The GrowthTLDR Podcast. Weekly Conversations on Business Growth. (Kieran Flanagan and Scott Tousley)

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about how you build a foundational layer for growth.

Most of the content published on growth talks to the experiments, hacks, and tips that can improve your core metrics - acquisition, activation, monetization, retention.

However, none of those things are impactful if you haven't built the right growth foundation. We talk about the three parts of your growth foundation that are critical for your success - creating a common language dashboard, getting the correct organizational design, and prioritizing.

Do you know what the best growth is for most companies, it's developing a product that solves a real problem. That's how Chili Piper, a company that offers a scheduling, calendar and inbox app for revenue teams is managing to double revenue year on year.

We talk to Chili Piper's founder and CEO, Nicolas Vandenberghe.

We talk to Nicolas about:

- Why Nicolas did something different with the early investment Chili Piper received by investing it in R&D.

- How Nicolas managed to secure known brands like Square, Greenhouse after the product had just launched.

- What channels Nicolas feels will offer scalable growth for Chili Piper, and why he decided to build a remote company.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Xenia Muntean, the CEO, and co-founder of Planable.

Planable is a four-year-old company based in London with 20 employees and 700 customers. They provide a tool that helps social media managers better collaborate.

We talk to Xenia about their journey to 700 customers. We get into why they went from a free plan to a free trial and back to a free plan. We talk about some of the biggest hurdles Xeina had as CEO in growing planable and how they differentiate themselves in a saturated market.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we have another Swipefile, as we discuss the shift from B2B to B2C2B go-to markets.

But what do we mean by B2C2B, and how do your go-to-market motions differ from traditional B2B?

We discuss how the rise in product-led growth has shifted focus from buyers to consumers of software, some of the more common B2C2B business models, and how you can successfully market to both your consumer and buyer.

Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Tomas Pueyo, the VP of Growth at Course Hero, a platform that helps students answer their study questions.

Tomas is managing the entire product and growth department that consists of 150 people.

We talk to Tomas about how leaders can best set their teams up for success, how Course Hero defines their north star metric, and why Tomas feels team design is an essential part of leadership.

We also get into the work Tomas has done in providing analysis around COVID and how two of his articles have generated more than 60 million views.

Happy Growing!

In a world saturated with content, where every brand is a publisher for their industry, how do you stand out from the crowd?

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Ann Handley, who is the Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs, a well-known keynote speaker, and author of top-selling books like "Everybody Writes Your Go-to-Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content."

We talk to Ann about:

- How competitive it's become for content to stand out from the crowd and if we're trying to measure too much as marketers.

- Why some content stands heads and shoulders above everything else, including examples from Ann.

- How should companies think about video as part of their content marketing mix?

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss what skills are the most under-valued in marketing.

We get into the art of persuasion, and why all marketers should invest time into learning both copywriting and sales. We give some of the best resources and methods to get started.

We also discuss why prioritization is such a critical skill, why the best leaders need to make tough choices and how teams can rally around priorities even if they disagree on what they are.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR with talk to Adelina Peltea, the VP of Growth at Holded, a 70 person company based in Barcelona selling business software to SMBs.

We talk to Adelina about her role as VP of Growth, where she manages the full customer lifecycle - marketing, sales, and customer success.

We talk to Adelina about the benefits of having cross-functional pods managing different parts of the go-to-market. We got into the three-step plan she developed to help Holded grow and what signals told her it was time to invest in a new growth channel.

Happy Growing!

In this episode on the GrowthTLDR, we're welcoming Garrett Mehrguth back to the podcast. In the first episode, Garrett took us through the founding story of his agency, Directive Consulting.

We're back to talk about all things sales outreach and brand advertising. Garrett goes through how to create the perfect sales outreach email and why they should read like a great movie.

We also go into brand advertising. Garrett talks us through why you shouldn't focus your efforts on generating leads, and instead focus on being visible at the top and bottom of your funnel.

Happy Growing

A quick update on the GrowthTLDR about upcoming shows, and our soon to be launched community.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Bhavneet Chahal, the CEO, and co-founder of GoSkills, about taking the company to 2 million in revenue.

GoSkills is an online education company. They have 18 people who all work remotely.

We talk to Bhavneet about how she started GoSkills are working at Groupon and seeing how successful promotions for courses were. We get into how Bhav differentiated her courses from competitors and what channels she pivoted to for growth after Groupon's reach began to diminish.

Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're back talking to the founder and CEO of Vidyard, Michael Litt.

In our first episode with Michael, we talked a lot about leadership and how to grow a company. In this episode, we wanted to dig into Vidyard's recent shift to being a product-led company and how they successfully added freemium to their go-to-market.

We talk to Michael about why he made that decision, the challenges Vidyard had to overcome to make it successful, how to get your go-to-market teams working effectively together, and how to get your sales team excited about freemium.

A winning content marketing strategy is the result of many different elements. Of course, writing is one of them :)

But the companies who are truly successful with content marketing perfect two vital parts - content marketing research and promotion.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Ross Simmonds, the founder of Foundation Marketing, a B2B content marketing agency, and Hustle & Grind, an eCommerce store for entrepreneurs.

