[t0]

>Only a specific type of product or business or piece of content will go viral—it not only has to be worth spreading, it has to provoke a desire in people to spread it.

How can you make sure of this when you're in the early stages of an idea? There needs to be a cheatsheet or something.

I've found that entire industries don't really work with growth hacking. B2B or specialized software, for instance. How can someone refer a friend when they probably don't even know anyone with a need for your product/service?

[EGreg]

There's a science to it

I wrote this back in 2008: http://luckyapps.com/blog/?p=12

And this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6324442

[ryanholiday]

I would disagree. The general principles for growth hacking always apply--far better than traditional marketing techniques do anyway. Growth hacking is, at its core, the art of building marketing into the product itself and then pulling in the initial customers/clients to kickstart that process.

But to go to your point PG has a funny line about cofounders. If you can't get a cofounder for your startup your idea will never blow up--because you couldn't even get one other person to agree to work on it with you for free