Growth Show

In this episode we've invited four SEO professionals to share with us their best SEO strategies for 2021.  Let us tell you one thing for sure: This episode is not only for SEO beginners. That's for sure. Introducing our guests: Fernando Angulo: Fernando Angulo is Semrush's Head of Communications He has been with Semrush since the beginning of the company's marketing efforts in several leading positions and has built its all-star marketing team. Being one of the most recognized faces of the brand, Fernando is speaking at 50+ top conferences worldwide each year. We had the pleasure to welcome Fernando's colleague Olga Andrienko in episode #23. Kyle Roof: Kyle is responsible for the development and implementation of all SEO techniques used by High Voltage SEO Agency and PageOptimizer Pro SEO tool. We had the pleasure to talk with Kyle in episode #36 about SEO testing and much more. Matt Diggity: Matt is the founder of Diggity Marketing, LeadSpring, The Search Initiative, Authority Builders, The Affiliate Lab, and The Chiang Mai SEO Conference. Matt shared with us his learnings on affiliate marketing in episode #38. Steve Toth: Steve has spent the last 10 years constantly updating his SEO knowledge, but regards the last three years to be the most eye-opening. After heading up SEO Strategy at FreshBooks (a 350-person SaaS in Toronto) for 2 years, Steve turned them into his client, so he could focus on his freelance SEO consultancy for medium-to-large size companies. Steve is also publisher of seonotebook.com, where he shares one page of his SEO strategy notebook. Steve shared with us his journey with SEOnotebook.com in episode #34. Sneak Peek: Fernando explains why featured snippets will be even more important this year and what you should know about featured snippets. Kyle shares with us a process, where Google tells you what to write. Matt shares not one but his top five SEO strategies for 2021 with us. And Core Web Vitals are one of them. Since Google is making page speed officially a ranking factor this one shouldn't be missing in this episode. Steve shares with us a page of this notebook. He explains how you can identify topics with people also asked suggestions. If you like what you hear, please make sure to subscribe and share our podcast with your friends. This is the season finale of season 2. We will be back after a short break. Stay tuned!

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Ryan Stewart. Ryan is a marketing entrepreneur specializing in growing online businesses with aggressive marketing tactics. To date, he has built 5 successful companies, 3 of which he exited. He currently owns and operates WEBRIS and The Blueprint Training, both work in the marketing consulting space. A few of the amazing insights hidden in this episode: What simplicity has to do with Ryan's greatest AHA moment,The only shortcut for SEO quick wins, which Ryan and his team discovered and the blueprint to adapt this concept,The new work concept that enables Ryan's agency to hire the best people,How Ryan hires talents for his business,and much more! Tune in and share if you love what you hear!

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Matt Diggity. Matt is the founder of Diggity Marketing, LeadSpring, The Search Initiative, Authority Builders, The Affiliate Lab, and The Chiang Mai SEO Conference. A few of the amazing insights hidden in this episode: Matt shares with us how he first started with Affiliate projects and how he managed to get to 5 figures monthly revenue within 6 months,why testing is super important when doing SEO and his formula for affiliate projects,when it might be a good idea to spend money on links,how to be productive while managing lots of projects,and much more! Tune in and share if you love what you hear!

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Nathan Gotch. He is the Founder of SEO Training company GotchSEO. We talk with Nathan about SEO, YouTube Marketing and LinkedIn Community Building. A few of the amazing insights hidden in this episode: The importance of topical relevance compared to in-depth content (02:45)How to create great SEO driven content (04:35)How Nathan accelerated his YouTube channel to over 27k followers (07:20)Resources to learn SEO (25:25)and much more! More about Nathan: Nathan Gotch is the founder of GotchSEO, an SEO training company based in St. Louis, Missouri. We've helped over 3,000 marketers get first page rankings and more organic search traffic.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Kyle Roof. He is Co-Founder of High Voltage SEO Agency, Page Optimizer Pro and Internet Marketing Gold. Kyle shares with us amazing insights on SEO, since he has done lots of SEO experiments. We are talking about a few of his findings: Why you shouldn't try to educate Google, why Backlinks are not forever, how an experiment he ran forced Google to change its guidelines and much more! More about Kyle: Kyle is responsible for the development and implementation of all SEO techniques used by High Voltage SEO Agency and PageOptimizer Pro SEO tool. Kyle is also the co-founder of Internet Marketing Gold, a global community of 3000+ SEO professionals who test and prove cutting edge SEO techniques. Kyle is also co-host of SEO Fight Club a weekly YouTube show that covers a multitude of SEO topics. Kyle's SEO techniques and discoveries are followed by many SEO professionals and business leaders, he has been featured in many respected publications and is a regular speaker on SEO and SEO testing at conferences throughout the world. 