We talk to Ross about:

- Why it benefits him as an agency owner to have other brands where he can perfect content marketing tactics.

- How you can leverage the 'Sherlock Homeboy' method to reverse-engineer popular content and create something better.

- Why companies should be using content to help grow their brand, not just create demand, and how best to measure it.

Happy Growing

One of the most common problems I see in fast-growing companies is the consistency of tone and voice across publishing content.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to May Habib, co-founder, and CEO of Qordoba, a company focused on helping brands solve that problem.

We talk to May about her thoughts on remote work and how they've changed during the COVID crisis as her entire company has been working from home. We also talk about customer acquisition for Qordoba, the difficulties of marketing a product with a broad set of use-cases, and how to decide between a free trial and freemium.

A lot of people dream of leaving their full-time roles to build out their company. But what's it like to leave the safety net of a full-time job to go out on your own?

We talk to John Doherty, CEO, and Founder of Credo, an online marketplace to connect clients to agencies, about his experience growing the company.

In this episode we cover:

• Why John decided to focus full-time on Credo instead of looking for a marketing leadership role in San Francisco. 
• What the first six months was like for John after going from an internal role where he had a team and budget, to running his own company that had generated $80 in revenue.
• How John copes with the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur.

Happy Growing

How hard is getting traffic from Google right now? They continue to release new features that make it harder than ever to grow traffic in specific verticals.

Well, fear not, we drafted in well-known SEO expert Aleyda Solis to give us the best insights on how to fight back against Google.

We cover:

• How Aleyda has seen Google evolve over her time doing SEO for a range of different clients.
• What to do if you're starting to try to compete for search traffic in a competitive market, and how you can still win against the biggest competitors.
• Why it might be time to start investing more in Youtube, and how to make it successful.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about some of the latest tech stories, including Loom updating their pricing and Notion launching jobs to be done guides.

We then get into how you can build a customer acquisition model for 2021 to ensure you'll hit your revenue goals. We get into creating targets via a bottom-up exercise, how you can decide what channels are worth the investment, and how to build a growth scorecard for each channel.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Johnny Bourafhat, the CEO and founder of Hopin.

Hopin is a virtual events platform and has grown a lot over the past four months. After launching the product in private access in March, they've gone from 6 employees to over 93, with tens of thousands of customers.

We talk to Johnny about how being a remote company has helped them grow so fast. We also dig into why Johnny as chosen to keep the company in private access, how he thinks about navigating growth during COVID, and what's been the hardest part of being the CEO of such a fast-growing company.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Darin Brown, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Docket, a company looking to revolutionize meetings through a product-led model.

Docket is currently at 15,000 users growing through SEO and product-led virality.

We talk to Darin about why he started Docket, how they measure user activation, and what's it like growing through the Zoom marketplace.

Imagine you're working at your dream job, doing killer work, and suddenly you get laid off. What do you do? Most people would look for another job.

Well, what about going traveling in South America, walking the Inca trail and deciding you want to be an entrepreneur, not tied down by location.

That's what today's guest did, Kean Graham, founder and CEO of MonetizeMore.

On this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Kean about:

- How he secured his very first client for MonetizeMore and why making them a bunch of money turned out to be a bad thing for him.

- How did Kean grow MonetizeMore to $23 million in gross revenue and the marketing channels that have helped them to grow?

- What MonetizeMore's biggest growth constraints are and how Kean plans to overcome them.

Happy Growing

For the best companies in the world, customers are their best growth channel, and that starts by providing an excellent customer experience.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Matt Barnett, founder and CEO of Bonjoro, a company that helps to create a delightful onboarding experience via personalized videos.

We talk to Matt about:

- Where the idea from Bonjoro came from, and how valuable personalized video messages were in Matt making sales.

- How Matt defines his perfect customers using the jobs to be done framework.

- Why customer advocacy is the best growth channel, a customer can develop.

Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Mike Adams, founder and CEO of Grain.

It's no secret that collaboration through online video is exploding. You only have to look at Zoom's growth numbers. Zoom's growth is an opportunity for other companies to build into their platform, tapping into their giant userbase.

One such company that's doing just that, and received a lot of press recently is Grain, Mike's third company.

We talk to Mike about how entrepreneurs find the right markets to build a product in, is he concerned about Grain's dependency on Zoom, and why all startups need to find their sharp edge.

Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Ludo Antonov, who founded the growth team at Pinterest and is now running growth engineering at Lyft.

We get into how companies like Pinterest and Lyft excel at growth.

We discuss the three most common goals growth teams have, how those growth teams manage a portfolio of investments across those goals, how they prioritize that work, and the experiment framework used by the best growth teams.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to James Currier, managing partner at NFX guild, serial entrepreneur, and the leading mind on network effects.

James and his partners exclusively invest in companies with network effects because those companies end up being a lot more profitable.

We talk to James about the most common types of network effects, how companies can add network effects to their business, and why the best companies think about building multi-channel games vs. single-player games.

