Growth school review
Short version: Not worth it. I paid 20k INR ($300) for this course for 1-year access and I’m definitely not happy with how I spent the money.
This review will be relevant for you regardless of which program you are interested to take. Whether it's growth school's brand marketing program, or performance marketing, or workshops, UX design, Linkedin courses, product management, etc.
And if you've been scammed by GS like so many others who self reported their experiences in the comments below, I encourage you to file a complaint with the National Consumer Helpline. It takes 5-10 minutes to do so. https://consumerhelpline.gov.in/
Long version:
I’ve always regretted buying a product from Instagram ads and I pretty much never learn from my mistakes. Growthschool was running a bunch of ads on Instagram. Good creative. Great copy. They retargeted me a bunch of times.
The $300 price tag was a bit on the higher end for me, especially because I had no context if growthschool's course was going to be good or not.
As a marketer, I can immediately tell when we a brand starts to use psychological tactics like these.
Piggybacking off of Sai Ganesh
But Growth School’s biggest lever was Sai Ganesh — the then CMO at Dunzo. And I’m a Dunzo fangirl because of how ridiculously good their marketing is.
So if this was a chance for me to take a look at their behind-the-scenes operations, I was going to take it up.
But, boy was I disappointed.
Sai’s content is good but I don't think he taught brand marketing. Instead, the entire course was more or less about social media marketing sold under a guise of brand marketing. I absolutely don't do social media marketing so idk what I'll do with all this newfound knowledge. 🥲
Growth School’s positioning is also really odd.
Is the brand marketing course by growthschool.io worth the money?
Their price point is incredibly high even when you compare to CXL and Reforge — both of which are industry standards and globally recognized.
Reforge — which is like the Harvard of growth schools costs $1000-$2000 for a yearly access to 22 programs + incredible guest sessions + live lectures + brilliant software + amazing Slack group + recognized brand.
CXL — same like Reforge, except it’s more tactical and entry-level.
I also put together an interactive list of growth marketing and growth product courses if you're looking for an alternative.
Is growth school good, overall?
Their marketing communication is very immature and geared towards people who would need to be motivated to join a course they paid for.
Constant, noisy upsells on Whatsapp. I still don’t understand why they use Whatsapp and publicly share our numbers.
Then they began hosting community led sessions. Anyone from the community could volunteer and take up a course. Great UGC and easy content for them, I’d say. Obviously not what I had in mind when I spent my money. If I wanted community-generated content, I could go on YouTube.
We paid for Sai’s lectures + guest lectures. The guest lectures didn’t happen on time, we weren’t given any visibility on when they would happen and people had to proactively reach out to their team for information.
The worst part? The management.
Look at some other reviews by students at growthschool.io.
GrowthSchool doesn't even know how to use Google Calendars. Of all the live courses, I’ve been a part of, no one scheduled courses worse than Growth School did. It's madness.
The discord community that they heavily promote? It doesn’t exist. The last message is more than a month ago and no one uses it.
Not to mention, Growth school constantly runs surveys for their own benefit, guising it as beneficial to our community. They’ve asked for our LinkedIn and Instagram profiles. Reviews are always incentivized instead of being organic.
People were really mad, and left brutally honest reviews for growthschool publicly in the chat.
Last week I tried to upload a YouTube video because someone mentioned they didn't search on Google for reviews before being scammed by Growth School. Within 2 days, Growth School discovered the video. Downvoted, commented aggressively, and reported the hell out of the video so the algorithm got confused and stopped serving impressions. 🤷♀️
Their software always crashes on me. No transcripts on videos. Slides are shared via a google drive link instead of being embedded in the course material. No templates are shared, so you’ll have to spend a lot of time recreating those.
Growth school fees
At 20k for an 8 week course, they seem to be using the price skimming pricing tactic.
So, what should you do?
It depends. I’d value this course at 5k, at most if it goes through Growth School.
If Sai just took this up on his own, I’d pay 20k because I know he has a full time job and needs to be compensated. At the same time, I would expect smaller cohort sizes and better engagement. Sai is a great teacher and I absolutely 100% recommend him.
You also have a lot more options, like CXL, Reforge, and so many more growth marketing courses!
Fun fact: When I first joined, we had an icebreaker session that was fun and well-led. Then, Growth School got a lot more interest by using the community to market for them.
We had more members join. Then, they set up a second ice breaker session, without telling the first group that we didn’t have to join. Everyone took time off on the weekends and joined the session. 15 minutes into the call we realized this was a repeat call. 🤣
They weren’t even apologetic about wasting our time.
I think they have the most aggressive marketing tactics of all times. Learning from a company like this is so embarrassing that I'll never put on my resume.
So, that’s a wrap. I took 30 minutes to badly write this article in the hope that someone manages to read through this non-proof read version of a brain dump and finds value. I’m also going to get a lot of hate from Growth School’s team for this article but I hope it helps you! If you're hoping to find a good growth marketing course, take a look at this interactive guide of all growth marketing courses I chain-smoked over the years! And if you have any questions, I’m available to chat via Linkedin but please don’t ask for access to the course. I don’t infringe on copyrights.
Was this post helpful?
Yes, it helped me select growth school.
Yes, it helped me reject growth school.
No, this wasn't helpful to me.
Thanks for reading and all the best.
- Khushi