analytics, artificial intelligence, referral systems, customer retention, monetization, and scaling operations. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on executive thinking and sustainable business growth, preparing future leaders to build organizations capable of continuous innovation and market expansion.
Course Objectives
By the conclusion of this course, students will be able to:
• Understand growth hacking as a strategic business discipline rather than a marketing tactic.
• Develop scalable customer acquisition and retention strategies.
• Analyze customer behavior to identify growth opportunities.
• Apply experimentation frameworks to improve business performance.
• Understand the relationship between product design and organic growth.
• Evaluate digital channels and growth systems using meaningful business metrics.
• Integrate behavioral psychology into customer acquisition and engagement strategies.
• Build sustainable growth engines that compound over time.
• Understand ethical considerations associated with rapid growth strategies.
• Apply growth principles to entrepreneurship, innovation, and executive leadership.
