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How Things Grow will take a break for now. As the more perceptive of you might have noticed, a lot of our energy has recently shifted from How Things Grow to our other podcast The Mobile User Acquisition Show. While the longer form profiles that we got to do in How Things Grow were very fun and satisfying, it’s just been hard to run two shows while we run the business that pays our bills. For now, How Things Grow will take a break - and we aren't sure when we’ll be back (although of course, all past episodes will continue to stay online).
I’m super super thankful for those of you who listened, those of you who wrote in with comments and feedback - and of course our fabulous guests. Thank you for making my first foray into podcasting fun! Of course, the party will go on - our podcast Mobile User Acquisition Show has had some very fun and fascinating episodes, and we hope you’ll come check us out on mobileuseracquisitionshow.com, on iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasting fix.
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My guest today is Liam Martin - and this is a conversation about a topic that is near & dear to my heart - remote work. Liam is one of the world’s foremost experts on remote work, having started a remote-only company more than a decade before it became cool to do so. He founded Time Doctor and Staff.com, doing some tremendously impactful work around productivity for remote work before founding the Running Remote conference, a real-life, non-remote conference about remote work. Liam has seen remote work up close from its earliest days - and has also seen nearly everything there is to be seen around remote work - be it culture, tracking, productivity and growth - and this is a conversation that I’m very excited to have.
How remote work was referred to 15 years ago - and how it’s changing.Why Liam chose remote work as a model for his business - and how he solved problems that are currently solved by tools like Zoom and Slack.What Liam recommends as the first step for a small company that is considering going remote - and the resources he recommends. Why measurement is crucial for a remote company.How Liam recommends setting up a remote culture for a team that is new to itHow Liam recommends approaching hiring in a remote context - and what he screens and filters for.How a remote team’s infrastructure & processes have to change as a team grows.The HR process that Liam’s team has built to ensure retention. The different compensation policies that are available to remote companies.What inspired the Running Remote conference - and how Liam attracted speakers and attendees for its first edition.
Key Highlights:Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/the-rise-of-remote-work-with-liam-martin-co-founder-of-timedoctor-co-organizer-in-running-remote/
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My guest today is Hila Qu. Hila is the former VP of growth at Acorns - and there are very many reasons I’ve so admired her work. Hila had a background in biology - and with nothing in her background that was relevant to growth, she started work at GrowthHackers, where she not only picked up the methodology of growth from Sean Ellis but also became very very proficient at experiment-driven growth. She wrote the series of articles ‘A growth practitioner’s 90 day plan’, which she herself used for her job search after GrowthHackers. She began working on experiments and retention at Acorns - and in a few years grew to be the VP of growth. In this interview, Hila talks not only about the pivotal moments in her career but also breaks down how she’s followed her curiosity and sought out challenges - and how this has always helped her break into spaces or positions where she’s started off being almost an outsider.
What inspired Hila to start working at GrowthHackers.com – and what they saw in her.Some of the things Hila learnt about growth that were essentially life principles. How Hila developed a mental model for career growth from working with Sean Ellis. What inspired Hila’s article “A growth practitioner’s first 90-day plan.”How Hila evaluated Acorns to see if they would be open to growth ideas and processes even though they didn’t have any.How Hila started introducing her ideas – and went after early wins. The two directions Hila recommends thinking around for getting early wins. What Hila’s learning plan looked like.What Hila’s day is structured like – at GrowthHackers and Acorns.How Hila accessed leadership positions at Acorns. How Hila learnt the ’science’ of leadership.How Hila picked KPIs around her personal OKR of being 20% tougher.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-trigger-massive-career-shifts-by-following-your-curiosity-with-hila-quformer-vp-of-growth-at-acorns/**
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My guest today is Noah Rosenberg, the founder and CEO of Narratively. Narratively is a publication that I’ve both written for - and have been very very impressed by for some of the pioneering work they’ve done. Narratively very much defined a niche for themselves in pioneering long-form human interest journalism in an age of diminishing attention spans. They not only continued to bring out original long-form stories - but also developed a unique monetization model of a content studio that has helped them thrive in an age when many journalism outlets are facing existential challenges.
