Podcasts about mobile app marketing

Season 2: Episode 4Did you know AI really loves the word delve? Sean and Andrew can't help starting the pod off with a little more AI talk. Then they get into Sean's new product he's working on. Meanwhile Andrew is putting aside his IDE and starting to shift his focus to marketing and selling ChartJuice. He talks about using Flow.club to focus and setting a goal of doing two hours of deep work every day. Sean asks Andrew if he would sell ChartJuice if someone made him an offer tomorrow. And Sean and Andrew talk about working together on a new client project!Links:Andrew's Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/ChartJuice: https://www.chartjuice.com/Sean's Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/StackWise: Coming soon...Cider: Coming soon...For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.77SeanWhat's up? What's up? How you doing?00:03.03AndrewNot bad. What happened to our theme music? I thought you were supposed to be coming in every week with a new theme song.00:09.35SeanSo, you know, it's actually a little bit harder to use. than i Yeah.00:14.64AndrewIsn't this the classic story of all of these AI tools is it's like, it seems great at first glance. And then you start trying to really use it for something and you start going, oh, this is so much work to get out of this, what I want to get out of it.00:28.82SeanYeah, 100%. I think like it doesn't have it doesn't have the levers I would want. you know I can't like dial a voice. I can't like switch. I have to use a prompt to change. like Do I want a male singer or a female singer? Do I want it to be you know louder here? I can't i can't say like I want to be louder here or different here. I feel like that.00:49.46AndrewYou need a cringe dial. Let me crank the cringe all the way down to zero.00:51.24SeanYeah. Yeah, i don't think i don't the thing is AI doesn't know what that is, which is crazy.00:55.60AndrewAI doesn't understand cringe. AI is by default cringe. That's that's why we still have jobs.00:58.85SeanYou know?01:01.89Seanum I've been looking at some other AI things and God.01:07.62Seanwhich AI really likes the word Delve. Did you know that?01:10.59AndrewOh, interesting. I have not noticed that.01:11.63SeanYeah. I think Paul Graham had a tweet or something to say like that's like the one of the biggest indicators that someone's seeing AI and they never saw it and then until I finally like um I was pulling a transcription out and then trying to get a summary just to see how any of that works and the amount of times it uses Delve is astounding and01:31.86AndrewThat's fascinating.01:32.63SeanThere's nothing I can't, i you know, once it's like a wrapper around whatever sort of AI tool, I can't tell it to, you know, at that point, I can't even change the prompt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um.01:42.85AndrewBy the way, I really want to try out a couple of different transcription tools to see if any any of them can do a better job with our voices because Zincaster is not terrible, but it's a little bit of a mess.01:45.78SeanHmm.01:57.05SeanHmm.01:57.49AndrewI do think the, Post edit transcription is usually better.02:03.85SeanMm-hmm.02:04.19Andrewlike I see a pretty noticeable improvement from pre-edit and post-edit, so that's kind of interesting.02:06.81SeanMm-hmm.02:09.69AndrewBut I'm really curious, like what if Podscan actually has the best the best transcriptions?02:10.71SeanMaybe.02:14.46Seanmaybe02:15.85AndrewOr yeah know maybe Transistor's new transcription tool will be better because that's all they're doing?02:16.09SeanMaybe.02:21.50SeanYeah.02:25.24AndrewI don't know.02:25.29SeanIs there a job to be good at that?02:27.00AndrewYeah, I guess it's Zincaster's job to get that right as much as Transistor's job. but um It might even be the same person powering both.02:31.87SeanYeah. Yeah, that's true. Um,02:37.63AndrewIt might be the same tool under the hood.02:39.95Seanum02:40.45AndrewThat would be funny.02:40.75Seanso, so this podcast, uh, for a client, I was running it through, I tried swell AI by, I don't remember his last name, Cody something, um. The draft horse, now he's doing swell, um and I tried to script again. um Interestingly, I don't know what's going on with swell, but like so far, that's the best transcript I got back. um Yeah, so that's pretty good. um Okay, no, no, no, no.03:08.87AndrewI also saw every, do you know them? ah Nathan used to be Bashaw and now I think it's Basquez. He was at Product Hunt and then at Gimlet and um then I think co-founded every with03:25.58SeanCool.03:31.51AndrewDan Schipler, if that, I might have that name right. It's kind of interesting. They were doing bundled newsletters. So taking different newsletter creators and creating a unified brand for them to publish under and then offering a bundled price where the creators split the revenue and they're now taking.03:43.65SeanCool.03:47.29Seancool03:52.41Andrewthat bundle concept to a new extreme and launching software products. And the only way to pay for their software products is by buying a bundle, a subscription to every. So for one price, you get access to all of their newsletters and their software products. And their first one was Lex, an AI powered document editor where you could04:18.67SeanOkay. You use that, yeah.04:22.06AndrewI, yeah, I've used it a little bit. It's, it's pretty nifty. And then it se...

I'm sure you've heard this adage “Data is the new blood of the economy”. When you operate on a big market with lots of competitors you better make sure you make decisions about your business based on hard data. App marketing is one of the brightest examples where this adage and it is so close to home. When the number of users of your product is in thousands, tens of thousands or millions informing your app marketing decisions with reliable data isn't a question of should or shouldn't but must. In this episode, Summer will help us to learn about leveraging mobile ad data, competitive analysis tools, as well as share her advice for marketers who are just getting started in the app marketing space. Today's Topics Include: Summer's background What is SocialPeta Leveraging app performance and ad creatives data effectively Staying competitive in a crowded app marketplace Upcoming features in the SocialPeta pipeline to benefit app marketers What Summer would like to change about digital marketing the most Android or iOS? Leaving her smartphone at home, what features would Summer miss most? What features she would like to see added to her smartphone? Links and Resources: Summer Liu on LinkedIn SocialPeta Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry Quotes from Sumer Liu: " If we talk about mobile ad intelligence tools, I think I can boast that there is no better platform that can be as friendly as SocialPeta. We dived in the mobile advertising business for over 8 years. We grew together with those top global publishers. We evolve our product from time to time. In the new era of AI technology, SocialPeta will firmly develop towards this direction on aspects like Ai recognition and analysis. We will draw the digital market picture in a much more intelligent way." Host Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012 A message from App Promotion Summit Tickets are available on all of our 2024 summits https://apppromotionsummit.com/   NYC – 27 Jun 2024 San Francisco – 26 Sep 2024 Berlin – 5 Dec 2024

In this episode, we sit down with Hannah Parvaz, an expert in app marketing and tracking, who recently started her own agency, Aperture. We delve deep into app tracking, measurement, creativity, and more. The conversation covers topics like optimal placement of the ATT pop-up in apps, app product page strategies, web funnels, and navigating attribution challenges. Listeners can expect to gain valuable insights and tips on app marketing from this engaging and informative discussion. Chapters

Aleks García es el founder de iVentas.com. Hablamos de la importancia de los dominios premium como el que compro “iVentas.com” y todoo el proceso que tuvo que hacer para comprar el dominio que te posoiciona para crear una empresa SaaS de alto nivel. Aleks nos cuenta su historia de como llego a la ideea de iVentas.com y como trans iono d teener una empresa de desarrollo de software a la medida a una empresa SaaS que puede escalar mundialmente vendiendo licencias de uso en la nube. Esta muy interesante la entrevista y te la recomiendo. Vamos a Platicar.

How Michael Kordvani of SEM Nexus Went From $20k to $200k MRR in Less Than 2 Years With His Mobile App Marketing Agency

So you've made a mobile app and want to spread the word about it. However, mobile applications are fiercely competitive these days, with more and more businesses realizing the value of having one and convincing customers to try yours isn't as simple as it once was.

Hoy hablamos con Noelia Leiro fundadora, CEO y consultora de Actualízatec_Mobile & App Marketing. En esta entrevista profundizaremos en temas de App Marketing y cuales son las claves para crear una app rentable y exitosa. Enlace formaciones de Actualízatec: https://actualizatec.com/formacion/

Today we're going to discuss why marketing on the small screen still matters. Joining us is Sean Casto, the Founder and CEO at PreApps, which is a service that helps companies grow their app adoption to millions of downloads and sales. In part 1 of our conversation, Sean is going to walk us through his pillars of mobile app marketing. Show NotesConnect With: Sean Casto: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to discuss why marketing on the small screen still matters. Joining us is Sean Casto, the Founder and CEO at PreApps, which is a service that helps companies grow their app adoption to millions of downloads and sales. In part 1 of our conversation, Sean is going to walk us through his pillars of mobile app marketing. Show NotesConnect With: Sean Casto: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

our course will teach you everything you needs to be an app entrepreneur. Learn how to monetize your mobile app in easy steps and make money. Get one million downloads with app store optimization (ASO).

