In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with positioning expert, April Dunford, author of the best-selling books, “Obviously Awesome” and “Sales Pitch.”   April had a successful career as a marketing and operations executive at companies including IBM and Nortel and it was in these roles that she developed her passion and approach to building effective positioning. Today she shares this passion and her knowledge as a consultant, speaker, and writer with companies around the world.    In “Sales Pitch”, April lays out her hypothesis that marketers have been taught storytelling that doesn’t work for sales. She says 60% of deals that are started are never finished so it’s often indecisiveness and the status quo that sales teams must work to overcome. Even if you are not focused on sales, you will find a lot of value in this discussion.   Messaging and positioning are fundamental to growth and what we get to in this conversation is a deeper look into how businesses can differentiate themselves, help their audiences discover value, and ultimately break through the noise.   What makes this especially fun and useful is that April isn’t afraid to take contrary and non-obvious positions. As an example, she doesn’t like the concept of Product/Market Fit, and since we do, it made for some good back-and-forth!   So jump into this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast as we learn more about the art of effective positioning with April Dunford.   And thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast. Don’t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * April's story from executive to “Positioning is my jam!”(06:46) * The problem with most sales pitches (09:44) * Why it matters that 60% of started deals are never finished (22:04) * Building and validating your sales Pitch (27:02) * Positioning isn’t static; how to keep it fresh (52:44) And much, much, more . . . 

If you want to know just how awesome AllTrails is, just ask Apple! Out of over 2 million apps in the App Store, AllTrails is one of just three finalists waiting to hear if they have been selected as Apple’s 2023 App of the Year. So, of course, we are delighted to welcome back to the podcast, Ron Schneidermann, AllTrails’s CEO.    Ron first joined Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr for a chat back in early 2022. At the time, the company was riding Covid-driven enthusiasm for socially distanced activities and had recently raised $150 million in private equity funding. Now, almost two years later, we wanted to hear how it has been going for this hyper-growth app that helps people have fun exploring the outdoors.   After the pandemic, Ron and his team were determined to continue accelerating growth and that meant pushing in new directions while at the same time building on what was already working well. To keep moving forward, they made big bets on international expansion, invested in new areas like e-commerce, and kept the focus on improving mindset and execution. And the growth has continued.    “Momentum begets momentum,” says Ron, and while the flywheel has accelerated and many of the bets have worked out, it hasn’t all been easy. In this conversation, Ron shares not just the wins, but the struggles and challenges that come hand-in-hand with managing rocketship growth.    There is a lot to this episode. From valuable learnings when looking to expand across borders to a really important discussion on leadership and vulnerability. And you will find out what it means when Ron says at AllTrails “Authenticity is our currency.”AllTrails.  So jump into this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast. And thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast. Don’t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * Obsessing on growth, not just maintaining the status quo (08:43) * “Much harder than we expected;” pushing for international growth (14:40) * Modern growth structure. Is “head of growth” obsolete? (35:43) * Growth as a role of influence, not ownership (36:36) * People challenges and hypergrowth; avoiding toxcity (44:55) * Authenticity as a personal core value (52:16) And much, much, more . . .

According to Todd Olson, Pendo’s founder and CEO, ‘the market isn’t just receptive to AI, it’s demanding it!’  So in this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr dive deep with Todd, to better understand what this and other changes in the world of product, marketing, and growth will mean for businesses.   Pendo helps companies accelerate how they build and launch products that customers actually want by combining the power of analytics tools with messaging and customer experience features. For Product-Led Growth companies, this can be quite powerful as it helps teams intelligently use analytics to understand and drive specific valuable behaviors.    In this spirited and fun conversation, we get a sense of Todd’s approach and philosophy, and how that has helped drive Pendo’s international growth over the past 10 years.  From the outset, the company was focused on improving customer experiences in software, but in the past few years, they have been able to accelerate that mission by investing in machine learning.   Todd says it’s really important to understand that the “mindset drives the tech,” not the other way around, and he’s built a culture to support that. Just as with our last podcast episode with the VP of EMEA from Moloco, Todd is laser-focused on building enthusiasm around outcomes from technology, not on the technology itself.   He says teams have a tendency to celebrate when they ship software, but really the celebration should start when the desired outcome is achieved. It’s this kind of candid and thoughtful growt-minded thinking that made for a great discussion and undoubtedly has been foundational to Pendo’s success thus far.   So jump in! And thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast. Don’t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * Building Pendo with a mission to improve experiences in software (06:10) * Speed of innovation is important, but we have to balance change (13:22) * What AI means for businesses and how to embrace it (18:14) * Marketing and product’s relationship to data has changed at a different pace (22:00) * In the future, every PM is thinking about growth (37:31) * Smarter and more efficient: the impact of a down economy (47:58) And much, much, more . . .

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat AI and growth with Ben Jeger, Moloco’s Vice President of EMEA. Moloco’s machine learning-based advertising solutions help marketers take advantage of advertising opportunities outside of the “walled gardens” of Google, Meta, and Amazon.   In the past year, AI has taken on a life of its own for good reason, but we wanted to dig beneath the hype cycle to understand how this technology will really impact the world of growth. With Ben, we got just that.   Moloco hasn’t changed its messaging to capitalize on the AI whirlwind, even though it’s fair to say they are an AI company.  They have simply continued their relentless focus on delivering customer outcomes.  In performance marketing, that is the only thing that matters, and as Ben says, “Fancy words don’t get us there.”   So in this discussion, we learn how these tools level the playing field for marketers and why they are so valuable for augmenting human capabilities. In addition, we get a picture of why Moloco has grown 5x in the past two years to a $2+ billion valuation, and how Ben is approaching his task of expanding the business throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.   Thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast, and don’t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * Moloco’s 10-year, overnight success story (07:50) * Defining AI and Machine Learning (10:58) * In performance marketing, sustainability is about long-term outcomes (14:41) * “It’s not a lie to say we are an AI company,” but what matters is outcomes (17:51) * Creating value outside of the “walled gardens” (27:43) * Growing Moloco beyond gaming (33:52) And much, much, more . . . 

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Jonas Klink, Thrive Market’s Vice President of Product Management & Design. Thrive Market is a subscription-based online grocery delivery service that aims to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone.     And that is a perfect fit for Jonas, who has over 15 years of experience in eCommerce working at companies like eBay, Walmart, and WeightWatchers. As he thought about the next chapter in his career, Jonas wanted to find a mission-driven company where he could make a difference, and Thrive is proving to be the right place for him to have that impact.   So in this conversation, we dig deep into Jonas’ growth approach and his passion for building organizational learning velocity. Scientific rigor is at the heart of his process, but speed is key. He explains that to keep growth flowing, tests must focus on answering hypotheses, but they cannot get bogged down by everything else needed for broad distribution.    If you have ever struggled to manage design in a high-tempo testing environment you will particularly enjoy this conversation. Jonas and his team have built a culture where UX and product are deeply connected so that design can flow into experimentation without encumbering it.   And that is just the beginning. From his use of the RICE prioritization framework to building alignment around a North Star Metric, Jonas is building the culture of experimentation most of us strive for as we look to accelerate growth.   So join us as we dive in with Jonas Klink and find out what’s driving breakout growth success at Thrive Market.        We discussed: * Sustainability, healthy living, and 18 million orders: (05:11)   * Bringing experience from Walmart, eBay, and Jet.com to Thrive Market  : (10:08)   * Organizing for rapid experimentation and great design: (14:54)   * Building a growth language where learnings replace failures: (30:58)   * The importance of lightweight process for teams: (39:11) And much, much, more . . . 

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Arjun Mahadevan, Co-Founder and CEO of doola, a launchpad for your first or next business. Most founders want to spend their time finding Product/Market Fit, but unfortunately, the work of just running a business itself can often get in the way.    Doola looks to help founders remove these distractions by offering a “business-in-a-box” solution.  The company helps you form your LLC, then manage everything from bookkeeping and banking, to taxes and compliance.    Other companies, like LegalZoom, offer business formation services, and certainly, lawyers and accountants can help with these processes too. But doola’s approach is about customer success and building a community where founders can find the support they need.  Arjun says it’s both “high tech and high touch”. Arjun says doola has helped founders in 175 countries form their LLCs in the US, and his team is all about finding the highest-leverage opportunities that will result in a great product suite and community for the business owners they serve.   So, if you are looking for some great inspiration and insights into how to optimize for sustainable growth, check out this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast with Arjun Mahadevan, Co-Founder and CEO of doola.       We discussed:   * Business-in-a-Box; the doola backstory: (06:04)   * Meeting the needs of Covid-driven eCommerce acceleration: (15:45)   * Building for retention beyond LLC formation: (25:52)   * Just-in-time user acquisition: (30:38)   * White labeling doula via API: (34:55) And much, much, more . . .

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Brendan Candon, Co-Founder and CEO of SidelineSwap, an online marketplace for sporting goods.   “Recommerce” is becoming increasingly popular. Reusing, reselling, and recycling used items creates value for buyers and sellers, and the process of trading in and trading up can actually be kind of fun. Brendan and his team have leaned into this by making it easy for athletes, parents, and coaches to find new homes for gear that might otherwise languish in their closets or end up in landfills.   Recently Brendan and his co-founders raised money through DSG Ventures (Dick’s Sporting Goods’ venture fund), and we learn how this strategic partnership has unlocked a unique growth channel. By bringing used gear to Sideline Swap Trade-in events, held at Dick’s Sporting Goods stores across the US, consumers can get paid instantly with gift cards, which they can then use to buy new gear in the store.   Not only does this build inventory for the online marketplace, but it also introduces new audiences to the platform. It’s this kind of thinking that has helped SidelineSwap compete and grow in a world dominated by large incumbents like Craigslist and eBay.   Brendan tells the story from the very beginning when the idea was born after he bought used lacrosse gear from a friend. He describes the constant work to learn and grow, and the grind and discipline it has taken to build the business into a top-100 marketplace according to Andreessen Horowitz.    So jump into this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast and learn about the amazing growth journey of SidelineSwap.      We discussed:   * The SidelineSwap backstory: from personal pain point to top-100 marketplace (08:00)     * Focusing on one sport first to win the hard side (11:38)     * Trade-in events, a unique channel to power growth (27:03)     * New opportunities and a win-win with DSG Ventures’ investment (35:04)     *Re-commerce and the power of “being where the customers are” (45:53) And much, much, more . . .

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr are joined by Hugo Pereira as he describes the experience of bringing the lessons of leading a hyper-growth rocketship into his new role as a startup founder.    When Hugo first appeared on the podcast in 2020 he was Chief Growth Officer of EVBox, a manufacturer of electric vehicle charging stations. The market was exploding, and Hugo had discovered that the more he and his team leaned into customer advocacy as a mechanism for leading their industry, the more success they could drive.   Listen to the original interview here: apple.co/3xmXoT1   After seven years, Hugo decided it was time for a change. While taking a sabbatical with his family, the idea for Ritmoo, a team communications and engagement platform, was born. And today, Hugo is on his way and applying the lessons from his EVBox days to building something unique and valuable.   So, in this conversation, we look to understand how Hugo approaches his search for product/market fit, and how his experience informs his thinking and decision-making.  We also ask how his passion for customer advocacy can serve him in this next chapter of his career.    We even discuss how some of his EVBox experiences may have to be unlearned or rethought as he faces new challenges in a very different startup environment.   Hugo’s experience and track record are powerful tools to guide his next chapter, but the reality is that there are no guarantees for new businesses. So this is an honest conversation about taking a big shot but giving yourself the best odds using what you have learned as your compass.       We discussed: * From Hypergrowth to starting anew: Hugo’s Journey (05:01)     * Bringing learnings from growth stages into a startup (10:51)     * Putting the focus on customers, not competition (12:21)     * Too many choices and other founder challenges (19:48)     * Principles for building a new tool for businesses (38:33)   And much, much, more . . .  The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr catch up with Henry Schuck, CEO & Founder of ZoomInfo. We first spoke with Henry after his company’s 2020 IPO. So in this conversation, we wanted to see what has changed for him and his team over the last few years.   What we found is a much larger company, expanding into new areas, and taking on increasingly greater challenges. And for Henry, that has meant changes in how he leads his now 4000+ person team (it was about 1100 when we first spoke). But, the most important takeaways from this discussion may not be in what has changed, but rather in what has stayed the same.   As Henry recounts the stories of how his company took on the challenge of adding a talent acquisition service, or how his go-to-market insights team helped surface opportunities for growth, what is clear is that the same principled approach that brought ZoomInfo to its IPO continues today.  That approach is very much based on data, experimentation, and an unstoppable desire to inspire curiosity across the organization.   Even though ZoomInfo is now a very large business, this is a conversation for businesses of all sizes and types. The importance of focus, the value of surfacing insights through data, and planning strategy in an organized way are all topics we discuss that apply to startups and scale-ups alike.   Before you jump in, learn more about SAP's cloud solutions for mid-size enterprises at sap.com/sme. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched-together solutions to manage business finances, operations, HR, suppliers, and customer relationships, leverage the flexibility of SAP's cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.   Achieve breakout growth success now with SAP at bit.ly/3UUPDxJ   Thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast, and don’t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * ZoomInfo today: Expansion and Growth post-IPO (08:15) * Changing responsibilities as the head of a public company (12:56) * The importance of communications as companies scale (15:18) * How the best-run companies plan strategy (16:29) * “Docusigns per day” as an aligning KPI (17:55) * Making a lot of big bets and maintaining focus (37:32) * Leveraging a valuable data asset (38:14) And much, much, more . . .

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr speak with GS Jha, who serves as both Global Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at Accuray, a manufacturer of radiotherapy technologies.   When you hear GS’s story it’s evident where his passion for life sciences comes from. As a child growing up in India, GS saw firsthand the impacts of poor access to medicine on his community.    And while he thought that his contributions to world health might be as a doctor, ultimately his path led to a place where infrastructure and business converged. That intersection is a key reason why GS feels he can be a catalyst for growth at Accuray in his role as CIO.   From GS’s perspective, success depends on aligning the systems he manages with the goals of both the company and the individuals who drive it forward. And what connects these things together is creating value for customers.    So we think you will enjoy this discussion as you hear why even as CIO, GS sees engaging with oncologists directly as an important part of his role, and why everything from his hiring approach to his considerations for systems and infrastructure is informed by a larger mission to save lives.    Before you jump in, learn more about SAP's cloud solutions for mid-size enterprises at sap.com/sme. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched-together solutions to manage business finances, operations, HR, suppliers, and customer relationships, leverage the flexibility of SAP's cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.   Achieve breakout growth success now with SAP at bit.ly/3UUPDxJ   Thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast, and don’t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * On a mission to deliver lifesaving technologies (04:21) * CIO vs. CTO, what are the differences (07:33) * How IT functions to unlock a business’ potential (11:31) * The challenges and importance of driving alignment (27:19) * Hiring technology people to drive growth (33:11) * Learning from customers, directly (33:56) And much, much, more . . .

Product-Led Growth is all the rage, but it wasn’t working   Today, things are looking good for Chameleon and its CEO, Pulkit Agrawal. Since we recorded this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast with him, Chameleon announced a successful Series A. But in 2015 the company was heading towards the startup scrap heap.   That’s where co-hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr pick up this conversation. Pulkit and his co-founders had built a product that offered simple tools to personalize customer experiences with product tours and tooltips. They were following the Product-Led playbook that was driving success for other startups in similar categories all around them.    The problem was they were running out of money. The business was not taking off even with an easy-to-use self-serve interface and low prices.      Pivoting to a Sales-Led Go-to-Market Strategy    If you listened to our previous conversation with the CEO of Fireflies, Krish Ramanelli, you will hear a story where PLG was exactly the right strategy. So why wasn’t it right for Pulkit and his team? And how did he figure it out?   Jump in and hear how focusing on the must-have experience helped Pulkit and his team regroup and reframe the business, why he doesn’t see the world as either Sales-Led or Product-Led and how the tough early journey informed his team’s growth approach.     The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * Building a business to solve a personal pain point (03:59) * Realizing the team had over-indexed on a self-serve model (06:08) * Learning that intuition isn’t fact (12:48) * Sales-Led & Product-Led; different learnings, different value (18:30) * Thinking through customer motivations to drive growth (24:55) * Building the culture to support Sales-Led growth (43:29) And much, much, more . . . 

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, Sean Ellis, and Ethan Garr talk with Sandeep Chouksey, Chief Technical Officer of Harry's, the company that manufactures and sells men's personal care products via online and retail channels.&nbsp; &nbsp; It turns out Harry&rsquo;s has a superpower!&nbsp; They can spin up a direct-to-consumer brand in just a matter of weeks, and then&ndash;if the brand&rsquo;s potential is validated&ndash;roll into an omnichannel marketing strategy almost as quickly. &nbsp; Unilever, Proctor &amp; Gamble, and other giants of the consumer packaged goods industry are surely taking notice as Harry&rsquo;s approach threatens to disrupt a variety of established players across markets. And men&rsquo;s razors are just the beginning. The company, now valued at more than $1.7 Billion, has four brands in six countries . . . One of them is a cat food brand! &nbsp; What gives Harry&rsquo;s the confidence to try to make entrances into new and disparate categories? And why are they able to move so quickly? Sandeep explains that it starts with people; Harry&rsquo;s is very intentional in how it hires people who are ready to &ldquo;embrace the mammoth&rdquo; and try new things.&nbsp; &nbsp; In fact, Sandeep himself embodies this mindset and in our discussion, he doesn&rsquo;t sound at all like a prototypical CTO.&nbsp; He views his role as one of aligning technical resources around their impact on growth, and &ldquo;figuring out how to be omnichannel&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s an approach that seems to be working well for him and Harry&rsquo;s, a fast-growing company changing the world of CPG. &nbsp; Before you jump in, learn more about SAP's cloud solutions for mid-size enterprises at sap.com/sme. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched-together solutions to manage business finances, operations, HR, suppliers, and customer relationships, leverage the flexibility of SAP's cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success. &nbsp; Achieve breakout growth success now with SAP at bit.ly/3UUPDxJ &nbsp; Thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast, and don&rsquo;t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * From razors to cat food; leveraging digital capabilities (05:47) * New speed in CPG; from DTC to omnichannel in a flash (07:19) <span sty

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, Sean Ellis, and Ethan Garr talk with Jonathan Becher, President of Sharks Sports &amp; Entertainment. If you are a hockey fan you probably know the San Jose Sharks, the flagship brand of Jonathan&rsquo;s organization, but in this discussion, we quickly learned that when it comes to growth, the sports team itself is just one component of an exciting and complex ecosystem. &nbsp; With its huge media presence, four buildings (arenas and skating facilities), and fans with varying interest levels and unique backgrounds, Jonathan has a variety of tools and resources he and his team can tap into to create meaningful experiences to attract and retain audiences. But it is not without its challenges. &nbsp; Professional sports are typically steeped in tradition and slow to embrace change, but sports teams can&rsquo;t afford to ignore the world around them. The Sharks literally live in the heart of Silicon Valley, and the world around them is becoming more digitized every day.&nbsp; Jonathan sees his job as one of &ldquo;pioneering the future of sports entertainment,&rdquo; so growth is then about embracing traditions while at the same time building new, engaging, and interconnected digital experiences for the future.&nbsp; &nbsp; A hockey fan at his core, Jonathan believes his staff is up to the task, and he brings a wealth of experience that includes everything from working as a developer to building startups, to even serving as CMO of SAP, to inform his approach. We learned quickly that Jonathan is a growth hacker at heart; working to understand the must-have experiences powering growth, and using data and experimentation to meet the needs of diverse audiences. &nbsp; Before you jump in, learn more about SAP's cloud solutions for mid-size enterprises at sap.com/sme. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched-together solutions to manage business finances, operations, HR, suppliers, and customer relationships, leverage the flexibility of SAP's cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success. &nbsp; Achieve breakout growth success now with SAP at bit.ly/3UUPDxJ &nbsp; Thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast, and don&rsquo;t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * Much more than just a hockey team; Sharks Sports &amp; Entertainment&nbsp; (05:40) * A future built on content and connected experiences (28:18) * Tattoos for die-hard fans &n

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Kevin Indig, who at the time of the interview was the Director of SEO at Shopify. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an important growth driver for startups, but it is an easy channel to misunderstand and get wrong.&nbsp; We wanted to talk to someone who is best-in-class in this field to separate truth from fiction and find out how growth leaders can support, leverage, and embrace SEO in their businesses.&nbsp; &nbsp; Fortunately, Kevin brought his &ldquo;A&rdquo; game to the conversation and did a great job of demystifying SEO for our listeners. He explains why SEO is a must-have for some companies, but just a nice-to-have for others.&nbsp; Then he describes why, when SEO is a necessary channel for growth, companies should invest early and heavily to maximize their potential.&nbsp; &nbsp; In the past, SEO could feel very &ldquo;hacky&rdquo; and there were definitely a lot of bad actors in the space.&nbsp; Kevin shows us why today&rsquo;s SEO is won with a deep focus on delivering value, why it needs to be validated like any other channel, and why elements like backlinks continue to be important.&nbsp; &nbsp; While you shouldn&rsquo;t expect to leave this conversation as an SEO expert, you will very likely be in a much better place to support, guide, and set up your organization for SEO success after you hear Kevin share his knowledge and experience.&nbsp; This is one of our more directly practical discussions and one we really enjoyed.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; So click that play button and jump in with Sean and Ethan as we look to better understand how to drive growth through Search Engine Optimization with Kevin Indig.&nbsp; &nbsp; The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * The two dimensions of SEO at Shopify (04:09) * Who wins with SEO: Aggregators versus Integrators (07:05) * Misconceptions and constants in a murky world (18:49) * Practical implementation; how to get started in SEO (34:39) * Building SEO into a growing organization (36:26) * Differentiation; why this is a channel that requires specific effort (50:20) And much, much, more . . .