Happy Growing!

Let's face it, when growing demand for your business, you're faced with a bunch of uncertainties. 

Can I hire the talent needed to succeed? Will I be able to generate enough demand for my product to be profitable? Are the marketing channels I'm dependent upon for growth going to be too competitive? Will I have to learn TikTok; I'm not funny enough :/

However, other things have a little more certainty around them. Most successful businesses master a small number of marketing channels that drive a disproportionate amount of their growth. Only a small number of the experiments you run will result in something meaningful for your company. And the channels that drive growth today will eventually plateau in the future.

A marketer focused on growing demand for their business is much like a portfolio manager. That portfolio is comprised of assets in the form of marketing channels:

- Those assets need to grow over time.

- The portfolio needs rebalancing over time by discovering new assets to drive future growth.

- Experiments help the marketer discover those assets.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss the hearts and minds approach to content marketing.

The mission of content marketing teams is to create stories that inspire and educate their audiences.

That content spans across both different content channels (blog, social, email, etc.) and content formats, text, audio, images, video.

The hearts and minds approach is a way for us to break out our marketing channels, topics, and content formats across two distinct buckets.

It helps us to associate both a primary goal and secondary goals with a channel. It's near impossible for a marketing channel to be successful if it has multiple goals, and they're all weighted evenly.

Happy Growing

Since the inception of Marketing Automation, the MQL has been a staple in how B2B marketing companies generate revenue.

An MQL is a lead your business has generated, and the possibility of it turning into a customer is higher than other leads. The reason you mark it an MQL is because it has certain demographic characteristics that would suggest it's a good fit for your product/services. Plus, it's also demonstrated an intent to buy via engagement patterns that you track - opening emails, visiting web pages, downloading content.

A PQL is no different, but the engagement patterns come from actual product usage, making it a far more valuable lead. The person has already used your product and got value from it before your sales team ever talk to them.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR we talk about how you can build an early PQL model for your company.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about how product-led growth is changing how companies go-to-market.

We cover four areas where product-led is changing how companies grow. We get into how b22 marketing teams need to shift from acquiring decision-makers to end-users. We get into how product teams are gaining more responsibility for companies' business metrics.

We also get into how product-led is starting to make the website obsolete and what that means for marketing teams. And we discuss how product-led is disrupting how companies do both pre and post-sales.

Happy Growing!

In this episode, we talk about all things positioning, copywriting, and conversion rate optimization with expert Joel Klettke.

We talk to Joel about the most common mistakes when creating website copy that is costing them millions of dollars in lost revenue. We get into the differences between positioning, copywriting, and CRO, before getting in a real example where Joel walks us through the processes he uses to optimize a brand's website resulting in $165k in additional revenue from changes that took less than 30 minutes to implement.

In this edition of the GrowthSwipeFile, we ask is it possible to add defensibility into your marketing efforts?

Successful businesses have some competitive advantages that help the company to become successful. But the truly successful businesses have some form of defensibility, which helps them maintain that success.

We get into the differences between competitive advantages and defensibility. We cover the most common types of defensibility that successful businesses have. And, we then ask, how do competitive advantages and defensibility work in marketing?

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to PJ Taei, the founder and CEO of Uscreen, a platform to help people monetize their videos.

It's no secret that online videos are a rapidly growing market, and the pandemic has only added fuel to that fire.

We talk to PJ about how he bootstrapped Uscreen to 50 employees, with over 4 million active users on their platform.

We cover how challenging growth is, and the reasons Uscreen struggled in their first three years. We talk about Uscreen's current growth channels and if focusing on specific industries is a growth accelerator. And, PJ covers how he built the first version of Uscreen, and why he wouldn't recommend it to others.

Happy Growing!

In previous episodes of the GrowthSwipeFile, we talked about the future of B2B marketing, including the shift to B2C2B go-to markets.

With that shift to B2C2B, companies need to find ways to market products to the consumers of those products.

Marketing your product to consumers isn't easy, you need something that scales, and provides value to your user without them needing to pay you money immediately.

In this episode of the podcast, we're going to discuss the more common ways to market your product to consumers, along with some B2B brands that excel in these areas.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about the relationship between marketing and data and how some of the world's best companies use data to optimize their go-to-market.

We talk about the benefits of being an expert in your customer versus an expert in data, along with examples of world-class brands that excel in being customer experts.

We talk about the importance of metrics and prioritizing the metrics that matter most to your growth over the next 6 to 12 months. We talk about how important it is to define those metrics, establish playbooks, and create the right team to impact those metrics.

We then discuss how the best companies establish pods to make an impact against those metrics, how pods work, and the benefits of creating them.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about a growth tactic you likely haven't invested in yet - website personalization.

We talk to founder and CEO of Mutiny, Jaleh Rezaei, about how B2B can better leverage website personalization as a growth lever for their business.

