The GrowthTLDR Podcast. Weekly Conversations on Business Growth.

Marketing should be a disruptive force. Today, data has turned a lot of marketing into a rigid force.  In this episode, we talk about how you can market against the grain.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Dennis Kelly, the CEO of Postalytics. Postalytics is making direct mail part of the marketing automation playbook. We talk to Dennis about why his previous company Boingnet pivoted to become Postalytics and how he knew it was time to make that change. We asked Dennis about the common mistakes founders make, how he hires executives onto his leadership team, and the hardest part of growing a SaaS company.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about how the unbundling of platforms like Craigslist, Reddit, and LinkedIn presents opportunities for digital communities to serve the needs of their audience better. We go through the famous example of Craigslist and how its unbundling resulted in a series of billion-dollar startups. We give examples of how the same thing is happening to Reddit and LinkedIn. But what does this mean for B2B? We go through how you should think about unbundling and the rise in digital communities' popularity related to your companies' growth. We give examples of when you should consider starting a digital community and its benefits. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we get into how you do customer acquisition and onboarding for companies with horizontal markets. That means their product serves the needs of many customers. Examples of fast-growing products with horizontal markets are the likes of Loom, Calendly, and Miro. We talk about the challenges of building a great onboarding flow with such a broad set of customers, why all products have some customer persona in mind, and examples of tactics used by product-led companies to fuel acquisition and improve user. activation rate. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we cover a common question, how do the best companies pick winning markets. We use Strava, the social network for athletes, and ask how they would pick who to build their go-to-market around. We cover how they might access a market's profitability, what market they should build product features for, and how they should think about building a plan for audience growth. Happy Growing!

It's the "One Thing" on the GrowthTLDR where the hosts (Kieran Flanagan, Nicholas Holland, and Scott Tousley) cover an idea or observation they feel is worth sharing with the podcast listeners. Each week we scour all of the information we've consumed for the best lessons and bring them to our audience. They get all of the information without needing to do any of the research. What you'll learn on this weeks episode: - Why all great outputs in media need great inputs. We cover a recent interview from Bob Pittman, the CEO of iHeartMedia, about successfully growing a media empire. We also cover why the next generation of software companies will need that growing empire. - Why you should be intentional about your 1:1 meetings. We cover why it's imperative to leadership to run effective 1:1 meetings and the common mistakes people make. - The rising cost to acquire a customer. In a recent post from Reforge.com, they highlighted the increasing costs for all companies to acquire customers. What does it mean for the future of marketing? Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Paul Cowan, the CMO of Freshbooks. By listening to this show, you'll learn: - How to think about building a 12 to 18-month plan as a new CMO of a fast-growth company. - Understand how to test brand messaging by focusing on specific cities - What channels to prioritize for growth - With the cost to acquire a customer increasing across all marketing channels, what it means for the future of marketing. Make sure you subscribe to hear future shows. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Darin Brown, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Docket, a company looking to revolutionize meetings through a product-led model. Docket is currently at 15,000 users growing through SEO and product-led virality. We talk to Darin about why he started Docket, how they measure user activation, and what's it like growing through the Zoom marketplace.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss five critical skills you need to be a successful marketing and growth leader. We talk about the importance of forecasting, why great leaders prioritize, how great leaders have great teams, how every problem is an opportunity, and ownership.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we run down our top six lessons from 2020. We talk about the evolution of content marketing, recap some great lessons on creating a growth OS for your company, and discuss some of the interviews we had with companies who went from sales-led models to product-led. We'll be back in January 2021; until then, Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're going to cover four examples of how companies use M&A deals to find both growth and leverage. We get into some of the latest M&A deals in SaaS and go through four examples of how companies have acquired media sites and software to fuel their growth and gain leverage. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Xenia Muntean, the CEO, and co-founder of Planable. Planable is a four-year-old company based in London with 20 employees and 700 customers. They provide a tool that helps social media managers better collaborate. We talk to Xenia about their journey to 700 customers. We get into why they went from a free plan to a free trial and back to a free plan. We talk about some of the biggest hurdles Xeina had as CEO in growing planable and how they differentiate themselves in a saturated market. Happy Growing!