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Andrew Davies, Chief Marketing Officer at Paddle. Offering a complete payment infrastructure for businesses in a single stack, Paddle is particularly valuable for PLG businesses, and helps more than 3000 customers in 200 markets set up and sell their SaaS offerings.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; This year Paddle has acquired Profitwell, the recurring revenue growth platform, and raised $200 million in funding (bringing the company&rsquo;s total valuation above $1.4 billion). As CMO, Andrew intends to continue driving aggressive growth by adapting a playbook he has developed in a career that includes serving as VP of Corporate Marketing at Optimizely and as co-founder of the &ldquo;demand orchestration&rdquo; platform, Idio. &nbsp; Andrew is particularly honest about the challenges that companies face at this stage in their journey. He explains that &ldquo;scale breaks systems&rdquo; so it becomes really important to work towards a culture that is not super-prescriptive, but instead looks to &ldquo;teach people the rules of the game, and then get them to play it themselves.&rdquo; &nbsp; Our conversation dives into everything from team leadership challenges, to what the CMO role is and how it creates impact in a fast-scaling organization. Ultimately, Andrew feels that Paddle&rsquo;s success will be a product of its own ability to help customers drive growth in their own businesses. So jump in and hear how he intends to ensure that Paddle is well-positioned to drive that outcome. &nbsp; Thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast, and don&rsquo;t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * Andrew&rsquo;s Journey to CMO, including Idio co-founder and Paddle advisor (06:39) * Why more complex approaches must replace original, more simple tactics (11:17) * The Profitwell acquisition and the challenges of taming the chaos (16:08) * Why leadership cannot be top-down when scaling up (26:15) * &ldquo;Tracking is always messed up&rdquo; &ndash; so now what? (29.10) * The massive shift Andrew sees in B2B marketing (44:05) And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, the world&rsquo;s leading ERP provider,&nbsp; Sean Ellis, and Ethan Garr chat with Tim Flaherty, Chief Financial Officer at Enable Injections.&nbsp; MedTech is an area we hadn&rsquo;t explored before, but we often find that going outside of what you know can offer new inspiration and insights for all of us working to drive breakout growth success.&nbsp; Enable Injections is developing enFuse&reg;, an innovative device designed to improve the lives of patients who depend on medical infusions. This less disruptive system for delivering life-sustaining medications has the potential to drive step-change quality of life improvements for people living with a variety of conditions. Tim is leading the company as CFO, and believes this technology can have dramatic consequences for people who sometimes have to give up their ambitions just to live life around their infusion schedules. But what does a CFO really do? Are they administrators who simply ensure that money flows in and out of the business efficiently? Or are they the strategic thinkers working to ensure the financial needs of the business support the mission? Tim certainly ascribes to the latter, and in this discussion, we learn how he brings a passion for patients into his work, and how he must constantly think about the future to ensure the long-term health of the business. Medtech has its own unique challenges, and everything from fundraising to regulation comes into the growth equation, but ultimately, many of the themes we discuss are applicable across industries and markets.&nbsp;&nbsp; Before you jump in, learn more about SAP's cloud solutions for mid-size enterprises at sap.com/sme. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched-together solutions to manage business finances, operations, HR, suppliers, and customer relationships, leverage the flexibility of SAP's cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success. &nbsp; Achieve breakout growth success now with SAP at bit.ly/3UUPDxJ We discussed: * Real patients: the hardships of living with in-clinic infusions (04:42) &nbsp; * Big Tech/Big Pharma &ndash; The impact of big budgets for CFOs (07:39) &nbsp; * Fundraising over $400 million to support a long-term strategy (11:01) &nbsp; * Once approved, we have to take off like a rocketship! 16:28) &nbsp; * When companies should hire a CFO (35:03) And much, much, more . . .&nbsp; The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: <a href

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Jacob Eiting, Co-Founder and CEO of RevenueCat. Building the backend system to support subscriptions in a mobile app can take months. Jacob had done this work himself multiple times as an engineer and realized there had to be a better way. So today, mobile developers rely on RevenueCat&rsquo;s APIs and SDKs to quickly add, manage, and grow subscription revenue in their businesses. For startups, time is a precious commodity, so being able to offload work that isn&rsquo;t directly focused on improving customer experiences can be super-valuable. But it isn&rsquo;t just time-savings that RevenueCat delivers.&nbsp;&nbsp; Working within the confines and ever-changing world of Apple and Android&rsquo;s walled-gardens can be daunting for developers. RevenueCat deeply understands these ecosystems and uses that knowledge to make it easier for every customer to thrive on these platforms. The company wins by helping its developers grow their businesses, and it is clearly working as RevenueCat itself has grown into a go-to solution for mobile developers around the world. But, the work isn&rsquo;t done. Jacob is pushing his team to look for additional ways to ensure RevenueCat is adding value for customer throughout their entire journey.&nbsp; He wants the company to, &ldquo;be the Salesforce of what we do&rdquo;, helping and empowering people who build apps at every step.&nbsp; From our conversation, it seems like he and his team are well on their way. Whether you are an app developer or not, this is a great conversation for anyone looking to better understand why directly aligning your company goals with the goals of your customers is a winning formula for sustainable growth.&nbsp; Take a listen, we think you will really enjoy this one! We discussed: * The RevenueCat backstory: from subscription frustration to accessible solutions (04:52) &nbsp; * &ldquo;Building on the back of a giant;&rdquo; adding value within Apple &amp; Android&rsquo;s walls (15:01) &nbsp; * The importance of being part of the wider developer community (17:59) &nbsp; * Figuring out RevenueCat&rsquo;s long-term value for customers&nbsp; (27:52) &nbsp; * OKRs and other efforts to drive alignment (46:20) &nbsp; * Jacob&rsquo;s most valuable growth learnings (55:18) And much, much, more . . .

How do you find your first growth channel and is that what you should be thinking about today? That&rsquo;s the topic of this week&rsquo;s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. We dive into common mistakes startups make in searching for that first scalable channel, and offer some practical advice to help you make good decisions along the way.&nbsp; &nbsp; We also mention a couple of resources you might want to check out: &nbsp; * &ldquo;Traction,&rdquo; a book by DuckDuckGo Founder, Gabriel Weinberg offers a framework for identifying and testing potential channels. * The First1000, (https://thefirst1000.substack.com/) offers inspiration on how to get early customers.&nbsp; * "Do Things That Don't Scale" (http://paulgraham.com/ds.html) Paul Graham's famous article emphasizing the importance of validating Product/Market Fit before looking for a scalable growth channel.&nbsp; &nbsp; So jump in, and in less than 10 minutes you will have food for thought as you work to achieve breakout growth success in your business. We discussed: &nbsp; * First growth channel mistakes Sean and Ethan see companies make (00:18) * Why for some businesses certain channels need to be thought about early (02:24) * Frameworks and resources for finding your first growth channel (05:01) * You will need to experiment! (06:17)

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Rajesh Jain, founder and managing director of Netcore Cloud. Rajesh bootstrapped Netcore into existence in 1998. Today, still without any outside investment, this global marketing technology company earns nearly $100 million in ARR. &nbsp; More than five thousand brands use Netcore to help create digital experiences for their customers with email, personalizations, nudges, and other tools. In India, the company has captured about 75% of the B2C email market, and they are a dominating force in many emerging markets around the world. But for the first ten years of Netcore&rsquo;s life, growth was slow.&nbsp; &nbsp; That changed when Rajesh realized that despite his early successes (he sold his first business for $100 million), he did not have the right leadership skills to drive Netcore to its full potential. So, with that self-awareness, he put ego aside and hired a CEO to lead the company&rsquo;s next chapter.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; That decision allowed Rajesh to provide leadership in different ways, and his story offers valuable lessons for anyone evaluating how they can make an impact in their roles. At the same time, Netcore was able to blossom. Today the company shares similarities with businesses like Braze and Twilio, offering services that help customers acquire, engage, and retain users.&nbsp; &nbsp; So join Sean and Ethan as they learn from Rajesh&rsquo;s thoughts on everything from the hidden value of conferences to &ldquo;understanding customers&rsquo; vocabulary&rdquo; and much more.&nbsp; &nbsp; The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured &nbsp; We discussed: * Netcore, a B2B SaaS company for B2B companies (05:19) * Rajesh&rsquo;s Early success and the &ldquo;Midas Touch&rdquo; fallacy (25:29) * Moving into Martech (41:44) * What a new CEO brought to the table (44:01) * &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t lose someone else&rsquo;s money!&rdquo; (33:38) * Growth through acquisition (38:40) &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Charlie Cole, Chief Executive Officer at FTD Flowers. In March of 2020, it was day one of a global pandemic, and day one of Charlie&rsquo;s new job at a 110-year-old, global flower delivery company that had recently gone through a bankruptcy. The odds seemed stacked against him, but in this conversation, we discover that whether you are managing a startup or a turnaround there are fundamental similarities that power a winning approach.&nbsp; &nbsp; Most startup leaders&ndash;under tremendous pressure to hit promised numbers or simply to not run out of money&ndash;make a common mistake; they try to do everything all at once. Similarly, in a turnaround situation, Charlie explains that &ldquo;there is so just so much that is broken,&rdquo; but the only way to fix everything is really to just focus with intensity on a very few of the most important things.&nbsp; &nbsp; If you enjoy unfiltered honesty, you are probably going to love this conversation. When we asked Charlie why he delivers flowers himself on Valentine&rsquo;s Day, he admitted that at first it was just because he didn&rsquo;t know what else to do. And when we asked him about starting his role in a pandemic he says, &rdquo;I was completely unprepared . . . but I think if we're being honest, anyone would be completely unprepared!&rdquo;&nbsp; &nbsp; Delivering flowers helped him better understand the florists and customers FTD served and helped him to create a new culture that would put FTD back on solid footing.&nbsp; And starting in chaos forced him to find new pathways to build trust with employees and customers.&nbsp; It has not been easy, but Charlie says it is the most fun he has ever had.&nbsp; &nbsp; If you listened to last week's Growth Snack, you will know just how inspired Sean and Ethan were by this discussion.&nbsp; So jump in with us and Charlie Cole as he shows us another side of breakout growth success.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * FTD&rsquo;s origins as a wire service: &ldquo;the first peer-to-peer network&rdquo; (05:05) * Charlie&rsquo;s biggest surprise coming into his new CEO role (09:36) * &ldquo;There's just so much broken&rdquo;&ndash;ruthless pragmatism, because you can&rsquo;t fix it all at once (20:32) * What does success look like when you are rebuilding? (32:36) *&nbsp; Differentiation is important, but it's equally important to know how you're not different (39:02) * Walking the walk; why Charlie delivers flowers himself and what it&rsquo;s taught him about customers and suppliers (37:51) And much, much, more . . .

Growth isn&rsquo;t about doing everything, it&rsquo;s about doing the right things. That&rsquo;s the topic of this week&rsquo;s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short. This concept came into sharp focus for Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr when they spoke with Charlie Cole, the CEO who has led the turnaround of FTD Flowers (full episode next week). A standout learning from that discussion is that startups and turnarounds often make the same crucial mistake: they try to do everything all at once. &nbsp; So where should you point your relentless focus? And what is the order of operations that prevents you from simply throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks? In this episode, we look to answer these questions as we dive into the importance of getting the right people to the right experiences with qualitative and quantitative learnings, and more.&nbsp; &nbsp; So jump in, and in less than 10 minutes you will have food for thought as you work to achieve breakout growth success in your business. We discussed: &nbsp; * Even the best leaders will try to do too much all at once (00:45) * The order of operations matters; slow down and focus (01:15) * Don&rsquo;t let the pressure to hit numbers force poor execution (02:00) * Growth isn&rsquo;t just about channels, focus on core customer challenges (03:13) * Get the right customers to the right experiences (03:45)

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Krish Ramineni, Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai.&nbsp; The Fireflies.ai video conferencing bot is an AI assistant that takes searchable notes to help teams maximize their productivity on Zoom, MSFT, Webex, and other video conferencing platforms. We dive in with Krish to get to the heart of why Product-Led Growth has proven to be the right approach for his team, why it is not right for everyone, and why Fireflies now plans to move beyond their purely self-serve model. &nbsp; And that might be what makes this conversation so interesting. Even though Fireflies has crushed it with PLG they are also learning and adapting every day.&nbsp; &ldquo;Let people buy the way they want to buy&rdquo; is a mantra for Krish and his team, but through data and experimentation, they are continuing to better understand what drives value for their customers. They have learned that some users do need a more conversational approach to succeed, so Krish is hiring a sales team to support that audience. &nbsp; We have seen evolutions like this from purely self-serve to hybrid models in other fast-growing companies like Slack and Hubspot and it shows how the best PLG companies are always working to better understand their growth engines and customers. &nbsp; So dive in with Sean and Ethan as they look to uncover what&rsquo;s driving breakout growth success at Fireflies.ai &nbsp; The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: &nbsp; *&nbsp; From Project Manager at Microsoft to Fireflies.ai (06:35) *&nbsp; Let people buy the way they want to buy (12:19) *&nbsp; Why hiring salespeople is now on the radar (13:54) * Not every product is right for PLG, but it shines for collaboration tools (16:49) *&nbsp; Building and monitoring predictability in growth (41:12) *&nbsp; Growth is repeatable (54:16) And much, much, more . . .

Is differentiation always important? If you are trying to grow, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr, say it absolutely is, but it is not just about offering unique features. That&rsquo;s the topic of this week&rsquo;s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short. Learn why it iscrucial to understand what the must-have experience looks like through the eyes of your customers, and why that is important in helping you to differentiate your business even in a crowded market. &nbsp; You might be surprised as you learn how Sean approached differentiation when he was interim head of growth at Dropbox. Or, you might find some inspiration as Ethan describes a company he is working with now that is launching a new product that will compete against products that solve the same problem for customers. Perhaps this will get you thinking about new questions to ask your customers to better distinguish your offerings. &nbsp; Either way, we think you will enjoy it! So jump in, and in less than 10 minutes you will have food for thought as you work to achieve breakout growth. We discussed: &nbsp; * The hot market trap; why copycats struggle to grow (01:03) * Differentiation is not just about nifty features or lower pricing (01:51) * What do customers see as unique? A lesson from Dropbox (03:41) * Why you should never assume fit transfers across products (05:24) * Fast-followers and other takeaways (07:21)

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Tony Beltramelli, Uizard&rsquo;s Co-founder and CEO. If you can picture a perfect up-and-to-the-right curve, then you can visualize what growth looks like for this AI-powered product design tool created for non-designers. To learn what is powering the company&rsquo;s success we asked Tony to dive further into a LinkedIn post he published where he asked the question, &ldquo;What did we learn and what did we do differently?&rdquo; It turned into an amazing discussion. &nbsp; Product and growth people can easily see the appeal of a rapid-prototyping tool that can turn even hand-drawn sketches into websites, mobile apps, and software designs, but despite that promise, Uizard (pronounced Wizard) was still struggling to grow in its early days. As a technical founder, Tony was frustrated that he could not just fix the problem by writing more code.&nbsp; &nbsp; Fortunately, with learnings from &ldquo;Hacking Growth&rdquo; and insights from Superhuman&rsquo;s CEO on building a Product/Market Fit Engine, Tony and his team discovered what was actually driving must-have experiences for users. That proved to be a huge confidence booster, and with those learnings, the company&rsquo;s trajectory shifted quickly and drastically. &nbsp; What we love about this conversation is Tony&rsquo;s honesty and enthusiasm. Even though his LinkedIn post took pride in the company&rsquo;s huge achievements, he wasn&rsquo;t bragging. It seems that Tony wanted to share what he learned on this &ldquo;wild ride&rdquo; to inspire and help others. Turning customer learnings into processes, investing in data, and narrowing the company&rsquo;s focus have all been key elements of Uizard&rsquo;s success, but it also appears that creating a great culture to support those efforts has been equally important.&nbsp; &nbsp; As of our recording, Uizard is looking for Growth Engineers and Marketing Designers to join their team, so if you are looking for an early-stage rocket ship, you may want to get in touch. Jump in and let&rsquo;s find out what is behind Uizard&rsquo;s breakout growth success. &nbsp; Tony&rsquo;s original LinkedIn Post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tony-beltramelli-513b1219_founders-startup-saas-activity-6889230200631111680-xdSW &nbsp; The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured We discussed: * Sharing a hockey stick graphic and learnings from a wild ride and on LinkedIn&nbsp; (08:30) * Junior founders and early assumptions (11:52) * How the Product/Market Fit Survey helped change the growth trajectory (12:38) * Uizard&rsquo