Noah’s early career as a journalist – and how he was drawn to larger human interest stories & underreported themes during his work in Queens and in South Africa.The sort of market research that Noah did to validate his idea of a human interest publication – and the response they got to Narratively on Kickstarter.How Narratively transitioned from being a New York focused publication to being global.How Narratively planned to use the $53k that it had raised in its Kickstarter campaign.Why Narratively didn’t adopt the subscription model or an ad supported model.How Narratively’s partnership with Warner Brothers materialized.How Narratively thinks about the relationship between its branded content side and its editorial side.How stories on Narratively.com get traffic.Why Narratively had challenges raising funding.
In this interview we dive into Noah’s journey from being a journalist to a journalism platform creator, talk about how he validated and launched Narratively, what drives audience growth for long-form articles, how Narratively’s unique monetization model has helped both keep it ad-free and allowed its writers to make good money. This interview presents lessons that apply for far beyond long-form journalism - and I’m excited to share this with you today.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-launch-a-long-form-journalism-publication-in-an-era-of-diminishing-attention-spans-with-noah-rosenberg-ceo-at-narratively/
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My guest today is Jabari Johnson, the founder of COLORS Worldwide, a live events company that produces parties and music events across 45 cities in the United States. This is a fascinating conversation - both for Jabari’s personal story as well as for his insights on scaling a live event and filling up rooms and halls - at scale. From his earliest days when he hustled to interview stars like Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber before they became famous to how he thoughtfully considers pricing and marketing decisions for COLORS and R&B Only, Jabari’s work provides a fascinating window into how it’s absolutely possible to run top-notch fun events - at scale.
How Jabari’s Youtube videos got him his first job.How Jabari would spread the word about his Youtube videos on his college campus, and how he made some of these videos viral.How Jabari’s experiences on the road led to his first business COLORS – and what his first parties were like.How Jabari filled up the room with 200-300 people by using TwitPic to build social proof for their event’s pics.Why Jabari wasn’t charging money for his early events.How it became evident to Jabari that these parties and events could be a scaled business – and how he learned to delegate & grow his team.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-blow-up-a-party-with-jabari-johnson-founder-at-colors-worldwide/
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My guest today is Jon Hook, the CRO of Homa Games, the publishers behind hit hypercasual games like Tower Color, Tiny Cars, Balls vs. Lasers - and more. Jon has held a myriad of roles in mobile marketing before Homa - including being a co-founder of the mobile marketing agency Odyssey Mobile, the Head of Mobile & Digital Investment at MediaCom - and VP EMEA for Brand and Agencies at AdColony.
In today’s interview, we dive into the fascinating world of hypercasual games. If you’ve even casually followed the appstores over the last few years, you’ll have seen seemingly simplistic games like Helix Jump, Tiny Cars - and others at the top of the appstore charts. What is as astounding as these games’ ascent is their staying power. In this interview, Jon talks about the rise of the hypercasual phenomenon, the drivers & forces powering it, what lies ahead - and offers some fascinating insights into one of the more unexpected occupants of the appstores today.
What are some of the characteristics of hyper-casual and what the hit recipe for hyper-casual games is.What factors have accelerated the emergence of hyper-casual games in recent years.How Jon started paying attention to the hypercasual space – and when he realized this wasn’t a fad.Why user acquisition and monetization are run by the same teams in hyper-casual games.What some of the common mistakes made by hypercasual developers are – and what some of the easy fixes are.What some of the challenges with using programmatic for hyper-casual games are.Why hypercasual can be a mass marketing channel.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/how-hyper-casual-games-took-over-the-app-stores-with-jon-hookcro-at-homa-games/
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My guest today is Brian Balfour - and there could be no one better than Brian to kick off the third season of How Things Grow.
Brian is seen as one of the most influential people in growth today - he has to his credit some truly astounding accomplishments in growth. He started his career building a social networking site for college students. He then founded a digital goods company & subsequently an ed-tech company. After this, he became the VP of Growth at Hubspot, overseeing & systematizing some tremendous growth that had been driven, astonishingly, by content. It was during this phase that he started writing his very popular blog. He started what was then a side project called ‘Silicon Valley Business Review’ with Andrew Chen. The Silicon Valley Business Review has since grown into Reforge, which is now a definitive source of education around growth for experienced professionals. In this fascinating conversation, Brian not only talks about his own experiences but also dives into how Reforge is changing how education around growth is imparted today, and is redefining many traditional paradigms of executive education. What I find truly astounding is how Brian applies growth frameworks and loops to Reforge’s business. He breaks down how these growth loops are applicable to Reforge - in a section that I find very very instructive.
