8 OF THE BEST STARTUP GROWTH-HACK TRICKS

Some are ethical, while others are not, but here are the startups that have achieved success using growth-hack marketing and how they did it... 

Puma paid footballer Pele $120,000 to tie his shoes before the 1970 World Cup start. The cameras concentrated on Pele and his Pumas, as expected, and helped people know the world's best player wore a Puma.

PayPal developed a bot that listed low-priced items on eBay and then ordered and paid for them with PayPal, fooling eBay into thinking people preferred this payment method. Naturally, eBay made Paypal their primary payment source. 

Uber's early staff ordered over 5,000 taxis on rival applications and then canceled them to provoke financial problems for their competitors.

Tinder generated thousands of fake accounts of goodly people to attract potential single people seeking love. For at least a year, they "accidentally" matched users.

Salesforce paid phony protestors to disrupt its main competitor's conferences. After that, the founder commandeered all taxis at the event and held a 45-minute presentation of his product.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sought a mechanism to acquire one book from a wholesaler when the minimum order was ten. He discovered a loophole and purchased one book before ordering nine books on lichens. None of the wholesalers held this book, so the wholesaler would send the one book he ordered along with an apology for the others. He expanded this across Amazon's client base.

Air BnB scanned Craigslist emails for anyone renting a space and prompted them to use their service instead. They also created a one-click interface from Craigslist to list immediately on Air BnB. 

Reddit began by generating lots of fake accounts and forcing them to engage with one another. This attracted in actual users, demonstrating the true method of faking it until you make it! This also allowed Reddit to regulate the tone of voice on their platform, which is still present today.