Software startup education: gamifying growth hacking

TL;DR

This paper introduces two board games designed to teach growth hacking concepts to students, aiming to bridge the gap between startup practitioner practices and academic education.

Contribution

It presents an innovative educational approach by gamifying growth hacking to enhance learning and engagement in academic settings.

Findings

Games effectively introduce growth hacking concepts

Students show increased engagement and understanding

Potential for broader adoption in startup education

Abstract

Startups seek to create highly scalable business models. For startups, growth is thus vital. Growth hacking is a marketing strategy advocated by various startup practitioner experts. It focuses on using low cost practices while utilizing existing platforms in creative ways to gain more users for the service. Though topics related to growth hacking such as marketing on a general level have been extensively studied in the past, growth hacking as a practitioner-born topic has not seen much interesting among the academia. To both spark interest in growth hacking, and to facilitate teaching growth hacking in the academia, we present two board games intended to serve as an engaging introduction to growth hacking for students.