This is very much a masterclass on growth - one taught by the very best in the business.
Why getting an external unbiased coach was the most important thing that Brian did in his career.What Brian’s experience was as a founder of an early social network – and subsequently as a founder of a digital goods company & then of an ed-tech company.Why Brian began to write – and the benefits he got from his own writingHow Hubspot’s content strategy was one of the key drivers behind their IPOThe gap that Brian noticed when doing 1:1s for his team and having to look up recommendations for professional development – and the side project it inspired – the ’Silicon Valley Business Review’.Is Reforge a ’service’ company or a ‘product’ company? Are its live experiences antithetical to scale?How Reforge selects people for ‘fit’, even if it means saying no to short term revenue.How growth loops apply to Reforge’s business.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-grow-a-growth-education-business-with-brian-balfour/
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I’m very excited to present to you the third season of How Things Grow! Thank you so much for the kind words, ratings and reviews for the episodes so far. As you perhaps know, each episode is a labor of love - and every rating and review matters a ton.
If you’re new here, How Things Grow tells the stories of the people who help companies, technologies and economic systems take off. Each episode features an interview with one of the leading growth practitioners, entrepreneurs, or experts or historians in the world.
In this season, you’ll hear the story of how this growth leader applied growth principles to advanced career education, the story of how a company hosting parties grew dramatically, about how hyper casual games are taking over our phone screens, how a long form journalism startup carved out a niche for itself in an age of diminishing attention spans - and so many other stories that are coming up in the new season of How Things Grow.
If you get any joy and pleasure from these episodes, please subscribe to How Things Grow on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast - or wherever else you get your podcast fix. Please also consider leaving a review, for this is very much a labor of love. I hope you enjoy listening to the show as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together. I look forward to presenting to you the first episode of the coming season of How Things Grow next Monday!
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Hi everyone - Welcome to How Things Grow. I’ve been very stoked to present some amazing stories as a part of season 2 of How Things Grow. As all good things do, this season has run its course. I’m taking a step back to reorient, readjust - and come back with a whole new season of how things grow. We’re already begun preparing for the next season. We have some amazing speakers lined up - and I can’t wait to get this out to you. Stay tuned - we’re going to be back very very soon for season 3 of How Things Grow.
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My guest today is Sahil Lavingia, and this is an incredibly powerful, honest & inspiring episode. Sahil is today the founder & CEO of Gumroad, a platform that helps creators get paid for the work they do. What is significantly more impressive though is Sahil’s journey to where he is today. Sahil was in many ways a prodigy as a teenager, working on apps & websites - and making $100k by age 15. He joined the University of Southern California, only to drop out after a semester to join the then fledgling platform Pinterest to build their iOS app as employee #2. Within a year, he left Pinterest - before his shares vested - to found the company that he hoped would be his magnum opus, what he announced on Twitter as a ‘billion dollar company idea’ before he launched it. This was Gumroad - and for a while he seemed to be a man who, at age 19, could do no wrong. Until things started to go wrong. Growth began to stall. Sahil and his team put their soul into the business - and they couldn’t do what it took to hit the targets they need to hit to make it a venture-scaleable business. In what was a wrenching time, he had to lay off three fourths of his company - and find his own path forward. This is Sahil’s story - about how things don’t always grow, and how sometimes that’s ok - but only if you make your peace with it.