Josh created Envision Digital in March 2020, right during the start of the pandemic. The intent behind Envision Digital is to deliver high growth, paid user acquisition, & user engagement for mobile apps. Using a data and technical driven approach, Josh hones in on the clients' need to produce the best value proposition for their users. Through the data, Josh is noticing a trend in the mobile app space. Mobile apps are replacing the need for and importance of websites. Although nothing will replace the website's role in a company's business, more people are tapping into apps to help them navigate their daily lives. Think of an app you're creating as developing prime real estate on a user's phone. How are and how will you keep the user returning to the app to best service their needs? Well, that's what Josh does best! He helps solve the problem of engagement complexity using added tools and partnerships. Don't go into the app market looking for money. Instead, look to how you can bring the greatest value to your current and future users. Please listen as Josh delves into the world of mobile marketing to increase user interaction. Contact:https://www.linkedin.com/in/lloydjoshua/https://envisiondigital.media/

Our guest today is Lomit Patel, VP of growth at IMVU. Prior to IMVU, Lomit managed growth at many early stage startups including Roku which had an IPO, TrustedID which was acquired by Equifax, Texture which was acquired by Apple & EarthLink. Lomit is a frequent speaker at different conferences and has been recognized as a Mobile Hero by Liftoff. Lomit has also authored the book Lean AI: How Innovative Startups Use Artificial Intelligence to Grow, which is a fascinating deep dive into the wild crazy world of automated marketing - the book comes out this week. We link to that in the show notes, so definitely check it out. In today's episode, we dive into how Lomit and his team run incredibly sophisticated re-engagement ads. We are going to dive into why paid re-engagement is necessary even when there are other organic options available. We talked about how to employ re-engagement across very different points of the user journey, how to measure the impact of re-engagement and we get a peek into the AI based creative testing and optimization system that Lomit & his team used to drive some incredible performance. This is a fascinating peek behind the curtain of an incredibly sophisticated marketing machine. Key Highlights:

Our guest today is Sharath Kowligi, the director of Ad Monetization at GameHouse and advisor to Rocketship HQ. Sharath works on improving monetization and yield for a portfolio of over 35 apps, and no, that is not a typo. Sharath has an incredible wealth of experience both on monetization as well as user acquisition and growth. In the past, he managed user acquisition and growth for Bash Gaming, where he worked alongside me. Bash Gaming was acquired for 170 million. Sharath also worked for Pretty Simple and has advised many companies on different aspects of growth. Something that Sharath has done an incredible amount of work on, has been App Store testing. He has run over 200 app store conversion experiments and that's what I'm excited to dive into with him today.Key Highlights:

Today we're going to discuss why marketing on the small screen still matters. Joining us is Sean Casto, the Founder and CEO at PreApps, which is a service that helps companies grow their app adoption to millions of downloads and sales. In part 1 of our conversation, Sean is going to walk us through his pillars of mobile app marketing. Show NotesConnect With: Sean Casto: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to discuss why marketing on the small screen still matters. Joining us is Sean Casto, the Founder and CEO at PreApps, which is a service that helps companies grow their app adoption to millions of downloads and sales. In part 1 of our conversation, Sean is going to walk us through his pillars of mobile app marketing. Show NotesConnect With: Sean Casto: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // Twitter

It's rare to find a business conference where "no egos are allowed". Recently, BoardActive Founder & CEO, Doug Pittman found a diamond in the rough with the International Franchise Association. He speaks on this unique experience, the dynamic takeaways from the speakers there, and the importance of localization. In addition, Doug Pittman provides concrete reasons for businesses of all sizes to have a mobile app, and also why those who gave up on mobile marketing need to get back in the saddle. As a bonus, we have provided an update on the list of businesses who are infringing on his Intellectual Property acquired recently. This is a must listen, friends! Thanks for your engagement. @boardactive @simpletechtalkpodcast on facebook, Linkedin, Instagram.

My guest today is Liam Martin - and this is a conversation about a topic that is near & dear to my heart - remote work. Liam is one of the world's foremost experts on remote work, having started a remote-only company more than a decade before it became cool to do so. He founded Time Doctor and Staff.com, doing some tremendously impactful work around productivity for remote work before founding the Running Remote conference, a real-life, non-remote conference about remote work. Liam has seen remote work up close from its earliest days - and has also seen nearly everything there is to be seen around remote work - be it culture, tracking, productivity and growth - and this is a conversation that I'm very excited to have.Key Highlights:How remote work was referred to 15 years ago - and how it's changing.Why Liam chose remote work as a model for his business - and how he solved problems that are currently solved by tools like Zoom and Slack.What Liam recommends as the first step for a small company that is considering going remote - and the resources he recommends. Why measurement is crucial for a remote company.How Liam recommends setting up a remote culture for a team that is new to itHow Liam recommends approaching hiring in a remote context - and what he screens and filters for.How a remote team's infrastructure & processes have to change as a team grows.The HR process that Liam's team has built to ensure retention. The different compensation policies that are available to remote companies.What inspired the Running Remote conference - and how Liam attracted speakers and attendees for its first edition. Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/the-rise-of-remote-work-with-liam-martin-co-founder-of-timedoctor-co-organizer-in-running-remote/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Often the duopoly of Facebook & Google just don't suffice to meet all your UA needs. Sometimes you need to hit scale that's far bigger than Facebook and Google can provide, even if these come together with Snapchat, Apple, Pinterest & other self-attributing networks. Programmatic advertising can be a wide blue ocean opportunity for advertisers seeking scale - but it is also one that is fraught with risks, because you're essentially bidding on CPM, and are building on ML/AI capabilities of DSPs to drive performance for you. We untangle some of the many challenges that programmatic advertising can often present - and I have with me one of the foremost experts on programmatic/DSP buying today.  I interview Misha Syrotiuk, the Head of Ad Networks & programmatic for UA at Huuuge Games - and we talk about many things programmatic, and discuss how to unlock scale outside the duopoly.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-unlock-scale-outside-the-duopoly-with-misha-syrotiukhead-of-ad-networks-programmatic-for-ua/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

One element of Facebook ads that can come across as monolithic or opaque is bidding - at the outset, it can appear simplistic - you either increase bids or drop them, and that is what it is. However the way Facebook's(and any other ad tech platform's) algorithm works is that the bid isn't the only thing that matters - relevance does just as much. In this episode, I'll walk you through some of the math behind bidding for ad auctions - and how to impact its different components.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/why-bidding-isnt-everything-the-simple-math-behind-winning-ad-auctions/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Today I'm going to talk about how to set ad set level budgets - and how to distribute your overall budgets across all your ad sets. This is a common conundrum when you are setting up campaigns & ad sets -> do you set up a lot of ad sets with very low budgets? This ostensibly lets you test more creatives & audiences.Or do you set up a very few ad sets with high budgets? This lets you get more data - and more statistically significant data. Where indeed is the sweet spot? This episode shows you how to think about this. We also look at:-> The relationship between target CPA and ad set budgets.-> How to think about campaign budgets for a CBO.See here the spreadsheet template from the video that you can make a copy of and use. http://bit.ly/AdSetBudgeting Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-set-ad-set-level-budgets/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Georgy Natsvlishvili, Head of Organic Growth at Glovo. I'm very excited to have Georgy because he & his team take a very very expansive view of organic growth - and cover a terrain that is far more significant than mere keyword optimization that most folks speak about when they talk about ASO. Georgy and his team have done some very impressive work in quantifying organic growth - across keyword optimization, conversion optimization, improving ratings - and even SEO(and no, that's not a typo). They've driven significant conversion rate improvements, massive rating improvements - and saved over $3mm in marketing spend through their optimizations. We dive into an immense breadth of topics in this very fascinating interview.KEY HIGHLIGHTS:How Georgy recommends quantifying impact of keyword optimizationHow improving ratings from 3.2 to 4.3 improved not just organic conversions but also performance of paid campaigns.How Glovo's team improved ratings from 3.2 to 4.3An example of an App Store screenshot that Georgy expected to see winning but didn't win.What tools Georgy recommends for app store conversion testing – and the problems he sees with third party tools.The ASO KPI dashboard that lets Glovo track and monitor their key organic metrics.How Georgy's team can now avoid delays with their tech team when they want to make simple changes to popups.Why Glovo does SEO activity to drive organic traction for their app.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-save-3mm-in-marketing-budgets-through-app-store-optimizationwith-george-natsvlishvili-head-of-organic-growth-at-glovo/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Hila Qu. Hila is the former VP of growth at Acorns - and there are very many reasons I've so admired her work. Hila had a background in biology - and with nothing in her background that was relevant to growth, she started work at GrowthHackers, where she not only picked up the methodology of growth from Sean Ellis but also became very very proficient at experiment-driven growth. She wrote the series of articles ‘A growth practitioner's 90 day plan', which she herself used for her job search after GrowthHackers. She began working on experiments and retention at Acorns - and in a few years grew to be the VP of growth. In this interview, Hila talks not only about the pivotal moments in her career but also breaks down how she's followed her curiosity and sought out challenges - and how this has always helped her break into spaces or positions where she's started off being almost an outsider.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat inspired Hila to start working at GrowthHackers.com – and what they saw in her.Some of the things Hila learnt about growth that were essentially life principles. How Hila developed a mental model for career growth from working with Sean Ellis. What inspired Hila's article “A growth practitioner's first 90-day plan.”How Hila evaluated Acorns to see if they would be open to growth ideas and processes even though they didn't have any.How Hila started introducing her ideas – and went after early wins. The two directions Hila recommends thinking around for getting early wins. What Hila's learning plan looked like.What Hila's day is structured like – at GrowthHackers and Acorns.How Hila accessed leadership positions at Acorns. How Hila learnt the 'science' of leadership.How Hila picked KPIs around her personal OKR of being 20% tougher.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-trigger-massive-career-shifts-by-following-your-curiosity-with-hila-quformer-vp-of-growth-at-acorns/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