In this episode, we talk to Adam Grenier who has done growth at companies like Hotel Tonight, Uber, and Lambda School. We get into Adam's wild ride at Uber, where during his four years the company went from 300 employees to 20,000. We ask what did growth do at Uber, how was it structured, and why it was disbanded after three years. We get into Adam's journey at Lambda School, and how the growth team was tasked with optimizing a very unique customer journey, with some examples of the work they did. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about the four things marketers can learn from growth. We talk about the importance of understanding the problem your product solves, and how that should translate to goals. We talk about the value of opportunity sizing and creating a culture of experimentation on your team. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Mark Fiske, who has lead teams at Ancestry and CreditKarma. We talk to Mark about all of the things you need to master to lead marketing at a successful scale-up company. We get into how you should prioritize and understand where you should invest your resources, time, and budget. We talk about how to do customer acquisition at scale and what happens when your main channels start to plateau. We talk about the importance of hiring and why the chief product officer at CreditKarma spent 20 hours a week talking to potential candidates, even when they hadn't any open roles. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about some of the latest tech stories, including Loom updating their pricing and Notion launching jobs to be done guides. We then get into how you can build a customer acquisition model for 2021 to ensure you'll hit your revenue goals. We get into creating targets via a bottom-up exercise, how you can decide what channels are worth the investment, and how to build a growth scorecard for each channel. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Ludo Antonov, who founded the growth team at Pinterest and is now running growth engineering at Lyft. We get into how companies like Pinterest and Lyft excel at growth. We discuss the three most common goals growth teams have, how those growth teams manage a portfolio of investments across those goals, how they prioritize that work, and the experiment framework used by the best growth teams. Happy Growing!

A quick update on the GrowthTLDR about upcoming shows, and our soon to be launched community.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss one of the most common problems that most scale-ups encounter - hitting growth ceilings. Most companies who transition from start-up to scale-up do so because they manage to find a marketing channel that generates both repeatable and scalable growth. But, near all scale-ups at some point hit a growth ceiling on that channel, and then they panic. This episode discusses how growth ceilings occur in the first point and five ways to avoid them potentially.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Tomas Pueyo, the VP of Growth at Course Hero, a platform that helps students answer their study questions. Tomas is managing the entire product and growth department that consists of 150 people. We talk to Tomas about how leaders can best set their teams up for success, how Course Hero defines their north star metric, and why Tomas feels team design is an essential part of leadership. We also get into the work Tomas has done in providing analysis around COVID and how two of his articles have generated more than 60 million views. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss the eight critical steps to building a winning content formula. We cover the three most popular categories of content, the best research methods to building your editorial calendar, how you grow an audience for your content, and how to cross-pollinate ideas across channels. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Bhavneet Chahal, the CEO, and co-founder of GoSkills, about taking the company to 2 million in revenue. GoSkills is an online education company. They have 18 people who all work remotely. We talk to Bhavneet about how she started GoSkills are working at Groupon and seeing how successful promotions for courses were. We get into how Bhav differentiated her courses from competitors and what channels she pivoted to for growth after Groupon's reach began to diminish. Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about what great leaders at scale-ups excel in. We discuss the importance of both hiring and retaining talent, including tips from people who've built great teams. We talk about team design and how great leaders use it as a growth lever. And finally, we talk about forecasting and why it's pivotal great leaders can build great plans. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Yousuf Bhaijee, the ex VP of Growth at Eaze. We talk to Yousuf about his time running growth at Eaze, an eCommerce company for on-demand Cannabis delivery. In that role, Yousuf was responsible for increasing revenue growth by 10% month on month. We discuss why the best growth teams always do a sizing exercise before committing to work on a specific opportunity. We get into the prioritization framework Yousuf used to stack rank the growth teams projects. And, we'll discuss the article Yousuf wrote on Reforge, breaking down how to calculate a word of mouth coefficient for your product. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Shane Murphy-Reuter, who heads up marketing for Intercom. Shane leads a marketing team of +70 people at Intercom, helping the company to move upmarket. We talk to Shane about paid advertising and how companies can more effectively split their budget across direct and brand advertising. We get into how most B2B brands don't do brand advertising well and give examples of companies who excel in that area. We then discuss the three categories of paid advertising, brand, problem, and product, and how companies should use them. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Krish Subramanian, the CEO, and co-founder of Chargebee. Chargebee offers subscription and billing software; they process over 3 billion dollars in annual transactions. Krish and his co-founders bootstrapped the company for the first two years, and since then have raised $40 million. We talk to Krish about how Chargebee found product-market fit, how founders should think about segmenting customers as they grow, what advice Krish would share with other founders, and the metrics all SaaS founders should be measuring. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Vaibhav Sahgal, the head of growth at Reddit. Reddit is one of the most popular websites on the internet, with 430 million monthly active users. During Vaibhav's time as head of growth, he has seen the team grow from 5 to 60 people. We talk to Vaibhav about the structure of the growth team and the metrics they're accountable too. We get into the first big win the growth team had at Reddit, how the team grew to over 60 people, and Vaibhav walks us through some of the latest successes the team has had. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Romain Dardour, the CEO and Co-Founder of Hull. Hull solves the problem of making data accessible across all marketing, sales, and customer support tools. It aggregates all of your data together into one unified profile. We talk to Romain about what customer acquisition channels are working for Hull, how Hull started life as an internal tool at a gaming company, and how Romain wants to build Hull for the mid-market. Happy Growing!