Sahil’s early work in design and development as a teenager that led him to make his first $100,000 and become financially independent.The path that led Sahil to be described as the most interesting teenager in Silicon Valley and the #2 employee at Pinterest, less than two years after he started learning to code. Why Sahil left Pinterest less than a year after joining, before his stocks vested and what about Gumroad inspired him to keep working on it.Why Sahil decided to go deep on Gumroad rather than seek out his next new project. How writing and painting helped him cultivate the patience that let him do this.Sahil’s cold email strategy of acquiring his first few customers – and why it was effective for him.Why Sahil was obsessed with becoming a billionaire from early on.How Sahil coped with the fact that Gumroad would never become a venture-bankable billion dollar company.How Sahil thought about ‘front loading his retirement’ why ‘diversifying his identity’ was crucial.What inspired Sahil to write the Medium piece about his journey.The reframing of impact that was crucial to Sahil’s coping with the change in circumstances for his business.The difference in lifestyle in Provo, Utah, compared to San Francisco.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/how-things-dont-grow-reflections-on-not-being-a-billionaire-with-sahil-lavingiaceo-at-gumroad/
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My guest today is Victoria Repa. Victoria is the founder and CEO of BetterMe, a fitness app based out of Ukraine. I’m very excited to have Victoria on the show because she has such an incredibly unconventional background and story that I find very very inspiring. In this interview, we talk about Victoria’s early upbringing in a tiny village in the east of Ukraine, how she educated herself early on, her move to Kyiv, her transition from working on transportation logistics to technology, her work on viral content - and how that led her to building a company with global ambitions from Kyiv. We also explore her personal life and systems - which I find incredibly inspiring and intimidating for how she not only makes time and space for contemplation, but also finds this introspection essential to her work. What’s also incredibly inspiring is that she’s just 26 - and she brings to her life and work an intentionality that I find incredibly rare. I’m very excited to welcome Victoria Repa to How Things Grow.
Victoria’s path from having zero experience in tech, to being CEO of a company behind the most-downloaded fitness and health appsHow Victoria learned to craft viral content for one of the biggest content companies in the world. How Victoria leveraged Facebook insights to discover niche topics and launch BetterMe.How Victoria and her team ‘test-drove’ the early versions of the app by trying out the practices on themselves.Why BetterMe has 6 different health and fitness related apps in the appstores.Victoria’s self-care and self-improvement practices – and why she says business is a “spiritual game”.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/how-viral-content-can-trigger-habit-change-at-scale-with-victoria-repa-founder-ceo-betterme/
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My guest today is one of the leading experts in the world on games and growth in games. He’s a man who who has helped launch & grow many many hit mobile games. He started his gaming career at Playdom, where he helped the game Social City get to 5 million installs in the first week of launch. He was the founding product manager at Scopely, where he helped grow the daily actives for Dice With Buddies 30x. Yes, you heard that right - 30x. Subsequently he moved to Zynga, where he served as the Franchise Lead and Head of Product for the whole Games With Friends portfolio. Right now he’s the VP & Commercial Leader at Blizzard Entertainment. I had a chance to meet Josh when I was at Zynga not too long ago. I found him incredibly generous with his time and knowledge - and always eager to see people around him succeed. Today’s conversation is a master-class on games, and about what happens behind the scenes that makes games such enjoyable experiences. If you’ve wondered about why hundreds of millions of players love Candy Crush, Farmville or Words With Friends and spend many many hours on these games, this interview has some answers. We talk about the early days of social gaming, the elements that make games habit-forming experiences and how Josh thinks about making, growing and learning about games. We also talk about how the same elements that make for great games also make services like, say, Spotify compelling. I always learn so much every time I listen to Josh - and I’m thrilled for this conversation.
The secret to unlocking virality of games as a growth product manager, even as the bar for sharing content on social platforms has gotten higherHow Josh and his team found opportunities to improve upon an established game like Words With Friends 2How Words With Friends 2 was intentional about making it to the top of iTunes charts.How the concept of “core loop design” increases user retention for digital products What sets the games that have survived the longest apart from othersJosh’s strategy for gleaning research from new games without playing them allWhy Josh says you need a “two-legged stool” on your team
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/art-science-making-games-fun-with-josh-lu-vp-blizzard-entertainment/