If you want to generate more raving fans for your business build a machine to understand what drives some of your users from awareness to white-hot enthusiasm. That is the theme of this week&rsquo;s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. The &rdquo;Perfect Customer Loop&rdquo; is a way to visualize the journey that evangelizer-customers follow as they try, use, and fall in love with your product.&nbsp; &nbsp; In our last Growth Snack, we talked about the trap companies often fall into when they achieve product/market fit but fail to understand it deeply enough to operationalize growth effectively. This conversation builds on that and will help you avoid that mistake while tapping into the emotions that drive users to your product&rsquo;s must-have experience. &nbsp; So jump in with us, and in less than 10 minutes you will learn how The Perfect Customer Loop can help you accelerate growth. We discussed: &nbsp; * &ldquo;The Perfect Customer Loop&rdquo;, a tool for dialing-in product/market fit (00:34) * The value of visualizing retention and referral in action (02:56) * How teams win with this exercise (04:03) * Leveraging the learnings to improve speed-to-value&nbsp; (05:23) * Warning; don&rsquo;t fall into this trap (05:41)

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Mayur Gupta, Gannett&rsquo;s Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer.&nbsp; Very few industries have been as dramatically impacted by digital disruption as the newspaper industry, so we wanted to learn from Mayur how he approaches and looks to drive growth in a world of constant change.&nbsp; &nbsp; Gannett owns USA Today and more than 1000 other daily and weekly publications. As the world has shifted from print to digital consumption of media, the company has had to evolve from its legacy media roots into a content subscription business. Mayur describes Gannett today as &ldquo;The Netflix of non-fiction content&rdquo; and that has meant a new approach to marketing and growth. What has not changed is Mayur&rsquo;s underlying beliefs about what drives sustainable growth. &nbsp; Mayur describes growth as foundational, and not just a tactic or a hack. And he goes on to explain that sustainable growth is a mindset and culture where you work to create flywheels that grow the brand, grow the user base, and grow user value. So when the world is changing around you, as is now the norm in the newspaper business, there is still firm ground from which to view and seize opportunities.&nbsp; &nbsp; This is our second conversation with Mayur, who joined The Breakout Growth Podcast a few years ago when he was at Freshly. He also previously led growth at Spotify. So as we look to learn more about how to lead and navigate growth in a rapidly changing environment Mayur&rsquo;s perspective is both unique and powerful.&nbsp; &nbsp; Let&rsquo;s jump in with Mayur Gupta, and don&rsquo;t forget to subscribe to `the Breakout Growth Podcast YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA We discussed: * Joining Gannett, &ldquo;The Netflix of non-fiction content&rdquo; (06:44) * The formula for sustainable growth: grow the brand, grow the user base, grow user value (10:23) * Seizing digital growth while respecting a loyal but ebbing print market (17:29) * North Star Priorities, OKRs, and Cross-functional pods (35:00) * Managing through data blind spots (26:00) * Establishing ourselves as a &ldquo;trusted destination&rdquo; (54:23) * Growth is a foundation and an outcome (56:00)

What are the biggest mistakes companies make after they find product/market fit? Find out in this week&rsquo;s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. &nbsp; It can be hard enough to find product/market fit in the first place, but even companies that do achieve this milestone often fail to build sustainable growth. So in this discussion, we tackle two key reasons why companies tend to stumble at this juncture. But more importantly, we talk about the strategies successful teams employ to avoid these errors and thrive. &nbsp; Product/market fit isn&rsquo;t a gate that you pass through and then leave behind as you move on to growth. It&rsquo;s the foundation on which you build and operationalize your business. So jump in with us and find out how to stay focused on what really matters at a crucial time in your organization&rsquo;s journey to breakout growth success.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; &nbsp; * Two common mistakes for companies with product/market fit (00:36) &nbsp; &nbsp; * How teams can focus on learnings to avoid mistake #1 (01:52) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Why teams get this wrong (04:24) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Monitoring product/market fit to stay on track (05:40) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Product/market fit; not just a startup thing (06:36) &nbsp; &nbsp; Please&nbsp;subscribe to our new Breakout Growth Podcast YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Oren Kaniel, AppsFlyer&rsquo;s CEO and cofounder. AppsFlyer is a mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform. When Apple announced the vast app tracking transparency changes it deployed in 2021 it shook the Mobile Marketing Partner (MMP) ecosystem. So we wanted to learn from Oren how a fast-growing company like his was able to navigate and lead through this massive sea change. &nbsp; One of the standout moments from our conversation was when Oren explained that as these external forces of change began to manifest around him, he asked the question, &ldquo;What do we know won&rsquo;t change?&rdquo; With so much uncertainty in the industry, knowing what he and his team could safely rely on to stay the same helped define the starting point from which they could meet the challenges and embrace new opportunities as they emerged. &nbsp; This was quite instructive and fits in with the longer view of the world Oren takes. Rather than getting hung up on what will happen in the next year or two, he tries to look at the world through the lens of &lsquo;where are we going,&rsquo; five years, ten years, and even beyond. In the startup world, it is often difficult to expand one&rsquo;s view beyond the urgency of the moment, but AppsFlyer&rsquo;s success demonstrates the importance of balancing that urgency with what will be important to the business over the longer term. &nbsp; Google recently announced its own round of privacy changes, similar to what Apple has instituted. Undoubtedly, this will further impact AppsFlyer and the entire mobile ecosystem. Despite the chaos this creates, companies like AppsFlyer will find ways to continue to thrive and grow.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Dive in with us and find out how to lead growth when the world around you is in flux, and please subscribe to our new Breakout Growth Podcast YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA We discussed: * The beginning of AppsFlyer; noticing an imbalance in 2010 (06:14) * The business of enabling businesses; 10,000 partners from Salesforce to Facebook (10:21) * Apple and IDFA; staying focused through challenge and change (24:52) * &ldquo;What we know won&rsquo;t change&rdquo; (28:44) *&nbsp; A future with winners and more complex solutions (56:07) And much, much, more . . .

Prioritizing experiments is a bit of an art and a science, but how do you get it right? Find out in this week&rsquo;s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. &nbsp; When Sean was struggling to find a good way for teams he led to compare growth ideas across dimensions he needed a tool that would balance the need to move the needle with the need to move fast. He came up with ICE scoring, and since then, thousands of growth teams have used this as their starting point for choosing experiments.&nbsp; &nbsp; In this Growth Snack, we share insights that will help you tune whatever approach you use for prioritizing experiments.&nbsp; Whether you use ICE or another system, this quick conversation can help you think about the best ways to surface and choose the high-impact ideas most likely to accelerate growth in your business. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; &nbsp; * What&rsquo;s important when picking growth ideas to test (00:57) &nbsp; &nbsp; * The basics of Impact&nbsp; (02:59) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Understanding Confidence (04:09) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Using a little bit of creativity to assess Ease (05:13) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Haphazard testing and other pitfalls (06:30) And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Victoria Repa who is the founder and CEO of BetterMe, a Ukraine-based developer of health and wellness mobile apps. We have held off on publishing the podcast for a few weeks as the world has been focused on the tragic situation in Ukraine. We did not want to do anything to shift the focus but decided to share this episode now in the hopes that it could help Victoria amplify her messages to the growth community asking for help and support in Ukraine. Victoria shared these links with us and, if you are in a position to help, we hope you will consider doing so: https://how-you-can-support-ukraine.super.site/ and https://bit.ly/3IDf3tw &nbsp; Our hearts go out to Victoria, her 230-person BetterMe team, and all of those impacted by this war.&nbsp; &nbsp; BetterMe Health Coaching and BetterMe Mental Health are mobile apps created to make health and wellness more accessible. Victoria&rsquo;s philosophy centers around helping people develop healthy habits that over time transform into an overall healthy lifestyle. In just over four years, the apps have grown to a combined total of more than 100 million users around the world. &nbsp; Driving BetterMe&rsquo;s growth trajectory is an intense focus on experimentation and learning that is guided by a &ldquo;fail fast and fail cheap mantra.&rdquo; This approach allows Victoria&rsquo;s team to continuously improve its understanding of users, their behaviors, and the problems they look to BetterMe to help them solve.&nbsp; Learning and evolving is critical in growth, and the BetterMe journey demonstrates how fast-growing companies use data to continuously optimize their offerings. At one point BetterMe had seven apps in its portfolio before eventually consolidating down to a single offering. Then, as B2B opportunities came into focus, Victoria&rsquo;s team iterated again to add a second mobile app to address changing market needs. &nbsp; We hope this pre-war story will help shine a light on the contributions and achievements of Ukrainians. Please consider visiting the links shared above to find out how you can help. In addition, here are a few other organizations working to make a difference in Ukraine: &nbsp; https://wck.org https://help.rescue.org/donate/ukraine-acq https://www.care.org https://novaukraine.org &nbsp; We discussed: * Making healthy lifestyles accessible to everyone (5:50) * Victoria&rsquo;s inspiration and journey to BetterMe (10:19) * The Silicon Valey growth approach powering the business (12:16) *&nbsp; Powering growth through data (28:33) <span style="font-weight: 400;

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Kevin Yip, Blueboard&rsquo;s Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer. Blueboard is a platform that allows companies to reward employees with amazing experiences; anything from a skydiving adventure to dinner at a Michelin-rated restaurant is fair game. How does a company with such a unique business concept not only achieve product/market fit but stay dynamic enough to retain it through challenging times? In this episode, we find out. &nbsp; While entrepreneurs often dream of bringing new ideas to market that nobody else has thought of, it can be a huge challenge to get from zero to one with a completely new idea. Kevin and his co-founder had their work cut out for them in their early days. They literally went door-to-door to try to get companies and their HR teams excited about the value of Blueboard experiences.&nbsp; An intro into GoPro proved to be a boon for the fledgling business, and eventually, Blueboard&rsquo;s vision of an experience marketplace came to life.&nbsp; &nbsp; The team continued to dial-in product/market fit. They learned how to more effectively sell into HR, they developed feedback loops to ensure that as employees enjoyed Blueboard rewards they were able to effectively share their experiences with their colleagues and more. The company had found its footing and was on a roll and then Covid hit. But Kevin&rsquo;s team understood their product/market fit and quickly figured out how they could continue to bring value to employers and their employees in the new stay-at-home environment. &nbsp; Take a listen, and please subscribe to our new Breakout Growth Podcast YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA We discussed: * &ldquo;Rewards really matter;&rdquo; how Blueboard makes an impact (08:29) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Customer vs. investor conversation; why it&rsquo;s not just about giving employees more money (38:41) * Door-to-door; finding product-market fit one company at a time&nbsp; (26:01) * The James Bond Experience (32:01) * What happens when the world shuts down; product/market fit and COVID (33:55) * Feedback loops; amplifying the Bluebaord experience (42:28) And much, much, more . . .

How can growth teams win by borrowing a bit from their engineering counterparts? &nbsp; Find out in this week&rsquo;s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short. Here, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr discuss the idea that growth teams win when they &ldquo;Write the Report Before they Run the Experiment&rdquo;.&nbsp; Ethan says growth teams that do this run better experiments, more frequently, with more predictable outcomes. &nbsp; Sean likes the idea because he has seen just how difficult it can be to get high-tempo testing to take flight. Because this technique forces teams to start with the end in mind as they run experiments, he believes it is a good habit to get into if you are looking to improve your growth trajectory. &nbsp; If you want to learn more about applying this concept after you listen, visit, &ldquo;Write The Report Before You Run The Experiment&rdquo; on BreakoutGrowth.net &nbsp; https://bit.ly/3sEo8f0 We discussed:&nbsp; * Writing the report first is a good idea if you want to test more effectively (28.81) * Why faster testing shouldn&rsquo;t come at the expense of quality learnings (01:18) * Documenting what you are going to do; a lesson from GoPractice!&nbsp; (03:48) *&nbsp; Begin with the end in mind to think ahead and drive test/learn cycles (04:26) *&nbsp; Who should build this habit (05:34)

This week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast is sponsored by Rise with SAP and features Garima Sinha, Instacart&rsquo;s Head of Growth. Instacart makes it easy to get groceries conveniently delivered to your home, but that is just the beginning. The company is working to bring that same convenience to a wide range of products we use in our daily lives. Garima joined less than a year ago after serving in growth roles at Facebook, so we wanted to learn more about what drove her successful transition and how her experience can help other growth professionals.&nbsp; &nbsp; People are more mobile in their careers than ever before, but moving from one large fast-growing company to another, especially in a leadership role, can be difficult.&nbsp; Garima explains that while it was not an easy decision to make the change in the first place, Instacart offered new challenges that she was hungry to embrace. When she says, &ldquo;there was much to do,&rdquo; you can hear just how excited she was to take on her new role. &nbsp; Bringing her passion for both the challenges and the mission clearly have been key elements of her success at Instacart, but Garima also offers practical insights when making this kind of career change.&nbsp; From building a team culture where individuals play a key role in the decision-making process to spending the time to dive into the levers she had less experience with, Garima shares a path that others can follow. &nbsp; And of course, because she is specifically leading growth, this episode is full of actionable insights around data and experimentation as well.&nbsp; &nbsp; Please remember to check out this week&rsquo;s sponsor, RISE with SAP S/4Hana Cloud. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched together solutions to manage business finances, operations, and customer relations, leverage the flexibility of SAP&rsquo;s cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.&nbsp; &nbsp; RISE with SAP Link:&nbsp;bit.ly/3u27Ay6 &nbsp; Please take a moment to rate and review The Breakout Growth Podcast wherever you listen.&nbsp; We discussed: * Grappling with the decision to move from Facebook to Instacart (04:28)&nbsp; * Thinking of growth as the full funnel (13:47) * What Garima did first when taking on this role (15:41) * Conviction; why growth leaders shouldn&rsquo;t give up easily on their first instincts (34:47) * Deferring decisions to the teams (35:58) And much, much, more . . .

This week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast is sponsored by Rise with SAP and features Ron Schneidermann, the CEO of AllTrails. Conventional wisdom says that you need product/market fit before you can grow, but sometimes conventional wisdom gets it wrong. For AllTrails Product/Channel Fit came first.&nbsp; &nbsp; Today, outdoor enthusiasts love the AllTrails mobile app and website and use them to navigate and enhance their adventures with hand-curated trail maps, and other useful tools like crowdsourced photos and reviews. But, when Ron started, he found that the product was actually quite a mess. Fortunately, he looked beyond that when he saw the acquisition data and realized a big opportunity lay ahead. &nbsp; If he and his team could overcome their product challenges and leverage existing SEO and other organic channels that were already working surprisingly well to attract the right type of users, then he believed they could deliver on their mission to kindle the spirit of adventure and help millions of people enjoy and connect outdoors.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Today, AllTrails is on a tear. The profitable company has over 1 million paying users, recently raised $150 million in new funding, and has big plans to continue growing around the world. For anyone analyzing potential opportunities or developing a growth strategy, this is a conversation sure to get you saying, &ldquo;wow, I never thought about it that way.&rdquo;&nbsp; &nbsp; Before you jump in, check out this week&rsquo;s sponsor, RISE with SAP S/4Hana Cloud. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched together solutions to manage business finances, operations, and customer relations, leverage the flexibility of SAP&rsquo;s cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.&nbsp; &nbsp; RISE with SAP Link:&nbsp;bit.ly/3u27Ay6 &nbsp; Please take a moment to subscribe as we talk growth with Ron Schneidermann, AllTrails CEO. We discussed: * &ldquo;I am not a Zero to one Guy,&rdquo; taking on the AllTrails leadership challenge (05:00) * Why Ron is a big believer in Product/Channel fit (08:01) * &ldquo;Pouring too much water on a seed causes it to rot;&rdquo; avoiding traps with paid channels (00:00) * &ldquo;My job is to get out of the way&rdquo; - How Ron views the CEO Role (09:40) * Raising money and sticking to your values (10:20) * &ldquo;Humility is our culture&rdquo; (58:40) And much, much, more . . .

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr speak with Jon Chang who recently took on the Head of Growth role at Nate. Nate is a new service that allows consumers to buy products from any e-commerce site with just one click. You may remember Jon from his first appearance on the podcast when he was a growth lead at Klarna, a rocketship Fintech company now valued at more than $45 Billion. His experience and approach offer valuable insights for leaders at fast-growing companies struggling to hire the right people to build on strong growth rates as well as individual growth and marketing professionals who are looking to find their next great opportunities. &nbsp; This week&rsquo;s episode is sponsored by Rise with SAP. &nbsp; Why did Jon leave this nearly 6000 person rocketship for a fast-growing, but relatively small 70 person startup? Well, when we saw Jon had shared a LinkedIn Post, by another former guest, Mayur Gupta (formerly Marketing/Growth lead at of Freshly and Spotify and now at Gannett Publications), it gave us a great starting point to answer that and other questions: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6883531385433321472/ &nbsp; Mayur encourages every marketer to get startup experience at some point in their journey, and suggests that the earlier the better. Jon agrees, and as a self-described builder, he explains not just why this matters, but also how it informs his approach for hiring and leading growth.&nbsp; &nbsp; Jon is obsessed with building teams and driving organizational efficiencies, but his approach is anything but clinical. From his thoughts on mentoring to his focus on soft skills, this discussion is really about a people-driven mindset to powering growth.&nbsp; &nbsp; Please remember to check out this week&rsquo;s sponsor, RISE with SAP S/4Hana Cloud. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched together solutions to manage business finances, operations, and customer relations, leverage the flexibility of SAP&rsquo;s cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.&nbsp; &nbsp; RISE with SAP Link:&nbsp;bit.ly/3u27Ay6 &nbsp; We discussed: * Moving from Klarna to Nate (03:35) * Why startups need jack-of-all-trades personalities to be successful (06:20) * Auditing the experience before you apply for a job (13:15) * Challenges of measuring your impact in large organizations (20:30) * Jon&rsquo;s approach to

This week's&nbsp;episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast is brought to you by Rise with SAP&nbsp;and includes some incredible stories! Paul Malicki is the founder and CEO of Flapper, Brazil&rsquo;s first on-demand private aviation marketplace, and his journey has been anything but boring. Hold onto your hats, as he tells Ethan and Sean about a negotiation he had in the Philippines where the other party placed a grenade and a gun on the desk and asked whether Paul was still not willing to budge from his proposed 70/30 revenue split?&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; That story stems from his days launching Easy Taxi in developing countries, but the excitement has continued, as Paul moved from building a terrestrial taxi service to now building a taxi service of sorts for the skies. Paul&rsquo;s vision is to turn private aviation into a mainstream travel option. From creating a marketplace where travelers can book empty seats on private jets and helicopters to offering on-demand charters, Flapper is blazing its own trail to breakout growth success. &nbsp; In 2019 the business grew 251%, and even with the challenges of the global pandemic, Paul and his team still were able to realize ~100% year over year gains in 2020. Driving growth through the tumult required a quick pivot to leverage the skyrocketing demand for cargo and ambulance flights, but a scrappy, growth hacker&rsquo;s mindset helped to keep the business on track through these difficult times. &nbsp; Flappers ascent has been anything but easy. Aviation has traditionally been a tough industry in which to win, and Paul explains that it took 228 meetings to raise seed money for the business, and another 530 meetings to fund his Series A. But, he explains his determination very simply: &ldquo;I was already here, I liked what I was doing, and it was a sexy business.&rdquo;&nbsp; &nbsp; So sit back and enjoy one of our most fun and entertaining conversations of the year. We still get into the gritty details of team structure, growth engine, and all the other important elements of growth you expect from the podcast, but through Paul&rsquo;s experience taking on challenges in developing, and not always friendly environments, we view growth from a unique and exciting vantage point.&nbsp; &nbsp; Before you jump in learn more about&nbsp;RISE with SAP S/4Hana Cloud here. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched together solutions to manage business finances, operations, and customer relations, leverage the flexibility of SAP&rsquo;s cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; RISE with SAP Link:&nbsp;bit.ly/3u27Ay6 &nbsp; Fasten your seatbelt for this one! &nbsp; &nbsp; We discussed: * A vision to change the way we travel (4:56) * Why private aviation can be affordable (6:53) * Learnings