We step through the best use cases for website personalization and how it can have a real impact on your business. We go through the best data points to segment your visitors, examples of how brands like Gusto and Amplitude have used personalization to increase their leads, and what impact COVID-19 has had on Jaleh's growth strategy for Mutiny.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Jimmy Daly, the founder of SuperPath, a community to help content markets have incredible careers.

We get into all aspects of content marketing - 

- Why the best content marketers often want to stop writing content.

- How content marketers can be more valuable if they understand how the business makes money and how sales at their company work.

- Who are the best people to hire as content marketers

- Why is writing art, but content marketing is an acquisition channel, and why you need both.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss the eight critical steps to building a winning content formula.

We cover the three most popular categories of content, the best research methods to building your editorial calendar, how you grow an audience for your content, and how to cross-pollinate ideas across channels.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about how the unbundling of platforms like Craigslist, Reddit, and LinkedIn presents opportunities for digital communities to serve the needs of their audience better.

We go through the famous example of Craigslist and how its unbundling resulted in a series of billion-dollar startups. We give examples of how the same thing is happening to Reddit and LinkedIn.

But what does this mean for B2B? We go through how you should think about unbundling and the rise in digital communities' popularity related to your companies' growth. We give examples of when you should consider starting a digital community and its benefits.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Dennis Kelly, the CEO of Postalytics.

Postalytics is making direct mail part of the marketing automation playbook.

We talk to Dennis about why his previous company Boingnet pivoted to become Postalytics and how he knew it was time to make that change.

We asked Dennis about the common mistakes founders make, how he hires executives onto his leadership team, and the hardest part of growing a SaaS company.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Daniel Scrivner, the CEO of Flow, the modern project management tool for teams.

Flow is a company at 2 million in ARR with 15 employees and has 300,000 teams who use them across 140 countries. Daniel joined as CEO almost 18 months ago.

We talk to Daniel about what he focused on when becoming CEO to re-accelerate Flow's growth. We discuss the challenges of differentiating your product in a crowded market, why it's better to focus on doing a couple of things better than the competition, and why Daniel thinks of freemium as a defensive play vs. offensive.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss one of the most common problems that most scale-ups encounter - hitting growth ceilings.

Most companies who transition from start-up to scale-up do so because they manage to find a marketing channel that generates both repeatable and scalable growth.

But, near all scale-ups at some point hit a growth ceiling on that channel, and then they panic.

This episode discusses how growth ceilings occur in the first point and five ways to avoid them potentially.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Krish Subramanian, the CEO, and co-founder of Chargebee.

Chargebee offers subscription and billing software; they process over 3 billion dollars in annual transactions. Krish and his co-founders bootstrapped the company for the first two years, and since then have raised $40 million.

We talk to Krish about how Chargebee found product-market fit, how founders should think about segmenting customers as they grow, what advice Krish would share with other founders, and the metrics all SaaS founders should be measuring.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Pulkit Agrawal, the CEO and Co-Founder of Chameleon.

Chameleon provides companies with tools that help drive better product success via onboarding, feature adoption, and better upgrades.

We talk to Pulkit about the repeatable formula to improve user engagement, why product marketing needs to be more accountable to user onboarding, and how product-led growth will change how we build products.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Paul Cowan, the CMO of Freshbooks.

By listening to this show, you'll learn:

- How to think about building a 12 to 18-month plan as a new CMO of a fast-growth company.
- Understand how to test brand messaging by focusing on specific cities
- What channels to prioritize for growth
- With the cost to acquire a customer increasing across all marketing channels, what it means for the future of marketing.

Make sure you subscribe to hear future shows.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Bram Kanstein about the No-code movement.

We're entering a world where it's possible to build powerful tools without needing to code. That's a massive advantage to all those people who want to validate a product idea by developing a minimal viable version of that idea.

We talk to Bram about the No-code movement, which he has created a course around. We cover some of the best examples of companies that created the first version of their product by taking a No-code approach.

We also dig into some of the best use cases for No-code applications and how budding entrepreneurs can leverage that approach to take a faster route to market.

Happy Growing!

It's the "One Thing" on the GrowthTLDR where the hosts (Kieran Flanagan, Nicholas Holland, and Scott Tousley) cover an idea or observation they feel is worth sharing with the podcast listeners.

Each week we scour all of the information we've consumed for the best lessons and bring them to our audience. They get all of the information without needing to do any of the research.

What you'll learn on this weeks episode:

- Why all great outputs in media need great inputs. We cover a recent interview from Bob Pittman, the CEO of iHeartMedia, about successfully growing a media empire. We also cover why the next generation of software companies will need that growing empire.

- Why you should be intentional about your 1:1 meetings. We cover why it's imperative to leadership to run effective 1:1 meetings and the common mistakes people make.

- The rising cost to acquire a customer. In a recent post from Reforge.com, they highlighted the increasing costs for all companies to acquire customers. What does it mean for the future of marketing?

Happy Growing!

Google is one of the best channels for growth. But, it's also an ultra-competitive channel, one where you're competing with every other brand.

It's hard to get a competitive edge. Sometimes to get that edge, we forget to pay attention to the fundamentals. For Google, that means the technical elements of SEO.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Geoff Atkinson, who is the CEO and founder of Huckabuy, a software company that makes it easier for Google to crawl large websites.