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My guest today is Elena Verna. Elena is a growth advisor - she advises a number of companies - and helps scale businesses with marketing, product, analytics and growth. Elena joined SurveyMonkey as an analyst a year and a half out of college - and found herself trying to understand a growth trajectory that was incredible. Yet this was a growth trajectory that no one on the team had insight into. As an analyst, Elena wrote the queries that helped answer many of the fundamental questions underlying the business and what was driving its growth. Over the next 7 years, she grew to become the SVP of Growth. In her next role, she became the SVP of Growth, Marketing, Product & Design at the cybersecurity company MalwareBytes - and much like at SurveyMonkey, she helped drive an understanding of exactly what was driving growth in a business where there was very little understanding of this. In this interview, Elena talks about what she learnt as she grew with the business, how she learnt that not every problem could be solved through quantitative optimization, how she learnt to trust her team and lead, about the death of the person who inspired her the most, about how she breaks down & understands the drivers of growth - and much much more.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
How the SurveyMonkey team started to figure out where their early growth was coming from – and what were the things that surprised Elena.What it was like for Elena to understand the qualitative aspects of growth.How Elena and her team’s focus changed as the company grew.Elena’s professional role model, how this person inspired Elena – and what it was like when this person passed away.Why Elena used to create a SurveyMonkey account every day during her time at the company.The persona of the user that was pivotal to the early growth of Malwarebytes – and how Elena’s team zeroed in on this persona.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/decoding-freemium-the-unlikely-drivers-of-cybersecurity-adoption-more-with-elena-vernagrowth-advisor-ex-svp-of-growth-marketing-product-design-at-malwarebytes-ex-svp-of-growth-at-surveymo/
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In today’s episode, we take a very short break from regular programming - as I present to you my talk at my alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras last year. This is a talk called ‘The Unseen Forces Driving Mass Adoption Of Technologies’ - featuring 8 key takeaways from season 1 of How Things Grow. I spoke to some of the smartest engineering students in India - the Indian Institutes of Technology(the IITs) tend to be super-selective and have an acceptance rate of under 1%. Fun fact: in one of my favorite Dilbert strips, Asok says: “Luckily, I’m an IIT Graduate, superior to most people on earth, so I finished the project myself.” Dilbert asks him: “Are you tired?” Asok says: “I am trained to only sleep during national holidays.”(https://dilbert.com/strip/2003-09-15 ) These were the kind of kids I spoke to. Anyway, while some of the effect is lost in podcast form because the actual talk was accompanied by a slide deck, I think you’ll still find some of the takeaways & highlights from season 1 very interesting. Without further ado, here you go on my talk: The unseen forces that drive mass-market adoption of technologies - 8 lessons from season 1 of How Things Grow.
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My guest today is Mauria Finley. Mauria has lived in very interesting times - and worked on some industry-defining products. Her first job out of college was at Netscape, where she not only saw from close up the large scale adoption of the internet but also helped build utilities and products for it like email, chat and browser features. She then worked on mobile in the days before mobile apps, when mobile was primarily a work and productivity platform - before working with PayPal and eBay. She started her first business Citrus Lane in 2011, which was born of a spreadsheet that went viral. After selling it to Care.com, she started her current company Allume that provides personal styling powered by data. In this wide-ranging conversation, we delve into so many topics - from how she approached building utilities during the early days of the internet, to building infrastructure for the early days of mobile, to starting an eCommerce company in the age of Amazon - and how she thinks about combining data and human judgment to build a personal styling business.
What about working at Netscape compelled Mauria.What Mauria tells the class at Stanford as to how they should pick their first company.Why Mauria thinks a recession is a great time to build a company.Why there was a debate at Paypal about the potential of mobile – and Mauria’s argument that swayed the decision.How Mauria’s first company was basically a productized version of a spreadsheet that went viral.How becoming a mom helped Mauria prioritize better.How Allume combines data and human judgment to help women make fashion choices.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/making-the-internet-work-building-an-ecommerce-business-in-the-age-of-amazon-and-more-with-mauria-finleyceo-of-allume/
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My guest today is Eric Seufert. Eric is the Head of Platform at N3twork, the founder of MobileDevMemo.com, author of the book ‘Freemium Economics’ - and one of the foremost experts on mobile user acquisition today. Eric started his career as an analyst at Skype, and went on to work with gaming companies like Digital Chocolate, Grey Area and Wooga - before heading up user acquisition for Rovio, in which capacity he headed up much of the launch activity for Angry Birds 2, which launched with over 25 million installs in the first week after its launch. Eric has also consulted with over 30 app development companies on their growth - and developed the growth and user acquisition platform Agamemnon, which was acquired by N3twork in 2017. Eric has worked on an incredibly wide variety of apps - and he’s seen it all, from the early days of mobile growth where you could basically buy bot installs to hit the top 10 ranks on iTunes to today’s increasingly sophisticated world of automation and programmatic growth. Indeed, his site MobileDevMemo.com is one of the resources I learn so much from and recommend very often to folks. In this fascinating and in-depth conversation, we dive into not only the state of mobile growth over the years and the forces that defined the evolution of mobile growth - but also into Eric’s fascinating career and work that has led him to develop an incredibly nuanced perspective on the past, present and future of growth on mobile.