In this week&rsquo;s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by Rise with SAP, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr are joined by Sean&rsquo;s co-author of &ldquo;Hacking Growth&rdquo; Morgan Brown. The book was published back in 2017, so in this episode, we get to hear the two guys who literally wrote the book on growth &ldquo;geek out&rdquo; about their most important growth learnings since their initial collaboration. &nbsp; Morgan&rsquo;s perspective on growth has been shaped by the leadership roles he has held at Inman News and Facebook, and in his current Vice-President of Growth position at Shopify. These companies are an order of magnitude larger than anything he and Sean had worked on prior to writing the book, so as we dive in we look to understand how the sheer scale of these businesses has impacted Morgan&rsquo;s perspective.&nbsp; &nbsp; Would he write a different book or change anything today with the benefit of hindsight? &nbsp; Morgan found incredible value in the understand, identify, execute, approach, that has molded Facebook into the most sophisticated growth organization in the world. At Shopify, he is now working to grow a team that leverages structured thinking to run trustworthy experiments that use the playbook of &ldquo;Hacking Growth&rdquo; at scale. Sean&rsquo;s own experiences working with fast-growing companies since writing the book guide his thinking on these topics, and that makes for some fascinating discussion!&nbsp; &nbsp; There is plenty to learn in this episode, but before you jump in learn more about RISE with SAP S/4Hana Cloud here. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched together solutions to manage business finances, operations, and customer relations, leverage the flexibility of SAP&rsquo;s cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.&nbsp; &nbsp; RISE with SAP Link:&nbsp;bit.ly/3u27Ay6 &nbsp; Thanks for tuning in and please rate and review the Breakout Growth Podcast wherever you listen.&nbsp; We discussed: * Scale matters: the humbling experiences of working at Facebook, the world&rsquo;s most advanced growth organization (05:36) * The sheer number of funnels: why scale offers so much opportunity to experiment (06:47) * Building &ldquo;trustworthy&rdquo; experiments: developing the muscle to gain valuable learnings across an organization (11:51) * Big bets versus smaller optimization: Morgan&rsquo;s belief in Hacking Growth&rsquo;s iterative process to drive value (20:18) * Find the root cause: Learnings from Facebook&rsquo;s understand, identify, execute approach&nbsp; (25:47) * Two books in one:

In the last 48 months, the fintech app Truebill, which helps users manage their personal finances, has had 47 months of exceptional growth. But in this week&rsquo;s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by Rise with SAP, Ethan Garr and Sean Ellis find out that before this hypergrowth tear began, the company was actually on death&rsquo;s doorstep. &nbsp; Four years ago, the two-year-old startup had just three months of runway remaining, and&nbsp;Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Yahya Mokhtarzada was told by one of his investors that the only option was to sell. He figured the company had the bandwidth for two more experiments; one of those tests would change everything! The test shifted the business from an affiliate to a premium subscription model, and the surprising conversion result didn&rsquo;t just buy more time, it was the final piece needed for Truebill to achieve Product/Market Fit. &nbsp; Since then, Truebill&rsquo;s breakout growth success has been a story of &ldquo;eternal tweaking&rdquo; where Yahya has come to learn that if you are doing growth right, resources never free up the way you expect. As Chief Revenue Officer in a B2C business, he sees his role as one of setting up teams to stay focused on the things that matter and ensuring individuals can continuously thrive by leveraging their creativity. &nbsp; And creativity seems to be one of the key success factors for Truebill. If you download the app, you might be surprised by the &ldquo;pay what you think is fair&rdquo; pricing model, and other unique elements that drive users to aha moments where they start thinking about their finances and saving money in different ways.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; There is plenty to learn in this episode, but before you jump in learn more about RISE with SAP S/4Hana Cloud here. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched together solutions to manage business finances, operations, and customer relations, leverage the flexibility of SAP&rsquo;s cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.&nbsp; &nbsp; RISE with SAP Link:&nbsp;bit.ly/3u27Ay6 &nbsp; Thanks for tuning in. Please subscribe and share the Breakout Growth Podcast with your colleagues and friends.&nbsp;&nbsp; We discussed: * &ldquo;The app I always needed:&rdquo; how an annoying $40/month subscription fee drove Truebill&rsquo;s inception&nbsp; (04:14) * Chief Revenue Officer: a very different role in B2B vs. B2C (07:01) * &ldquo;We weren&rsquo;t the cool kids:&rdquo; Struggling to find traction and Product/Market Fit (11:10) *&nbsp; Crunch time: 3 months of runway and time for two experiments. What a last-chance test on premium subscriptions taught Truebill (22:27)</spa

Show Notes: &nbsp; In this week&rsquo;s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by Rise with SAP, Ethan Garr and Sean Ellis speak with Kieran Flanagan, Hubspot&rsquo;s Senior Vice President of Marketing to learn what&rsquo;s driving Hubspot&rsquo;s unstoppable growth. With more than 100,000 customers and over $1 billion dollars in ARR, Hubspot is simply on fire.&nbsp; &nbsp; Kieran has been a growth leader at the company for nearly ten years. During that time the business has gone through massive changes. From its giant bet on Freemium to a more recent shift from inbound marketing to inbound media, the company has continuously reinvented itself in its quest to become the #1 CRM for scaling businesses. &nbsp; However, despite Hubspot&rsquo;s enormous scale and $37 billion valuation (at the time of recording), the insights and learnings from this discussion relate to businesses both large and small. Yes, at this size, Kieran does explain that he and his team have to focus on big bets because small optimizations just won&rsquo;t have enough impact, but his framework for making smart decisions, taking risks, and building a culture where innovation can thrive is applicable for any company looking to drive breakout growth success. &nbsp; Kieran is also forthcoming about the moments when he felt stuck trying to tackle specific problems. The strategies he employed to overcome these challenges offer practical lessons to help listeners see their way forward when they encounter roadblocks to growth.&nbsp; &nbsp; Before you jump into the episode, we encourage you to learn more about RISE with SAP S/4Hana Cloud. If you have ambitious goals, SAP is the technology partner you need to scale and drive innovation. Instead of relying on stitched together solutions to manage business finances, operations, and customer relations, leverage the flexibility of SAP&rsquo;s cloud-based ERP solution to gain the insights that will help drive your breakout growth success.&nbsp; &nbsp; RISE with SAP Link:&nbsp;bit.ly/3u27Ay6 &nbsp; Thanks for tuning in to this episode with Kieran Flanagan, Hubspot&rsquo;s Senior Vice President of Marketing, and please share the Breakout Growth Podcast with your colleagues and friends.&nbsp;&nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; *&nbsp; Hubspot&rsquo;s evolution into a modern-day CRM built for the internet (03:12) * From &ldquo;inbound marketing&rdquo; to &ldquo;inbound media:&rdquo; why Hubspot is betting on building a true media organization to power growth (06:50) * Organizing for growth as a large organization: With more than a billion dollars in ARR, Hubspot&rsquo;s marketing team must think on a much bigger scale to source demand (08:28) * The changing world of content consumption and &ldquo;community&rdquo; a

In this week&rsquo;s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Ethan Garr and Sean Ellis chat with Mark Tan, Director of Product, Platform &amp; Community at Wyze, a smart home tech startup offering affordable cameras, lighting, sensors, and other devices to more than 5 million customers. But this conversation goes well beyond just the Wyze growth story. Mark is a leader in the growing Community-Led Growth movement, so it&rsquo;s through that lens that we look to understand how companies are leveraging their own audiences of passionate users to achieve success.&nbsp; &nbsp; Over our 50 episode history, we have noticed that many of the world's fastest-growing companies leverage the strength of their own communities to drive outcomes. Glowforge showed us how a passionate userbase literally crowdsourced the company&rsquo;s 3D laser printer into existence. EVBox credits its customer advocacy efforts as a major reason why the company has been able to lead an entire industry. But is Community-Led Growth an actionable approach or just new packaging for good product management?&nbsp; &nbsp; Mark explains that CLG is a real discipline that when executed with intentionality drives significant value. He has used it to power growth at Wyze, and in his former role at Amazon Video Games. He acknowledges that there are challenges in tracking community impact, but he explains how he and his team are using this approach to deliver value for their audiences.&nbsp; &nbsp; So let&rsquo;s dive in with Mark Tan of Wyze and find out more about Community-Led Growth, a powerful mechanism for reflecting customer empathy into your products. We discussed: &nbsp; * (11:40) Measuring the impact of community-led growth efforts on overall growth rate. &nbsp; &nbsp; * (20:26) Why direct feedback from customers isn't enough. There is a lot more honesty when customers talk to each other. * (21:17) Why detractors in your community can actually be beneficial.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * (23:20) Why hardware companies must embrace community-led growth to remain competitive. &nbsp; &nbsp; * (30:36) How to organize your team for more effective community-led growth efforts. &nbsp; &nbsp; * (49:02) The most important new thing that Mark has learned about growth in the last couple of years. &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;

&ldquo;Are you creating impact?&rdquo; That is the fundamental question that drives Heap&rsquo;s Chief Marketing Officer, Lynn Girotto. Heap&rsquo;s analytics platform is designed to help digital product managers &ldquo;know where to look&rdquo; by automatically surfacing insights and identifying friction points across the customer journey. Thanks to a unique approach to capturing data, where every end-user interaction is tracked, Lynn feels Heap is able to drive impact in more meaningful and valuable ways for clients.&nbsp; &nbsp; This episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast struck a chord for hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. When data is democratized, accessible, and easily visualized it drives curiosity and inspires creativity, but too often data becomes a black box that holds back growth. Heap exists to help teams align and leverage data, and that seems to couple well with Lynn&rsquo;s approach to marketing. &nbsp; Leveraging experience in senior marketing roles at top brands including Pepsi, Microsoft, and Starbucks, she is focused on helping her team see and measure their impact across the organization. From building a brand and tracking share of voice to optimizing Heap&rsquo;s freemium offerings to build a pipeline, Lynn describes an approach to growth where constant inspiration and fostering a fun and supportive environment is powering growth. &nbsp; From balancing the needs of self-service and higher touch clients to using data and insights to allocate resources, this episode offers something for anyone looking to create impact in their organization. &nbsp; So take a listen as we dive into Heap&rsquo;s story with Chief Marketing Officer, Lynn Girotto. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * Solving a key pain point (4:44) &nbsp; * From Starbucks and Pepsi to Tableau and Heap (7:05) &nbsp; * The Grandma Test, and a new approach to analytics (9:37) &nbsp; * Self-service vs. hands-on customer relationships (22:00) &nbsp; * &ldquo;Are you creating impact,&rdquo; and other CMO challenges (25:08) &nbsp; * Measuring impact: brand, go-to-market, and customer insights (27:36) &nbsp; * Fostering creativity and constant inspiration (30:25) &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;

Atlassian is the powerhouse behind popular productivity software brands including Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello. Their solutions help more than 170,000 businesses, and in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr are joined by Atlassian&rsquo;s Senior Growth Product Manager, Andrea Ho.&nbsp; &nbsp; Today, Atlassian is one of the most respected and fast-growing companies in the world, but it took some time before the company was able to dial in growth. Andrea says she and many others in Australia have been attracted to this &ldquo;homegrown unicorn&rdquo; because the company is always innovating in its quest to create valuable, self-serve, low CAC, affordable enterprise software.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Atlassian has done an artful job of capitalizing on its successes. Building and acquiring valuable products that help customers achieve their goals has helped create a strong brand and a powerful word-of-mouth engine. Andrea&rsquo;s team is then tasked with the &ldquo;expansion&rdquo; part of the company&rsquo;s &ldquo;land and expand&rdquo; growth approach.&nbsp; They focus on getting clients to adopt Atlassian solutions across the full organization as well as on driving customers from one product within the Atlassian ecosystem to another.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; This approach has helped create the company&rsquo;s enormous value. Atlassian currently has a market cap of over $62 billion and a team of over 5000 employees. But Andrea explains there is always more work to be done, and the team is constantly working to evolve its growth process. &nbsp; So join us as we learn what&rsquo;s driving Atlassian&rsquo;s breakout growth success. We discussed: &nbsp; * What&rsquo;s a growth product manager vs. a product manager? (4:01) * Atlassian&rsquo;s rise to global success (9:30) * Why having a revenue goal has been a good challenge for Andrea (15:33) * The &ldquo;why&rdquo; behind Atlassian&rsquo;s new North Star Metric (17:25) * Insights into the growth team structure (24:40) * The &ldquo;land and expand&rdquo; growth engine (27:52) And much, much, more . . .

You likely know Shutterstock as a stock photography company, but in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, we discover that in its 17-year history, Shutterstock has grown into a creative powerhouse that provides everything from motion and special effects to music and full production services. &nbsp; When Jamie Elden joined as Chief Global Revenue Officer the company was positioning itself around its technology, but Jamie who comes from a creative background felt that Shutterstock primarily spoke to creative audiences. To drive sustainable growth, he believed Shutterstock would need to refocus as a creative company. This would require a cultural shift and new efforts to personalize experiences for customers. &nbsp; With an intense focus on speaking to creative people on their terms and making it simpler to engage with Shutterstock at every level, the company thrived through the pandemic. Personalization has become a mainstay of customer interactions, even in the self-service areas of the business. Jamie wants the company to speak to customers as humans, and in this conversation with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr, he explains how he has worked to make that a reality throughout the global organization. &nbsp; And if you think the role of Chief Revenue Officer is all about numbers, this discussion may very well change your mind. Jamie talks about throwing away the spreadsheets and setting new goals to pivot without process. That is a bold approach for a business with 4,800 employees but it seems to be working. &nbsp; This is one of our favorite episodes. As with our discussion with Noom&rsquo;s founder and president Artem Petakov and our discussion with Georgia Vidler, Canva&rsquo;s former Head of Product, this is a conversation that really shows the human side of breakout growth. Enjoy! We discussed: &nbsp; * Jamie&rsquo;s journey to Shutterstock and what excited him about the opportunity (5:47) * From creative company to creative company, not small business to big business (6:28) * Coping with Covid, thriving through Covid (14:58) * Kickstarting the culture at a large company that was plateauing internally&nbsp; (18:49) * Simplify, simplify, simplify! (23:45) * Throw away the spreadsheets (31:48) * Bring lessons from Tonik, a small business to Shutterstock&nbsp; (44:53) * Training for relationships (47:45) And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;

Television advertising used to be the domain of large, Fortune 500-type companies with deep pockets who could afford to invest in channels with low ROI visibility. For startups, TV advertising seemed to be an expensive experiment that would be pretty tough to prove its effectiveness. However, in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr, we find out that things have changed dramatically. TV advertising is now more accessible, trackable, and very scalable if a test yields positive results. &nbsp; To unpack the new potential of this medium we brought Philip Inghelbrecht, co-founder and CEO of Tatari, and Jamie Fontana, Senior Director of e-Commerce at Vuori to the conversation. You may already know Vuori, the fast-growing performance apparel company, and if you do it may be because of their television presence. Tatari executes Vuori&rsquo;s ad-buying strategy, but Philip, who previously founded Shazam and TruCar, sees his company as a data and analytics company facilitating digital advertising and less as a media buying agency.&nbsp; &nbsp; As digital streaming is rapidly replacing broadcast television and cable, Philip&rsquo;s team has developed technologies to unlock systems for measuring, buying, and optimizing television ad spends. Where companies used to face entry points north of $3 million just to test TV advertising, Philip says $100,000 is now a big enough budget to get in the game. For Vuori and even for smaller brands this puts the credibility of TV within reach.&nbsp; &nbsp; To measure the value of a campaign, companies used to depend on the slow and rudimentary feedback loops of Neilson surveys, but Tatari has developed technology to provide accurate, next-day reporting that brands can use to effectively optimize campaigns. At the same time, the costs and speed of creative development have dropped to more manageable levels making this a much more accessible medium. &nbsp; Vuori&rsquo;s experience is proof that TV can be an effective channel for growing brands. Jamie explains, &ldquo;If you have a brand story to tell then TV and streaming are potentially valuable across your entire marketing funnel.&rdquo; So, if you previously looked at TV as only a brand marketing channel, or a channel out of reach for your business, take a listen and see if this old channel has something new to offer for your business. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * Why better measurement, more transparent buying, and better creative optimization are now possible (11:45) * The shift that has changed TV into a performance-centric, digital advertising platform (13:15) * Putting TV credibility within reach for smaller brands and businesses, and&nbsp; Vuori&rsquo;s growth with TV through the pandemic (14:15) * TV as a viable channel in an &ldquo;outcome marketing&rdquo; world (29:12) * Far from dead! The future of cable, broadcast, and streaming opportunities (31:28) And much, much, more . . .

