“The difference between disrupt and being disrupted is the number of executed
ideas.” – Hendrik Lennarz

Hendrik is founder of the Growth Hacking Academy and the author of the 1st official German Growth Hacking book-publication.

He developed a framework focusing on customer-centric product development,
scaling business models, targeted online-marketing and high-speed execution
Growth teams. This „Growth Hacking process V2.0“ serves today as template for
international startups and corporate as step-by- step tutorial for sustainable Growth.
His working experience is based on 10 years working as CTO/CPO at Trusted
Shops, where he built up the tech- and product stack from scratch up to a team-size
of 50+ people and to a customer base of 25.000 online retailers across Europe.

We met some weeks ago, during the Frankfurt Growth Hacking Bootcamp at CoWork&Play, and we engaged in sharing more content and value to our RMS readers.

Following some previous Small Talk formats, here you can find some FAQ about the topic he masters.

RMS– Can you shortly explain what Growth Hacking is?HL – In a nutshell, Growth Hacking means increasing your experimentation speed like
hell. Nobody can predict 100% valid how users will react to your product, services or
marketing campaigns. Means, you have to try, measure, learn and try, measure,
learn and so on…finding out what really has impact on your Growth figures.

RMS-For a start-up, do you think is it something that can be Key to success?
HL – Startups, small-medium and enterprises lack all in the same disciplines, most of time. They are not able to execute ideas and innovation with high-speed. But today, where technologies and customer needs are changing rapidly, it is key to get market/- and customer feedbacks to new ideas as fast quick as possible. There is no time waiting for finishing long-term projects or long product development processes.
Social networks gives you the chance to launch a new service without having started
building it.

My unique Growth Hacking Process V2.0 gives a holistic overview of the most important tasks and disciplines to reach product-market- fit as soon as possible. That means for our customers, that they can use the Growth Hacking process V2.0 like an individual Growth roadmap, which always helps prioritizing the right tasks to the right time, step-by- step.

RMS – Do you have a great example from here Frankfurt or international?
HL-One really great example is Fastbill  the accounting software from Frankfurt. I´m a happy customer for more than 2,5 years now and sharing thoughts and ideas with the founder team from time to time. What makes them strong in my eyes, they have a really great product with a clear target group and keep on developing new features in strong collaboration with their user base.
Furthermore they seems never be tired in trying out new and optimizing their working
marketing channels. End of April 2018 I will try to help the whole Fastbill team to increase execution speed even more, with an individual Growth Hacking Bootcamp
in their office in Frankfurt…

One more example from Bad Homburg is the physiotherapist „platform“ Liebscher &Bracht. They are incredible successful with their Youtube channel with more than 200.000 subscribers. In summer 2017 we had a Growth Hacking bootcamp with their very motivated marketing team and figured out some real Growth drivers, they have been able to execute within days.

RMS – Regarding the Growth Hacking bootcamps in Frankfurt are you happy with the result? 
HL-Yes, 100% happy. Either startups or the corporates in Frankfurt seems to have accepted that they have to move on now and that one of the most important ToDos in the digitization age is the education of employees.
My self-organized bootcamps in Frankfurt are always sold out and full of curious
people, that can´t wait to start executing afterwards… I love that 😉

RMS – Do you plan to organize a more meetups soon? Maybe in English?
HL- I´m already on the road with this. I started last year in June to organize one Growth Hacking Bootcamp per month in another European city. I´ve been to Cologne (3x),
Düsseldorf (3x), Frankfurt (2x), Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna and
Zürich so far…Next stops for instance will be Amsterdam and Berlin. Checkout all
locations and dates here.
As you can see, I´m following an international approach already, because the demand on learning the Growth Hacking skillset seems to be everywhere in these days.

RMS – Any advice for our readers?
HL- Start executing your ideas immediately. There is always a reason not to start. If you
are an employee, tell your boss that you want to start with Growth Hacking to
leverage Growth for their company. I´m pretty sure he/she will love it and try to give
you what you need to do so. If not, let me know 😉

RMS – Can you recommend some inspirational sources for those who want to know more about the subject or future events that you are organizing?
HL -My team is organizing the Growth Europe Summit – a 100% online conference,
taking part from May 14th until May 18th. More than 25 international Growth Hackers
as Andre Morys, Marcus Tober, Karl Gillis, Kevin Indig, Tom Bachem, Maxime Pico,
Talia Wolf and Nils Kattau and some more will share their best kept Growth Hacks.
Good news for all friends of Rhein-Main- Startups wanting to learn more about
Growth Hacking – via this link ( you can grab your personal conference ticket for FREE ).