On this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we cover:

- The story behind Huckabuy, and how Geoff realized the importance of technical SEO after increasing revenue from $0 to $300 million at Overstock from organic search.

- How Geoff helps large enterprise companies dramatically grow their search traffic by helping them with page speed, structured data, and dynamic rendering.

- What Geoff did to sell into large brands like SAP, Concur, Salesforce even though Huckabuy is a company of 14 employees.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Tope Awotona, CEO and founder of the fast-growing Calendly, who are up to 140 employees with near 50 million in ARR.

We talk to Tope about the three decisions that helped to make Calendly the success it is today, how he managed to build the first version of the product without any full-time engineers, how Calendly doubled down on virality, and why they give customer support to their free users.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Abhi Ramesh, the CEO, and founder of Misfits Market.

Misfits Market is direct to consumer grocery business where they resell grocery items via a subscription box at a substantial discount. They've also grown to over 700 employees in 20 months and raised over $100 million in funding.

We talk to Abhi about the Misfits Market business model. We get into how they make money, how Abhi thinks about the long-term defensibility of the business, the critical things that have gone into their success, and what's it like to hire more than 700 people in less than two years.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Rishi Mallik, the VP of Growth at Workato.

Workato is an integration and automation company, and Rishi's growth team's goals are to generate more revenue for the business.

We talk about the structure of the growth team at Workato and how they partner with marketing, product, and sales. We cover some of the most impactful wins from Rishi's growth team and how they've improved critical metrics like sales response times to inbound leads and triggering alerts based on companies' actions in their database.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we run down our top six lessons from 2020.

We talk about the evolution of content marketing, recap some great lessons on creating a growth OS for your company, and discuss some of the interviews we had with companies who went from sales-led models to product-led.

We'll be back in January 2021; until then,

Happy Growing!

A lot of companies are now looking to adopt growth principles and make them part of their team's operating model.

But, making growth a success in your company isn't easy.

Well, on this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Yara Paoli, who is the co-founder of GrowthOS and has previously held growth leadership roles at Preply and Skyscanner.

We talk to Yara about:

- How Skyscanner decided to adopt growth when their business growth began to stall, and the impact it had on both the marketing and product teams.

- The initiatives the growth team implemented at Skyscanner, and how they helped to make growth org a success.

- Why growth isn't a bunch of hacks and tricks and is much more like an operating system that Yara now teaches to companies.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Andy Raskin, who helps companies with their strategic messaging and positioning.

It's not easy standing out from the competition today. To do so, you need to have a story that separates you from everyone else. Andy helps companies do just that.

We talk about why a companies sales deck is the best test of being able to construct a story that works for your prospects. It gives you the most immediate feedback. We talk about Andy's framework that he uses to help companies build a winning story and examples from Andy's clients on how they've successfully created that narrative.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're back with another Swipefile, where we talk about adding motivation and removing friction.

Most of the goals marketing and growth teams have can be categorized as either adding motivation or removing friction.

We talk about some common ways marketers add motivation, some great examples of how companies remove friction, and why product-led companies need to approach them differently.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Waikit Lau about the growth of remote work, and how RemoteHQ provides a virtual office for better collaboration between remote teams.

We talk to Waikit about the rapid growth in popularity of remote work, will it last, how did RemoteHQ launch and generate their first customers, should remote employees get paid differently, and how COVID affected his growth plans.

Why have product-led companies become so popular in the past number of years?

We talk to Blake Bartlett, Partner at OpenView, on why product-led growth has become such a popular way for software businesses to grow.

On this episode you'll learn:

- What are the three era's of software, and how they've changed how businesses go-to-market?

- Why product-led companies have many advantages of traditional software companies, what they are, and how they've changed the way companies invest.

- The importance of A/B testing your pricing and packaging as a product-led company.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Romain Dardour, the CEO and Co-Founder of Hull.

Hull solves the problem of making data accessible across all marketing, sales, and customer support tools. It aggregates all of your data together into one unified profile.

We talk to Romain about what customer acquisition channels are working for Hull, how Hull started life as an internal tool at a gaming company, and how Romain wants to build Hull for the mid-market.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're back with another GrowthSwipeFile.

We talk about the challenges of trying to start something new, whether that's starting a growth team, investing in a new channel, program, or initiative. There is always a list of problems you're faced with when scaling.

We talk about a framework that might help the four stages of growth. We talk about why it's important to align people around them, so you're solving problems that matter.

We talk to Miika Kenttämies, Director of Growth at Supermetrics, about their evolution from a pure self-serve model, to a hybrid between self-serve and sales assisted revenue.

Miika and Supermetrics are at an early stage of building out their growth team, and we get to dig in on what they're currently focusing on, any challenges they've had to overcome, and what learnings Miika would share with others at a similar stage in their growth journey.

In this episode, we talk to Adam Grenier who has done growth at companies like Hotel Tonight, Uber, and Lambda School.

