Messy Growth

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...

Most founders raise VC money and stay on the treadmill. Raise. Burn. Grow. Repeat. Maciej Sawicki did something different. After raising $4M and scaling inStreamly to 150,000 streamers (working with Samsung, Disney, PlayStation), he had 10 months of runway left and two choices: collapse or pivot to profitability. He chose profit. Now inStreamly is fully remote, fully profitable, and fully independ...

Abram built Natu. Care from nothing into one of Poland’s fastest-growing premium supplement brands — 75,000 customers and 5× growth in 2024 — while previously architecting product & AI transformations for platforms serving 900K+ users. In this episode of Messy Growth we go deep on:• How to win trust in a scam-filled category (transparency, lab tests, customer feedback loops)• Building product-...

In this episode of Messy Growth, I talk to Natalia Slota — founder of Apricot and former growth lead at high-velocity startups — about building real growth when you don’t have infinite budget. We cover founder-side hustles that teach better marketing, how to pick channels for $2M ARR B2B companies, aligning sales + marketing, product-market fit, and why humans still beat AI when it comes to real s...

Justyna Dzikowska is the Head of Marketing at Brand24, where she drives 70,000 unique visitors per month through organic content, SEO, partnerships, and product marketing. With over 10 years in B2B SaaS marketing, she's worked with companies like Packhelp, Devantly, PProjects, and Ogilvy. In this conversation, we dig into:Why most B2B companies waste marketing budget on the wrong metricsHow Br...

Most teams have one of two problems: either they're psychologically safe but nothing gets done, or they're high-performing but people are miserable. Susanna Romantsova says you can have both and she's built the framework to prove it. Susanna is a Certified Psychological Safety Expert, TEDx Speaker, Forbes 30 Under 30, and Founder of Zespołowo. She spent 12+ years building high-performi...

Greg Gorzynski generated 5,700 users and 11,000+ leads PRE-PRODUCT as CMO at GoodSalary. Now he's a Product Manager at Sprout Social, working on growth and user activation. In this episode, we talk about:→ How he got 11K leads before having a real product (and why he wasn't happy with it)→ Why he tested 11 marketing channels and which 2 actually worked→ Why marketers need to be analytical,...

Maciej Wróblewski spent 14 years in B2B marketing. He did growth at Skyscanner, built Prowly's marketing for almost 5 years before Semrush acquired them, and now leads marketing for a PR tech company competing globally. In this conversation, we talk about:→ Why he left Skyscanner in October 2019 (5 months before COVID destroyed travel)→ What actually works in B2B marketing in 2025 vs. 5 years...

Kamil Rejent built Survicate from zero to $4.2M ARR over 12 years. No overnight success. No unicorn story. Just 12 years of grinding, pivoting, and not quitting. In this conversation, we talk about:→ Why most startups die by year 3 (and what kept him going for 12)→ The two forces that drive founders: ambition and fear of failure→ How Survicate competes with Typeform, SurveyMonkey, and 500+ other s...

$98 billion spent on sales training annually. 85-90% fails within 120 days. I scaled Hubstaff $4M→$31M with almost zero external training.  In this episode, I break down why most sales training is expensive theater and what actually works instead. The problem isn't lack of skills. It's broken systems.  Your reps don't need Challenger Sales. They need a CRM that works, lead routing t...

Michal Sadowski built Brand24 into a company used by thousands of businesses across 154 countries. He has 136K Instagram followers, 34K YouTube subscribers, won multiple awards, and exited at a $100M valuation. And he cares way less about all of it now than he did 5 years ago. In this conversation, we talk about:→ The anxiety of chasing social media validation and why he stopped→ What actually hap...

Mick Griffin is Chief Growth Officer at Traffit, former CRO at Brand24, and founder of Pipeline Summit. He started as a professional rugby player in the UK before transitioning to sales and building some of Poland's most successful tech companies. In this conversation, Mick shares how culture, adaptability, and being willing to do things differently have defined his career - and why these principl...

Jakub Tutaj is a Senior Growth Product Manager at Mixmax with over 15 years in product management. He spent 8+ years at Zendesk (rising to Principal PM), was COO at Vocabla (growing to 400K users with $0 marketing budget), and now runs a Polish product management podcast. In this conversation, we discuss:Key Topics:- How he grew Vocabla to 400K users without spending on marketing [03:45]- The diff...

Barbara Derkowska (Fractional CMO) and Wiktor Sobolak (Head of Product at Text) join me to talk about building Warsaw's best growth meetup from a small group of friends to a must-attend tech event. We cover: How they created a community-first event that actually delivers value (not another networking circus) Whether university still matters in 2025 - and what you should focus on instead The r...

LinkedIn will have you believe sales has been reinvented every other week, new frameworks, AI hacks, hustle porn at 4 a.m. But here’s the truth: sales hasn’t changed. In this episode, I cut through the noise and share why the basics still win. You’ll hear: Why flashy tactics and shortcuts don’t close deals The “boring” fundamentals that actually move the needle How trust beats tricks Why the harde...

Everyone's rushing to build AI products. The logic seems simple: add GPT, ship fast, watch the money roll in. Except it's not rolling in. In this episode, I break down why AI products still need to be sold and marketed - and why founders are failing because they've forgotten this basic truth. We cover the instant gratification trap that AI tools created, the race to the bottom in se...

In 2012, I applied to 400 companies in one month and got zero responses. I was 18, broke, and picking blueberries just to pay rent. Eventually, one company gave me a shot and it changed everything. Fast forward to today: the job application game has completely changed. Remote work means you're competing with the entire world, not just your city. Recruiters are drowning in applications, and yo...

Hiring a Customer Success Manager (CSM) is crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction, retention, and growth of your current customer base. Without a healthy state of your current revenue, you will not be able to maximize the impact that your TOFU (Top of the funnel activities) will have to your bottomline. Which is why hiring for this role is crucial for success of your business.

For a while now, I have been trying to find the best way to gauge the performance of my CSMs (Customer Success Managers). It started off with NRR (Net Revenue Retention) being the north star through which I could see how my team is performing. Followed up by, emails sent, meetings done, calls answered, tickets resolved, so and so forth, the list is almost never ending. Until I found GRR.