65% of all mobile app installs come from search, this single data point compels all app marketers have the App Store Optimization technique, aka ASO, in their mobile app marketing toolbox. Since the inception of the iTunes App Store ASO has evolved and went through lots of trial and errors.  Today's guest is David Bell, co-founder and CEO of Gummicube, which is a provider of App Store Optimization (ASO) and App Store Intelligence (ASI) software and services to marketers and developers. David describes what and how to build, market, and optimize products and apps by avoiding common mistakes. This episode topics include: Beers or Bears? David describes story behind naming company, Gummicube  3 Focus Areas for Algorithms and Abstractions:  Paid vs. organic search options  Conversion optimization  Paid marketing Mistake #1: Assuming ASO is executed similarly to search engine optimization (SEO) Self-fulfilling Prophecy: Optimize correctly to index keywords and generate traffic Merchandising Game: Understand connection between related keyword terms and audiences  Mistake #2: Conversion optimization doesn't only affect app store listing, but also occurs at keyword level  Mistake #3: Apple and Google are not the same; both app stores are evolving and changing, so success on one does not equal success on the other David's favorite apps include LinkedIn and Reddit; most overrated app is Flappy Bird Links and Resources: David Linkedin profile Gummicube Quotes by David Bell: “Mobile is a fundamentally different platform than the Web.” “Search is important, but it really only works if you are optimizing the correct way and you have the right data behind the decisions that you make.” “This is a game of merchandising. Every keyword is an aisle. Every keyword has related terms. Every keyword has related audiences.” “The average user gives an app five to six seconds as they're scrolling through the search results before they decide to download it or not.”

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Competitive challenges in Q4 are well known and much spoken about - often with some trepidation about being priced out by big brands that escalate spends during this time. Yet the flip side of this dynamic are the opportunities in Q1. January and the post-holiday season phase often presents significant opportunities for mobile marketers because of the unique dynamics inherent in it. Here are the 3 key opportunities that mobile marketers can capitalize on.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-q1-opportunity-3-factors-that-can-unlock-growth/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Noah Rosenberg, the founder and CEO of Narratively. Narratively is a publication that I've both written for - and have been very very impressed by for some of the pioneering work they've done. Narratively very much defined a niche for themselves in pioneering long-form human interest journalism in an age of diminishing attention spans. They not only continued to bring out original long-form stories - but also developed a unique monetization model of a content studio that has helped them thrive in an age when many journalism outlets are facing existential challenges. In this interview we dive into Noah's journey from being a journalist to a journalism platform creator, talk about how he validated and launched Narratively, what drives audience growth for long-form articles, how Narratively's unique monetization model has helped both keep it ad-free and allowed its writers to make good money. This interview presents lessons that apply for far beyond long-form journalism - and I'm excited to share this with you today.KEY HIGHLIGHTSNoah's early career as a journalist – and how he was drawn to larger human interest stories & underreported themes during his work in Queens and in South Africa.The sort of market research that Noah did to validate his idea of a human interest publication – and the response they got to Narratively on Kickstarter.How Narratively transitioned from being a New York focused publication to being global.How Narratively planned to use the $53k that it had raised in its Kickstarter campaign.Why Narratively didn't adopt the subscription model or an ad supported model.How Narratively's partnership with Warner Brothers materialized.How Narratively thinks about the relationship between its branded content side and its editorial side.How stories on Narratively.com get traffic.Why Narratively had challenges raising funding.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-launch-a-long-form-journalism-publication-in-an-era-of-diminishing-attention-spans-with-noah-rosenberg-ceo-at-narratively/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

One of the key challenges with app store keyword optimization activity is that it isn't easily measurable or quantifiable. In this video we talk about what the best approach is for assessing your ASO performance - and walk you through what assumptions & estimates you're going to have to make.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-do-you-quantify-the-impact-of-app-store-keyword-optimization-aso-activity/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Creative tests on Facebook can be challenging to execute - especially since there is no clear official documentation around this. We explain here how we do it and what considerations are the most important for creative tests that drive results.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-run-creative-tests-on-facebook/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Because there's no direct way to measure or quantify your app store optimization efforts, it can be easy to rely on keyword rankings as a measure of progress. Here's why that can be problematic.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/what-not-to-track-while-measuring-the-impact-of-app-store-optimizationaso/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Steve P. Young. Steve is the founder and CEO of AppMasters. Steve is one of the best known experts on ASO in the world today - and he's helped many many apps kickstart their organic growth. He's also the host of the very popular AppMasters podcast and Youtube channel. Something that Steve is very very good at is getting his clients featured by Apple. This can often be a game changer for an app - and can result in thousands of downloads. In this interview Steve breaks down his process and gives us the inside track on exactly how to pitch Apple for a feature.KEY HIGHLIGHTSThe difference between Apple and Google in how they evaluate apps for featuring.How one of Steve's clients drove 8000 downloads before they even launched.How an app can prepare before pitching Apple for featuring.How to cold email app store managers at Apple – and the key components of a cold email pitch.One of the most effective subject lines for cold emails.How to capitalize on an Apple feature to magnify the impact from featuring.Why Steve recommends going to WWDC to pitch app store managersCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-get-your-app-featured-on-the-apple-itunes-store-with-steve-p-young-founder-ceo-at-appmasters/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Matej Lancaric. Matej is the Director of User Acquisition at SuperScale and a mobile user acquisition consultant who has worked on UA for many hypercasual games. In the past he headed mobile UA for Boombit and Pixel Federation, and is one of the leading experts on UA, particularly for hypercasual games. I've been fascinated by hypercasual games - mainly because of the order of magnitude difference some hypercasual games have in their performance compared to other genres - be it in CPIs, IPMs or install volumes. In this interview, I sit down with Matej to understand what forces drive these tremendous metrics and contribute to the scale of hypercasual games.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat sort of metrics hypercasual games are able to achieve.Why broad targeting is effective for hypercasual games.What sort of creatives are the best for hypercasual.What campaign structure and ad set setup Matej recommends.What the ideal audience size is for each ad set.What strategy works best for UAC, and what is the best way to structure different ad formats within UAC.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-unlock-massive-scale-with-hypercasual-games-with-matej-lancaric-director-of-user-acquisition-at-super-scale/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Jabari Johnson, the founder of COLORS Worldwide, a live events company that produces parties and music events across 45 cities in the United States. This is a fascinating conversation - both for Jabari's personal story as well as for his insights on scaling a live event and filling up rooms and halls - at scale. From his earliest days when he hustled to interview stars like Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber before they became famous to how he thoughtfully considers pricing and marketing decisions for COLORS and R&B Only, Jabari's work provides a fascinating window into how it's absolutely possible to run top-notch fun events - at scale.KEY HIGHLIGHTSHow Jabari's Youtube videos got him his first job.How Jabari would spread the word about his Youtube videos on his college campus, and how he made some of these videos viral.How Jabari's experiences on the road led to his first business COLORS – and what his first parties were like.How Jabari filled up the room with 200-300 people by using TwitPic to build social proof for their event's pics.Why Jabari wasn't charging money for his early events.How it became evident to Jabari that these parties and events could be a scaled business – and how he learned to delegate & grow his team.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-blow-up-a-party-with-jabari-johnson-founder-at-colors-worldwide/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

This episode features Anish Shah, CEO of Bring Ruckus, a firm focused on attracting, vetting and recruiting the best talent in growth - that includes digital marketing, product, analytics, and design.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat are some of the key challenges Anish's clients face while hiring talent.How a founder looking to hire growth talent should begin to cultivate relationships to plan to bring this growth hire in.Why brilliant growth hires at the wrong stage of a company's growth can not only set back a company's growth but also its culture.What top growth candidates look for in a company.What one of the most common unsavory experiences is among top growth candidates.Why Anish doesn't advise CEOs to go out and pitch growth hires that they'd make millions – and what he advises them to say instead.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-hire-superstar-growth-leaders-with-anish-shah-ceo-at-bring-ruckus/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

