Home Articles This 17-year-old high school student is Australia’s most sought after growth hacker

This 17-year-old high school student is Australia’s most sought after growth hacker

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Tamir Vigder is a successful, much lauded and internationally sought after, ‘Growth Hacker,’ still attending school at Killara High, NSW. Tamir Vigder’s star is rising in the lofty competitive firmament of the start up world and he has caught the attention of global disrupters and serial starters.

In 2015, employing some impressively creative growth hacking, Tamir received 43,000 hits in 20 hours for start up mortgage disrupter HashChing, which has since converted into $70 million in 2 months of home loan applications requests for the company.

Hashcing CEO Mandeep Sodhi enthuses; “When Tamir joining HashChing he was only 15 after launching his first business. Tamir then helped us scale 70 million dollars in home loan applications in just a few weeks.”

This was done by creating an Australian comedy spoof attached to the trailer of the recently launched Hollywood movie “The Big Short.” As people from all over Australia clicked to watch the trailer, they inadvertently clicked into generated content from HashChing that led them to their website.

Welcome to the brave new world of ‘growth hacking’

Growth hacking is a numbers game whose ‘true north’ is rapid growth during launch/start up phase of a business. Not just numbers acquisition at any cost, growth hacking’s goal is about creating ‘growth funnels’ from which sustainable and long term leads are acquired.

A growth funnel is a vortex of online activity, a tornado of online leads that get funneled down to one, singular website. A growth funnel may be created by using media in a new way and can combine, EDM’s, viral marketing, ambush marketing or social media. Growth hacking combines smarts, technical know how, creativity and a sprinkle of ambush hacking, growth hacking is creating a brave new frontier, offering stellar profits for those clever, connected and fast.

Tamir says, “This is the game and I am addicted to it. I get up at 4am every morning when my clients from San Francisco wake and I hustle to get closer to a win.”

Tamir’s journey began at 15, when he designed a smartphone app. that allowed people from around the world to instantly send and receive messages from friends and family in a very ‘cool’ way and at no cost. Tamir was hustling to get in front of VCs through cold emails and introductions. He asked a school teacher to introduce him to people in the startup ecosystem who might be able to help him make it a commercial reality and this is how he met his mentor, Brad Shofer. Clearly, a prodigiously talented young man, Tamir has been nurtured and mentored by Brad over the past 3 years.

Brad Shofer’s story is the stuff of legend. Originally an accountant by profession and fortunate enough to find himself beginning his career at the start of the personal computer revolution, Brad embarked on a journey to improve accounting software and helped create MYOB. The MYOB business was listed on the ASX in 1999 and quickly rose in value to over a billion dollars.

Brad recognises Tamir’s talent and says; “I believe Australia’s future will be greatly enhanced by having a vibrant startup ecosystem. My way of giving back is to mentor promising young entrepreneurs and to help connect them to others who might be able to help them realise their potential. I could immediately see from that first introduction that Tamir had great potential. Even though he’s still at school, he’s already well on his way and being the hustler he is, he has already developed a tremendous connections and skillset that will enable him to hit the ground running as soon as he finishes school.”

What has Tamir Vigder been up to lately?

Right now, Tamir is busy with his own start up idea and is looking to launch his second start up, in mid-2017. This is a platform that allows busy parents and their children to order healthy and appetizing lunchtime meals (instead of waking up early or providing money for inevitably unhealthy canteen lunch options). A subscription service for healthy lunches that get delivered home, every morning. The subscription service gives parents the option of choosing from organic, gluten free – whatever they want. They get to check the lunchtime meal, know that is healthy substantial then place it in the school bag.

Tamir has already turned down $500,000 seed capital for this venture, preferring to launch the concept in the home of start-ups, in San Francisco next year. Tamir is optimistic about the San Francisco launch. “2016 was my warm up. I decided to focus on helping startups from Silicon Valley scale their sales. I’m planning to move to San Francisco next year to launch my business because I think there is a larger pool of talented employees and a higher chance to differentiate to other start ups.”