How I Grew This: Real Stories of Digital Growth

Today, most SaaS companies were started in the last few years or at the beginning of Web 2.0. Our guest Rick Stollmeyer, Co-Founder and current Executive Chairman of Mindbody, however, saw an opportunity back in 2001, when he started the company out of his garage. In March, Mindbody saw 90% of their appointments disappear through the platform, which led the team to innovate and drive towards a vir...

Our guest today, Siddarth Jena, has learned a lot about growth running the largest platform for fans of India’s most popular sport, Cricket. Siddarth came into Cricket.com at a time when they had to scale their marketing efforts from 0 to 100, he shares how they tested Google, Facebook, affiliates, and many other growth channels to capture the market. They were able to rapidly test and then scaled...

In today's episode, Alex McNamara shares his unique approach to solving client problems and delivering growth for brands. Alex is the Head of Growth Marketing at Cruise, leading the charge for Cruise's first customers. Before joining Cruise, he was the Director of Growth at iProspect, with responsibility for the overall direction of pitch strategy, media planning, and activation. Alex shares how h...

Today’s guest, Chetana Deorah, talks about the role of design to drive business outcomes for some of the top companies in the world. Growing up in the hustle and bustle of Mumbai, Chetana’s curiosity and rebelliousness led her to dabble in the life sciences before finding her calling in UX design. She’s taken her success and translated it into not only hockey stick growth for profit-motivated comp...

Some people stop after creating their first successful company, but today’s guest, Sachin Bhatia, has created three products and companies that have flourished. Sachin shares how he got his parents' entrepreneurial spirit by selling water and other items as a child. He started his first company, MakeMyTrip, in 2000, and while they had a successful launch due to word of mouth, they weren’t able to...

As product leaders, you might be looking at road maps for 1-3 years from now, but our next guest is someone who seeks a challenge that takes a decade to solve. Loni Stark is the Senior Director of Strategy and Product at Adobe; fittingly, she works for Adobe; she is both a technical product leader and a creative artist with hobbies like a painting. She was inspired by her mother, who was the only...

Grant Ingersoll, Chief Technology Officer of Wikimedia, joined us on the podcast this week to discuss his experience navigating his own career through identity and knowledge equity. He shares the path that led him to his current role and why he chose to take a bet on himself and start his own company. More on Grant’s story, including his beliefs that people’s views of themselves can be blockers fo...

Today’s guest is Stuart Jones, the Head of Product at ITV Hub, an on demand streaming service in the UK. Stuart discusses how the pandemic has affected the television industry in many ways, specifically in the lack of available content along with the call for changes to their subscription model. More on Stuart’s story, including his early start as an airplane engineer apprentice, how his experienc...

Martijn Lancee is the Senior Manager for Mobile Growth and Business Strategy on LinkedIn, where he has grown as a product leader over the past three years. Before LinkedIn, Martijn spent eight years at Google, where he was responsible for developing and implementing Google's app distribution strategy focused on preloads and pre-installs. Working on mobile growth preloads as a strategy, Martijn adv...

Tech professionals, especially those who work in product, are not necessarily the folks who first come to mind when discussing the topic of creativity. However, there is a shifting viewpoint that argues a healthy level of creativity and optimism is essential to these functions due to the responsibility of bringing technological advancements and game-changing content to a global audience. Michael S...

When it comes to your career, taking the road less traveled will often serve you well. Knowing exactly what you’re passionate about, what you’re naturally good at and what you want to accomplish on your career path are essential components needed to live a life of intent. Today’s guest is Ana Guillen, the Senior Director of Marketing at TuneIn. She has been intentional about growing her career eve...

Surendra Bashani, Senior Director of Product Management at Best Buy, joins us in the next episode of How I Grew This podcast. Surendra describes his role at Best Buy, where he focuses on various programs to see how customers behave and improve their customer experience. To measure the success of the programs, the team checks the metrics from adoption to increase engagement. They also measure custo...