This episode features Eric Seufert, founder at Heracles, founder at QuantMar, and founder at MobileDevMemo.com . Eric is perhaps one of the smartest people in mobile user acquisition today - in this episode Eric walks us through how to model out an app's DAU. Key highlightsWhy systematic modeling of growth is crucial to an app.What inputs Eric recommends for systematic modeling of growth.How to think about the DAU gap to be closed – and the UA effort required to close it.How granular or high-level should a model be? How Eric recommends thinking about this.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-model-out-an-apps-dau-with-eric-seufert-founder-at-heracles-quantmar-mobiledevmemo/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Jon Hook, the CRO of Homa Games, the publishers behind hit hypercasual games like Tower Color, Tiny Cars, Balls vs. Lasers - and more. Jon has held a myriad of roles in mobile marketing before Homa - including being a co-founder of the mobile marketing agency Odyssey Mobile, the Head of Mobile & Digital Investment at MediaCom - and VP EMEA for Brand and Agencies at AdColony. In today's interview, we dive into the fascinating world of hypercasual games. If you've even casually followed the appstores over the last few years, you'll have seen seemingly simplistic games like Helix Jump, Tiny Cars - and others at the top of the appstore charts. What is as astounding as these games' ascent is their staying power. In this interview, Jon talks about the rise of the hypercasual phenomenon, the drivers & forces powering it, what lies ahead - and offers some fascinating insights into one of the more unexpected occupants of the appstores today.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat are some of the characteristics of hyper-casual and what the hit recipe for hyper-casual games is.What factors have accelerated the emergence of hyper-casual games in recent years.How Jon started paying attention to the hypercasual space – and when he realized this wasn't a fad.Why user acquisition and monetization are run by the same teams in hyper-casual games.What some of the common mistakes made by hypercasual developers are – and what some of the easy fixes are.What some of the challenges with using programmatic for hyper-casual games are.Why hypercasual can be a mass marketing channel.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/how-hyper-casual-games-took-over-the-app-stores-with-jon-hookcro-at-homa-games/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

What do you do when your app's redesign provokes a massive user backlash - and your rating drops from 4.5 to 2.3? Mirela Cialai (Director of Mobile Marketing- Zinio) faced this challenge some time ago - here's the story of how she dealt with it and got Zinio's app ratings back to 4.5 (and Zinio back into the top 50 ranks in its category on iTunes).Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-improve-an-apps-rating-from-2-3-to-4-5-with-mirela-cialai-director-of-mobile-marketing-zinio/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Facebook's split test functionality lets you run AB tests within the Facebook ads manager. Surely this should help you ascertain which ads perform well and which dont? Here are 3 reasons why we prefer & recommend not using this functionality.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/3-reasons-why-we-dont-use-facebooks-split-test-functionality/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

One of the more common requests we get from smaller developers is to run ads on Google UAC. Unfortunately, Google UAC can take significant budgets to make work - in this episode we explain why this is the case - and provide some numbers to illustrate this.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/why-we-dont-run-google-uac-on-smaller-mobile-user-acquisition-budgets/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Brian Balfour - and there could be no one better than Brian to kick off the third season of How Things Grow. Brian is seen as one of the most influential people in growth today - he has to his credit some truly astounding accomplishments in growth. He started his career building a social networking site for college students. He then founded a digital goods company & subsequently an ed-tech company. After this, he became the VP of Growth at Hubspot, overseeing & systematizing some tremendous growth that had been driven, astonishingly, by content. It was during this phase that he started writing his very popular blog. He started what was then a side project called ‘Silicon Valley Business Review' with Andrew Chen. The Silicon Valley Business Review has since grown into Reforge, which is now a definitive source of education around growth for experienced professionals. In this fascinating conversation, Brian not only talks about his own experiences but also dives into how Reforge is changing how education around growth is imparted today, and is redefining many traditional paradigms of executive education. What I find truly astounding is how Brian applies growth frameworks and loops to Reforge's business. He breaks down how these growth loops are applicable to Reforge - in a section that I find very very instructive. This is very much a masterclass on growth - one taught by the very best in the business. KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhy getting an external unbiased coach was the most important thing that Brian did in his career.What Brian's experience was as a founder of an early social network – and subsequently as a founder of a digital goods company & then of an ed-tech company.Why Brian began to write – and the benefits he got from his own writingHow Hubspot's content strategy was one of the key drivers behind their IPOThe gap that Brian noticed when doing 1:1s for his team and having to look up recommendations for professional development – and the side project it inspired – the 'Silicon Valley Business Review'.Is Reforge a 'service' company or a ‘product' company? Are its live experiences antithetical to scale?How Reforge selects people for ‘fit', even if it means saying no to short term revenue.How growth loops apply to Reforge's business. Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-grow-a-growth-education-business-with-brian-balfour/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

I'm very excited to present to you the third season of How Things Grow! Thank you so much for the kind words, ratings and reviews for the episodes so far. As you perhaps know, each episode is a labor of love - and every rating and review matters a ton.If you're new here, How Things Grow tells the stories of the people who help companies, technologies and economic systems take off.  Each episode features an interview with one of the leading growth practitioners, entrepreneurs, or experts or historians in the world.   In this season, you'll hear the story of how this growth leader applied growth principles to advanced career education, the story of how a company hosting parties grew dramatically, about how hyper casual games are taking over our phone screens, how a long form journalism startup carved out a niche for itself in an age of diminishing attention spans - and so many other stories that are coming up in the new season of How Things Grow. If you get any joy and pleasure from these episodes, please subscribe to How Things Grow on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast - or wherever else you get your podcast fix. Please also consider leaving a review, for this is very much a labor of love. I hope you enjoy listening to the show as much as I've enjoyed putting it together. I look forward to presenting to you the first episode of the coming season of How Things Grow next Monday!  **Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

If you're starting out with mobile user acquisition on Facebook, what is the exact account structure that we recommend? This episode walks you through the 3 key components that matter the most.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-structure-your-first-facebook-ad-account-if-youre-an-indie-developer-with-limited-budgets/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Why you cant use UTM tags and cookies to attribute traffic on mobile -> and why a device ID based approach is effective.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-mobile-attribution-differs-from-web-attribution/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

