I'm not trying to be an asshole, but its hard to explain things to people who have made up their mind. I'm a business development consultant (growth hacking is one of the things I do), so I know what it is and what isn't. Its not your definition, or the definitions posted in the links you posted. Real growth hacking is simply doing whatever you can to grow the business. Not customer development, but the business itself. As an example, I've had to negotiate with suppliers in order to hack the growth of some company.

Customer interviews are pretty much worthless. People speak louder with their actions. That is why A/B testing is crucial to growth (hacking or not).

Anyhow, don't buy into the hype. Most of the growth hackers out there are social media gurus who discovered a new way to label themselves.

There is a limit for replying in HN? I can't continue to reply to the last response. But I will do it here anyway.

I didn't make my mind. That's why I wanted you to explain it. And I quite agree that growth hacking is very different from customer development. What I am saying, and you apparently is disagreeing, is that you first do customer development and only after product/market fit you do growth hacking. I am now only doing customer development and I think is not a good thing to already start growth hacking.

I am not "buying into the hype", on the contrary, I am postponing the growth hacking for me. I think you assume too much of what I think. But it is ok if we have two different concepts about what growth hacking is - even though I can't say i KNOW what it is.

Allow me to apologize. I'm constantly getting bamboozled by wanna by founders looking for an easy paycheck that it makes me more negative than usual. Why don't you shoot me an email and we can talk about whatever. Cool?