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with the Daniel Foley, who is behind an independent SEO Consultancy for more than 20 years. He has seen it all - the raise and fall of search engines. Back in the days he has done search engine optimization for Lycos - a search engine (that oddly still exists) not many will remember. Daniel shares with us how marketers and business owners can identify great SEO professionals, how brand building impacts local SEO, how to create great content and much more! More about Daniel: Daniel Foley is a self-taught – self acclaimed SEO with over 20 years SEO experience. Unlike traditional SEOs, Daniel followed a testing methodology over conventional “SEO knowledge building” using online resources. Daniel Foley is an independent SEO consultant although has owned and built agencies over the years including Assertive Media.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with the Steve Toth, who is behind SEOnotebook.com and a seasoned SEO expert. Steve shares with us, how his journey with SEOnotebook.com started and especially how he got 2700 subscribers with an Evernote notebook in 8 months (today he has more than 4600 subscribers). In this episode there are lots of SEO gems hidden like how to develop a domain authority, competitor SEO and how podcasts can help with SEO. Also, resources for other SEO marketers as well as insights on how to start with SEO. More about Steve: Steve has spent the last 10 years constantly updating his SEO knowledge, but regards the last three years to be the most eye-opening. After heading up SEO Strategy at FreshBooks (a 350-person SaaS in Toronto) for 2 years, Steve turned them into his client, so he could focus on his freelance SEO consultancy for medium-to-large size companies. He's put his SEO knowledge to work for major brands including Porter Airlines, Toyota, KPMG, Intercom, Mejuri, EMI and of course FreshBooks, but also spent 7 years working on SMB clients like dentists, lawyers, plastic surgeons, trades, etc. In July 2019, Steve started seonotebook.com which has grown to 2700 subscribers in 8 months. Every week, Steve emails one page of his SEO strategy notebook out to his list. His notebook is loaded with actionable, modern SEO strategies that you are not going to find on any mainstream blogs. By putting what he's learned into practice, He has been able to rank #1 for money keywords with over 300,000 searches per month and while quintupling FreshBooks' organic traffic with a blogging custom strategy he developed.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with the Founder of podcast hosting service bcast and media company SaaS Marketer Tom Hunt. We are talking with Tom about how he started with Virtual Valley and how easily he solved the chicken egg problem of this marketplace, one of his favorite SaaS growth strategies from SaaS Marketer (spoiler: it has something to do with videos), the growth strategy he likes to use for bCasts growth, when a SaaS company should think of a deal plattform like AppSumo and how bCast leverages the growth coming from AppSumo and much much more. More about Tom Hunt: Tom Hunt builds and grows Software Businesses. Before that he studied Chemistry at Imperial College London and followed the herd to a management consulting job in the City Of London. Eventually he got bored and built a marketplace connecting online entrepreneurs and virtual assistants from scratch whilst travelling the world and sold 90% of it. Today he is Managing Director of bCast a Podcast hosting service for marketers by marketers, writes SaaS growth case studies at SaaS Marketer, helps other SaaS businesses grow with a very specific podcast process and is a business angel in several startups like an AirBnB for Storage, an automation tool, a blockchain startup and much more.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with serial founder Sujan Patel. Sujan is founder of companies such as Mailshake, Right Inbox, Norbert and WebProfits. Sujan is sharing with us his greatest learning as entrepreneur, the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs and marketers do, how to 10x a SaaS business and what 10x businesses have in common, strategies on customer retention, why it's important to speak the language of the customer and much much more. More about Sujan Patel: Sujan Patel is the founder of Mailshake, a sales engagement software used by 20,000 sales and marketing professionals. He also owns 8 other SaaS companies under the Ramp Venture brand. Sujan has over 15 years of marketing experience and has led the digital marketing strategy for companies like Salesforce, Mint, Cafepress and many other Fortune 500 caliber companies.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with serial entrepreneur Zia Nadjib. We are talking with Zia about how he and his team build a strong fitness brand, how GymJunky interacted with customers, how Zia did build a growing personal brand, why Zia was also known as Larry within one of his early ventures, and much more. More about Zia Nadjib: Zia Nadjib joined multiple startups since he has moved from Los Angeles to Hamburg, Germany. He is the founder of Boost Bastards Clothing as well as Gymjunky sportswear's where he was also the CEO until the beginning of this year. Zia led the company to 7 figures in revenues within 4 years and was responsible not only for its marketing but also for its designs and sourcing of production facilities. After selling Boost Bastards in early 2020 and leaving Gymjunky Sportswear as CEO Zia has focused on many more new StartUps which we are very keen on seeing rise. He just started an agency focusing in influencer marketing called social moose and he is also the CEO and owner of 22 LBLS a Hamburg based textile manufacturer. Prior to his time in Hamburg Zia studied Business Commerce in Los Angeles where he has also joined his older brother in their family business. He started his very first and own company by the age of 18 and decided to become an entrepreneur at young age looking up to this father. 