In this episode, we talk to Elena Verna, a growth advisor to many great companies and a Reforge lecturer. We talk to Elena about how most founders struggle to set up a growth function within the company. We get into the most common reasons companies build a self-serve model, how to turn more of your self-serve business into enterprise revenue, and why your product champions are a critical part of selling into large companies. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about how product-led growth is changing how companies go-to-market. We cover four areas where product-led is changing how companies grow. We get into how b22 marketing teams need to shift from acquiring decision-makers to end-users. We get into how product teams are gaining more responsibility for companies' business metrics. We also get into how product-led is starting to make the website obsolete and what that means for marketing teams. And we discuss how product-led is disrupting how companies do both pre and post-sales. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, with talk to Gibson Biddle, who has led product for Netflix, Chegg, and advised companies like Metromile, NerdWallet, and more. We talk to Gibson about why some companies manage to become so successful. We discuss the importance of product strategy, consumer science, and company culture. We get into how consumer science was pivotal to Netflix's success and why Netflix's founder Reed Hastings was so focused on making it a core part of their companies culture. We also get into a live case study to demonstrate how product leaders decide what features to launch and discuss how personal recommendations are why Netflix has become so dominant. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Eli Schwartz, a growth advisor to B2B and B2C companies, increasing their traffic via search. We talk to Eli about when companies should consider investing in search. We dive into building a forecasting model for SEO, why it's so hard, how to get a somewhat accurate version, and how the best SEO approaches their work as a product manager. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Pulkit Agrawal, the CEO and Co-Founder of Chameleon. Chameleon provides companies with tools that help drive better product success via onboarding, feature adoption, and better upgrades. We talk to Pulkit about the repeatable formula to improve user engagement, why product marketing needs to be more accountable to user onboarding, and how product-led growth will change how we build products. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about the relationship between marketing and data and how some of the world's best companies use data to optimize their go-to-market. We talk about the benefits of being an expert in your customer versus an expert in data, along with examples of world-class brands that excel in being customer experts. We talk about the importance of metrics and prioritizing the metrics that matter most to your growth over the next 6 to 12 months. We talk about how important it is to define those metrics, establish playbooks, and create the right team to impact those metrics. We then discuss how the best companies establish pods to make an impact against those metrics, how pods work, and the benefits of creating them. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR with talk to Adelina Peltea, the VP of Growth at Holded, a 70 person company based in Barcelona selling business software to SMBs. We talk to Adelina about her role as VP of Growth, where she manages the full customer lifecycle - marketing, sales, and customer success. We talk to Adelina about the benefits of having cross-functional pods managing different parts of the go-to-market. We got into the three-step plan she developed to help Holded grow and what signals told her it was time to invest in a new growth channel. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're back with another Swipefile, where we talk about adding motivation and removing friction. Most of the goals marketing and growth teams have can be categorized as either adding motivation or removing friction. We talk about some common ways marketers add motivation, some great examples of how companies remove friction, and why product-led companies need to approach them differently. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to James Currier, managing partner at NFX guild, serial entrepreneur, and the leading mind on network effects. James and his partners exclusively invest in companies with network effects because those companies end up being a lot more profitable. We talk to James about the most common types of network effects, how companies can add network effects to their business, and why the best companies think about building multi-channel games vs. single-player games. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Holly Chen, a growth advisor to numerous companies, and former global head of growth marketing at Slack. We go into what makes up a winning customer acquisition strategy. We talk about forecasting models, and how you know what hires to make. We talk about the importance of multi-attribution models and how to split your paid advertising budget across both brand and direct response. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Daniel Scrivner, the CEO of Flow, the modern project management tool for teams. Flow is a company at 2 million in ARR with 15 employees and has 300,000 teams who use them across 140 countries. Daniel joined as CEO almost 18 months ago. We talk to Daniel about what he focused on when becoming CEO to re-accelerate Flow's growth. We discuss the challenges of differentiating your product in a crowded market, why it's better to focus on doing a couple of things better than the competition, and why Daniel thinks of freemium as a defensive play vs. offensive. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about a great article from Bangaly Kaba called - "The Adjacent User Theory." We summarize the main takeaways from the article and discuss how they might apply to other areas of marketing. We talk about the importance of creating content for adjacent content topics, knowing when to pivot to new growth channels, and how to enrich personas with real-world data. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Rishi Mallik, the VP of Growth at Workato. Workato is an integration and automation company, and Rishi's growth team's goals are to generate more revenue for the business. We talk about the structure of the growth team at Workato and how they partner with marketing, product, and sales. We cover some of the most impactful wins from Rishi's growth team and how they've improved critical metrics like sales response times to inbound leads and triggering alerts based on companies' actions in their database. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we're back with another Swipefile on why marketing should be accountable for revenue. We discuss how marketing goals are separated into the things you can and can't measure. We cover the most common business models in B2B and the ownership of go-to-market metrics across different teams. We then get into how marketing can be held accountable for revenue in all these models, and how they can use that to build a forecast model to identify areas to invest in for growth.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Johnny Bourafhat, the CEO and founder of Hopin. Hopin is a virtual events platform and has grown a lot over the past four months. After launching the product in private access in March, they've gone from 6 employees to over 93, with tens of thousands of customers. We talk to Johnny about how being a remote company has helped them grow so fast. We also dig into why Johnny as chosen to keep the company in private access, how he thinks about navigating growth during COVID, and what's been the hardest part of being the CEO of such a fast-growing company. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Jimmy Daly, the founder of SuperPath, a community to help content markets have incredible careers. We get into all aspects of content marketing -  - Why the best content marketers often want to stop writing content. - How content marketers can be more valuable if they understand how the business makes money and how sales at their company work. - Who are the best people to hire as content marketers - Why is writing art, but content marketing is an acquisition channel, and why you need both. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Abhi Ramesh, the CEO, and founder of Misfits Market. Misfits Market is direct to consumer grocery business where they resell grocery items via a subscription box at a substantial discount. They've also grown to over 700 employees in 20 months and raised over $100 million in funding. We talk to Abhi about the Misfits Market business model. We get into how they make money, how Abhi thinks about the long-term defensibility of the business, the critical things that have gone into their success, and what's it like to hire more than 700 people in less than two years. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we discuss what skills are the most under-valued in marketing. We get into the art of persuasion, and why all marketers should invest time into learning both copywriting and sales. We give some of the best resources and methods to get started. We also discuss why prioritization is such a critical skill, why the best leaders need to make tough choices and how teams can rally around priorities even if they disagree on what they are. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Camille Ricketts, the head of marketing at Notion. Notion's last raise was $68 million, and they've quickly become the go-to collaboration tool for many companies. Camille talks about what it's like to be leading the marketing team in such a fast-growing company. We talk about what Camille and her team are most focused on right now, including the hires she plans to make. We discuss the importance of community, and how marketing can help build it, and how can you build beach head personas for your product. Happy Growing!