We get into Adam's wild ride at Uber, where during his four years the company went from 300 employees to 20,000. We ask what did growth do at Uber, how was it structured, and why it was disbanded after three years.

We get into Adam's journey at Lambda School, and how the growth team was tasked with optimizing a very unique customer journey, with some examples of the work they did.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, it's another SwipeFile, and we discuss the playbook of hiring marketing & growth talent.

We cover why it's crucial to apply marketing and growth thinking to build your talent pipeline, find talent in places that others aren't looking, and some of the best tips we've found to get the best people to join your company.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to the founder and CEO of Mural, Mariano Suarez Battan.

Mural recently secured $23 million in a Series A round and is serving 40% of Fortune 100 companies.

We talk to Mariona about the origins of Mural and how the idea for the company came from video games. As a product, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different things you can do with it, so we talk to Mariona about how he manages onboard users successfully.

We also ask Mariano why Mural isn't freemium, and just what's he going to do with all that money :)

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we get into how you do customer acquisition and onboarding for companies with horizontal markets. That means their product serves the needs of many customers.

Examples of fast-growing products with horizontal markets are the likes of Loom, Calendly, and Miro.

We talk about the challenges of building a great onboarding flow with such a broad set of customers, why all products have some customer persona in mind, and examples of tactics used by product-led companies to fuel acquisition and improve user. activation rate.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about a great article from Bangaly Kaba called - "The Adjacent User Theory."

We summarize the main takeaways from the article and discuss how they might apply to other areas of marketing.

We talk about the importance of creating content for adjacent content topics, knowing when to pivot to new growth channels, and how to enrich personas with real-world data.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Shane Murphy-Reuter, who heads up marketing for Intercom. Shane leads a marketing team of +70 people at Intercom, helping the company to move upmarket.

We talk to Shane about paid advertising and how companies can more effectively split their budget across direct and brand advertising. We get into how most B2B brands don't do brand advertising well and give examples of companies who excel in that area.

We then discuss the three categories of paid advertising, brand, problem, and product, and how companies should use them.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we kick off our first swipe file topic, where we discuss marketing and growth tactics that work.

We kick off the series with a common question growing companies have about content marketing - should you spend time creating content for the top of your funnel, or the middle and bottom of your funnel.

We talk about the five stages of awareness you should keep in mind when planning your content—the common debate between spending your time creating content for the top and middle of your funnel. And, we leave you with our recommendations on how you can solve for both.

One of the more advanced ways you can create demand for your product or service is to create a free tool. However, most free tools developed by marketers were probably not worth the investment.

In this edition of the GrowthSwipeFile, we're going to talk about all things free tools. What kind of free tools can marketing develop to improve their metrics, when does it make sense to develop a free tool, and should you build or buy?

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about what great leaders at scale-ups excel in.

We discuss the importance of both hiring and retaining talent, including tips from people who've built great teams.

We talk about team design and how great leaders use it as a growth lever.

And finally, we talk about forecasting and why it's pivotal great leaders can build great plans.

Happy Growing!

In this episode, we talk to Elena Verna, a growth advisor to many great companies and a Reforge lecturer.

We talk to Elena about how most founders struggle to set up a growth function within the company.

We get into the most common reasons companies build a self-serve model, how to turn more of your self-serve business into enterprise revenue, and why your product champions are a critical part of selling into large companies.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Vaibhav Sahgal, the head of growth at Reddit.

Reddit is one of the most popular websites on the internet, with 430 million monthly active users. During Vaibhav's time as head of growth, he has seen the team grow from 5 to 60 people.

We talk to Vaibhav about the structure of the growth team and the metrics they're accountable too. We get into the first big win the growth team had at Reddit, how the team grew to over 60 people, and Vaibhav walks us through some of the latest successes the team has had.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Camille Ricketts, the head of marketing at Notion.

Notion's last raise was $68 million, and they've quickly become the go-to collaboration tool for many companies.

Camille talks about what it's like to be leading the marketing team in such a fast-growing company. We talk about what Camille and her team are most focused on right now, including the hires she plans to make. We discuss the importance of community, and how marketing can help build it, and how can you build beach head personas for your product.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss five critical skills you need to be a successful marketing and growth leader.

We talk about the importance of forecasting, why great leaders prioritize, how great leaders have great teams, how every problem is an opportunity, and ownership.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're back with another Swipefile on why marketing should be accountable for revenue.

We discuss how marketing goals are separated into the things you can and can't measure. We cover the most common business models in B2B and the ownership of go-to-market metrics across different teams.

We then get into how marketing can be held accountable for revenue in all these models, and how they can use that to build a forecast model to identify areas to invest in for growth.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about all things distribution tams. We discuss how the path to growth for most B2B companies looks the same and how we spend most of our time trying to grow from a company of marketing channels incrementally.

But, we don't spend very much time figuring out how much growth is available on these marketing channels.

We discuss if it's possible to build a total addressable market for the channels you want to grow from incrementally, and give some examples of how you might do it.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Philip Inghelbrecht, the CEO and Co-Founder of Tatari, a data and analytics company for TV advertising.