The lines between product and growth are often gray, and in this week&rsquo;s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean and Ethan share more about this trend with their guest, JD Millwood, Vice-President of Product at Curve.&nbsp; &nbsp; Curve is a Fintech company on a mission to simplify the way people spend, send, see and save money. JD describes the Curve debit card as the first over the top platform for banking, and with innovations like the ability to finance purchases you have already made, he and his team seek to create a new and better banking experience for consumers. &nbsp; JD previously held growth roles at Coinbase and Uber, and his role at Curve morphed from growth into product fairly recently. It has been a natural progression, and through this lens, JD sheds great insights into why growth people need to have a degree of ownership over the product to control their own destinies. At Curve, the growth team lives within his product organization, and the coupling of product and growth is a trend Ethan and Sean have been exploring with recent guests from Buffer, Canva, and other fast-growing organizations. &nbsp; The approach is working. Despite huge challenges during the pandemic that put a temporary hold on an aggressive hiring plan, the company still expects to nearly double its headcount from about 330 today to over 600 employees by year&rsquo;s end. Strong product/market fit continues to drive growth, but JD sees partnerships as Curve&rsquo;s next big opportunity. Leveraging relationships with company&rsquo;s like Samsung, the company is able to extend its B2C go-to-market strategy to B2B2C and greatly expand distribution.&nbsp; &nbsp; With an understanding of how product and growth work together, we dive into Curve&rsquo;s &ldquo;helix&rdquo; team structure where data-driven thinking guides the prioritization of experiments and ensures engineering resources are not wasted on efforts that will not move the North Star Metric. We learn about the company&rsquo;s growth engine, and how building excitement for users early drives referrals and retention. And we find out how a growth mindset drives great product leadership.&nbsp; &nbsp; Take a listen. For anyone focused on growth, this is a valuable discussion. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * A better way of banking in the fragmented world of Fintech (3:45) * Why growth people need to have some control over product (6:30) * How data challenges led to the product/marketing teams formation (9:10) * Why JD saw a huge opportunity at Curve (11:25) * Curve&rsquo;s dangerous exposure during the pandemic&nbsp; (17:05) * Partnerships and B2B2C as the next big thing&nbsp; (19:50) * Structuring for growth (25:50) And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;

In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean and Ethan have a learning-packed discussion with Pat Kinsel, Notarize&rsquo;s Founder and CEO. Notarize provides an online service that makes the process of getting documents legally notarized fast and easy. Instead of meeting with a notary public in person, the entire process is managed digitally with integrated online meetings and digital signature technologies. &nbsp; The company&rsquo;s journey began about 6 years ago when Pat, who had previously sold a business to Twitter, needed to get documents notarized&nbsp; When errors in the process turned into a stressful and annoying near-disaster, he realized that technology might solve the problem he experienced. But, he also knew he faced an uphill battle on the legal front. &nbsp; With a partner who had government relations experience, he went to work to understand, and in many cases, change the laws related to notarization. Together, they navigated these challenges and discovered massive enterprise demand for a solution. &nbsp; The company began to grow quickly and Pat and his team realized they had a superpower; they could get a call from a new business or industry looking for help with a notarization process, unpack and quickly understand the legal challenges, and adapt their solutions to solve the problem. Then, when the pandemic struck, the service became a must-have for the mortgage, title, and other industries. &nbsp; Now, with 600% year over year growth, and a fresh round of venture capital ($130 million), Pat says the world will never go back to the old ways of solving these problems. Notarize was a far better solution before the pandemic, and the crisis has only served to amplify the need and expand the market. So take a listen, as The Breakout Growth Podcast explorers Notarize&rsquo;s explosive success. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * How Pat&rsquo;s own notarization frustrations drove the inception of the business (5:13) * The massive impact of the pandemic on growth (8:20) * Navigating the legal hurdles to make online notarization possible (8:44) * How the product drew massive enterprise interest (9:30) * The word-of-mouth engine behind Notarize.com&rsquo;s success(11:15) * How Covid forced Pat and his team to mature their go-to-market strategy (12:00) * &ldquo;Product/Delivery Fit&rdquo; (23:22) * The importance of distribution partners in the Notarize.com growth story (34:26) And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;

Recently, we have focused the lens of The Breakout Growth Podcast on the role of product in driving sustainable growth. We had a super-interesting conversation with Georgia Vidler, Canva&rsquo;s former Head of Product, and this week we picked up that theme with Maria Thomas, Buffer&rsquo;s Chief Product Officer.&nbsp; &nbsp; Buffer provides social media tools to facilitate authentic engagement with end-users. Customers can pre-schedule posts on multiple channels, engage with commenters, create reports, and more using the service. Maria is relatively new to the company, having previously served as VP of Product Management at Bitly, so it is interesting to hear her compare and contrast her experiences between these two fast-growing businesses. &nbsp; To Maria, the single biggest growth driver at Buffer has been &ldquo;brand beyond the product.&rdquo;&nbsp; &nbsp; She explains that brand recognition is a tremendously important factor for both Buffer and Bitly, but with different go-to-market strategies Buffer&rsquo;s brand in the context of its mission is what she sees as the company&rsquo;s secret sauce. &nbsp; The ability to speak to customers on a deeper mission-focused level has been a key factor in Buffer&rsquo;s approach, and Maria explains that &ldquo;Buffer was a product-led growth company even before PLG was cool.&rdquo; From a product perspective, this has meant putting intense focus on building the user experience to power acquisition, retention, and expansion.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; We also learn that the company&rsquo;s super-transparent culture that embraced remote work long before the pandemic began, has helped drive Buffer&rsquo;s data-driven test/learn culture. However, it has also created interesting communications challenges along the way. As Maria describes how she has overcome these and other challenges, we get great insights into the world of growth from a product perspective. &nbsp; This is a fun one, enjoy! &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * Getting used to Buffer&rsquo;s super transparent culture (3:30) * How a well-known brand impacts growth, plus its impact on product (7:35) * Highlighting Bitly vs. Buffer when it comes to go-to-market strategies (7:50) * Key growth factors and challenges in Buffer&rsquo;s Product Led Growth approach (8:34) * Advantages and challenges of a no-meetings culture and asynchronous communications (13:05) * Working with data; super-important but not a replacement for working with customers (19:41) * Why MAU is the right North Star Metric to drive growth at Buffer (24:28) * Organizational leadership where product and marketing are in constant communications (26:30) * Why Maria believes in a dedicated growth team approach (27:00) And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;

Looking back after you have stepped away from something is often a great way to gain valuable insights, and in this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean and Ethan have the unique opportunity to gain retrospective learnings from a conversation with Georgia Vidler, who, until recently, was Canva's Head of Product.&nbsp; &nbsp; If you are not familiar with Canva, their tagline says it all: &ldquo;Amazingly simple graphic design software&rdquo;. With a huge library of templates and a super-intuitive interface, Canva allows non-designers to create high-quality logos, social media ads, infographics, and more to power their businesses. By delivering on that promise, Canva has become Australia&rsquo;s fastest-growing startup with a reported valuation of over $6 Billion. &nbsp; Georgia has experience in product, marketing, and growth, and through that lens, she describes how Canva&rsquo;s success took shape. It might surprise you to find out that the company bucked the &ldquo;Lean Startup&rdquo; convention and didn&rsquo;t build a simple MVP, and when Georgia talks about data, you may find it refreshing when she explains that while she very much believes in metrics, she also feels that not everything that is worth doing is measurable. Her perspective reminds us that there is very little prescription in growth, but lots of inspiration! &nbsp; Canva wants to be &ldquo;the Google of design one day,&rdquo; says Georgia and she believes the company is well on its way with a philosophy that puts customer happiness before revenue, and a structure that is constantly evolving to meet the demands of a fast-growing business.&nbsp; While Canva may not be formulaic in its approach, she describes a culture that is systematic and intentional and focused on learning and growth.&nbsp; &nbsp; In this conversation, we walk through each component of Canva&rsquo;s growth engine, gaining insights into how a cross-functional approach to improvements connects each piece of the business. We also see a great example of a North Star Metric helping to unify individuals and teams towards a common mission.&nbsp; &nbsp; So join us as Georgia Vidler takes a &ldquo;look back&rdquo; at her amazing journey to Head of Product at Canva. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * Georgia&rsquo;s backstory from working in an incubator to heading product at Canva (3:28) &nbsp; &nbsp; * How the product &ldquo;felt delightful&rdquo; and &ldquo;made with love&rdquo; and why that matters (9:31) * Why Canva did not build a simple MVP (12:01) * How using the product every day drives team member contributions (19:01) * Metrics: they are not one-size-fits-all, or the be-all-end-all of growth (20:22) * Happy Active Users - a North Star Metric that puts users in focus (23:05) * Planning in seasons, not quarters (30:38) * Deep diving into Canva&rsquo;s Growth Engine (36:30)

&ldquo;Ultimately, what it meant was we had to figure out ways we could resonate with an older audience . . . Stop talking to 18-year-olds and start talking to 50-year-olds!"&nbsp; &nbsp; This turned out to be a key, data-driven learning for Bradley Fehler, Echo&rsquo;s Head of Growth, and fortunately, he and his team started to figure this out before 2020 brought unexpected and explosive growth. &nbsp; Brad joins Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr on this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast to share Echo&rsquo;s story of growing into England&rsquo;s leading online pharmacy. The journey began when the company&rsquo;s two co-founders faced different health problems and saw an opportunity to create a mobile app to meet an unsatisfied need. For many, a trip to the pharmacy is just one of life&rsquo;s minor inconveniences, but for some getting their medication is a matter of life and death. &nbsp; Before Covid, the business was growing well. The company had found ways to help consumers solve problems of adherence by creating a simple three-step process to get users to their first prescription delivery and then by optimizing notifications and reminders to ensure those same users were taking their doses and ordering refills as needed. But then Covid hit, and the company&rsquo;s patient-base doubled in just three weeks.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Brad explains the operational challenges of meeting that demand, and the mission-driven decisions the company made to ensure successful patient experiences.&nbsp; At one point the company actually paused acquisition efforts just so everyone in the organization could focus on helping customers get their medications. Echo is a business that depends on patient trust, and one late delivery could shatter that relationship.&nbsp; The company takes this responsibility very seriously. &nbsp; So dive in with Sean and Ethan as The Breakout Growth Podcast looks to uncover key growth learnings with Bradley Fehler, Echo&rsquo;s Head of Growth.&nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * A mission to deliver the medications people need to get better or stay well (3:21) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Anxiety and Asthma, the co-founder&rsquo;s journey that led to Echo (4:51) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Why Brad was excited to join a company with a patient-led approach (8:40) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Growth to nearly 400,000 patients, accelerated by the pandemic (12:01) &nbsp; &nbsp; * McKesson&rsquo;s acquisition of Echo in June 2019 and its impact (16:34) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Driving profitability by talking to the right audiences (17:50) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Organizing for growth and using a North Star Metric (25:29) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Word of Mouth Growth efforts with regulatory challenges (36:03) &nbsp; &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .&nbsp; &nbsp;

Slip on your Oculus headset and FitXR will get your heart rate up. They are combining gaming, fitness, and virtual reality together to create immersive experiences where users can go dancing or jump into a boxing ring. The immersive part seems to really be working! &ldquo;There have been some mishaps,&rdquo; laughs Product Lead, Nejc Skoberne. &ldquo;A few of our community members shared pictures of holes they accidentally punched in their walls.&rdquo; &nbsp; Nejc is excited, because FitXR is on an accelerating growth trajectory, in a growing marketplace where the rules are yet to be written. Virtual reality is still very much in its infancy. Players like FitXR must deal with the challenges of a relatively small hardware-driven ecosystem, but they also benefit from rapid innovation and new opportunities constantly emerging in this space. While the playbook has yet to be written, Nejc and the team are driving growth by learning from data and tapping into an enthusiastic community of users. &nbsp; In our conversation, Nejc explains that virtual reality today is at a stage very similar to that of the early days of the mobile app industry. A few key hardware players like Oculus, Sony, and Steam are setting the framework. That means FitXR cannot easily offer a subscription model today and has to rely on one-off purchases. That&rsquo;s a challenge in a world where Peloton and Mirror, and other at-home fitness systems have emerged, but those limitations also drive the team to focus and innovate within those constraints. &nbsp; By the end of the discussion co-hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr both wanted to try out the virtual boxing game, so take a listen and join us as we find out how FitXR is working to drive sustainable growth. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * What is FitXR? Think of products like Peloton reimagined for the virtual world (7:25) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Why boxing and VR? How the founders came up with this innovation (9:18) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Fitness, gaming, or a combination of both? (12:07) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Challenges and opportunities in the emerging VR-hardware ecosystem (13:59) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Growth as people were forced to stay home (15:20) &nbsp; &nbsp; * What VR today has in common with the early days of the App Store (18:51) &nbsp; &nbsp; * The emergence of communities and how they drive growth (19:40) &nbsp; &nbsp; * When there is no playbook for growth, focus on end-user value (23:50) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Putting data to work and using Amplitude to drive learnings (27:40) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Subscriptions are not yet possible, FitXR&rsquo;s business model today (33:20) &nbsp; &nbsp; * Winning with Product/Market Fit (38:20) &nbsp; &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .

Few industries have been hit harder by Covid-19 than gyms, but despite the lockdowns and forced closures, many have actually weathered the storm. In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, we will find out how one company helped make that possible, and why their growth approach was crucial in supporting clients through these turbulent times. Daan Bakker is VirtuaGym&rsquo;s VP of Growth and in our conversation, he explains that the company started with an app, and grew into an all-in-one tool that helps gyms and trainers navigate everything from scheduling to workout plans. &nbsp; Many of those tools would have been useless if Covid closed their client&rsquo;s doors and disconnected members from their gyms. But VirtuaGym had been growing internationally with 50 - 100% YoY returns for a reason. They were quick to innovate and whether it meant helping gyms schedule Zoom workouts, or building interactive connections between trainers and clients, they were up to the task. Daan also spun up the company&rsquo;s FitNation podcasts and webinars, which focus on helping fitness entrepreneurs find the tools and approaches to move forward and grow through Covid. &nbsp; These pivots have all been about putting the focus on VirtuaGym&rsquo;s clients (and their client&rsquo;s customers) and that has helped drive growth in the face of adversity. A big part of that has been the growth team&rsquo;s unique ability to influence fast change within the organization.Daan says when he joined the company had many functional silos, but the more he and his team interjected themselves and found ways to show results, the more effective they have been in driving cross-functional success. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * How VirtuaGym looks to deliver on a promise to make fitness professional&rsquo;s lives easier by automating everything in one place (2:34) &nbsp; * Why success means not just helping customers, but helping their customers too (6:45) &nbsp; * How the founders&rsquo; story and the company&rsquo;s original app-based approach developed (7:02) &nbsp; * Compliance and Covid-19; how VirtuaGym became an integral link for gyms and trainers (9:25) &nbsp; * Spinning up the FitNation Webinars and Podcasts to help the community navigate the crisis (13:20) &nbsp; * The future of gyms beyond the pandemic (16:00) &nbsp; * VirtuaGym&rsquo;s successful SaaS model growth (22:55) &nbsp; * The Growth Team&rsquo;s critical role as the &ldquo;oil&rsquo; between departments (29:25) &nbsp; * How bringing value in growth became a powerful tool in breaking down silos (37:47) &nbsp; &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .

We thought Noom was a weight loss company, but in this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr discovered that weight management is actually just the gateway the company is using to meet much larger objectives. In-fact, as Artem Petakov, Co-Founder and President of Noom explains, Noom is the largest consumer-facing healthcare company in the world, and its goal is to help people make healthy choices and to change people&rsquo;s lives.&nbsp; &nbsp; During the pandemic, Noom&rsquo;s popularity exploded, but their journey actually began more than 12 years ago, when Artem and his co-founders began looking for the most meaningful ways they could make an impact in the world. Artem had studied behavioral science and knew that behavior change requires a big data set. He and his co-founders realized that using weight management as an entry point into people&rsquo;s overall health could unlock the giant data set they sought.&nbsp; &nbsp; The company&rsquo;s approach to solving weight problems is very different from other solutions as Sean realized when he recently began his own Noom customer journey. There are no point systems or physical locations, and the company&rsquo;s mobile app focuses on intervention, not tracking. The system uses data and psychology to help change how people think about food. With this approach, breakout growth has come into focus, and Artem is intent on &ldquo;building the machine to get things right.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; Rigorous experimentation and a maniacal focus on people and process helped drive Noom&rsquo;s 2020&rsquo;s revenue to around $400 million dollars (nearly twice that of 2019), but throughout the conversation, it became clear that for Artem, this is just the beginning. The company measures success by Quality-Adjusted Life Years, which means success for them is not just about dollars, it is about helping people live longer, better and healthier lives. &nbsp; So join us as we find out how sustainable growth is being built every day at Noom.&nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * A mission much larger than weight management (3:18) &nbsp; * How the question, &ldquo;what would we be proud of having done on our deathbeds,&rdquo; helped drive Noom&rsquo;s founders (5:17) &nbsp; * Why Noom chose to focus on the consumer as the ultimate decision-maker but has kept enterprise partnerships on its menu (8:46) &nbsp; * How an early consultation with Sean helped bring a North Star Metric and a test/learn approach into Noom&rsquo;s process (11:30) &nbsp; * Leaning on psychology internally to drive a more effective organization (14:23) &nbsp; * What drove Noom&rsquo;s tremendous year over year revenue growth (21:23) &nbsp; * Why Noom believes &ldquo;brainpower is greater than willpower&rdquo; (23:01) &nbsp; * Building healthy relationships with customers to impact healthy changes (28:28) &nbsp; * Why 60 or so steps to onboarding works for Noom in the context of its mission (33:21) &nbsp; * Why Artem believes a maniacal focus on people and process is key for sustainable growth (38:18) &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .&nbsp;</s

Is it just luck that determines which companies successfully find and harness Product/Market Fit? Or are there specific strategies teams can employ to systematically take ideas through this elusive gate?&nbsp; &nbsp; In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis digs in with product management coach, speaker and author, Itamar Gilad to answer these questions and explain and uncover what every organization--from early startup to established team--can do to find and capitalize on product/market fit.&nbsp; &nbsp; On BreakoutGrowth.net, the new companion site to this podcast, Sean and Ethan share their Principles of Sustainable Growth, and at the top of the list is the importance of &ldquo;Dialing-in the &lsquo;Must-Have&rsquo; Experience&rdquo; first. Itamar, who developed his own GIST framework to help companies achieve breakout growth success, deconstructs his process for finding this fit and explains why many companies fail when they focus on validating solutions instead of truly understanding their customer needs. &nbsp; But this isn&rsquo;t just a discussion for early-stage startups. Itamar and Sean explain that Product/Market Fit is not just an obstacle to overcome, but the foundation of growth. Organizations must continuously work to optimize and iterate to stay relevant, meet changing needs, and expand their audiences. Even new features in well-established products need to be evaluated through their own product-market fit lenses. &nbsp; So whether you are two co-founders with an idea, or leading the next big idea for an enterprise business, this discussion can help you find the focus, tools, and approaches to best position your organization to unlock growth. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * Itamar&rsquo;s experience from software engineer to product lead at companies including Microsoft and Google (3:17) &nbsp; * Why many companies fall into the trap of trying to grow without Product/Market Fit (7:14) &nbsp; * Why Fit matters for both startups and established organizations (8:38) &nbsp; * Itamar&rsquo;s GIST Framework for sustainable growth success (11:12)&nbsp; &nbsp; * Why it can be so hard to accept that your idea is wrong (14:30)&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; * Whose job it is to find Product/Market Fit (17:45) &nbsp; * The &ldquo;Renaissance Rep&rdquo; and how this role can help understand needs (18:40) &nbsp; * How finding fit varies in B2C, B2B and Enterprise (22:24) &nbsp; * The role of luck and how to make your own (35:00) &nbsp; * Why these concepts should always be in focus if you want to stay relevant (46:21) &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .