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Chuck Muth, who is the Chief Growth Officer of Beyond Meat. We are talking with Chuck about going up the career ladder from a truck driver to a top level executive in big brands like Honest Tea, Coca Cola and currently Beyond Meat; the story how he was convinced by the story of Beyond Meat to leave his early retirement; his daily routine and advices for entrepreneurs to find the right people and much more. More about Chuck Muth: Chuck Muth joined Beyond Meat, Inc. as the Chief Growth Officer in May 2017. Muth leads the company's growth initiatives and has been instrumental in building a high performing sales and commercial organization. Under Chuck's leadership, the company has rapidly grown Net Revenues by expanding distribution into approximately 111,000 retail, restaurant and foodservice outlets in more than 83 countries worldwide. Prior to joining Beyond Meat, Chuck had a long career in the beverage industry. Chuck Muth is a senior leader with strong background in building winning organizational cultures with both large and small companies. From 2014 to 2016, he led the creation of a new entrepreneurial sales/commercial organization within the Coca-Cola Company called Venturing & Emerging Brands (VEB) as Senior Vice-President with revenue increases of over 200%. From 2010 to 2014, he was Vice President of Sales at the Honest Beverage Company after its acquisition by Coke growing revenues from $35 million to over $230 million. From 2004 to 2010 Chuck was Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at The Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Prior to 2004 he served as the Vice President/General Manager of Joseph E. Seagram's global non-alcoholic beverages business unit. Chuck began his career as a Route Salesman for The Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New York where he progressively advanced his career with promotions to District Sales Manager, Division Sales Manager, Director of Brand Management and Branch General Manager.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Lomit Patel, VP of Growth at IMVU and bestselling author of Lean AI, which is part of Eric Ries' „The Lean Startup“ series. We are talking with Lomit about... ... his greatest AHA moment as professional in growth marketing, his craziest campaign so far, the greatest challenges in reaching multiple million dollar in annual subscription business at his former growth marketing job at Texture, Leadership and of course sneak peek into his book Lean AI as well as growth metrics that matter for founders and much much more. More about Lomit Patel: Lomit Patel is the Vice President of Growth at IMVU. Prior to IMVU, Lomit managed growth at early-stage startups including Roku (IPO), TrustedID (acquired by Equifax), Texture (acquired. by Apple) and EarthLink. Lomit is a public speaker, author, advisor, and recognized as a Mobile Hero by Liftoff. Lomit's new bestselling book Lean AI, is part of Eric Ries' “The Lean Startup” series, now available at Amazon.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Jonathan Miller, who is a conflict transformation coach. We are talking with Jonathan about: the inspiring story why he became a conflict coach real life conflict examples by Jonathan and how he resolved themmethods to solve conflictshow to tackle conflicts with a lot of emotional involvementand much more More about Jonathan Miller: Jonathan is a speaker, facilitator and conflict transformation coach, specializing in working with entrepreneurs to be powerful in the face of conflict. He believes in the power of honing one's communication skills to not just "deal with" conflicts, but to transform them into powerful partnerships that serve one's business and their lives. His programs draw heavily from his extensive training in several communication systems including Nonviolent Communication, the Harvard Negotiation Project, Landmark Worldwide, and more. His methodology is also heavily influenced by his Vipassana meditation practice, of which he has spent over 2,000 hours practicing.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Bobby Östberg, Founder & CEO of fashion tech company ZyseMe. We are talking with Bobby about: his learnings from being an athlete to being an entrepreneurhis ventures after being a consultant at McKinseythe fashion tech industry and ZyseMehow ZyseMe convinced H&M to be a clientand much more More about Bobby Östberg: Having grown up in a sporty and entrepreneurial family Bobby's childhood was much about sports and small own ventures. After spending years pursuing a career as a cross country skier he founded a start-up incubator at the age for 22. After studying Engineering and business he joined McKinsey & Co where he was an Associate Partner in the New York office. Bobby has dedicated the last 8 years to customization and on demand produced fashion. Today he is the founder of ZyseMe, an end-to-end technology connecting real consumer demand to brands' production machinery. ZyseMe's technology empowers brands to produce clothing made to each customer's unique size and style. By enabling brands to only produce what is sold and thereby help them– cutting overproduction, waste and returns.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Lina Wüller, Co-Founder of Ovy - a female health company. We are talking with Lina about: the beginning of her journeyhow she and her sister developed and tested the healthcare producthow they marketed Ovy and skyrocketed user growththeir strategies to retain usersand much more More about Lina Wüller: Lina founded the Female Health Company Ovy with her sister Eva back in 2016. Their mission is to help women live healthyly and without hormones. Together with their team, they develop medical apps and products e.g. a Bluetooth hardware for women who want to get pregnant or on the contrary prevent a pregnancy. From very early on they could win investors to support their vision. Ovy products are available online and in different stores. Lina founded her first marketing firm at the age of 25. 

