Messy Growth

Most conversations about SaaS happen on stage, on LinkedIn, or inside fundraising decks. This one doesn’t. In this episode of Messy Growth, Off the Record, Syed sits down with Gustavo and Rui - two operators he’s worked with in the trenches of SaaS - to talk honestly about what’s actually happening inside tech companies right now. No hot takes. No polished narratives. Just a real conversation abou...

What does 20+ years in business development actually teach you about growth, sales, and success? In this episode of Messy Growth, Syed sits down with Joanna Rybus, strategic business leader and Head of Business Development at Wingle Group, to unpack the realities behind building revenue engines, scaling companies, and navigating long careers in business. Joanna has spent over two decades leading b...

What happens to sales teams when AI starts doing the work? In this episode of Messy Growth, I sit down with Justin, a revenue leader with more than 30 years of experience building and scaling software companies. Justin has helped build six software companies with five successful exits and has served as CRO, Chief Sales Officer, VP at Salesforce, and board advisor. He has seen SaaS evolve through m...

Most founders think building a SaaS product is the hard part. It’s not. In this episode of Messy Growth, I sit down with Elston Baretto - founder of Tiinyhost who bootstrapped his way to over 1 million users without VC money. We break down:• Why distribution now matters more than product• How AI lowered the barrier to entry (and made things harder)• The emotional cost of bootstrapping• Why most fo...

Most early-stage startups don’t fail because of product. They fail because their go-to-market doesn’t work. In this episode of Messy Growth, I sit down with Kas Szatylowicz — fractional Head of Marketing, GTM advisor, and revenue-focused operator who has built growth engines across AI and cybersecurity startups. She’s been the first marketing hire multiple times, scaled organic traffic from 3.5K t...

Building a company isn’t linear. Monika Mikowska built Mobee Dick into one of Poland’s most respected UX/UI agencies - 50+ people, millions in revenue, major enterprise clients. Then it nearly collapsed. In this episode of Messy Growth, we go deep into:• Why fast growth lies to founders• How ego quietly expands during success• What really causes companies to crash• The hidden burnout phase no one...

Aleksandra went from producing fashion events for Hermès and Stella McCartney to building ABM programs that close 6-7 figure deals at Launchmetrics and Kpler. This conversation gets messy - in the best way. We break down:→ Why 70% of your martech stack is probably useless (and what to keep)→ The #1 reason ABM programs fail when scaling beyond 10 accounts→ What sales teams say they want vs. what ac...

Building brands today isn’t about bigger ad budgets - it’s about trust. In this episode of Messy Growth, I sit down with Olivia Dumnicka, Founder of SWAI, a UGC and nano-influencer agency helping brands like Booksy, Weleda OnePiece, Liferando, and others grow through creator-led marketing that actually converts. Before founding SWAI, Olivia worked across early-stage tech startups in London and Ber...

Rashel Hariri has seen growth from every angle - McDonald's, Shopify, and now dozens of early-stage startups as a fractional CMO. In this episode, she breaks down why most go-to-market strategies fall apart, what founders get wrong about marketing vs. sales, and when spending money on ads is actually a waste. What we cover: Why big corporations are just startups in disguise (even McDonald'...

Anna Jagiello went from doing spam control at OLX in Argentina to becoming Head of Product at Surfer, an SEO tool competing with giants like Ahrefs and SEMrush. In this episode, we break down:→ How SEO experience gives product managers an unfair advantage→ The process of building enterprise products from scratch (starting with squatting in a Barcelona clinic for a week)→ Why she reduced churn by 2...

Kris Palucki did the full loop most startup people dream about: VC → Operator → Founder → back to VC.He started as an Investment Director at OTB Ventures (one of CEE's top VCs), left to become a Product Manager at Contractbook (Google-backed CLM platform), co-founded Owlright (an AI documentation agent), and is now back at OTB as Investment Director. In this episode, we break down:→ Why asking...

Piotr Kacała is the former CTO & Board Member at Displate, and now founder of Product Cards and AI Product Heroes. With 20 years building world-class engineering teams, he's seen what works and what destroys great teams. In this episode, we discuss: Why telling engineers what to build kills innovation (and what to do instead) The 3 team sizes where everything breaks (10, 50, 150) How Polish te...

In this episode of Messy Growth, I sit down with Marta Rzymek, Head of Sales at Brand24, to unpack what real sales leadership looks like after nearly 20 years in the trenches. We talk about: • Growing from individual contributor to Head of Sales inside the same company • Why great salespeople can’t sell just anything • Product quality vs people: what really matters more • Remote work, team sensiti...

