The Initial

Get David's prioritization framework in this month's newsletter: ⁠ https://increaseconversionrate.substack.com/⁠ David Swinstead spent 10 years inside the Booking.com bubble, and came out with some of the sharpest, most contrarian takes in the experimentation space. in this episode… he is now running experimentation programs at e-clerks, and doing stand-up comedy on the side, he treats both the sa...

Proven at brands like Kia, Montblanc, Blinkist, and Blacklane, Ioana’s framework shows how to implement experimentation that actually scales. Find it in this month’s newsletter: ⁠ https://increaseconversionrate.substack.com/⁠ in this episode... Ioana has built experimentation programs across industries (from automotive to luxury to tech) and she’s not just running tests, she’s building systems tha...

How do you pitch 50 experiments a month? ...by making them impossible to refuse. Steal Grace Miller’s framework for "tiny loss" proposals that guarantee a "Yes" from even the most risk-averse clients, it's in this month's newsletter: https://increaseconversionrate.substack.com/ in this episode… Grace Miller is building one of the most advanced experimentation cultures i...

If you enjoy learning about these topics, follow our newsletter to get all the frameworks and insights: https://increaseconversionrate.substack.com/ in this episode… Talia Wolf has been shaping the CRO industry since its earliest days. she doesn’t just run experiments; she decodes how people make decisions. as the creator of the emotional targeting framework, she’s helped companies move beyond sur...

get Luiza's playbook in our newsletter: https://increaseconversionrate.substack.com/ apply to work with us: https://the-initial.com/ in this episode... Luiza de Lange has taken companies from zero to over 100 experiments a year. she doesn't just run tests; she builds engines. currently leading experimentation at LeoVegas, she’s an award-winning practitioner who knows exactly where the &quo...

Maarten van Pijpen spent 15 years at Booking.com. a place where experimentation wasn’t a project. it was the culture. now he’s chief growth officer at Unravel. a travel app that feels like TikTok, but lets you book instantly. in his first 35 days, he: – chose an experimentation tool – lined up 10 experiments – started building a data foundation but this conversation isn’t about tooling. it’s about...

the wrong Culture inside a company, kills even the best specialists. this is what Ruben de Boer, 15+ years in Experimentation, has noticed again and again: we need to create the right environment for CRO & Experimentation to flourish. not by pushing CRO but by bringing it to people and teams his course on Udemy has 25000+ students and is very much about the basics of CRO and Experimentation, b...

we unpack one of the fastest built experimentation engines i've seen!! In this episode, I sit down with Kameron Tanseli (Growth Engineering) and Rosie Hoggmascall (Growth & Product) from Fyxer.ai and we retrace the steps of building a 500+ /year experimentation program. We go deep into: Why their first onboarding experiments actually made things worse The tooling shift from PostHog to Grow...

as a Behavioral Psychologist, dr. Florien Cramwinckel has helped the CRO and Experimentation world increase sales for S*x Toys, Children's playhouses ánd Fintech. Florien shares how CRO, experimentation, finance, sex, and play are related and can how to improve their business, society, and people's lives. she shares what she knows about "Pleasure Shoppers", and how they differ fr...

in this episode, Lea Mattern shares hard-won tactics for driving experimentation adoption inside organizations. Based on her experience at Condor Airlines and German brands she worked with at Konversionskraft, we break down what actually works when you work at a Center of Excellence trying to increase experimentation adoption. 4 practical guidelines we cover: do internal marketing ('yes, be an...

In this episode, Alisa Antypova (ex-Preply & ADC Consulting) opens the door to her world of experimentation. She talks about her start in data science, building Preply’s experimentation platform from the ground up, and how decisions become sharper when you test instead of guess. We explore airlines, marketplaces, and other complex systems where a single decision can create wide ripple effects....

In this conversation, Giedrius shares his journey from academia to working on experimentation at Vinted. He talks about the messiness of testing in a marketplace, where every A/B test affects both sellers and buyers. We discuss why shared metrics matter, and how difficult, yet worthwhile, it is to build a culture that truly experiments. We get into the slow, steady work of improving this craft. Th...

In this conversation, Kevin Anderson (ex-Vista, ex-ING, now a consultant) shares his journey from web analyst to product manager at VistaPrint, and how he’s experienced experimentation from every angle. We talk about what it really takes to scale experimentation across an entire organization. That includes leadership pushback, the slow work of proving value, and the mistakes that still sting. Kevi...