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Anna Rauch & Alex Tymann, both Co-Founders of Hēdoïne, a DTC (direct to consumer) fashion brand for tights. We are talking with Anna & Alex about: the beginning of her journey and why they decided to reinvent tightstheir biggest challenges in building a fashion brandhow Hēdoïne markets itself and how Anna & Alex built the brand itselfhow their work changed in times of the pandemic Covid-19and much more More about Anna Rauch: 10 years in banking at UBS, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup in Frankfurt, Singapore and London with roles across COO Office, Product Management and the Innovation Lab. Exit to run EMEA Partnerships & Enterprise Suppliers for FinTech scale-up C2FO helping companies optimize their working capital and driving marketplace expansion. More about Alex Tymann: 5 years restructuring consulting at PwC assessing distressed companies business models and helping turnaround.  Exit to become the CFO of a tech startup, later venture building experience as VP Strategy & Operations for an incubator helping startups to build business models, strategy and raise funds.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Roman Kirsch, a Berlin based entrepreneur by day and an investor by night. We are talking with Roman about: his greatest AHA momentthe growth story of LesaraLeadership challenges and managing 300+ employeeshis investment approach as business angeland much more More about Roman Kirsch: Roman is a global entrepreneur (Casacanda, Fab, Lesara, Amorelie) and investor in 25+ companies (including Fitvia, Flowerchimp, SevenSenders, PlusDental, MoBerries). Roman started his first company at the age of 15, selling Hanseatic clocks to souvenir shops. After studies at WHU Otto Beisheim and the London School of Economics, Roman started his first tech company Casacanda, a European online destination for home & decor products in 2011. The company was sold to Fab.com after only 7 months. From 2012 onwards Roman co-founds and invests in many successful consumer internet companies through his private internet holding company Rapid Pioneers Group. The portfolio of over 25 companies raised more than $300m in follow-on capital and employs over 1.000 people.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Olga Andrienko, who is Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush – a SaaS for online visibility and marketing analytics. We are talking with Olga about: How to leverage social media & brand reveal for customer successTactics on ranking optimization for established companies as well as startupsWhy SEO might be easier for startupsThe smart SEO strategy of a dentistry The global marketing day that brought SEMrush 55k leads The challenges of a 24 hours conferenceOlga's Leadership Adviceand much more More about Olga Andrienko: Olga Andrienko is the Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush. Together with her team, she has built one of the strongest international communities in the online marketing industry. Olga has expanded SEMrushs brand visibility worldwide, bringing >90% YoY growth from the top 10 new markets. She currently leads all SEMrush branding across over 50 countries, ensuring marketers all over the world have access to the best software to run effective online marketing campaigns.  In 2018 Olga was mentioned among the 25 most influential women in digital marketing by TopRank. She speaks at major marketing conferences and her quotes on online user behavior appear in media such as Business Insider and Washington Post.

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Alice Default, who is CEO & Co-Founder of Double – a modern executive assistant service. We are talking with Alice about: How she experienced the acquisition of Sunrise Calendar by MicrosoftHow to win users by offering a free tool close to your product (with an example from her time at Front App)How her journey with her startup Double started and what its USP isHow Double wins Executives as clients and how she got her first clientsWhy it might be a great idea to grow slowly to validate and develop a product furtherHow Alice saves time on a daily basis and much more More about Alice Default: Alice Default has spent over 6 years building productivity tools to help people work better at companies including Microsoft, Sunrise, and Front.  Since 2018, she and her team have been laser-focused on helping CEOs and their teams get more done with Double, a modern executive assistant service that sources experienced US-based assistants and empowers them with great tech. Doubles are incredibly talented at handling your calendar, inbox, travel, admin, and anything else on your to-do list and the company is already helping hundreds of executives nationwide.  Alice is Forbes 30 Under 30 and has just completed a $6 million raise for Double led by angel investing powerhouse Index Ventures.