You've perhaps seen apps and games change icons for specific seasons and occasions. Cute, yes? Absolutely. Catchy? Certainly.Do these really help or impact business or metrics? This episode explains how these icon swaps are impactful.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-non-obvious-benefits-of-icon-changes/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Hi everyone -   Welcome to How Things Grow. I've been very stoked to present some amazing stories as a part of season 2 of How Things Grow.   As all good things do, this season has run its course. I'm taking a step back to reorient, readjust - and come back with a whole new season of how things grow. We're already begun preparing for the next season. We have some amazing speakers lined up - and I can't wait to get this out to you.   Stay tuned - we're going to be back very very soon for season 3 of How Things Grow.**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is Sahil Lavingia, and this is an incredibly powerful, honest & inspiring episode. Sahil is today the founder & CEO of Gumroad, a platform that helps creators get paid for the work they do. What is significantly more impressive though is Sahil's journey to where he is today. Sahil was in many ways a prodigy as a teenager, working on apps & websites - and making $100k by age 15. He joined the University of Southern California, only to drop out after a semester to join the then fledgling platform Pinterest to build their iOS app as employee #2. Within a year, he left Pinterest - before his shares vested - to found the company that he hoped would be his magnum opus, what he announced on Twitter as a ‘billion dollar company idea' before he launched it. This was Gumroad - and for a while he seemed to be a man who, at age 19, could do no wrong. Until things started to go wrong. Growth began to stall. Sahil and his team put their soul into the business - and they couldn't do what it took to hit the targets they need to hit to make it a venture-scaleable business. In what was a wrenching time, he had to lay off three fourths of his company - and find his own path forward. This is Sahil's story - about how things don't always grow, and how sometimes that's ok - but only if you make your peace with it.KEY HIGHLIGHTSSahil's early work in design and development as a teenager that led him to make his first $100,000 and become financially independent.The path that led Sahil to be described as the most interesting teenager in Silicon Valley and the #2 employee at Pinterest, less than two years after he started learning to code. Why Sahil left Pinterest less than a year after joining, before his stocks vested  and what about Gumroad inspired him to keep working on it.Why Sahil decided to go deep on Gumroad rather than seek out his next new project. How writing and painting helped him cultivate the patience that let him do this.Sahil's cold email strategy of acquiring his first few customers – and why it was effective for him.Why Sahil was obsessed with becoming a billionaire from early on.How Sahil coped with the fact that Gumroad would never become a venture-bankable billion dollar company.How Sahil thought about ‘front loading his retirement' why ‘diversifying his identity' was crucial.What inspired Sahil to write the Medium piece about his journey.The reframing of impact that was crucial to Sahil's coping with the change in circumstances for his business.The difference in lifestyle in Provo, Utah, compared to San Francisco.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/how-things-dont-grow-reflections-on-not-being-a-billionaire-with-sahil-lavingiaceo-at-gumroad/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Guest: Gabriel Garcia - Global Head of Mobile Apps Marketing @Expedia, Head of Marketing - APAC @Expedia (Formerly @Newscorp, @CareerOne.com) Guest Background: Gabriel Garcia is Global Head of Mobile Apps Marketing for Expedia ($6/share in Nov ‘08 → $133/share yesterday). He is responsible for Expedia's Mobile growth and Apps adoption strategy across 35+ markets and helping define Expedia's investment plans across new app ecosystems. Besides his global remit, he leads Marketing for Asia-Pacific and is responsible for defining Expedia's marketing channel strategy and identifying growth opportunities for Expedia in the region. Prior to this role, Gabriel was Senior Director of Strategy and Business Development. Prior to joining Expedia, Gabriel spent six years at Newscorp in Australia holding several roles, including Product and Strategy Director, Director of Strategy, and National Sales Director for Newscorp's joint venture with Monster.com. Prior to this, he was Managing Director of the Latin American subsidiary of Monitoring Systems Technology, a leading European technology provider for the outdoor media industry. Originally from Mexico City, Gabriel holds an MBA from Macquarie Graduate School of Management; a Bachelor in Business Administration from ITAM University in Mexico City and studies at Hogeschool Voor Economische Studies (University of Amsterdam). Outside of work, Gabriel is passionate about travel, meditation, Buddhist philosophy, surf and his family. Guest Links: LinkedIn Episode Summary: In this episode, we cover: - The Scientific Method - Application to Marketing - Mobile App Marketing - The Customer Journey Design - A Mobile-First Marketing Mindset - Strategic Marketing and Channel Partnerships - Multiple-Stakeholder Engagement - Marketing Budgeting & Planning Process Full Interview Transcript: Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to The Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest growing companies. Enjoy! Naber:  Hey everybody. Today we've got Gabriel Garcia on the show. Gabriel is Global Head of Mobile Marketing and Apps for Expedia, who's stock price in November '08 was down to $6 per share, but has gone all the way back up to $133 per share as of today. Gabriel's responsible for Expedia's Mobile Growth and Apps Adoption Strategy across 35+ markets and helping define Expedia's investment plans across new app ecosystems. In addition to his global remit, he leads Marketing for Asia-Pacific and is responsible for defining Expedia's Marketing Channel Strategy and identifying growth opportunities for Expedia in the region. Prior to this role, Gabriel was S Director of Strategy and Business Development at Expedia. Prior to joining Expedia, Gabriel spent six years at News Corp in Australia holding several roles including Product and Strategy Director, Director of Strategy and National Sales Director for News Corp's joint venture with Monster.com. Prior to this, he was Managing Director of the Latin American subsidiary of Monitoring Systems Technology, a leading European Technology provider for the outdoor media industry. Originally from Mexico City, Gabriel holds an MBA from Macquarie Graduate School of Management, a Bachelor in Business Administration from ITAM University in Mexico City and studied at Hogeschool voor Economische Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Outside of work, Gabriel is passionate about travel, meditation, Buddhist Philosophy, surf, and his family. Here we go. Naber:  Gabriel, awesome to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming. Gabriel Garcia:  It's my absolute pleasure to be here with you today. Naber:  Excellent. It's our absolute pleasure to hear your beautiful accent. I can see your pretty face, but everyone else can't. They can hear your accent, which is definitely not a consolation, that is first prize. You and I know each other personally. We actually know each other more personally, than professionally. Gabriel Garcia:  We do. Naber:  So this is one of those of those fun conversations that I get to learn a lot more about you in depth professionally and how your headspace works. But, the good news is we know each other personally, and that's been really fruitful for both of us. What I'd love to do first is go through a bit of your personal story so people can get to know you like I know you. And we'll go through a few of the things how you grew up, where you grew up, some of the things you're interested in, and where you went to school, all that fun stuff. I know that you grew up in Mexico City, Colegio Greenhill School in Magdalena Contrarez, you went to ITAM in Mexico City as well. You spent time in Amsterdam, Madrid, obviously Mexico City, Sydney, Singapore. We're going to touch on your twin brother. We're gonna touch on your beautiful family. We'll touch on your other brother, although he sounds he's third place in my mind in that category, but we won't make him that. And we can talk about a few other things that are meaningful to you as well. And then we'll hop into the professional stuff, and that'll be the bulk of what we talk about today. That sound okay with you? Gabriel Garcia:  Sounds awesome. Feels we need six hours, but let's see how we go. Naber:  We won't, we'll keep it finite and not brief, but we'll keep it thorough but not too long. So why don't we start for maybe five to seven minutes on, what was it growing up as Gabriel as a kid? Where'd you grow up? What was your family situation like? What were you interested in, and then take us through school as well. Gabriel Garcia:  Sure. So I'm originally from Mexico City as as you mentioned. And it was fascinating to grow up in Mexico City, in a huge city full of opportunities and full of quite a diverse range of things to do. I'm one of four kids, so I'm in the middle of the sandwich. My twin brother and I are, so we have an older brother and a younger brother. And I was always very active, very playful, and spent a lot of time, a lot of hours playing sports at school. I remember that I loved winning. I think that's something that carried over throughout my life anyways. I'll say this humbly, but it was a maybe I see it as a gift in retrospective, where without necessarily studying too much, I was able to be top of the class more often than not, particularly in elementary school. Then things got a bit more complicated in high school. But I think also having a twin to share with made life just easier. You always had a buddy to hang out with, to share ideas with, to share concerns with. So that I think made both our lives pretty smooth at least in those early days of elementary school, and certainly through all the way through high school. Naber:  Nice. Awesome. And what were some of your interests or hobbies when you were a kid? Gabriel Garcia:  Football, football, and football, so played, played a lot of football. And that's soccer if we have an American audience somewhere in the world. I used to just do anything that was sports-related. I did karate for a few years. And did that to just one level short of being a black belt, which I regret not going through it, but that was just change of schools, and anyway that's a different story. But yeah, football, karate, those were certainly my hobbies. It was always very sports orientated for sure. Naber:  Nice. Awesome. So you said you have four brothers. You and your brother are the co-meat to the sandwich, if you will, or veggie burger depending on who's eating it. What were some of your first jobs, and what were some of the first ways that you made money? Gabriel Garcia:  Oh, I was lucky enough not to have to make money at that early stage of my life, so I was privileged enough to be able to go to school, and have an education, and our parents look after us. But I remember in high school, and that's towards maybe fourth grade of high school, I was dating this girl, and her brother was selling water filters of all things. And I met him, and he was a really cool guy. And when you're 15 years old and you meet a very cool guy that is making money, you want to be him a little bit. Particularly if it's your girlfriend's brother. So that's what I started doing. I started working with him, selling water filters. And that was the first time that I earned money. The first time that I realized that I could sell something. And the first time that I realized that there were other ways of making my girlfriend happy. Naber:  Good one, good one. Okay. That's a good answer. And so you went to school at Colegio Green Hills, southwest burbs del Mexico City. And you're going to ITAM, tell us about that journey through there. Gabriel Garcia:  Sure. So ITAM in Mexico City is the most renowned school of business and economics in Mexico City. So, when when I finished high school, it was a tough decision actually, because I was in between studying business...And I had a clear a view that if I studied business, I would go to this school, and at least go through the process of trying to get admitted to this school...But I was in between that or studying drama. Which was very