For a lot of us working in marketing and growth, we've leveraged near every digital channel and platform to grow audiences for our company. But, for many of us, it's like we've had very little experience with TV advertising.

Tatari is aiming to change all that by making TV advertising feel just like Digital advertising. We talk to Philip about how he started Tatari, what it is like growing a company in a well-established industry like TV, and how we should measure the performance of our TV ads.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Eli Schwartz, a growth advisor to B2B and B2C companies, increasing their traffic via search.

We talk to Eli about when companies should consider investing in search. We dive into building a forecasting model for SEO, why it’s so hard, how to get a somewhat accurate version, and how the best SEO approaches their work as a product manager.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Samuel Hulick, a world-renowned expert in user onboarding, and writer of much great content on Useronboard.com.

Many more companies are taking a product-led growth approach to their go-to marketing, making user onboarding a vital part of their playbook. But, improving metrics like user activation and free to paid upgrade rates isn't easy.

We talk to Samuel about some of the most common mistakes companies make in their user onboarding. We step through Samuel's process for identifying what features and jobs to be done you should onboarding users too. And, we talk about how some of the best products and apps in the World succeed in great world-class onboarding experiences.

We've had a lot of fantastic guests on the GrowthTLDR covering all aspects of how to scale and grow a company.

The following episode looks back on ten of the top lessons we got from guests and why you should pay attention to them.

The episode features advice from leaders at Pinterest, Airbnb, Zapier, CreditKarma, and many more.

We talk about growth a lot on this podcast, I mean, it's in the name of our show :)

A lot of companies are in the process of building out a growth team. Many of those companies have been on this podcast to talk about their experiences.

But, do these companies need a growth team? Is it a lot of effort and resources for minimum upside.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Lars Lofgren, CEO of QuickSprout, and managing partner at 'Grow or Die' about why a lot of companies are wasting time and money investing in growth teams.

We cover:

- How Lars defines a growth team, and why that team doesn't make sense for a lot of companies.

- What companies do make sense for a growth team, and why does it work at those companies.

- How Lars grew traffic to QuickSprout by 74%, and the exact tactic he used to do it.

Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Aydin Mirzaee, CEO and Co-Founder of Fellow.

Fellow is the third company Aydin and his co-founders have launched, and it helps managers to have more productive meetings.

We cover how Aydin managed to sell fellow to Shopify before they ever had a product. They now have over 5,000 users on the fellow app. We get into how fellow was able to acquire so many users, how Aydin decided on freemium as their go-to-market, and how Aydin thinks about focusing in on a specific customer persona to monetize.

Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about the four things marketers can learn from growth.

We talk about the importance of understanding the problem your product solves, and how that should translate to goals.

We talk about the value of opportunity sizing and creating a culture of experimentation on your team.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Craig Zingerline about the growth of Sandboxx, a product that lets people send letters to recruits in the military.

We get into what it's like to make customer acquisition for a niche audience. We talk about Sandboxx's approach to content marketing and how it's helped them be called Google for the military.

And, we talk about the purpose of growth teams at a company, why you shouldn't overthink them, and the advantages of the pod team structure.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Jaqueline Cook COO of Vendasta about how they moved to a product-led business.

We talk about how Vendasta used a self-serve model to monetize a large segment of their market, how their CAC dropped by 50%, conversions rates increased, and why the success of growth is as much about organization design as running experiments.

We also get into how Vendasta has organized their growth team into squads, and the importance of squads in product-led companies.

In a growing company, should your content team have their own goals, or be a service provider to all the other teams that need content help?

How you answer these questions will have a real impact on your success with content marketing.

On this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Kameron Jenkins, Director of Brand and Communication at Botify about all things content.

We cover:

• What is brand content, and how does Kameron keep a pulse on how Botify's audience feel about them.
• What goals should a content team have in a growing company? Should they be a service provider to others, or be accountable to their own goals?
• How do you create content that attracts the attention of the right people at large organizations, and what should your promotion plan look like?

Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, with talk to Gibson Biddle, who has led product for Netflix, Chegg, and advised companies like Metromile, NerdWallet, and more.

We talk to Gibson about why some companies manage to become so successful. We discuss the importance of product strategy, consumer science, and company culture.

We get into how consumer science was pivotal to Netflix’s success and why Netflix’s founder Reed Hastings was so focused on making it a core part of their companies culture.

We also get into a live case study to demonstrate how product leaders decide what features to launch and discuss how personal recommendations are why Netflix has become so dominant.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss how B2B marketing may change in the future.

We discuss how B2B brands may need to change the talent they hire, how the structure of B2B marketing teams could fundamentally change, and why we should think about customer experience automation vs. marketing automation.

Happy Growing!

A couple of the topics we love to talk about on the GrowthTLDR is team structure and product-led growth.

Luckily in this episode, we got to talk about both of these things with a true leader in the space, Oji Udezue, VP of Product at Calendly.

We talked to Oji about:

- How the product team at Calendly is broken into different squads and Oji's approach to creating these multi-disciplinary teams.