It's time for season 2! But let's recap season 1 first: In this episode the hosts of the Growth Show podcast Sebastian Kunz & Serhat Kaya share their favorite episodes of Season 1. Of course it's not easy to choose a favorite episode amongst so many amazing best. But here are their highlights: Sebastian's Favorite Episodes #12 with Lennart Rieper of STRYVE #15 with Global Keynote Speaker Coach Peter Hopwood #16 with Johannes Kliesch of SNOCKS Serhat's Favorite Episodes are: #02 with Michael Asshauer of TALENTE #08 with Robin Himmels of eatclever #09 with Jan Sapper of PaperLike Tune in and hear more about the reason these episodes impressed them the most so far.

In this episode, we have the pleasure to talk with Bedeir Rizk about faking it until you make it, getting the first big corporate retail companies, about the octopus strategy, what makes a great mentor and much more! More about Bedeir Rizk: He is the CMO of Qopius, a deep-tech startup based in Paris & Berlin that leverages AI & robotics to digitize physical stores. Formerly Bedeir was an AI researcher for a couple of years at the Intelligence Robotics research lab from Siemens. Additionally, he has experience in strategy consulting and investment banking with retail focus.

In this episode, we meet with Lukas Haensch. He is the founder of Pathmonk and has an extensive background in conversion optimization and UX. He describes himself as a UX Conversion ‘Nerd'. He has worked at Google for quite some time as UX Manager in the mobile optimization team. Topics covered in this podcast: - How to optimize your mobile website - Differences in mobile and desktop conversion - How to increase conversion by using onsite behavior for optimization Hands-on tips on tools, like webpagetest.org Website Pathmonk: https://pathmonk.com/

In this episode of the Growth Show we have the pleasure to talk with Florian Schneider, who is Founder & CEO of Fairling – a digital trade fair for brands. We talk with Florian about the ups and downs of his journey, about pivots and lessons learned, what KPIs have to do with it, and how they managed to leverage offline events to increase user growth. Also, why paying users are more interesting (not because of the obvious reason). More about Florian: After studying Information Systems Florian Schneider found his first company Findeling. Only a little later his second entrepreneurial journey started with FAIRLING. Because of an own need he developed a digital KPI model over the course of the next two and a half years, which visualizes the most important KPIs and puts them into perspective. This helped him 10x his revenue by scaling in a controlled way. After more and more companies came up to him and asked for help in finding and visualizing their KPIs, Florian decided to found his third venture Leantree. He now helps managers and founders all over Germany to scale their businesses with his KPI model.

Mathias is Partner at Speedinvest x. Prior to launching Speedinvest x, a Speedinvest focus fund investing into network effects, he was a General Manager for the German market at Uniplaces, an international marketplace for student accommodation. Before that, Mathias built out the marketplace-practice at Berlin-based Point Nine Capital, an early-stage fund focusing on SaaS and marketplaces, where he was a Principal for 4 years. Previously, Mathias led the M&A-department of ricardo Group, then a subsidiary of South African Naspers, that operates several online marketplace, classifieds and auction businesses across Europe. Earlier, he started his career as an Investment Manager at Mountain Partners Group in Zurich where he leads early-stage investments in companies such as Lieferando or reBuy. Mathias holds a German-French double-diploma from European School of Business Reutlingen and Neoma Business School Reims. Knowing Germany's capital city like the back of his hand, Mathias now leads Speedinvest`s Berlin office as a Partner at Speedinvest x. In this episode, we are talking with Mathias about his beginnings as a venture capitalist, the magic of network effects, chicken egg problems and marketplaces. Tune in and deep dive into Mathias's insights!

What a story! In this episode of the Growth Show Podcast, we talk with Johannes Kliesch, Co-Founder and Managing Director of SNOCKS. SNOCKS started as an e-commerce startup, selling only socks via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Shopify. By now they have evolved into a full Lifestyle Brand and have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Tune in to hear the amazing story behind SNOCKS, learn about Johannes as a founder, how SNOCKS uses and masters the art of selling through Amazon and what is next to come.

Peter Hopwood is Global Keynote Speaker Coach & Founder of Hopwood Communications. He travels the globe helping people tell clearer stories with stronger impact. Bringing more value to their ideas. He helps executives and entrepreneurs develop their speaking style in front of a crowd or on camera, gain investment and persuade with impact. Equally, as an internationally experienced live events MC, Peter has developed an extensive global portfolio of shaping large scale conferences. He loves to be kept on his toes wearing many hats – mentor, coach, presenter and voiceover talent. In this episode, we talk with Peter about his impressive background in public speaking and his career path over the past twenty years. Peter shares valuable insights about body language, how to use your voice, how to master public speaking and much more. Tune in to hear how you make your audience care about what you have to say and how you make sure to stay in their heads. Would you like to know more about Peter and why speaking on a stage is like flexing a muscle?