Patricia Serafin-Wynne has scaled teams from 5 to 200+ people THREE separate times - at NetGuru, Money Boomerang, and Publicis. In this episode, she pulls back the curtain on what actually happens when you're growing that fast (spoiler: it's chaos).We cover: Why onboarding breaks when you scale fast (and how to fix it) The moment trust stops working and processes take over Building a 150-p...

In this episode of Messy Growth, I sit down with Aleksandra Korczynksa, one of Poland's most experienced B2B SaaS marketing leaders and current CMO at Survicate. Ola shares her unconventional career move: stepping down from managing a 40+ person marketing team and $10M budget at GetResponse to become hands-on at an early-stage startup. We dig into why senior leaders should embrace "steppi...

Ewelina Chrzanowska started as a CSM at Codewise, led a team of 16 across EMEA at Splunk, and now manages three teams (support, tech support, CSMs) at Edrone while training Polish CS managers through CS for Poland School. In this conversation, we break down:→ The biggest misconception about customer success (hint: it's not just tech support or sales catch-all)→ How to build a CS team from zero...

Ewelina Chrzanowska started as a CSM at Codewise, led a team of 16 across EMEA at Splunk, and now manages three teams (support, tech support, CSMs) at Edrone while training Polish CS managers through CS for Poland School. In this conversation, we break down:→ The biggest misconception about customer success (hint: it's not just tech support or sales catch-all)→ How to build a CS team from zero...

Most SaaS companies are at "zero level proficiency" in pricing - and it's costing them at least 10% in untapped revenue. Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz, co-founder of Value Ships and former McKinsey pricing strategist, breaks down the three massive revenue leaks killing SaaS growth:- Discounting disasters - One company was leaking $2.4M ARR from grandfathered pricing alone- Underpricing epid...

Abby Hehemann spent over a decade building her career in Poland, climbing from customer support to Global Marketing Officer at GetResponse. Then she left. Twice. In this raw conversation, Abby breaks down what it actually takes to stay somewhere for 12 years, why she walked away from a CMO role, and what she learned about loyalty, burnout, and knowing when it's time to move on. We talk about:...

Anna Zarudzka runs Boldare, a 100-person digital product company in Poland that's built 300+ products and operates without traditional managers. But she didn't start in tech. She started in jazz, painting, and TV production at Poland's biggest channels. In 2008, she left a dying industry (TV) to co-found what became Boldare. They scaled to 200 people using Holacracy (no hierarchy, no b...

Mateusz Zalubski left Google to join FlixBus (a bus company), co-founded and sold an e-commerce business, became CMO at Incogni (a privacy tech company), and won CMO of the Year 2024.In this conversation, we break down:→ Why he left Google to work for a bus company (and what he learned about brutal markets)→ The real difference between CMOs who drive revenue vs those who just run campaigns→ Why bi...

Agata Krzysztofik spent 7 years at Google shaping community strategy and scaling global platforms, then became VP of Growth at multiple high-growth startups (Piktochart, SimScale, Demodesk), and now runs Growth52 - an agency helping B2B SaaS companies fix their Google Ads and hit profitable growth in 90 days. In this conversation, we break down:→ The exact 90-day process she uses to achieve solid...

Most career advice tells you to "follow your passion" or "network more." Sylwia Masłowska actually did the work, she went from BNP Paribas and Thomson Reuters (corporate) to Netguru and 10Clouds (tech startups), managed $40M revenue divisions, built customer success teams from scratch, and led operations teams of 100+ people. Sylwia is the CSO at Polcode and she also runs Shift...

Most founders struggle to build one thing at a time. Paulina Walkowiak built a UX analytics company while being pregnant, raising two kids, and moving between Berlin, Poland, Madeira, and Lisbon. She's the CEO of CUX.io - a tool helping e-commerce companies eliminate conversion blockers. She's competed against giants like Hotjar and Mixpanel for 6+ years, survived near-failures, hired too...

Most people think you need to job hop every 18 months to climb the ladder in tech. Margaret Sikora proved them wrong. She started at Woodpecker in 2017 as a junior customer success agent answering support tickets. Eight years later, she's the CEO. Same company. No shortcuts. Junior CS → Customer Success Officer → Head of Support → Head of Product → COO → CEO.She didn't parachute in from Go...