- What's Oji's approach to improving the virality of Calendly and developing features that improve the network effects of the product.

- How Oji thinks about making Calendly defensible, and his vision for how Calendly will continue to become more valuable to their customers.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we cover a common question, how do the best companies pick winning markets.

We use Strava, the social network for athletes, and ask how they would pick who to build their go-to-market around.

We cover how they might access a market's profitability, what market they should build product features for, and how they should think about building a plan for audience growth.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Andy Crestodina, the CMO and Co-Founder of Orbit Media, about content marketing, thought leadership, and growing a successful agency.

We talk to Andy about:

- What are the advantages and disadvantages of Andy having such a well known personal brand, and what tips he would give for replicating his success?

- How to be a thought leader for your market and the three types of content you need to master.

- The number one piece of advice Andy would give to other founders who are thinking about starting their agency or company.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Holly Chen, a growth advisor to numerous companies, and former global head of growth marketing at Slack.

We go into what makes up a winning customer acquisition strategy. We talk about forecasting models, and how you know what hires to make. We talk about the importance of multi-attribution models and how to split your paid advertising budget across both brand and direct response.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we have another excellent founder story. We talk to Amir Salihefendic, the founder and CEO of ToDoist, a productivity app with over one million active users.

We talk to Amir about:

- How it took him four years to realize his side project Todoist could be a real business and the investments he made when he had that realization.

- Why founders need to be great salespeople to attract talented employees who have a plethora of other options.

- What were Amir's most significant challenges in growing Todoist, and what his future plans are for the company?

Happy Growing!

Marketing should be a disruptive force.

Today, data has turned a lot of marketing into a rigid force. 

In this episode, we talk about how you can market against the grain.

Something that continues to grow in popularity is coworking and co-living spaces. With more and more people leaving the traditional office life to spend more time in these properties, we'll likely see the number of them grow.

But, how do the businesses behind these properties work?

To find out, we caught up with Emmanuel Guisset, who is the founder of Outsite, a company that offers spaces where you can both live and work with others.

We talk to Emmanuel about:

- How he ended up starting Outsite and where he got his very first customers from.

- Why supply is more challenging than demand in his market, how he finds properties, and what partnerships he does with the property owner.

- The growth metrics Emmanuel measures to know if Outsite is successful.

Happy Growing!

A lot of great entrepreneurs start their journey by creating an agency, so the revenue from services can fund the business's software development.

Well, on this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Michael King about his journey from an SEO consultant to an agency owner, and his plans to launch a content strategy tool.

We talk to Mike about:

- How Mike got started in SEO and the advantages that came from developing a personal brand within the industry.

- Why Mike's agency iPullRank having a different pricing model from most other agencies, and how they've managed to attract well-known brands as clients.

- What's Mike's biggest growth constraint right for iPullRank, how he plans to solve it, and a sneak peek at their upcoming software product.

Happy Growing

Have you ever dreamed of being the CEO of your own company, but that dream felt a long way out of your reach.

Well, how much do you know about buying and selling micro-businesses?

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're talking to Ryan Kulp, CEO at FOMO and founder of ForkEquity, a company that buys and sells small businesses.

We talk to Ryan about:

- How he bought his first business Notify that later was rebranded to FOMO, and how he managed to pay for it.
- What Ryan looks for in a potential acquisition and how to ensure you end up buying a company that has a lot of upside.
- Why Ryan is now spending more of his time teaching people how to follow in his footsteps via his new course MicroAcquisitions.com.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Mark Fiske, who has lead teams at Ancestry and CreditKarma.

We talk to Mark about all of the things you need to master to lead marketing at a successful scale-up company.

We get into how you should prioritize and understand where you should invest your resources, time, and budget.

We talk about how to do customer acquisition at scale and what happens when your main channels start to plateau.

We talk about the importance of hiring and why the chief product officer at CreditKarma spent 20 hours a week talking to potential candidates, even when they hadn't any open roles.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Jeff Gothelf, author of Lean UX and Forever Employable, about developing fantastic products and applying product thinking to your career.

We cover why it's critical to take a problem, not a solution approach to developing products. How companies can build customer research into their culture, the MVP approach to developing products and how to have jobs chasing you, versus you chasing jobs.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're going to cover four examples of how companies use M&A deals to find both growth and leverage.

We get into some of the latest M&A deals in SaaS and go through four examples of how companies have acquired media sites and software to fuel their growth and gain leverage.

Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Yousuf Bhaijee, the ex VP of Growth at Eaze.

We talk to Yousuf about his time running growth at Eaze, an eCommerce company for on-demand Cannabis delivery. In that role, Yousuf was responsible for increasing revenue growth by 10% month on month.

We discuss why the best growth teams always do a sizing exercise before committing to work on a specific opportunity. We get into the prioritization framework Yousuf used to stack rank the growth teams projects. And, we'll discuss the article Yousuf wrote on Reforge, breaking down how to calculate a word of mouth coefficient for your product.

Happy Growing!