In this week&rsquo;s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, we (Sean and Ethan) invite you into our virtual living rooms for a cup of coffee and a bit of a change from our usual conversations with CEO&rsquo;s, heads of growth, and leaders from the world&rsquo;s fastest-growing companies. Our goal with the podcast is always to make growth more human, accessible, and actionable for our listeners. So as we start this new year, we wanted to look forward to what is next in the world of Breakout Growth through the lens of our own struggles, fears, accomplishments, and learnings. &nbsp; Like many of you, during this tough year of transition, we have had rollercoaster rides of our own, and in this conversation, we start by sharing what we learned as we worked together for the first time in 20 years to launch a network-effects project to help underserved college students navigate through the pandemic. It felt good to do good, but it also forced us to sharpen our data skills, hone in on value delivery for end-users, and evolve our processes for rapid iteration. &nbsp; It was a scary time because while we enjoyed making a difference, we also knew that we would ultimately have to rethink our approach to our own careers. Sean was coaching and training growth teams around the world and Ethan was pivoting to a similar career from his success leading the mobile app, RoboKiller. We had to adapt so that we could help companies accelerate growth despite the emerging challenges. The journey has not always been easy, but it helped us to better develop our understanding of a set of core principles for sustainable growth, which we are excited to share over the coming weeks on a new website that will complement and expand on learnings from the podcast. &nbsp; We discuss these and many other topics, as well as the new things we are excited to learn in 2021 so that we can continue to provide valuable insights into the world of growth for our audience. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; * Fear and transition in the face of Covid-19 (01:00) * Working together and putting growth skills into practice in response to the Covid-19 pandemic (4:08) &nbsp; * Sharpening our data skills as Sean launched GoPractice for the US market with Oleg Yakubenkov (7:00) &nbsp; * Upskilling ourselves and teams; the importance of being able to pull your own data (8:09) &nbsp; * What we learned interviewing leaders from the world&rsquo;s fastest-growing companies (15:20) &nbsp; * Translating key learnings to make an impact on our clients and their businesses (17:33) &nbsp; * Adjusting our workshop formats to meet the demands of a remote workforce (21:05) &nbsp; * Forming North Star Metrics and making them useful within an organization (25:15) &nbsp; * The pursuit of &ldquo;fit&rdquo; (Product/Market, Language/Market, Channel/Market, etc. (35:30) &nbsp; * Guiding principles that we will highlight on our new site, BreakoutGrowth.net (42:42) &nbsp; * How value sits at the center of every growth engine and drives organizations forward (51:00) &nbsp; * What we are looking forward to learning and sharing in 2021 (55:00) &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .

&ldquo;It is a superpower for anyone working in growth to know how to get their own data&rdquo; &nbsp; CEO Holger Seim and his co-founders developed Blinkist to help users fit learning into their lives by reading or listening to &ldquo;Blinks&rdquo; - 15-minute summations of non-fiction books. He explains, &ldquo;sometimes you need a three-course dinner, sometimes you need a snack, we are the snack.&rdquo; In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast co-hosts, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr dive in with Holger to learn how the company has built a sustainable growth engine where focused effort on improving engagement spins a flywheel of paid acquisition and word-of-mouth expansion and it helps them avoid a dependency on venture capital. &nbsp; In the beginning, growth was slow for Blinkist. The team launched their mobile app in 2013 in their native German-language, and Holger calls this their biggest mistake. But we also learn how the company found traction in the US and then came to realize that adding audio content could improve engagement. Success then blossomed as a process of iterative learning through experimentation, and Holger describes how a cross-functional strike team approach that the company calls &ldquo;missions&rdquo; has worked to break down silos and motivate teams. &nbsp; One such mission focused on &ldquo;cracking&rdquo; paid acquisition channels proved to be the company&rsquo;s largest driver of growth, but Holger is quick to point out that it is the product&rsquo;s value to end-users that makes all growth possible. The Blinkist team always has the customer in focus, working to help them build positive habits around learning. From automatically starting a new recommended title after a user finishes listening, to adding &ldquo;Shortcasts&rdquo; (brief summations of podcasts) to its content lineup, Blinkist continuously pushes to improve the user experience. &nbsp; With that intentionality, it is no surprise to find out that the company has adopted a North Star Metric of &ldquo;Monthly Engaged Users&rdquo; to align teams against its broader mission to fit learning into people&rsquo;s lives. So jump in with Sean and Ethan as they find out from Holger Seim how growth is built at Blinkist. &nbsp; We discussed:&nbsp; &nbsp; * How Holger and his co-founders struggled in their own lives to find time for learning, and why they saw a mobile app as the right solution to this problem (4:42) &nbsp; * Why launching in German to protect a non-existent brand turned out to be a poor decision in hindsight (8:42) &nbsp; * The impact of qualitative feedback and how that led to the addition of audio versions of Blinks (10:50) &nbsp; * How authors and publishers react to finding their content on Blinkist (12:15) &nbsp; * Why the company is focused on mobile apps as its key platforms (16:53) &nbsp; * The company&rsquo;s push for annual subscriptions (21:27) &nbsp; * Why fast payback windows are profoundly valuable for helping the company optimize for independence (25:50) &nbsp; * The impact of Covid-19; why less commuting has meant less time for reading and learning but has ultimately helped Holger learn to say &ldquo;no&rdquo; and improve efficiencies (32:48) &nbsp; <span style="font-weight: 400

With a product management system that helps organizations get the right products to market, faster, by centralizing feedback and making insights from customers available all in one place, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard has created a new category.&nbsp; &nbsp; The idea of a blue ocean awaiting a unique invention always sounds exciting, but in this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, we learn that in reality, building sustainable growth when everything is new and direct competitors do not yet exist, also comes with tremendous challenges. &nbsp; Sean interviews Hubert at an interesting time as the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformations around the world. Companies like Zoom, serving established markets, quickly capitalize on new demand, but for Productboard the problems they solve are less understood. Therefore, growth has required a constant effort to build problem awareness while expanding the solution to meet changing market needs.&nbsp; &nbsp; We trace the company&rsquo;s journey from its initial bottoms-up focus on emerging startups and SMBs to robust top-down solutions that now also include mid-market and enterprise businesses. We find out how the team has grown to hundreds of employees and evolved to serve over 3000 customers with both self-service and high-touch sales systems and why Hubert sees a whole-market strategy as the right approach to meet the needs of the market and defend against competition.&nbsp; &nbsp; For anyone focused on driving growth, this interview includes valuable learnings about the importance of authenticity in creating value for end-users. Hubert says, &ldquo;The reason why we exist is to make a world where every product is extraordinary and exceptional,&rdquo; and it is clear this mission has informed the culture and mindset behind Productboard&rsquo;s breakout growth.&nbsp; &nbsp; Take a listen, this is one of our favorites . . . &nbsp; We discussed:&nbsp; * The company&rsquo;s journey from serving the needs of small startups to a client roster of more than 3000 companies including Marriot, ZenDesk, Disney+, and more (2:18) &nbsp; * How the business model works from self-service options for SMBs to high-touch sales-driven approaches for mid-market and enterprise clients (4:10) &nbsp; * The recently launched free customer feedback portal that closes the loop between product management teams and customers and provides a viral loop to accelerate growth (5:49) &nbsp; * Hubert&rsquo;s journey as CEO, and how he applied lessons learned from his Berkeley MBA professor, Steve Blank, to build the business (9:22) &nbsp; * Building the growth canvas for a blue ocean business model, and how iteration and prototyping helped solidify the vision (11:50) &nbsp; * How raising $45 million just prior to the pandemic is helping grow the team to meet market demand (17:30) &nbsp; * Why digital transformations are changing the potential market to include companies like Marriot, Sherwin-Williams, and Cartier, and why that was interesting for investors (21:56) &nbsp; * The challenges and benefits of moving upmarket (28:40) &nbsp; * Managing culture as the company has g

Brian Stoner says that Google, Facebook, and many other companies have made it their business models to track you online, but in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, he explains to hosts, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr, that while regulation may ultimately be the answer to this problem, consumers can fight back today with DuckDuckGo&rsquo;s all-in-one mobile and desktop privacy solutions. &nbsp; At DuckDuckGo, Brian serves as Vice-President of Product, shaping the company&rsquo;s browser extension and mobile app experiences. Consumers use these solutions to browse and search the Internet for free, but the company is challenging the notion that users must sacrifice their privacy for these services. The company makes money showing ads to its users, but it does no user tracking in the process. To be successful, DuckDuckGo has optimized for speed-to-value, elegantly showing users how its services protect and serve with every interaction. &nbsp; So what are the sacrifices and tradeoffs for a company that&rsquo;s made search privacy its mission? Can users expect the same search quality they get from Google? And without access to user data how can DuckDuckGo effectively optimize for growth? We drill into these questions with Brian and learn how the company&rsquo;s fully remote team embraces a culture of transparency and learning to drive sustainable growth. &nbsp; Few companies dare to challenge the Googles and Facebooks of the world, and even fewer are successful. However, in a world where consumers often feel powerless when it comes to trading privacy and security for access to the connected world, DuckDuckGo has found a way to grow and thrive.&nbsp; &nbsp; We discussed:&nbsp; &nbsp; * Why consumers feel powerless to protect their privacy on the Internet, and how DuckDuckGo challenges the business models of Internet giants like Google (2:04)&nbsp; &nbsp; * DuckDuckGo&rsquo;s advertising-based model, and how that works without user-level tracking (4:42)&nbsp; &nbsp; * How the company looks to build parity in its functionality with its competitors relying on external APIs and other innovations (9:50) &nbsp; * The company&rsquo;s approach to making good bets by looking for &ldquo; the smallest thing we can do with the highest impact, and lowest complexity&rdquo; (14:24) &nbsp; * Founder, Gabriel Weinberg&rsquo;s thoughts on &ldquo;Traction&rdquo; and what it means at DuckDuckGo (20:54) &nbsp; * The culture that challenges the company&rsquo;s fully remote team to question assumptions (24:00) &nbsp; * Organization around growth, without a centralized growth team (30:12) &nbsp; * User testing movie nights to share learnings (41:02) &nbsp; And much, much, more . . .

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr speak with Kyle Jansen, Vice President of Growth at Skillshare, an online learning community that offers 30,000 classes focused on creative pursuits. As Covid-19 dramatically increased demand for online learning, Skillshare has leaned into a culture of experimentation where everyone in the organization is encouraged to contribute ideas to power growth. Buoyed by a $66 million fundraising round in the midst of the global pandemic, Kyle explains that the already cash-flow positive organization is looking to accelerate growth on multiple fronts. From expanding its international presence to helping companies bring creativity to their entire workforces, Skillshare is looking to capitalize on the strong product/market fit the company has established by helping everyone from hobbyists looking for better ways to bake bread to professionals trying to add illustration skills to their resumes.&nbsp; Interestingly, much of Skillshare&rsquo;s growth, product and funnel optimization efforts were outsourced up until 2019, and in this interview, we learn how that impacted the business. We also find out how influencer marketing has been a crucial growth lever, and how Skillshare&rsquo;s mobile app fits into the company&rsquo;s online learning ecosystem.&nbsp; Kyle says the company&rsquo;s Chief Product Officer always talks about &ldquo;Doing the Brilliant Basics,&rdquo; and in this episode, we get a sense of just what that means as Skillshare builds its breakout growth success story. We discussed:&nbsp;&nbsp; How Skillshare&rsquo;s dual-sided marketplace offering of both home-grown and creator-developed content drives value (4:03) The timing and purpose of the company&rsquo;s recent $66 million fundraising round (7:38) Where the company&rsquo;s mobile app fits into the ecosystem and how that has evolved over time (10:06) Skillshare&rsquo;s international expansion and how product-market fit varies from market to market (19:49) The test/learn culture that drives innovation and growth and the growth team structure driving these efforts (26:59) &nbsp;

With the Universe mobile app internet entrepreneurs create complete websites using only their iPhones. Joseph Cohen, the company&rsquo;s Founder and CEO started with the idea that if you could empower creators to &ldquo;build the internet&rdquo; you could unlock a wave of creativity (4:36). In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast he shares the Universe journey with Sean Ellis who is joined by Ethan Garr for the discussion. Universe was built based on the realization that today, creators use their phones to do everything from editing photos and making music, to shooting videos and writing books. Being able to build a website in that same environment is a natural next step for this mobile-first generation, and these websites allow users to create, promote, sell, and fulfill orders. Essentially, they can build fully-functional businesses without outside help using nothing more than a phone that fits in their pocket. Joe explains that his business model is tightly aligned with the goals of his audience. He feels strongly that the more Universe can help creators grow their businesses, the more successful the company will be. In this episode, we will learn how this approach has unlocked word-of-mouth growth, how experimentation helps the company find and amplify opportunities, and how a ship early and often mentality is embraced and shared with users. Through the lens of Universe&rsquo;s growth story, including its recent $10 million funding round, this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast offers unique insights into the challenges and opportunities facing mobile companies looking to accelerate growth. We discussed:&nbsp; How the democratization of the web in things like photos on Instagram and video with TikTok has created a mobile-first creation mindset (5:00) The challenges of creating a website-building tool specifically for the small screen of a mobile phone (5:55) Universe&rsquo;s original pivot to its current business model (11:35) How the companies North Star Metric closely aligns with customer success (38:30) The company&rsquo;s approach to growth through experimentation and continuous improvement (39:45) &nbsp;

Technically, Klarna is a Fintech company; a Swedish bank that provides online financial services such as payments for online storefronts, direct payments, and more. However, in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast we learn that Klarna is not an ordinary Fintech startup at all. Their breakout growth success, which has seen a valuation increase from $2.5B to more than $10B in just the past year and a quarter (5:40) offers powerful lessons on how growth is built on a foundation of strong product/market fit coupled with great execution, and a data-driven test/learn process.&nbsp; The company is driving innovation and making shopping simple, safe and smooth for millions of consumers, and in this interview, Sean interviews Jon Chang, Global Head of Shopping Growth Marketing, who joined the company in August of 2019. In that short time period, the company&rsquo;s US operations have grown 10X and Jon describes that success as being an output of &ldquo;doing a good job of preparing ourselves to be lucky&rdquo; (14:10). We discover exactly what that means as Jon explains how he and his team structure and execute their approach to accelerating growth. The company now has over 3000 employees broken down into 400 teams. More than 150 of those employees are focused directly on growth, and we find out that it takes very intentional culture-building effort to drive cross-functional alignment across such a massive and growing organization (24:06). Although the name Klarna may be new to you today, this is a company that is having a massive impact on the world in which we live. We discussed:&nbsp; Impacts of Covid-19, and how the company has responded and grown through the crisis (6:30) The company&rsquo;s unique mobile app that &ldquo;ingests the entire internet&rdquo; to offer unique buying power to consumers (14:10) How the company has evolved over its 15-year history, including a pivot from B2B to B2C sales (16:58) Jon&rsquo;s test/learn growth approach and how a marketing experiment recently yielded a 7x increase in installs (28:53) How the company culture which led to 10X growth in the US in one year, looks to do that again this year (41:40)

Tim Ash ran the strategic Conversion Rate Optimization agency, SiteTuners for over 20 years, a business that has generated over $1.2 billion in value for its clients. At the core of that success was a deep understanding of neurobiology, which Tim explores in detail in his new book &lsquo;Unleash Your Primal Brain&rsquo;. In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Tim to better understand how &ldquo;what makes us bizarrely and uniquely human&rdquo; can be used to help us drive growth.&nbsp; The conversation is spirited as Tim holds some contrarian views to Sean when it comes to driving growth through high-velocity testing and optimization practices. However, there is also plenty of common ground as they discuss how the biology of the brain impacts everything from interpersonal relationships to politics, and how an understanding of these ideas can be applied to accelerate growth for businesses. Both Sean and Tim are passionate about the importance of driving value for end-users as the foundation for unlocking growth, and there are exciting learnings as Tim explains how &ldquo;relentless dissatisfaction&rdquo; can help companies find opportunities to drive significant improvements. According to Tim, &ldquo;&lsquo;Unleash Your Primal Brain&rsquo; may help you make a billion dollars or even become the next Dalai Lama, but at the very least this interview will help you understand how a deeper look into your own brain can help you understand and influence others. We discussed:&nbsp; How neuro-marketing and principles from &lsquo;Influence&rsquo; by Robert Cialdini&rsquo;s helped shape Tim&rsquo;s thinking and his book How the biology of the brain and cultural and genetic co-evolution impact our lives as humans The do-nothing status quo and why companies fail when they try to be nice instead of appealing to our survival instincts to avoid pain Why companies need to focus on value over product and put the emphasis on learning from customers How neurobiology and science fit into the test/learn approach to growth How motivation, ability and triggers work together to drive action

Currently valued at around $13 Billion, ZoomInfo, made its Initial Public Offering on NASDAQ in early June. It was the technology sector&rsquo;s largest IPO of 2020, and in this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews ZoomInfo&rsquo;s, CEO Henry Shuck. We discover how using data, technology, and insights, Henry and his team have built a platform that today is used by more than 200,000 sales and marketing professionals at 16,000 companies to help them find their next best customers. Henry explains that the journey began when he was a law school student. Having worked for a company in the same space that ZoomInfo would eventually occupy, he saw an opportunity to help an underserved area of the market and launched Discover.org (5:00). The business took off, but it was learnings from a webinar a few years later that helped him see how sales and marketing automation could be transformational for the business. Using these emerging technologies to power meaningful interactions with customers, the company--which was bootstrapped through 2014--rapidly expanded and positioned itself for growth through acquisition (12:40). Discover.org eventually bought the original company Henry had worked at while he was in college, and in 2017 they completed the purchase of ZoomInfo. Merging Discover.org&rsquo;s powerful tools with ZoomInfo&rsquo;s tremendous industry breadth proved fruitful, and today the combined company has more than 1300 employees. While the large organization is built to support and drive a sales-driven model, Henry explains that an always-experimenting mindset, using data at every step in the customer journey, is actually the foundation of ZoomInfo&rsquo;s breakout growth (34:00). We discussed:&nbsp; The story of how Discover.org came into existence to fill a market need, and how that eventually led to the acquisition of ZoomInfo, and the recent IPO (5:00) How sales and marketing automation transformed the business and became the company&rsquo;s competitive edge (12:40) Key challenges that have threatened the company&rsquo;s success, but also helped the company thrive (23:52) How experimentation powers growth within ZoomInfo&rsquo;s sales-driven model (24:00) The intricate organizational structure, that relies on specialization to acquire and retain an enthusiastic user base (28:30)

With more than 4000 course offerings on its online education platform, over 65 million people have found opportunities to learn new skills and improve their lives through Coursera. That demand is growing rapidly as Covid-19 changes how we work and interact with the world around us. In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Shwetabh Mittal, Coursera&rsquo;s Senior Director of Product Management to learn how the company has built a 3-sided platform in its mission to provide universal access to the world&rsquo;s best education. Coursera offers learners access to high-quality classes from top universities at no cost, as well as more structured fee-based learning programs. At the same time, businesses can use the platform to re-skill and upskill their workforces (4:37), and university partners provide full degree programs to extend their reach beyond their campus footprint. To support these solutions, Coursera has developed a pedagogy designed to help learners stay engaged and retain knowledge in an online format (6:49). And powering growth is an obsession with creating learner value and driving successful learner outcomes (22:45). As Sean digs into the business with Shwetabh we learn how the company&rsquo;s B2B growth engine taps into the strategic agenda of companies looking to develop the skills their workforces will need to compete into the future, and how Coursera&rsquo;s Global Skills Index Report helps in that process (40:27). In addition, we will gain insight into the team structures that facilitate collaboration and experimentation in the growth process, and we will find out more about how the company has met the challenges of Covid-19 for its University partners. We discussed:&nbsp; The learner-focused pedagogy Coursera has developed to create more value for users (6:49) How Coursera makes money working with consumers, businesses, universities and governments (9:46) Why&nbsp; tapping CEO level agendas has driven B2B growth, and the process the company uses to engage the right decision-makers (25:02) The team structure and organizational processes helping Coursera sustain growth (33:51) How the company brings prospects into the pipeline, identifies their needs, and looks to engage them effectively to drive sales (39:23) Learn more about&nbsp;Shwetabh Mittal, Coursera&rsquo;s Senior Director of Product Management at&nbsp;https://www.linkedin.com/in/mittalshwetabh/ Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.SeanEllis.me