different because I was really into drama and that started in early days of high school, and become a very important part of my life. And my drama teacher and Director at that time, told me to study business because I would be able to continue to work at an independent theater company, which I did for the first years of being in school until I realized that I couldn't do everything, it was too hard. So that was the reason why I studied at ITAM because I decided to start a business because it was the top business and economic school in Mexico City. I did an admission exam, I got accepted and yeah, that's how the mid nineties started, which is a period of my life where things changed a lot - from mid to late nineties. A lot of things happen. So I started university. I stopped doing drama, so that's 95-96. My Dad unexpectedly passed away in 96. In 97 I decided to do my take my first big trip to Europe, backpacking with a few friends for a couple of months. In 99, I decided to do an exchange program from business school and go and live in Amsterdam. And I came back from Amsterdam to finish my major and take on my first real job, working for a tech startup, where I ended up being the Managing Director of that business and growing it successfully. And did that for four or five years. Soon after I joined, I was growing a business, and closing rounds of financing, and building a team, which was very unexpected that I never thought I was going to be my first gig after university, but that came as an opportunity, which I took, and I'll never regret, and that's certainly cemented what my career is today. Naber:  Very cool. That's Monitoring Systems Technology, correct? Gabriel Garcia:  That's right. Yep. Naber:  So, did you bounce back and forth between Mexico City and Madrid in that role? Gabriel Garcia:  Yeah. Great question. So I was leading the Latin America...so we started expanding Latin America, so I was leading that. And then I was going to move to Madrid because I was dating a Spanish girl, and I was going to go there and study an MBA at IE Business School. And the company owners, the shareholders that I reported into told me, hey, you want to go to Madrid not because of your MBA. You want to go to Madrid because of your girlfriend. So why don't you go and try to set up the operation of this business in central Europe. The head office of this business was in eastern Europe, in Budapest, in Hungary. But we didn't have a presence in central Europe. So they made me an offer, which I couldn't resist. So I went to Madrid, moved to Madrid, did all research, etc - put a case together. But then some of the shareholders decided not to invest, and the Mexican shareholders asked me to go back to Mexico City. This is seven months later. And I agreed, not before asking for a three month a break, which I took and I went traveling to India, Nepal, and trekking in the Himalayas, which was yet another life changing experience. Naber:  Excellent. So, let's just briefly talk about some of the learnings you have from Monitoring Systems Technology cause that's a massive five year ride between two continents, and an amazing spectrum of early stage and then building up a business to having fully functional operations. So what are a few of the learnings you took away from that gig? Gabriel Garcia:  Well, first of all, I've learned how to pitch to investors, which I had never done before. And I realized that everything was possible. When you find yourself as a young entrepreneur, even when it wasn't my business idea, closing rounds of financing and seeing that there's people interested in investing in the business that you're trying to, you realize everything's possible. You realize that it's all about how you, build it, presented, wrap it up, and how you pitch. So that got me really excited. I also, I learned about people, I learned a ton about people. I realized since those days that if I was going to be a successful at all, it was all about the team that I was forming around me, and that the value that others could bring to the table was going to be way more, way higher than the value that I could deliver myself as an individual contributor. So I learned very quickly to empower people, to enable people to do their best. And it comes through...you know, there were obviously hard times for sure. But it also also taught me that when you're gonna do that, you've gotta start taking into consideration cultural nuances. Particularly when you start thinking about different countries. And I was relatively inexperienced back then. So that came at a price, it was tough. But also at a perfect age where all you want to do is spend time in the office, which is not the case today. Not that I don't love my work, but I'd rather spend times somewhere else. So those perhaps were the biggest learnings. The realization that everything is possible if you are deliberate and you're determined to do it. And how powerful it can be to enable people, even if you're young and you don't have a clear view as to what you need to do. If you surround yourself with the right people, they can make things happen. Naber:  Awesome, man. That's great. Thanks so much for that. And then MST, it comes to your time to make a move, and natural move, you move to Sydney, Australia. Classic. Tell about that move getting your MBA, and then take us through the journey of moving to Sydney get your MBA, and then takes us through News Corp and CareerOne, as well up to up to Expedia. Gabriel Garcia:  Sure. So, I wanted to study overseas. I wanted to do an MBA, and I wanted to be overseas. And my girlfriend back then, is my wife these days, Cecilia, also wanted to study a Master's. And we were traveling in Myanmar, of all places. And I remember we both said, well, if we ever live somewhere, outside of Mexico, where would that be? And we both, we both said Australia. Don't ask me why we'd never been before. But we were both really into outdoors. We used to spend a lot of time at the beach, a lot of trekking and diving, etc. And when the opportunity, well the right time came to actually go and study overseas, we were really focused on going to a top 10 business school, and by the book sort of discerning process. And suddenly we realized that wasn't necessarily what we were, only what we're looking for. So it was actually Cecilia that said, well, why don't we do some research about universities in Australia. There might be some good ones there. And we did. And that's how we ended up in Sydney. We've never been there, then we just committed to two years of study, which turned into 11 years. Naber:  Nice. That's awesome. Obviously, Cecilia bringing some sense to your decision making process. Shout out to Cecilia, because she's doing that all the time in your life. All right, cool. Keep going. Gabriel Garcia:  Yeah. So we moved to Sydney. Loved it from day one, living in Manly Beach, one of the most beautiful places in the world, I think. And after finishing our Master's, we loved it so much that we decided we would give it a go and try to find work opportunity. And we did. And I did, just a couple of consulting gigs, just very short term what I interviewing. And then this opportunity came up at News Corp. News Corp was going through a big transformation of setting up their digital business - News Digital Media it was called back then. And as part of that, a huge transformation of the classified business. So they were just growing, everything that had to do with digital media. So I started working with them in a commercial capacity, on the classified side of their business. And I did several commercial roles in a short period of time. So I was getting promoted quite frequently, which which was quite overwhelming. And I just didn't expect it that would happen that quickly. And then we ended up doing a joint venture with Monster.com, which back then was just the biggest online job board. And that was fascinating, it was a great experience. And soon after that happened, I got offered to Head Sales for the JV. And that was challenging. That was the first senior gig that I did in a Corporate environment. It was the middle of the global financial crisis. And it was hard, man. That's all I remember about that gig. It was really hard. I was just traveling around Australia and trying to keep the team afloat, and coming up with different Sales structures, and coming up with different value propositions in the market to try to, I was going to say unlock budgets, but there was nothing to be unlocked. It was just to keep the P&L afloat. And it it was great. It was tough, but it was great. And another important thing happened back then, which Cecilia was pregnant. So all this was happening while I was about to have my first kid, which was a fascinating adventure. Very quickly, a year and a bit after that, I was offered buy our CEO of the JV, a Strategy role. Which I took with so much passion because it was very different. It was very different, and suddenly I had time to whiteboard stuff. It was like, wow, I used to spend that time on planes, and talking to clients, and managing Sales Managers. So I loved that, and that grew into a Product role. So I ended up, Heading Product for the joint venture. And I did that for three and a bit years. Huge change, massive shift managing Product Managers and a couple of Dev pods, which I've had no experience whatsoever doing before. So I learned a ton out of that experience, until I realized that it was time for me to follow my dream, which was really getting into tech. And travel has always been a thing as you can see from my story here. And Expedia was always there. We'd go to conferences, and I would see people from Expedia presenting. And I had a buddy, one of my surfing buddies, that worked at Expedia, and I told him, hey, whenever something comes up, let me know. And he did. This role as Director of Business Development, heading the Partnership Business for Australia, New Zealand region came up, and I took it. And it's been a fascinating roller coaster since. Roller coaster in a good way. he downs have been amazing downs in a good way. Just learning, shaking you up, going through the company that invented online travel, to suddenly a marketplace that everyone wants to be part of with incredibly disruptive companies, and continue to try to revolutionize travel utilizing Technology, and doing that in numerous different roles. From Partnership roles in Australia and New Zealand, then covering Latin America as well, to then two and a half years later moving to Singapore to manage Business Development and our Partnerships team for Asia Pacific for a couple years before my current boss, our Chief Marketing Officer, offered me a new role, which was very different - just heading Marketing for the region, which I took. And it was a big challenge, completely outside of my comfort zone, which that's exactly the reason why I decided to take it. And that grew into what I'm doing today, which is by far the best thing of I've done, which is heading our Mobile Marketing function globally and our Apps Ecosystems, which changes every day, man, every day. It's different, and it's fascinating, and it's challenging, and I love it. Naber:  Awesome. Man, the amount of passion that comes through when you talk about your experiences, awesome. Thanks for the chronology. Let's dive into a few of a few of the strengths and super powers that you have, as well as...let's tap into some unique experience that you have. So the first thing, probably a natural segue, is you mentioned quite a few different stakeholders that you played, and quite a different few stakeholders that you obviously had at each one of those roles. So you've been the Sales stakeholder, you've been the Marketing stakeholder, you've been the Product stakeholder, you've been the Strategy stakeholder, and you've also been customer and the stakeholder on both sides of those conversations in years and years of different roles that you've had. When you're thinking about the mindset of talking to each one of those different stakeholders, can you give us some of the best practices about how one should think about interacting with Marketing, Sales, Product, Strategy as as you're having these types of conversations? Gabriel Garcia:  Sure. That's a, that's a great question. There's a lot there. let me start just by, by saying that, I don't have any superpowers. So I strongly believe that I don't have any skills that are unique. I think that everyone has a set of unbelievable qualities within them, it just takes longer to identify them and nurture them. So let me just get that out of the way. No superpowers here. Sorry. Apologies. But I would summarize perhaps, the pretty full-on question, with trust. I strongly believe that building