From the post:

The basic premise is that you may never see hockey stick user growth, but with SaaS it might not matter. If your customers are saying you have something and you have some growth, then over time (possibly a long and challenging time), the math of SaaS usually works out in your favor.

And one of the big takeaways:

...[make] sure that when someone tries or buys your product, they have a ‘wow’ experience, they get quick to an understanding and an outcome that blows them away.

SaaS is wonderful because you know exactly how many people find your product useful enough to pay for at any given moment. It has the sincerest form of feedback.

So yeah, hooking a new customer with wow is important. 

Put another way: Being excellent IS a growth hack. 

I really liked this nugget at the tail end of the talk, buried in the Q&A section:

You don’t own the gas pedal on word of mouth. The best gas pedal is a great experience.

There are a few exceptions, like dropbox and skype, but for the most part, it is super difficult to accelerate word of mouth promotion.

I agree that word of mouth cannot help nearly as much as, say, keyword advertising. 

But for that to be worth the money, the product has to be good.