How Eric got his start in user acquisition & growth from following his curiosity about freemium.How Eric’s fears about the possibility that his company would fail impelled him to start his blog – and how his blog got him his next job.The difference between mobile and desktop when it comes to user acquisition.Do you have be a big established company with a huge balance sheet to build a commercial successful app?The anxiety that Rovio had before Angry Birds 2 about living up to the original – and Eric’s team’s strategy for launch.Why programmatic is so hard to make work.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/a-brief-history-of-mobile-user-acquisition-with-eric-seuferthead-of-platform-at-n3twork-founder-at-mobiledevmemo/
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Today’s is a unique episode. I have two amazing guests to offer two different perspectives about a theme that I’ve always been very very fascinated by - influencer marketing, and the economics of internet fame. Sophia Yeh(aka Sophia Beatbox, or Sophia Kiddbeatz) is a YouTuber and influencer manager. Sophia literally grew up with Youtube. She started making videos in high school, and really took off on the Youtube platform as a teenager making these really cool beatboxing videos. After growing her presence on Youtube for a number of years, she moved over to the business side of influencer marketing - in helping influencers strike deals with brands. Adam Hadi is the VP of Marketing at Current, and is known as one of the foremost experts in the world at influencer marketing, particularly for mobile apps. Adam began his career as an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and made his way into mobile app marketing for The Topps Company, in which capacity he stumbled upon the wild world of influencer marketing. Since then, he’s headed up marketing for leading apps such as Draft, Quidd and now Current - and advised a host of other apps on influencer marketing. Between them, Adam & Sophia bring very unique perspectives on influencer marketing - on what it’s like to be an influencer, on what it takes to grow an audience as an influencer, on the unique and peculiar challenges of being a creator and a businessperson, on how deals are made on influencer marketing platforms - and so much more.
What inspired Sophia to make Youtube videos in high school - and the first results she saw on her first 4 videos.How Adam stumbled upon influencers while running campaigns for a soccer app.How influencers like MiniMinter & KSI evolved with the Youtube platform and expanded their brand from just FIFA related content to much broader themes.How Adam essentially hunted down his target influencers at the conference PAX East.The most important factor that contributes to an influencer’s early growth - and why ignoring this caused Sophia’s Youtube to die down for a bit. How this factor impacts Youtube’s algorithms.What catalyzes influencers who grow really big - or expand their brand in dramatically different ways?What results Sophia saw when she tested videos that didn’t show her beatboxingHow marketers evaluate a new channel for influencers who are present on it. Is there a minimum audience size at which a platform becomes interesting for marketers?Why influencer marketing can be intimidating for performance marketers - since they dont have a lot of raw data to base decisions off of. What Adam recommends doing to make these assessments when there is imperfect data.Why platforms such as Google have had some reluctance to embracing influencer marketingThe Adpocalypse - and how that hit influencers badly, and how Sophia reacted to the hit her channels were taking.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/the-inner-workings-of-internet-fame-with-sophia-yehcmo-at-most-amazing-adam-hadivp-of-marketing-at-current/
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My guest today is Cameron Adams. Cameron is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, the graphic design tool website that recently was valued at over $1 billion. In today’s interview, we talk to Cameron about his long and checkered career. We talk about his work on Google Wave, which seemed to be a product way ahead of its time - and which gathered some incredible buzz but saw limited adoption. In his next startup Fluent, he seemed to have everything going for him with a huge surge of user interest - in spite of which he had to shut it down. Cameron was third time lucky with Canva, which has a steady start and growth before it really took off in the last couple of years. In today’s conversation we talk about Canva’s gradual rise and the forces behind it. We go into some of the key product decisions they’ve made in their pursuit of the mission of making design accessible to everyone.