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Tally&rsquo;s Vice President of Growth, Mark Powlen. Tally offers an automated debt manager, which analyzes a user&rsquo;s financial profile to determine the best and fastest way to pay down credit card debt. Their algorithm finds the lowest available interest rates and leverages an integrated credit line to saves customers money as they reduce their debt. Tally only makes money when their customers derive this value, and this deliberate &ldquo;alignment with users&rdquo; is an underlying theme of Tally&rsquo;s breakout growth success story (24:58). Making users less stressed and better off financially is the company&rsquo;s mission, and to make this actionable the company has built teams and processes around a North Star Metric that focuses on how quickly users are getting out of debt (23:40). This informs and drives a test, learn and adapt growth approach driven by Tally&rsquo;s dedicated growth team, but embraced company-wide (13:05).&nbsp; In this episode, we will learn how Tally drives growth through cross-functional alignment and how intentional growth leadership has made this possible even as the company has grown to a team of 132 employees from just 8&nbsp; four years ago. We will also dig deep into Mark&rsquo;s approach to high-velocity experimentation and learn how the development and prioritization of tests leverage quantitative learnings from analytics paired with qualitative information from user research and customer support feedback loops. For fans of Sean Ellis&rsquo; &ldquo;Hacking Growth&rdquo; this episode will certainly resonate, as Mark and his team have embraced the book&rsquo;s key principles on their way to breakout growth success. In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Tally&rsquo;s Vice President of Growth, Mark Powlen. Tally offers an automated debt manager, which analyzes a user&rsquo;s financial profile to determine the best and fastest way to pay down credit card debt. Their algorithm finds the lowest available interest rates and leverages an integrated credit line to saves customers money as they reduce their debt. Tally only makes money when their customers derive this value, and this deliberate &ldquo;alignment with users&rdquo; is an underlying theme of Tally&rsquo;s breakout growth success story (24:58). Making users less stressed and better off financially is the company&rsquo;s mission, and to make this actionable the company has built teams and processes around a North Star Metric that focuses on how quickly users are getting out of debt (23:40). This informs and drives a test, learn and adapt growth approach driven by Tally&rsquo;s dedicated growth team, but embraced company-wide (13:05).&nbsp; In this episode, we will learn how Tally drives growth through cross-functional alignment and how intentional growth leadership has made this possible even as the company has grown to a team of 132 employees from just 8&nbsp; four years ago. We will also dig deep into Mark&rsquo;s approach to high-velocity experimentation and learn how the development and prioritization of tests leverage quantitative learnings from analytics paired with qualitative information from user research and customer support feedback loops. For fans of Sean Ellis&rsquo; &ldquo;Hacking Growth&rdquo; this episode will certainly resonate, as Mark and his team have embraced the book&rsquo;s key principles on their way to breakout growth success. We discussed:&nbsp; How lessons of the last financial crisis have helped Tally through Covid-1

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis is joined once again by Ethan Garr to discuss what&rsquo;s driving growth at the world&rsquo;s fastest-growing companies. The conversation focuses on learnings from Sean&rsquo;s interviews with companies nailing growth in the challenging world of Hardware. While Sean and Ethan expected growth for businesses building hard goods to be vastly different from their personal experiences leading growth for software and mobile apps, they found themselves pleasantly surprised as they honed in on learnings from hardware companies that are applicable for anyone seeking to drive breakout growth in their organization. Iterating to product/market fit is often not practical for hardware companies, but innovative approaches to drawing out market signals have the ability to tap into the love consumers have for product ideas even when an MVP or prototype isn&rsquo;t possible (1:59). While a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign informed Glowforge as to who would embrace their 3D Laser Printers for makers and crafters (2:44), Brynn Putnam, the founder of the Mirror, learned through a survey of her boutique gym clients that wall mirrors could provide the immersive experiences consumers hunger for in their connected-fitness devices for home workouts. The conversation also looks at the interdependencies of growth drivers seen throughout these interviews. While EVBox, a manufacturer of electric vehicle charging stations and software, showcased how a focus on customer advocacy can drive referral and retention cycles, a look into AfterShockz, a manufacturer of innovative headphones, brought to life how video and other methods for simulating and showcasing value for users can play an important role in growth (20:44). Even though experimentation can be difficult in the slower cycles of hardware development, Sean &amp; Ethan discover how these companies are still able to use a test/learn culture in their approach. Although hardware companies have unique challenges to overcome, in this episode, you will find that the fundamental tools and techniques driving growth at the world&rsquo;s fastest-growing companies can cohesively be applied across industries and markets. We discussed:&nbsp; Product/Market Fit as the foundation for growth; how retained engagement is crucial across industries (3:00) How hardware companies tap into love for their products through community building and customer engagement (10:45) The challenges hardware companies face in using data to drive growth, and how that has changed with connected devices (6:42) Why the interdependence of growth drivers is critically important for these companies, and how they use tools like video to connect users to value (17:53) How growth is built and nurtured in fast-growing hardware companies with a clear focus on mission, and how team leadership and alignment drives success (34:45)

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews the Global Co-CEO of Finder, Fred Schebesta. Finder is on a mission to help people make better buying decisions with comparison tools, guides, and news, and their breakout growth story is one of constant reinvention. Fred wants Finder to be more than a unicorn, and to sustain growth long into the future (12:50). To do this, he believes the company needs to take big risks. Today, that means shifting the organization from a media company to a product and technology company. The company&rsquo;s mobile app represents the beginning of this shift. Finder has already helped consumers make 74 million decisions, but their goal is to help the world make a billion decisions. That&rsquo;s difficult when consumers are wired to use Google for every search, but as the Finder app intercepts and predicts purchasing intent, the company hopes to disrupt both itself and the market (11:15). In this discussion, Sean digs into the mindset and approach to growth that is allowing Finder to thrive and expand on the global stage.&nbsp; The company serves more than 10 countries with over 300 employees, and Finder recognizes that product/market fit is not a constant across the globe. Fred explains his personal passion for listening to and identifying customer needs and the importance of this approach as the company reimagines itself into these markets, and we also learn why this approach has helped the company adapt to the challenges of a world swept by Covid-19. While nothing can fully prepare an organization for a global crisis, Finder has been able to use its reinvention-based DNA to continue growing through this period. We discussed:&nbsp; Finder&rsquo;s reinventions from a blog-based comparison site to a media company and now to product and technology company (2:05) Fred&rsquo;s reasons for taking big risks despite the company&rsquo;s and his own success, and why he thinks this critical for sustained growth (11:54) The challenges of expanding into other markets and how Finder has approached and finds product/market fit in each country (14:33) Leading growth with a distributed, growing team through the Covid-19 pandemic (29:00) Turning the desire to help the world make a billion decisions into a Northstar Metric&nbsp; (36:50) How Finder&rsquo;s growth engine, begins with performance channels and moves to brand and awareness channels, taking into account the nuances of each market (40:00)

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Marlo Struve, Glowforge&rsquo;s Vice President of Growth. Glowforge is a 3D printer that allows crafters and makers to create unique and innovative things using a subtractive manufacturing process. Where traditional 3D printers add layers of material to create items, Glowforge carves away material using a CO2 laser to reveal a maker&rsquo;s ideas for prototypes, parts, crafts, and gifts. Breakout growth started with a hugely successful 2015 crowdfunding campaign that yielded more $30 million dollars in 30 days, and while that did demonstrate incredible demand for the concept, it would actually take two years before the first Glowforge printers would be delivered to customers.&nbsp; In this interview, Sean uncovers how the team built off of the excitement and anticipation of the original crowdsourcing campaign to transform customer love for an idea into a flywheel effect that now drives sustainable growth (28:36). He also discovers how the company&rsquo;s growth mindset stressed the idea of &ldquo;growing the market while you sell it,&rdquo; to unlock opportunity and expand the potential userbase (23:02).&nbsp; Perhaps the most interesting part of this conversation is a deep dive into how Glowforge intentionally and skilfully uses friction to unearth a white-hot core of passionate fans and users (19:44). The idea of always working to reduce friction is ingrained in the minds of growth professionals through books, conferences, and interviews, but this discussion may make you think differently about how you might apply &ldquo;educational friction&rdquo; to accelerate growth.&nbsp; We discussed:&nbsp; The advantages, opportunities, and challenges that grew out of the company&rsquo;s crowdsourced beginnings and the two-year period before delivery. (2:20) How early demand served as an indicator of product/market fit and how the company navigated its transition from concept to growth (9:09) Why intentionally introducing friction helps the company distinguish an intensely loyal customer base excited to help share and grow the product (19:44) How an incentivized referral program contributes to 50% of sales. (21:25) The power of Glowforge customer enthusiasm in helping to make a difference during the Covid-19 outbreak (34:25)

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Hugo Pereira, Chief Growth Officer of EVBox, a manufacturer of electric vehicle charging station solutions on a mission to drive sustainable mobility and a zero-emission world. Their breakout growth can partly be attributed to their focus of not just being a market leader in charging manufacturing and development, but instead on being an industry leader (27:56), building mindshare around electric vehicle adoption.&nbsp; To meet their mission and vision, EVBox shifted from a B2C to B2B2C approach and put an incredible emphasis on customer advocacy (13:17). By amplifying the value of customer relationships the company has been able to center their test/learn growth process around effectively meeting the needs of diverse customer sets that include automobile manufacturers, energy companies, fuel retailers, and others.&nbsp; In this interview, we learn about the challenges that come along with this explosive growth. Transferring knowledge as a team grows by 40 - 50 people a month is incredibly challenging (27:03), and Hugo describes how collaborative culture and transparency have made is possible for the company to expand from a dozen employees to more than 600 in five years. Hardware businesses are notoriously complex as there is little room for error when it comes to nailing product/market fit. Hugo explains how a shift in mindset has helped overcome these challenges, and how a culture has emerged where people powered by purpose build the right products in a fast-moving industry (27:40). We discussed: How Covid-19 may change the EV landscape forever, and how that has presented both internal and external challenges and opportunities (11:42). The unique challenges of getting it right vs. getting it fast in the hardware space (26:30). How being acquired in 2017 by a large energy firm gave EVBox more power to form partnerships and make an impact in the industry (29:24). Why managing accountability across the organization is an important part of the growth team&rsquo;s role in a growing organization (36:00). How bureaucratic control is balanced with a startup mindset that connects to the mission, vision, and values of the company (38.55).&nbsp;

In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews&nbsp;Santi Jaramillo, CEO and cofounder of Emplify,&nbsp;a B2B company that combines software and consulting to deliver insights that unlock the potential in teams. &nbsp; We discussed: &nbsp; The challenging path that Emplify took to reach product/market fit How Emplify drove interest using thought leadership and content marketing The team structure that Emplify has used to convert highly engaged customers How the Emplify team overcome the COVID 19 disruption to accelerate their company mission Beyond learning about Emplify&rsquo;s approach to growth, Santi also shared insights into how teams around the world have been affected by the COVID crisis and ways to help them succeed despite the challenges.&nbsp;

In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews&nbsp;Hitachi Solutions' SVP Operations Jessica Hawk and Growth Team Lead Dean Kroker. They both played a key role in driving growth from&nbsp;a small startup to hundreds of employees and an impressive acquisition by Hitachi. We discussed: How to overcome resistance to growth transformation in larger organizations. Their transformation over the last year from a traditional growth approach of an IT services business to one that effectively uses data and experimentation to accelerate growth.&nbsp; Their response to Covid 19 and how their startup agility and experience with remote implementations at Capax Global has been very helpful for the broader Hitachi solutions team.&nbsp; The importance of applying technical intensity to developing scalable solutions to operational growth challenges. The role of a partner in driving growth when providing services built on the partner's platform. The role that workshops can play in driving the organizational transformation to an agile growth hacking approach in a large company.

In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast I&rsquo;m speaking with Mark Frank and Scott Orn from Sondermind, a company growing 20% month over month. The founding team of Sondermind recognized that mental health services are way too hard to get for many of the patients who need them. So they built a platform to make it easier for patients to find excellent mental healthcare professionals and navigate the challenges of paying for these services. Sondermind is needed now more than ever and due to their strong mission, they were quickly able to introduce a remote care option. In the episode we discussed the following topics. Role of mission in driving success at Sondermind How they acquire most of their new clients How they initially seeded their network How they are expanding their network to new states How Sondermind managed the fundraising process Best way to communicate with investors after raising funding How they keep balance in the two sides of their network The answers to these questions are critical to understanding how Sondermind is achieving 20% month over months growth.

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Sampo Parkkinen, CEO of Revieve, an AI-driven beauty personalization platform that helps cosmetic brands and retailers drive revenue by improving their customer experiences. As physical retail cosmetic stores around the world close, this solution is increasingly important for driving sales online. In the interview, Parkkinen explains how Revieve didn&rsquo;t really hit their growth stride until they realized what the true value is that they deliver. Since then, they&rsquo;ve worked hard to align their team around delivering more of this value. While they largely have a traditional B2B sales process, Revieve is able to work with partners to closely track usage data and optimize their solution over time. Learn more about CEO Sampo Parkkinen at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sampo-parkkinen-b3262a6/ Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.SeanEllis.me

In this episode, Sean Ellis interviews Nabis Founder and CEO Vincent Ning to understand what is driving their breakout growth. Vincent tells the story of how they went from a couple of guys driving a van to a 120 person company moving over $100M in wholesale cannabis products. The YCombinator backed business is now a logistics powerhouse handling everything from product distribution to compliance.&nbsp;&nbsp; Vincent credits the biggest driver of growth to an industry that is booming. But he also says that their technology has played a big role in differentiating the service from competitors. For example, brands have complete visibility into the location of their shipments at any time.&nbsp; This helps build trust which is critical for developing strong relationships with brands. This interview took place in March. Since that time a lot of businesses have been heavily impacted by Covid 19 and Nabis is no exception.&nbsp;&nbsp;

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Brynn Putnam, CEO of Mirror, a smart fitness hardware and subscription service for better at-home workouts. The product is essentially an elegant mirror that is also a personal fitness studio with content ranging from on-demand cardio classes to boxing and yoga. An important part of their value proposition is that unlike most exercise equipment, the Mirror takes up very little floor space.&nbsp;&nbsp; While common startup wisdom today touts that you should launch early with an MVP version of your product, the Mirror team wanted to ensure that they launched with a very polished product that could deliver a great experience. They also focused a lot of effort and marketing dollars to build trust in the Mirror brand.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the interview, Brynn explains How her team builds desire for this cool product The role of social proof in building trust How celebrities were an important part of building initial interest How rewarding experiences feed the referral loop&nbsp; Learn more about CEO Brynn Putnam at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brynn-jinnett-putnam-1311938/ Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.SeanEllis.me

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Christoffer Pettersson, CMO of Minna Technologies, a SaaS product for banks. The product empowers banks to make recommendations to their customers of ways to save on recurring subscription fees.&nbsp;&nbsp; Initially, Minna Technologies focused on offering this functionality directly to consumers but over time realized the best way to monetize was via banks.&nbsp; However, because of their early B2C efforts, Minna Technologies was able to really refine their user experience based on a deep understanding of consumer behavior. They continue to maintain a direct to consumer user base as a &ldquo;sandbox&rdquo; for driving improvements in both the product and the way customers engage with the product.&nbsp;&nbsp; This direct to consumer sandbox overcomes one of the largest challenges of working in a B2B banking environment, which is understandably a low risk tolerance.&nbsp; By the time a bank wants to consider rolling out an improvement, Minna Technologies can present data showing that it really is an improvement.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the conversation, Sean and Christoffer also discussed the typical communication challenges of growing a team from 5 people to 55 people. They explored how to use both a North Star Metric and OKRs to help drive alignment and coordinate execution cross-functionally.&nbsp;&nbsp; Learn more about CMO Christoffer Pettersson at https://www.linkedin.com/in/christofferpetterssongbg/ Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.SeanEllis.me

For this week&rsquo;s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis travels to Vilnius, Lithuania to interview leaders from their hottest breakout growth companies.&nbsp;&nbsp; The panel discussion included the CEO, Thomas Plantenga, of Vinted which is Lithuania&rsquo;s first unicorn. Thomas led the successful turnaround effort from struggling startup to a billion-dollar valuation. He shares details about what they specifically did to drive this turnaround.&nbsp;&nbsp; The panel also included Jonas Karklys, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Tesonet, a company that creates security tools. The business has grown rapidly and is now almost 1000 employees. Tesonet sponsored Sean&rsquo;s travel to Lithuania for a private workshop and was the key sponsor behind the event. Other guests included JB Daguene, a partner from 70Ventures, which funds and accelerates B2B startups from across Europe and Tomas Slimas, CMO/co-founder of Oberlo, a company founded in Lithuania that was quickly acquired by Shopify. Tomas now serves as the director of online marketing for Shopify where he continues to grow the Oberlo business. The conversation led to many insights ranging from finding product-market fit, to driving a successful turnaround to managing growth at massive scale. View a video of this panel discussion and Sean Ellis' Keynote at https://www.seanellis.me/sean-ellis-keynote-panel.html

For this episode, I interviewed Ankur Nagpal, Founder and CEO of Teachable, a SaaS platform that is disrupting the online education space.&nbsp; Ankur shares his journey from the grit driven growth of the early days to what is now a large eduction platform generating $1.5M in monthly recurring revenue in addition to significant transaction fees.&nbsp; We discuss Why it&rsquo;s important to bake growth into the culture of a business in the early days The role that aggressive targets played in helping trigger creative growth programs How early customer education programs help reduce churn rates How Teachable has evolved the growth and marketing team structure Future growth plans for maintaining aggressive growth targets

For this episode, I&rsquo;m joined by Ethan Garr, SVP Growth at Robokiller, to discuss the key commonalities and differences for breakout growth B2B companies featured in the last six episodes of the podcast. Ethan has also been helping write in-depth growth studies on each of the companies I've interviewed so he is very familiar with them (Lola, TripActions, Templafy, Valuer, Miro and Hubs (formerly 3D Hubs).&nbsp; Some of the areas that we explored include: How B2B companies are leveraging data to accelerate growth Common factors driving their breakout growth How a growth mindset is essential to fueling testing Why it is essential to clearly identify target customers Why B2B needs to obsess on value for all stakeholders How B2B growth is undergoing a major transformation Role of product/market fit in B2B growth Why it is essential for B2B to collaborate cross-functionally

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Aryal Smith, Marketing Director at AfterShokz, makers of innovative headphones that are ideal for athletes who need to stay aware of their surroundings. Joining Aryal for the interview is Jeff Goldenberg, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Abacus, a leading performance digital agency that has been working with AfterShokz for over two years. Since 2015, AfterShokz&rsquo;s annual revenue has grown by 2000% and its monthly output of headphones now exceeds 200,000 units. AfterShokz headphones use bone conduction technology which enables them to offer situational awareness and a great listening experience.&nbsp; In the interview, Aryal and Jeff share their insights into what is driving AfterShokz breakout growth.&nbsp; They cover a broad range of topics including: The challenge of communicating how a physical product offers a unique experience Some of the challenges of a multichannel approach to growth How to effectively use video in online advertising How a digital agency works effectively with a high growth client How they used a grassroots approach to gain traction and continue to drive growth Challenges of marketing a very innovative consumer electronics product See detailed growth studies on companies interviewed for the Breakout Growth Podcast at&nbsp;https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies Learn more about Aryal Smite at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aryal-smith-8a552770/ Learn more about Jeff Goldenberg at https://www.linkedin.com/in/goldenbergjeff/ Learn more about AfterShokz at www.aftershokz.com Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.seanellis.me