In this episode, we have the pleasure to talk with Sophie Zepnik about the early days of hejhej-mats. hejhej-mats is offering the first holistic closed-looped yoga mat. This means, the yoga mats are not only produced from recycled materials but will be recyclable at the end of their lifespan. You will also hear insights about developing a fully sustainable product - closing the loop from start to finish. Tune in and check out this amazing Startup story with a great vision!

As an electrical engineering graduate Sebastian started his career as automation engineer within a brown coal mining facility. When he moved to software development he started to work for a medium-sized IT company, as engineer, team lead and later as project lead. A few years ago, he transitioned to Axel Springer and started living the agile way. Within Axel Springer, as CTO of Ideas Engineering, Sebastian is one of the key drivers to transform this historic corporation to become a modern tech company. This challenge and his passion for a great team culture motivates him every single day! Tune in to hear the story about his awesome journey!

Lennart completed his B.A. at the design college, the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Schwäbisch Gmünd in product design, and passed his bachelor's thesis with a 1.0. During his studies, he also worked in design studios in Ulm, Hamburg, and Chicago as he studied Interior Design at the Ohio State University in the US. Directly after graduating in spring 2015, Lennart founded a design agency (THINKS Design GmbH) together with his Co-Founder Florian Goecke and shortly afterward them two founded a sports brand (STRYVE GmbH). While the agency also offers design as a service the agency now also develops products for the company's own sports brand. From anti-vandal lights for public spaces, advertising campaigns and user interface design to lifestyle and sports products, THINKS is always dedicated to new customers and projects. The style is mostly timeless, minimal with high demands on aesthetics, function, and attention to detail. THINKS already won the iF and Red Dot Design Award in 2017, 2018 and 2019. STRYVE GmbH has partners all over the world. Its products are now available in 24 countries (as of December 2018) and with several thousand shops worldwide. In this episode, we will talk with Lennart about the beginning of this entrepreneurial journey and about creating a world-class product. Lennart also shares the exciting story how a TV show helped him boost sales to an incredible amount of orders.

Julian Blessin is Co-Founder of TIER Mobility - the Berlin based micro-mobility company. TIER was founded in summer 2018 and is already active in 35+ cities in 12 countries. Before founding TIER, Julian was with the Berlin team of BCG Digital Ventures as a Lead Venture Architect where he launched and scaled COUP - a BOSCH owned eScooter-Sharing Company. Prior to joining BCG DV, Julian invested in Tech Startups for an international VC fund. Julian studied Business Administration and Technology Management at LMU Munich, CDTM and UC Berkeley and holds a PhD in BA. In this episode, we will talk with Julian about the massive growth of TIER to 5 Mio. rides per month and what led to it, the challenges of a hyper-growth startup and much more!

Serhat Kaya is a German Entrepreneur and Founder of the digital agency XPERIENTS. He is also Initiator of the Hamburg Chapter of Startup Grind and Host of the podcast "The Growth Show". Serhat's passion is supporting entrepreneurs in changing the world. The digital agency XPERIENTS supports entrepreneurs in designing great products with an amazing UX as well as with conversion optimization. With Startup Grind Serhat connects the startup scene in Hamburg with knowledge transfer from founders for founders. He also explores growth topics in his podcast with practical insights for innovators. Last but not least he supports innovation processes within tech events & corporate innovation events as a facilitator, whenever he as the time for that. In this episode, Serhat's co-host Sebastian Kunz is having a casual talk with him, so that you have the chance to get to know your hosts a little bit better. He shares some of the remarkable stories he heard in interviewing other entrepreneurs in fireside chats as host of Startup Grind Hamburg, his challenges at the beginning of his agency, how he got his first clients and much more!