trust is key when you're communicating with any of those stakeholders that you described. And you'll build by being empathetic. You'll build trust by listening. And it's not only when you gotta listen to customers, and you gotta listen to the partners that you're trying to do business with, and to other stake holders. But it's also about listening to yourself. You need to stay put and be true to yourself. And the moment that you do that I think is a moment where you let the best version of yourself shine. And if you are a leader, then that allows you to get the best out of the people that you're working with, right? And that just tends to have an incredible, incredibly positive impact on the relationships that you build with customers, on a direct basis when you're doing business to business, Marketing or Sales, the relationships that you have with with your team, with different stakeholders. So for the people that that I mentor, there is a common question that they sometimes ask, which is, how can how can I continue to build my brand? And I always tell them, look, focus on building your trust and then the rest will follow. So that's one thing that I would, I think it could summarize and those interactions. I think...less is more, right? So if we talk less, and we listen more, it's better. If we have less objectives or more meaningful ones, it's better. If we have less dependencies, and we're able to enable other stakeholders during those interactions to be able to execute whatever they need to execute. And that might be your team or maybe someone else's team, the better. So aim for less, aim for simplicity, while building trust. And that's a formula that has so far worked for me. Naber:  Nice love it. That's great. And one of the things that I've seen that is a common theme in the keynotes that you're doing, the content you're putting out, a lot of the quotes that I've seen you in the media, which you've had 30, 40 plus appearances in different media, whether it's interviews or quotes or events, etc. Just tons of stuff out there that you've talked about which is, which is great stuff. One of the themes that I see is talking about transforming the data quality and data-driven Marketing methods at Expedia specifically. You mention things around leveraging big data and machine learning. You talk about scientific method and the approach, as well as using VR within the Marketing scheme, Marketing Strategy. Let's take each one of those, if you don't mind. Could you talk a little bit about your mindset as you're using data driven Marketing methods? And then take us through, maybe a couple of key points around what businesses should be doing, and how businesses should be thinking about this? Gabriel Garcia:  Sure. So the first thing I would say is, this applies, in my experience, and at least something that encourage or push the teams to focus on. This applies not only on data driven Marketing. I think it applies in business in general. And that has to do with, the scientific method for sure. But I would, I would describe it better perhaps as just being scientific towards identifying growth opportunities. And that doesn't mean that you need to trade off creativity. That doesn't mean that it's just always a fall away formula. But it means that if you do it in a methodic way, you'll be able to discern what's meaningful versus not meaningful, faster. And once you're able to do that, you can iterate on it. And that's what drives growth. So, it just starts with an observation, or a data point. And again, this is where I said it doesn't necessarily have to be data driven Marketing, it could just start with a point of view, right? And that's fine, but once you have that, you need an overall objective or hypothesis that you can go in and test. If you don't have that, then if you're going to be very difficult to define some success. And also very important to understand within that objective what's in scope and what's out of scope. I've seen many, many times in business when there's a description of what's in scope, but there is no specific clarification of what's out of scope. And that just takes people in very, very, interesting paths where they spend most of the time trying to explain why they're not doing something as opposed to just focusing on what was supposed to be in scope in the first place. A good example of that could be, you're developing, I'm trying to be generic here, I can give you specific examples for Expedia, but if you're developing a new value proposition for your Product, and your success metric is engagement, then make sure that you perfectly articulate that driving incremental, customer growth is out of scope, right? Because when you look at your success metrics, that could be a quite normal questions, like, well are we driving incremental. It's like, well, no, because that was not the aim of this experiment, right? And have very clear key results. And if you think of the things I'm touching on right now, it's following almost a scientific method, right? But if you have key results, and you know exactly what's the expected output, then you can define what your success criteria is. Now, what are the primary and secondary measures of success or metrics of success. And that also allows you to identify what are potential risks or dependencies that that could become blockers into executing on that Marketing Strategy in this case. And of course, having an estimated business value always helps, right? When it's not only about the metric, but exactly how much value is that going to deliver to the business. So that's in general terms. Now when it comes to, more specifically, the application of that into Technology, or everything that we're doing with Marketing, or data science...Expedia went through this transformation a few years ago where there was just a focus on making data-driven observations and follow the scientific method. And the way that that allows us to operate today, has transformed the way in which we innovate in every single thing we do. Not only the Product, but Marketing, even as I said in some forums, even HR today follows the scientific method in the way they operat at Expedia. And you're pretty much taking real time information, and think of an e-commerce environment, and letting your customer tell you what they and don't in real time. Naber:  Interesting, can you give us some examples? Gabriel Garcia:  Well, the simplest example would be an A/B test, right? If you're a, if you're A/B testing something, what people don't realize is that you are actually getting real time feedback of whether an ad resonates more with an audience or not. How you take that feedback and how you iterate on that process is what then drives the success. But that's in the simplest example. There are obviously many other, more complex ways in which you can apply the scientific method, you can apply data science into the way that you're automating process, and learning from those data loops, and learning from your customers to improve your Product and improve your Marketing. But a few things that I would say are key to focus on, from a Marketing standpoint...if you think of how complex marketplaces have become - the multidimensional nature of the cross-channel Marketing world we live in today, there are multiple, storefronts and touchpoints, right? And I always say the same thing, which as marketers it's unacceptable to ignore the infinite amount of data that is coming our way. And everyone talks about big data, I know. But if you really take that data and ensure that the next customer interaction is being informed and dictated by the data that you've been gathering, naturally you're enhancing whatever you're putting in front of your customers, either a Product, or a Marketing message, or a value proposition, or whatever it is. And in the past, that linear path to Marketing was pretty simple, but today it doesn't work that. Today, we have different devices. Today, we have those multiple touch points. Today, we have complexities around, multi-channel attribution and cross-device attribution. And so it's a lot more complex. And the amount of customer data out there, means that the customer journey is quite fractured. So unless we find specific ways in which we can start to test with the data that we're gathering, it's very difficult to deliver on measurable results and iterate on those, which goes back to what I was saying before, right? And just following that simplistic approach to the scientific method. So what that means in practice, again, when it comes to my Marketing, when it comes to data driven Marketing and measurement, if you're truly thinking about the customer, then in order to drive sustainable growth you need to understand the value that that customer or set of customers brings in the long run, right? And I love this quote, which is from a guy from McKinsey, that I think is an Emeritus Partner now as they call them...but he says something like...I might look for you, and send it to you later....he writes a lot about capitalism, right? And the future of capitalism. And he says that the vast majority of most firms value, depends on the results three years from now, which, that's how it works. But yet Management is preoccupied with what's reportable three months from now, then capitalism has a big problem. And that happens all the time. So if I go back to what I was talking, on measurement and data-driven Marketing, we as marketers, we got to focus on the outcome, not on the metric that you're capturing, right? So some metrics like, cost per acquisition, etc, are great directional indicators. But they don't determine the value of our investments. So you need to look at what are the levers that you have in order to drive business outcomes, like customer lifetime value. And the moment that you do that, you will be challenged on your attribution models. You will be challenged on the shape of what your P&L looks like on a monthly, on a quarterly basis, even on a yearly basis. And at Expedia, we're starting to make decisions in those terms, which is, well you have one attribution model that will tell you the return on your ad spend, and you have a shadow attribution model that tells you that the mix might look slightly different if you start looking at lifetime value metrics. And not only in the 12 month basis, but even an 18 or 24 month basis. And if you're really about delivering business growth in a sustainable and future-proven manner, you cannot be looking in that short term. You gotta be, being scientific, utilizing your data and applying those metrics that look way beyond that monthly, quarterly basis. And then that keep the customer at heart. Because the moment that you do that, then customer centricity really kicks in. Because you're really delivering what the customer is interested, not only today, but 12 months from now, 24 months from now. And that drives loyalty, that drives business growth. Naber:  Yep. Oh, sorry, did you have something else to add? Gabriel Garcia:  You were asking about data-driven Marketing, and the one thing that is important to explain is why data is so critical, right? The more informed you are, and your organisation is, the more valuable your hypothesis becomes, right? And I was referring to the scientific method before. So data democratisation, and the access to it is fundamental to drive a test and learn culture, which is what drives that excellence, that iteration, at least in our business. And having the infrastructure and data warehouses, to capture the data, is an important foundation for sure. But having the right tools, and the analytics for different people to make sense of is obviously needed. Now what really makes the difference is acknowledging that unless every single person within the organization have access to the data, and there is a culture that drives an expectation of everyone having to experiment with it, the potential is not being maximized, right? So the sooner the data supply chain can be streamlined, and the data democratised for the consumer, the end consumer, that could be your Marketing Manager, that could be your Product Manager, the sooner that data become a strategic asset. So the test and learn culture at Expedia wouldn't really exist unless every single person in the organization had access to the data tools, to the performance dashboards, to the framework. But I think most importantly they were encouraged to fail all the time and make data driven decisions knowing that you're going to fail. About 70% of our tests fail. And unless you go through that journey, and the business is ready to invest on failing, then you won't be able to really make the most out of the application of the scientific method into all the experimentation to