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk about how you build a foundational layer for growth. Most of the content published on growth talks to the experiments, hacks, and tips that can improve your core metrics - acquisition, activation, monetization, retention. However, none of those things are impactful if you haven't built the right growth foundation. We talk about the three parts of your growth foundation that are critical for your success - creating a common language dashboard, getting the correct organizational design, and prioritizing.

In previous episodes of the GrowthSwipeFile, we talked about the future of B2B marketing, including the shift to B2C2B go-to markets. With that shift to B2C2B, companies need to find ways to market products to the consumers of those products. Marketing your product to consumers isn't easy, you need something that scales, and provides value to your user without them needing to pay you money immediately. In this episode of the podcast, we're going to discuss the more common ways to market your product to consumers, along with some B2B brands that excel in these areas.

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we have another Swipefile, as we discuss the shift from B2B to B2C2B go-to markets. But what do we mean by B2C2B, and how do your go-to-market motions differ from traditional B2B? We discuss how the rise in product-led growth has shifted focus from buyers to consumers of software, some of the more common B2C2B business models, and how you can successfully market to both your consumer and buyer. Happy Growing

In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to PJ Taei, the founder and CEO of Uscreen, a platform to help people monetize their videos. It's no secret that online videos are a rapidly growing market, and the pandemic has only added fuel to that fire. We talk to PJ about how he bootstrapped Uscreen to 50 employees, with over 4 million active users on their platform. We cover how challenging growth is, and the reasons Uscreen struggled in their first three years. We talk about Uscreen's current growth channels and if focusing on specific industries is a growth accelerator. And, PJ covers how he built the first version of Uscreen, and why he wouldn't recommend it to others. Happy Growing!