Jan Sapper grew up in Guatemala, did his Bachelor in engineering in Vienna, completed his Master's degree in Business Management in London and is currently working on optimizing the iPad. In 2012 Jan started "Sapper Limited" with the intent of creating the MacDock; the most awesome docking station for the MacBook – ever. This journey brought him through all stages a startup goes through market research, building a community, filing patents, managing teams remotely, sourcing components in Europe and Asia, launching and managing a successful Kickstarter campaign and so on. All in all; Jan built an awesome product and in that process acquired competencies and gathered insights that anyone freshly out of the uni can only get by having his own startup. This adventure ended in tears, but what Jan learned in the process defined some essential foundation blocks for his later entrepreneurial path. Jan joined Protonet's ranks in the Marketing & Sales team by the end of 2013 and ended up becoming Product manager there. As product manager at Protonet he created a product he is pretty proud of: Protonet's On-Premise-Warranty program. He also managed pricing & HW-product line and brought Protonet's private cloud servers to market. In his last months at Protonet he managed the phase-out the Indiegogo campaign for the ZOE home automation hub. The campaign hadn't run as hoped and Jan was assigned to refund 300k USD to over 1000 worldwide supporters. A side from crowdfunding he hadn't experienced before. In 2017 Jan launched the PaperLike crowdfunding campaign with the goal of raising 2.000€, which ended up raising over 60k€. This "Hobby" back then has now grown to be Jan's main job, and he and his small team of decentralized people make PaperLike work. In this episode, you will hear more about Jan's best practices on winning crowdfunding campaigns, how to multiply sales with YouTube marketing and much more!

Robin Himmels is Co-Founder & COO of the healthy food delivery company eatclever. Robin loves being in situations where he can explore the underlying mechanics of things, whether they are machines, processes, or products. Analysing and understanding how a certain ingredient in a recipe influences the taste does not just allow you to tweak the product, but also to develop new products. This insight holds value through all his interests in food, processes & technology. This curiosity led him to found his first company, an affiliate business comprised of multiple couponing platforms. Understanding how consumers and employees behave and how they can be motivated was the reason he studied business psychology and e-business. After selling his first company he decided to combine his passion for food with his desire to build and develop products & businesses. As COO he leads & develops eatclevers teams in the areas of Partner Management, Product Development, Customer Support, and Logistics. He always looks for ways to further improve the way eatclever does things together with the individual team leads. In this episode we talk with Robin about eatclevers beginnings, about feedback culture and how it led to the first business angel, how Tinder users matched with eatclevers meals and eventually became happy customers and much more.

Pascal van Steen is Co-Founder of the Netherland based Growth Marketing Agency „Growth Spike“, Organizer of the Growth Hacker Talk in Amsterdam and Host of Blockchain Investor Summits. Pascal is obsessive about growth as well as fascinated by new technologies and the startups which create them. He is an expert in communicating the value of startups with the right audience and converting them into clients. Since big budgets aren't always available, Pascal implements an experiment driven growth process to maximize cost-effectiveness and subsequently help his clients grow. Pascal was formerly in Growth Marketing positions at Blockport, Greenhome and Prezi. In this episode we talk with Pascal about his growth marketing recipes and learnings, discuss the amazing marketing success of Initiative Q (we are pretty sure you have heard about them especially last year) and much more. Amongst other things Pascal shares with us, how he and his co-founder reached out to crypto investors through WhatsApp groups.

Andy is a German serial entrepreneur. He is currently Founder and Managing Director of Ryte and Co-Founder & Host of the Founder Festival Bits & Pretzels and Co-Founder and Chairman of the performance marketing agency EPHNY. Andy Bruckschlögl started his first business at the age of 12, selling backpacks on eBay. A year later he founded his first online shop. In order to promote the online store better, Andreas began to learn how to optimize websites for search engines. Four years later he started another online shop for fashion, which unfortunately failed due to the high return rate. In 2008, Andy was hired as a super trainee by online marketing expert Marcus Tandler. With the merge to Tandler.Doerje.Partner, Andreas Bruckschlögl became Head of Inbound Marketing at age 21, taking responsibility for a team of 10 employees. In July 2012 Andy co-founded Ryte (former OnPage.org) – an innovative software for website quality management and -optimization. Today, the bootstrapped company with 42 employees is generating over 3 million € in revenue and is being used by over 500.000 users worldwide. Together with Dr. Bernd Storm van's Gravesande, he started the first Bits & Pretzels event in September 2014 as a small and cozy founders breakfast. In only two years the event has grown rapidly to a 3-day festival taking place at Munich's famous Oktoberfest with more than 5.000 attendees from around the world. Speakers at this year's event were academy award winning actor and tech investor Sir Kevin Spacey, Founder of Virgin-Group Sir Richard Branson, Airbnb Co-Founder and CTO Nathan Blecharczyk and many more. In this episode we will talk with Andy about growing the founder festival Bits & Pretzels from 70 to 5000 attendees as well as growing Ryte's user base to over 500.000 users worldwide and the marketing tactics, which supported this growth.