The promise of Google Wave to rethink email as it was reimagined for the modern age - and what the problem with this approach was.How the economics of Cameron’s next startup Fluent didn't quite work out even though it had 80000 users on its waitlist.What inspired Canva’s onboarding process to make the design process seem less intimidating to users.How the proliferation of visual media like Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest helped drive the adoption of Canva.How Canva built up relationships with bloggers & social media marketers to support its launch & post-launch growth.How Canva’s growth after its early year 1 growth was a function of its growth marketing strategy that was intentional about bringing users in the door.What Canva learned about why people tended to go with low-quality imagery - and how this insight led Canva to pick the freemium model and to offer much lower prices than alternatives.What Cameron had to learn as he progressed from a creator to a manager of large teams as Canva scaled.What drove Canva’s huge wave of growth in 2017 that converted its user growth into tangible revenue growth.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/making-design-accessible-to-the-world-with-cameron-adamsco-founder-cpo-at-canva/
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My guest today is Cat Lee. Cat Lee is the newest partner at Maveron, a $160MM consumer-tech fund, primarily focused on funding hyper-growth startups at the series A and seed rounds. Cat has had a long history of working on some groundbreaking growth projects - and taking huge leaps in her own career. She worked on the Facebook platform team starting in 2008, and helped drive the adoption of Open Graph, which drove some breakout growth for Facebook outside of its own platform. She then joined Pinterest in 2012 as the Head of Growth, and helped drive 3x growth in MAUs for the then fledgling platform - and set it on the path to scale & sustainability. After working on growth & marketing at Pinterest for over 4 years, she transitioned to being the Head of Culture at Pinterest, in which capacity she did some very interesting & tremendously impactful work, before she moved to being a VC at Maveron Partners earlier this year. In this fascinating & wide-ranging conversation, we talk not only about Cat’s unconventional career choices but also explore the elements that made Facebook and Pinterest’s growth machines as powerful as they were. We talk about the gender diversity problem in venture capital - and how Maveron’s approach has yielded dramatic results. Cat has had so many dimensions to her work and career - and all of these make this a fascinating conversation.
What inspired Facebook’s Open Graph. How Facebook’s teams approached pitching Open Graph to publishers at a point when they didn’t have a lot of leverage or clout.What inspired Cat to join Pinterest - and why Pinterest was invite only at first even when it had millions of users. How Pinterest’s network effect was driven by content more than social interactions between users.How mobile traffic overtook web traffic in 24 hours of the launch of Pinterest’s mobile apps. What inspired Cat to move to a head of culture role, even though this was a role whose success wasn’t as objectively measurable as that of growth roles. How Cat assessed the possible impact she could have heading up culture - and how she approached changing the elements of the culture that she felt needed changing.What inspired Cat to move to the VC space - and her very elaborate research & learning process before making the move.Why the % of VC money going to women is so low(at about 2.2%). How the lack of diversity in the VC space impacts this. Why Maveron’s leadership team’s composition unusual in terms of diversity - and how this has changed their results compared to most VC firms(even though these results weren’t something they tracked actively). What inspired Cat to go on a sabbatical after working on two high growth startups - and what her personal goals were during this sabbatical.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/facebook-pinterest-growth-cat-lee-maveron-vc-diversity/
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My guest today is Lomit Patel, VP of Growth at IMVU. Prior to IMVU, Lomit managed growth at many early stage startups including Roku (IPO), TrustedID (acquired by Equifax), Texture (acquired. by Apple) and Earthlink. Lomit is a frequent speaker at different conferences and recognized as a Mobile Hero by Liftoff. In today’s episode, we talk about one of the pivotal moments in Lomit’s career - when he presented a one word strategic plan to kick off a massive transition within his company IMVU. We go into the circumstances that preceded his one word plan, his thinking behind it - and how he not only rallied his team to execute upon his one word plan, but also drove some massive impact as a result of executing this plan, which resulted in 50% year on year growth after years of flat growth numbers. In this episode, we go very deep in exploring the anatomy of a huge transition that originated in Lomit’s one word strategic plan - and I find some of the details in here incredibly fascinating.
The context in which Lomit joined IMVU - and in which he presented his one word plan. Lomit's team’s shock when he presented his one word plan.IMVU had an established desktop product - and there was a lot of skepticism around whether to make the transition that Lomit proposed. What Lomit did to get people comfortable around the transition - and the tradeoffs that the team had to make in picking features.When there is a major change, the impetus has to come from the top.Lomit didnt have a lot of mobile gaming experience. What gave him the confidence that he could execute the transition that he proposed.How it was such a freeing experience to enjoy being a kid in Malawi. As Lomit grew up and went to college, what inspired him to look at internet businesses - and move to America.How IMVU onboards users by having them take a small step - and gradually advance within the from there as they become familiar with it.
KEY HIGHLIGHTSCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/the-one-word-strategic-plan-with-lomit-patelvp-of-growth-at-imvu/
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