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Ferdinand Goetzen, Director of Marketing and Growth at 3D Hubs, a B2B platform that connects engineers to a global network of on-demand manufacturers. 3D Hubs was founded in Amsterdam in 2013 and since that time the platform has helped engineers produce more than 4 million parts.&nbsp; In the interview, Ferdinand shares his insights into what is driving 3D Hubs&rsquo; breakout growth.&nbsp; He covers a broad range of topics including: Why the $12 trillion manufacturing market was ripe for disruption How 3D Hubs offers an amazing aha moment when a new project can be priced in seconds compared to the weeks it takes via alternative solutions Ferdinand&rsquo;s top priority tasks when he joined the team six months ago The process that 3D Hubs follows to accelerate growth How the 3D Hubs marketing and growth team fits into the broader organization Ferdinand previously ran growth for Recruitee, one of the fastest-growing B2B SaaS businesses in Europe. He shares some of the key differences between growing that business and 3D Hubs. He also compares some unique challenges of growing a B2B vs a B2C company and what it typically takes to be successful.&nbsp; See detailed growth studies on companies interviewed for the Breakout Growth Podcast at: https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies Learn more about Ferdinand Goetzen at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdinandgoetzen/ Learn more about 3D Hubs at www.3dhubs.com Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.seanellis.me

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Yuliya Malysh, Head of Growth and Self Serve Business at Miro, a B2C2B collaborative whiteboarding solution. Miro was founded in Russia and its viral breakout growth helped attract a $25M investment led by Accel Partners, a top Silicon Valley VC firm.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the interview, Yulia shares her insights into what is driving this breakout growth.&nbsp; She covers a broad range of topics including: How her team is organized The process that her team follows to accelerate growth How her team fits into the broader organization Steps the company took to unlock viral growth such as moving from a free trial model to a freemium plan Yuliya&rsquo;s strong data background is an important part of her success as head of growth.&nbsp; She explains that data is key to identifying large opportunities for growth, informing hypotheses and generating effective ideas for further accelerating growth. Data also helps teams remain objective and not &ldquo;fall in love&rdquo; with their ideas.&nbsp; Yuliya credits a lot of Miro&rsquo;s breakout growth to an intuitive simple solution for the challenges resulting from the market trend toward more geographically distributed teams. She has clearly identified users that have the biggest needs for the solution and has also identified which users are most effective at accelerating viral adoption.&nbsp; See detailed growth studies on companies interviewed for the Breakout Growth Podcast at: https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies Learn more about Yulya Malysh at https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuliya-malysh-66220669/ Learn more about Miro at www.Miro.com Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.seanellis.me

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Meagen Eisenberg, CMO at TripActions, a mobile-first corporate travel platform that has quickly achieved a $4B valuation. In the 10 months since Meagen joined the company, the overall team size has tripled from a few hundred employees to over 1000.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the interview, Meagan shares her insights into what is driving this breakout growth. She covers a&nbsp; broad range of topics including: How her team is organized The process that her team follows to accelerate growth How her team fits into the broader organization What the company does to drive cross-functional alignment and ensure that everyone is &ldquo;rowing in the same direction&rdquo; Meagen credits a lot of the growth to strong product/market fit in the $1.5 trillion corporate travel market. She explains that TripActions delivers on a powerful value proposition for both businesses and their traveling employees. For businesses, TripActions helps drive significant savings, reaching up to 34% of their total travel budget (the second largest controllable expense in businesses). But where TripActions really shines is their ability to help improve the actual traveler experience.&nbsp; Travelers get 24x7 365 travel agents to help them ensure their travel goes smoothly.&nbsp;&nbsp; See detailed TripActions growth study at https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies Learn more about Meagen Eisenberg here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meageneisenberg/ Learn more about TripActions here: https://tripactions.com/ Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.SeanEllis.me

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Casper Rouchmann, Templafy's head of growth and product owner, Oskar Konstantyner. Templafy is an Enterprise SaaS platform for helping companies stay consistent with their branding and compliant in their messaging. Their solution helps teams keep templates consistent ranging from PowerPoint to email.&nbsp; Templafy is one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe and was recently ranked as the fastest-growing company in Denmark. Oskar and Casper explain that some of the key advantages supporting this rapid growth are a great product, rapid deployment across an organization once it has been purchased and a very low churn rate. Oskar and Casper have both worked to further accelerate growth with growth hacking. In the interview, we explore the challenges and opportunities of using growth hacking when a product is relatively expensive, has a long sales cycle and has multiple stakeholders involved in a purchase decision. We agree that cross-company alignment around the right North Star Metric is critical for unlocking the power of growth hacking and go on to discuss potential North Star Metrics for the business. Despite the challenges, Oskar and Casper are confident that a strong team and a clear focus on enterprise customers make an affective growth hacking approach possible.&nbsp; Learn more about Casper Rouchmann at https://www.linkedin.com/in/casper-rouchmann-growth-hacker/?originalSubdomain=dk Learn more about Oskar Konstantyner at https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantyner/?originalSubdomain=dk Learn more about Templafy at www.templafy.com

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola.com, a SaaS platform disrupting the $1.3 trillion business travel market. As the former CMO at Hubspot, Mike provides an interesting perspective on growth since he now oversees all of the key growth levers in the business.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Initially, Lola wasn't focused on the B2B market. The founder previously helped build Kayak.com so he has a strong background in the consumer travel space.&nbsp; But by studying their early passionate customers the Lola team realized their product was resonating most with business travelers. Given Mike&rsquo;s background growing B2B SaaS companies, he was an ideal CEO to recruit to help lead the company into this opportunity.&nbsp; Mike credits Lola&rsquo;s rapid growth to having a fantastic product serving a very large market. Lola provides value to both travel managers and road warriors. For travel managers, Lola helps them save significantly on their travel expenses and gain better visibility and control over their corporate travel. For road warriors, Lola helps improve the overall travel experience.&nbsp; As CEO, Mike believes an important part of his role is to keep the overall team aligned and pulling in the same direction. One of the most effective ways he helps to drive this alignment and cross-functional collaboration is through a monthly full-day meeting between the functional leads. By carving out a full day, they go beyond surface level reporting to actually working with each other to achieve the company objectives.&nbsp; Another key part of Mike&rsquo;s role as CEO is to ensure that the company isn&rsquo;t just growing quickly but it is maintaining strong unit economics as it does so. He explains that the B2B travel space has attracted so much investment capital that it would be easy to pursue growth at any cost. He believes that it is critical to take a more sustainable approach to growth.&nbsp; Learn more about CEO Mike Volpe at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikevolpe Learn more about Lola at www.Lola.com &nbsp;

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Dennis Poulsen, CEO of Valuer, along with their CMO, Taylor Ryan. Valuer helps major enterprises tap into startup innovation strengths via their AI-powered matchmaking platform.&nbsp; Sean&rsquo;s goal with this interview is to understand what is truly driving breakout growth success for Valuer. Since launching in early 2018, the Demark based business has scaled rapidly due to a surprisingly short sales cycle and an effective lead gen program. In the interview, we explore the problem that Dennis and his cofounders originally set out to solve, how they were able to build initial traction for the platform and when they had enough validation to aggressively start scaling. We also analyzed today&rsquo;s growth engine which starts with aggressive customer acquisition.&nbsp; Most new sales leads are generated via content marketing that aims to increase awareness among enterprises that startups can help solve their digital transformation and corporate innovation challenges. This content marketing has helped valuer achieve strong organic search traffic.&nbsp;&nbsp; The Valuer team works to convert web traffic to qualified sales leads by optimizing site content such as case studies and reducing friction to completing the demo request forms. They are able to capture additional leads for outbound sales calls by analyzing IP addresses of the businesses that visit their website without completing a lead gen form.&nbsp;&nbsp; Once leads are generated, the sales team works to quickly arrange a demo of how the platform works. Given that Valuer sales efforts are focused on large enterprises, the sales cycle is surprisingly short, typically ranging from a couple of weeks to a couple of months.&nbsp; All of these elements of the growth engine ultimately are working to increase the number of synergistic matches between startups and large enterprises.&nbsp; Learn more about Valuer at&nbsp;Valuer.ai Learn more about CEO Dennis Poulsen here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennisjuulpoulsen/ Learn more about CMO Taylor Ryan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorryan/

For this episode, we look back at the first six episodes of The Breakout Growth Podcast to uncover key cross-company learnings from each of the breakout growth interviews. Ethan Garr, SVP Growth at Robokiller, returns to help me uncover the key commonalities and differences between these breakout growth companies. I interviewed Ethan in episode 2 about RoboKiller and the path they took from product/market fit to an acquisition by IAC. Ethan has also been helping write more in-depth growth studies on each of the companies featured on the podcast (available at GrowthHackers.com/growthstudies). So Ethan is really the perfect person to help me uncover some of the key learnings across these breakout growth companies. Some of the areas that we explore include: The role of product/market fit and mission in driving growth We compared growth engines and key growth drivers across each of the companies (Acorns, RoboKiller, Transferwise, Resi, Freshly and GenM) We compared the leadership styles to find what is critical to driving sustainable growth Finally, we dug into some of the challenges that each company is facing or will likely face as they work to sustain their rapid growth rates

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Mayur Gupta, CMO of Freshly, the number one direct-to-consumer, fully-prepared, meal delivery service in America. They are on a mission to deliver healthy, tasty, and convenient meals that are fresh and ready to eat in minutes. They have attracted over one million subscribers and expect to deliver almost 35 million meals this year.&nbsp; Sean&rsquo;s goal with this interview is to understand what is truly driving breakout growth success for Freshly. According to Gupta, the real growth drivers to date have been leveraging the intersection of health, taste, and convenience as the basis for strong product-market fit. That, along with the ability to instill a mission-driven culture and mindset, has allowed them to use rapid iteration as their catalyst for growth.&nbsp; This kind of rapid iterative thinking is specifically important to Freshly because meeting the demands of a diverse market requires continuous optimizations to attract and convert target customer segments. For example, people who previously were buying frozen meals have different expectations in regards to variety as compared to recent empty nesters. Freshly has applied growth testing to developing menu variety, and now they are looking to serve additional markets such as vegetarians.&nbsp; Activation for Freshly happens when customers make their first order. Once they try Freshly, customers are able to appreciate the intersections of great taste, healthy meals, and convenience. Freshly also has a referral program that incentivizes customers to recommend the healthy, convenient meal service to their friends. When a friend successfully subscribes to Freshly, both parties receive $40 in free Freshly meal credits.&nbsp; The Freshly team has also been able to discover and scale profitable paid customer acquisition channels. Freshly&rsquo;s growth to date has been built without a strong focus on brand building and only recently has the company started to put more focus on organic growth and to emphasize its brand and PR initiatives. Learn more about the Freshly success story in the growth study here https://growthhackers.com/growthstudies Learn more about CMO Mayur Gupta here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/inspiremartech/

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Moe Abbas, CEO of GenM, a marketplace for digital marketing apprenticeships that has attracted over 60,000 students and 30,000 businesses in its first 2 years of business.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Sean&rsquo;s goal with this interview is to understand what is truly driving breakout growth success for GenM&rsquo;s marketplace. GenM&rsquo;s growth starts with strong product/market fit and a worthy mission of fixing the broken internship model. Their solution connects students with businesses for digital marketing apprenticeships. The language of &ldquo;apprenticeships&rdquo; is an intentional departure from the more traditional language of internships. But the solution goes beyond language to actually require that new businesses sign a commitment to true mentorship and teaching for students. GenM complements this hands-on training with courses that help the students bring real marketing skills to the relationship. GenM&rsquo;s business model makes the program free for students and businesses pay just $89/month. The GenM team optimized to this price point after realizing that higher price points changed the nature of the relationship between the apprentice and the business.&nbsp; At this price point, businesses are willing to mentor and teach the apprentice.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The North Star Metric for the entire team is to expand the weekly active apprenticeships. As a two-sided marketplace, this North Star Metric is driven by distinct growth engines for both the business and the student sides of the marketplace. Students are largely attracted to free education and on the job experience. Businesses, on the other hand, are attracted to the idea of mentoring and teaching an apprentice in exchange for 10 hours/week of marketing help.&nbsp;&nbsp; In his role at GenM as CEO, Moe Abbas has worked to nurture a &ldquo;test and learn&rdquo; growth mindset across the company. This is evident in the rapid experimentation that the team has with everything from how they onboard new businesses and students to the prices that they charge for the service.&nbsp; &nbsp;Learn more about Moe Abbas here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moeabbas/?originalSubdomain=ca &nbsp;And learn more about GenM here: www.genm.co &nbsp;

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Alexandra DePledge, CEO of Resi, a UK based company that aims to reduce the challenges of home renovation and building projects. After only 2.5 years, they have built Resi to become the largest architectural platform in the UK. Sean&rsquo;s goal with this interview is to understand what is truly driving breakout growth success for Resi. While Resi&rsquo;s goal is to build a broad platform for the full range of building challenges, they narrowed their initial solution to a low level, affordable entry product so they could ensure a quality solution and achieve initial product-market fit. By onboarding customers into this solution, the Resi team was able to learn about other pressing challenges that people face with their home building and renovation projects. From this initial solution, they have expanded into architectural planning and design services, financing solutions and even a marketplace for builders and contractors. They have developed a unique team structure that combines both a team to iterate around these new opportunities and an operating team to capitalize on product/market fit for the solutions that have been validated. One highly effective tactic for Resi is a free telephone hotline to answer any questions about the home building and renovation process. This hotline is available to both existing customers and non-customers, providing a powerful way to build trust and eventually cross-sell a broad range of building services. Given that the typical family rarely does a home renovation or building projects, Resi does not have a long-term engagement loop. So instead, they focus on building a strong referral loop via ambassadors. They also benefit from significant average revenue per customer which they can use to fund the paid acquisition loop.&nbsp; Learn more about Alexandra DePledge here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-depledge-mbe-22b57a14/?originalSubdomain=uk And learn more about Resi here: https://resi.co.uk/

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Ethan Garr, the SVP of Growth at Teltech, the makers of RoboKiller. RoboKiller has been nominated by Apple as the App of The Day in addition to consistently being ranked in the top twenty for utility app downloads. It has been featured on both local and national news programs around the USA as an important solution to battling robo callers. Due largely to the growth success of RoboKiller, Teletech was acquired by IAC earlier this year. Sean&rsquo;s goal with this interview is to deconstruct what is truly driving breakout growth for RoboKiller. Their growth starts with strong product/market fit and the worthy mission of reducing the number of robocalls that annoy all of us on a daily basis. Their solution is a mobile app that detects robocalls and wastes the time of the spammer by keeping them on the line with a recorded voice that appears to be a real human. The more these callers waste their time with the RoboKiller bots, the less time they have to annoy us. In his role at RoboKiller, Ethan helped to conceptualize the RoboKiller solution, iterate it to product-market fit, and ultimately drive its scale and adoption to a breakout hit. Ethan credits their success to, &ldquo;product-market fit, people, and passion.&rdquo; He believes that when these three points intersect, they drive rapid, sustainable growth. The team has conducted obsessive optimizations and an aggressive outbound PR effort. Early in their career, Ethan and Sean worked together in marketing to build Uproar.com, the largest online gaming community at the time, which listed on NASDAQ and was acquired by Vivendi Universal in 2001.&nbsp; Learn more about Ethan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-garr-08b101/ And give RoboKiller a try here: www.RoboKiller.com

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis is joined by guest host Matt Lerner, formerly marketing director at PayPal. Together, they interviewed Nilan Peiris, the VP of Growth at TransferWise.&nbsp; Nilan has led growth at Transferwise from around 40 employees to a company that is now over 1700 employees. The goal of this interview is to deconstruct what is truly driving this breakout growth success for TransferWise. TransferWise&rsquo;s growth starts with strong product/market fit. The founders identified an opportunity in the high costs that banks charge for international money transfers. Their solution makes it instant, convenient, transparent and significantly cheaper to transfer money abroad. One of the key growth challenges that Nilan and his team have faced with TransferWise is that most people don&rsquo;t realize that they are overpaying for money transfers. Getting the word out and building a trusted brand via advertising would be a very expensive feat, so instead, Transferwise has worked hard to build customer advocates. But to maintain strong word of mouth, the team needs to delight customers with every touchpoint. This has proven challenging given their unprecedented growth rate. Still, Nilan and his team have closely monitored their Net Promoter Score and have quickly worked to address the inevitable operations challenges that come from a rapidly scaling business. This requires Nilan and his team to work closely with other executives and even the board of directors to effectively manage their rapid expansion.&nbsp; Another reason that a strong referral loop is important is that TransferWise is generally an infrequent use case.&nbsp; So rather than focusing on building a strong engagement loop, Nilan and his team focus on the referral loop. Another recent addition to their approach is identifying a more frequent use case for international money transfers, the b2b market.&nbsp; Some of the other topics discussed are: Forecasting growth in early-stage startups vs rapidly scaling companies Managing your growth and marketing career in an expanding company Building trust with executives and board of directors The role of mission in driving sustainable growth Listen to the full podcast for more details on how Nilan and his team at TransferWise are driving breakout growth.&nbsp; Learn more about Nilan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilanpeiris And learn more about TransferWise here: www.TransferWise.com

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Hila Qu, the VP of Growth at Acorns. His goal is to deconstruct what is truly driving breakout growth success for Acorns. Acorns&rsquo; growth starts with strong product/market fit and the worthy mission of overcoming the challenges that millennials face with investing. Their solution makes it easy to get started with your first small investment in only five minutes. This includes the time it takes to download the app, create an account, connect your bank and credit card accounts and make your first investment. Once you&rsquo;ve completed your first investment, Acorns also automates continuous micro-investments via an approach they call roundups. This low friction approach to investing has attracted over 5 million passionate investors to the platform. Growth is primarily driven by brand advocates which can be seen with their strong app store reviews. On iOS alone, Acorns has attracted nearly 500,000 reviews with an average rating of 4.7.&nbsp;&nbsp; Hila previously led growth lead at GrowthHackers.com. When she joined Acorns it was in a retention leadership role. She soon made the case that the activation lever was a critical driver of retention so she was tasked with managing this lever as well. From there she was promoted to VP of Growth and now has a dedicated growth team of 15 people.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The growth team did not replace the marketing team. There is still a marketing team that manages brand and PR. Hila credits the strong brand as another important growth driver, so she strives to balance the needs of rapid experimentation and staying within the brand guidelines. Hila&rsquo;s growth team scope of responsibilities includes customer acquisition, activation, engagement, and referral.&nbsp;&nbsp; Because Acorns is primarily a mobile app experience, Hila&rsquo;s growth team must comply with a fairly rigid release schedule for their experiments. Every two weeks the product development team makes a new release into the app store and Hila and her team must bundle their experiments into these releases. Still, the smooth onboarding, impressive engagement, and referral loops are evidence of a very effective growth testing program. Learn more about Hila here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilaqu/ And give Acorns a try here: www.acorns.com