Adi Arezzini is co-founder and CEO of Teami Blends, a bootstrapped lifestyle brand centered around using all-natural, plant-based ingredients to help customers live happier, healthier lives. Teami's product line ranges from wellness blends to tea-infused skincare. From a young age, Adi was taught the benefits of holistic health and plant-based eating by her health conscious mother. At 19, Adi served as a combat trainer for the Israel Defense Force, and later, after returning home to Florida, qualified as a National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) certified personal trainer. After years of life in the army barracks, Adi realized her gut wasn't functioning properly, due to a lack of access to quality nutrition. Despite trying different diets, supplements and more, nothing seemed to help with her lagging digestive system, inability to go to the bathroom and painful bloating. Soon Adi began experimenting with loose leaf tea blends as a natural remedy. These high quality teas Adi made uncovered the root of her problem: an excess of toxins built up in her digestive tract. After realizing her “secret sauce” blend also solved similar digestion issues with her friends, Adi saw the potential and began looking to different varieties of tea to combat other common issues: fatigue, depleted immune system, stress and insomnia. Researching, creating, blending and sourcing these teas wasn't just a passion for Adi, it became her purpose and, soon, her expertise. At just 23, Adi created Teami in her mother's bedroom. She saw Teami as a way to help people become healthier and happier, using teas to solve everyday issues. Today, Adi has since grown Teami Blends to a company with 55 people and to a lifestyle tea brand which includes tea-infused beauty oils and green tea mask + scrub. Learn more about how to get from 0 to 1 Mio. followers on Instagram, how to deal with bad reviews and why Adi believes that micro influencers are great ambassadors of your company message and how much budget you should plan to work with influencers.

Kim Dormann is co-founder and managing director of Redpinata, a Hamburg-based video production company for high-quality moving image content of all sizes. The North German media entrepreneur has learned the use of voice, emotions and feedback from the audience as a musician, the economic thinking for companies in his time as a foreign trade merchant. The graduate designer acquired his sense for aesthetics and his understanding for the design of communication during his studies as well as during his years as a web developer. Since 2010 he has been self-employed with Redpinata, one of the first video content creators worldwide, where he connects authentic media with brands and channels and helps to serve interaction and demand with relevant video formats. In this episode we will talk with Kim about the ingredients for a great video, underestimated video channels and more.

"You just need to become one with your target audience!“ – Gilles De Clerck is a Growth Marketer. In 2016 he started as a marketer at a SaaS startup called "Salesflare". During that time he learned a lot of things by experimenting and people started to call him growth hacker. When his learning curve flattened he started to work for the growth hacking agency "Growth Revolution" as Head of Growth. He worked with clients on projects from startups to corporates, was responsible for the inbound strategy and the positioning of the growth hacking agency and was the lead of the Growth Revolution conference. Today he is the Founder of Ablaze Growth Studio. ABLAZE crafts and scales ROI-driven growth machines for startups, new ventures and personal brands from the creative intersection of data, experimentation and human psychology. In this episode we dive deep into the secret recipes of a practitioner of growth hacking – a term which describes mostly the continuous adjustment of your marketing strategy to your target groups behaviour – and the discoveries Gilles made down the road of his marketing career.

"For the journalists it was just cool that the founders themselves approached them personally." Michael Asshauer is Co-Founder of Familonet – a Social Network for the Family, which was acquired in 2017 by Moovel – the multimodal mobility platform of Daimler. During his time as Founder he was mainly responsible for the product as Chief Product Officer. Today Michael is working as Head of Product Design of Moovel. In this episode we explore with Michael how he and his team managed to get the first users for their app and how that user growth developed to the hockey stick growth, which every tech founders dreams of.

"Freedom within a big corporation." 60 employees, 10 to 12 nationalities and all of that within 4 years. Jonas Thiemann ist CEO & Co-Founder of AppLike – AppLike is an App Recommendation & Discovery Plattform. His first venture was directly after his studies. Unfortunately it did not work out and somehow his path came across with one of Europes largest publishing houses Gruner & Jahr and the corporate world. During that time he became a Gruner & Jahr intrapreneur. Learn more in this episode about the story behind Jonas Thiemann and his great success as intrapreneur and what supported the growth of AppLike.

Growth Show in short: The Growth Show is a podcast all about growth. The hosts Sebastian Kunz and Serhat Kaya are exploring the topic from different perspectives with different guest speakers. Especially from the personal as well as business perspective of their speakers. The speakers are mostly successful entrepreneurs with an amazing track record, growth hackers, practitioners of interesting marketing tactics and growth hacks, coaches and other amazing and interesting people with different experiences and backgrounds. How it began: Like all great stories Sebastian Kunz and Serhat Kaya were sitting in a bar and talked about different stuff. Until they realized, that they both are interested in hosting a podcast. So they teamed up and tried to figure out what topic would be interesting. Somehow it ended up in the topic growth. All in all the idea of this podcast is to figure out how a podcast works and how podcasts can be grown