Jean-Sebastien Laverge, the Chief Growth Officer at Tilting Point, joins us in the next episode of How I Grew This podcast. As a CGO, JS oversees more than forty game titles. Before Tilting Point, he worked for twelve years at Gameloft, where he helped generate significant annual revenues by developing retention and monetization strategies. Tilting Point is a leading award-winning free-to-play gam...

Diego Dzodan, the co-founder and CEO of Facily, joins us in the next episode of How I Grew This podcast. Before starting Facily, Diego worked for Facebook and Instagram as the VP of Latam. He spent ten years at SAP, where he focused on driving growth across countries by strengthening relationships with customers while working with them to innovate and deliver business value. Facily is the leading...

The pandemic has certainly brought about many changes to the world - one of them being how companies do business. Since the onset, marketers from various industries have been working to figure out how to stay relevant and continue to appeal to consumers when priorities and advertising systems are constantly evolving. Today’s guest is Jason Wilson, Overstock.com’s Director of Marketing. He shares h...

In the age of increasing levels of automation, it’s easy to get bogged down with the desire to automate as much as possible. However, this isn’t always in the best interest of your product’s users. Chris Yu has worked in various fields, from venture capital to gaming, before landing at Microsoft-acquired productivity app, MileIQ. Chris shares his perspective on the importance of giving your users...

What can be gleaned from the stories at the geographic and technological edge between the US and China? As a Bay Area native, how did a journey back to China lead to strategic growth for American companies like LinkedIn and Tesla who hadn’t yet unlocked the Chinese market? Hear about the way Pinterest grew pre-IPO, how Linus is leading his team with compassion at Coinbase, and how his appearance o...

How do you achieve growth when the system is full of obstacles? With today’s guest, Lomit Patel, we talk about choosing to take decisive action towards your goals whether that’s in your own career or with your product. From working his way up the ladder to his dream job to having the foresight to push for utilizing AI at a time when it was still very new, Lomit has proved to be a catalyst for imme...

How does someone with a passion for cooking end up leading a team driving business-critical decisions? What does it take to teach yourself how to code then apply that to how you are able to help a company grow? This story, how she learned to tell stories with data at Visa, the 2x2 matrix thinking model, and when to make a career jump into (or out of) the startup world is featured on this episode o...

What does it take to recreate the organic growth of the largest online delivery grocery in the US in a new market like Mexico? How do you define growth when new markets take time to mature and show actual business outcomes? Our next guest, Adithi Sampath, has worked across a variety of industries building products in gaming, insurance, and now is forging the online grocery experience for Walmart G...

Aim big. This theme, along with successful cross-collaboration, aligning with strong mentors, and leading by example, seems to be common in many growth stories. How does the theme of family fit in? Manoj Tolety shares what he’s learned from becoming a parent and how human behavior, a dash of luck, and hard work drives both personal and professional growth. This, traveling the world every 6 months...

What does it take to build a leading Peer-to-Peer car-sharing company when the market is exploding with new competitors? How do you continue to drive growth after your company gets acquired? This, the stories of learning from failure, recruiting his first users one by one, and the decisions he made that ensured the product remained a market leader, are in our third episode of “How I Grew This” wit...

What does it take to bring an iconic brand and experience to digital? What makes the Philz app one of the most loved and used apps in the industry and how do you take the specific vision of a founder and transform into an on par digital experience? That and stories of success, failure, the invention of the mobile boarding pass and how Philz ended up on HBO’s Silicon Valley are featured in our firs...

Some get to join a company that redefines an industry once in their life. Sheila has done it twice. As Dropbox’s first marketing hire, she led the transition from a consumer-facing product to one with an enterprise focus. Now at Opendoor, she is redefining a 100+ year-old industry and revolutionizing the way real estate is bought and sold. This, stories of doubling market share for Opendoor in 3 m...

Emre Ertan is the Chief Product Officer at Getir. Emre has previously directed growth at Slice Technologies and Zum. He also co-founded not one but two companies, Mobito and Soru. Get people to share their referral links on social media, specifically mass social media avenues like timelines posts and groups. The more people share about your product, the higher the chances of their posts being feat...