your Product and Marketing. The core there, is to just do it fast, right? You go experiment, fail, do to it fast, learn and move on to the next thing. Naber:  Excellent. And I want to go back to something you said before about longterm growth. Can you give us a bit of a sense for how that process works for you? So how do you define what that long-term growth looks like? What indicators you look for for longterm growth, and then reverse engineering, what leading indicators you look for in order to get to that place? Can you walk us through that process, the process, the step by step process. Gabriel Garcia:  Sure, let me walk you through the process, and I'll try to sort of share an example Naber:  That's what I was going to say. If you can do an example, great. If not, I understand. Gabriel Garcia:  Let me start with the process. Well first of all, you need to define...as I said, you start with, with defining, based on on observation, coming up with a hypothesis, right? And once you have your hypothesis and it's a strong enough hypothesis that you can go and test, then you start the testing process. And in terms of metrics, and to your question of what does that look in the long-term? It depends on what your objective is, right? So if your objective is to drive, for example, the shape of your P&L would dramatically change if you drive 90 day repeat rates of your customers. And the lifetime value of your platform mix varies. It's a tangible example. So customers on Expedia app are worth more, repeat more, our most loyal customers, than customers transacting on web, right? Process wise, you got to define that your objective would be to get a customer to transact on the app. Hypothesis being that if they transact on the app, they have a higher lifetime value because you know they have a higher liftemtime value by the way, but the hypothesis is because they repeat more, they are more engaged, and there's higher attach rates. As in you go and book a flight, the likelihood or probability of booking a hotel is higher. So that a process. So you go to your metric, which is 90 day repeat rate, which determines the lifetime value. You go to your hypothesis in place and you go on you test that. Now, what's happening in the analytics world behind it, I'm going to go get into the details of that, but that's just the way that you would set up your attribution model - look at the click stream and look at if a customer clicks on a Marketing link, most likely on Google, you've all got your money. Where does that customer click before you transact? How much of those clicks can you save? You've got a customer goes direct into your platform. How does that impact your costs per acquisition? How does that bring, what do we call our Marketing contribution, and if they end up because of that journey on the on the platform preference, how then the lifetime value increases. And you test that hypothesis. What are some of the challenges of this? Well, statistical significance, reaching statistical significance when you are applying some of these tests. Particularly when you're trying to do it in a small region. If you're trying to do it globally, that's fine. If you're trying to do it in the US that's fine. If you're trying to do it in Taiwan, it's not so easy. So, there are techniques to address those challenges where you can bundle together, similar cohorts that could comparatively allow you to reach that significance faster, or make certain assumptions. So that's the process that it would take. And I tried to describe the process with a tangible example, trying to simplify it, right. But a tangible example of you come up with a hypothesis, you have the metric that you know is the driver of that lifetime value, and then what follows after doing that is, or in parallel to that, is you need a predictive model. This is where it gets complex, that will allow you to tell you that in fact that's going to be the value, the lifetime value, of that customer in 12 or 24 months. Naber:  Right, there's a lot of art and science to that. Gabriel Garcia:  Yes. And hopefully you're still around 12 months later, then see how accurate your predictive model was. And once you have that 12 month cohort with a predictive model, stress testing it, you adjust the predictive model. And then life becomes a lot smoother. Naber:  Wow, that's amazing. Reverse engineering into a longterm objective from a Marketing perspective, and then testing it, stress testing. I come up with hypothesis, going through that entire process that's like, that's an amazing science and art to get right. But once you do, it sounds there's massive upside to doing it. Gabriel Garcia:  There is, there is a massive upside for sure. And it takes time, and dedication, and takes resources for sure. If you want to manage your entire Marketing engine in that way, which at Expedia we certainly aim for. And the investment into data science is something that requires a lot of resources, as you know, but it really pays off, right? That's when Marketing transformed into Marketing Technology. And either, you not only ride the wave, we believe we need to leave the way, as Expedia, when it comes to utilizing data science into our Marketing Strategy. Naber:  Love it. Awesome. Thanks Gabriel. So let's move it into something that's also a pretty reasonable transition from that particular topic, which is, which is Mobile Apps Marketing and Mobile First Marketing. So let's talk about Mobile First Marketing, mobile first versus desktop. And Asia is an amazing playground and bleeding edge petri dish for this particular topic. If someone's thinking about mobile first Marketing, and they want to either transform their Marketing Strategy into mobile first Strategy, or if they are currently in that model right now, but they want to optimize it, what are some best practices for a mobile first Marketing Strategy? Gabriel Garcia:  Great question, Brandon. The first thing I would say is, be ready to make tradeoffs. There's not such thing as free lunches, and you just got to make those trade offs. But if you are not thinking and operating that way, then you'll have to pay the consequence in the future. And to be fair, I mean we're not the pioneers of Mobile Marketing, or Mobile First Marketing. A company like Facebook, really took a stand on developing for mobile first and moving their whole company in that direction. We were kind of the late comers to the party from a tech perspective. But as the first thing, the trade offs. What I mean with trade offs, is, well, you just gotta recognize and acknowledge where your customers are spending time. Once you understand where your customers are spending time, you realize that marketplaces and mobile environments, at least to date, can be more expensive. And can be more expensive because market dynamics are different, because the cost per clicks might be different, and they're going to vary tremendously from country to country, and from region to region, right? There are some more advanced regions where the Marketing mobile ecosystems are very different. If we're talking about, what my team does with environments in Japan, you got to take into consideration Line as an environment. Or in Korea, Naver as a platform. Everywhere else is going to be highly driven by Google, for sure. But you gotta make sure that, when you're designing a mobile first Marketing, you have a mobile first Product to deliver to your customer expectations. And I guess it depends on what your business is all about and which industry you are operating in. But for sure, if you are operating in the online world, and certainly if you are operating in a two sided platform ecosystem as as we do, where you have consumers at one end and hotel partners, and airlines, and cars, etc on the other end, you have to tweak that engine, and you got to tweak that engine with a mobile first approach. If you tweak one side of the engine with one lens, and the other one with another lens, then things break...they don't break. They just cost a lot of money because you're not optimizing your Marketing spend as much as you could be. Naber:  Right, you're hedging on both sides. Naber:  That's right. So I touched on a couple things there, which are tradeoffs and acknowledging the relationship between Marketing and Product. The third thing, and I think it's all encompassing is design, right? And I say it's all encompassing because design touches Marketing, touches Product. The message that you would deliver in a mobile platform is not necessarily different to the message, per se - when you talk about specifically Apps it might be different, right? - but, per se is not necessarily different to the message that you would deliver on desktop. But the experience will be different. The design of the customer experience will be significantly different. How you optimize those landing page experiences in order to optimize your return on ad spend, in order to optimize the delivery of your Product, of your service, will be dramatically different. And if you try to do both...so there are two things very critical for me. If you try to do both, as in you try to put the same weight into one or the other, as in, desktop and mobile, as I said, you might fail. You need to trade off. But also very importantly, you can not assume that as the world has gone mobile then delivering the same experience in a platform agnostic way is going to solve the problem. And that's what makes it challenging. You still gotta A.) acknowledge that cross device behavior, but go and develop mobile-unique experiences for your customers. And once that you have that experience designed, then the bidding, the automation, the algorithms that allow you to optimize your Marketing spend, that's the least of the concern that just takes, again, time and iteration to continue for the machine to learn, and get better at, and particularly on bidding platforms. But it's connecting the customer, depending on which part of the journey it is, with a shopping intent, with how they are going to resonate with that message, with where the experience is where they're going to land is what really drives mobile first everything. Unless you see it in that lens, you won't be able to solve a customer problem. Naber:  Right. Okay. Got It. And as you were explaining that, one of the things...and that was great by the way. Thank you. One of the things you were explaining was creating those mobile specific journeys for the customer. When you're having those conversations, and you actually sit down in those meetings - when you're the Marketing stakeholder, sitting with the Product stakeholder, sitting with other stakeholders in the room, from Eng, or whatever orgs need to be in that conversation, or they happen chronologically back to back, whatever. What input should Marketing have, and how much input should Marketing have in those discussions around the actual customer journey creation? Gabriel Garcia:  Yeah. Love it. We're just going through all of that right now. Well, first of all, if you're going to go talk to a customer, or set of customers, or the world about what you stand for, you're going to deliver it on your Product, right? So the world in which Product develops Product, and then we find a way to Market it I don't think it's successful anymore. So Marketing should help define what do we stand for as a company? What do we stand for as a Product? What customer problems do we solve? What benefits do we provide to the customer? And that is based on user research. That is based on being close and having a full understanding of ecosystem, and environment, and marketplace that you're braiding in. And once we fully understand that and you articulate that value proposition, then you come out with Products that will fulfill that, right? One of the biggest mistakes that I've seen is what I mentioned in the beginning. It's the opposite. It's like, well, we build this great product, Marketing go and find a way of selling. Come up with a value proposition. I'm saying that it hasn't worked. But In today's world that tends to fail. Naber:  Right. Cool. That's good. I have like a hundred followup questions, but I think we should stick on that one because that's actually really good advice, and a good overview around the way a Marketer, and Marketing mindset, and Marketing leaders should be thinking about it. Okay. So, one last question from a Mobile Apps perspective, when you're thinking about principles or the framework that one should be using as they're thinking about mobile app Marketing in marketplaces, what are the set of principles or framework that someone should be using as they're putting together their Strategy? Gabriel Garcia:  First of all, is your business and app only business or not? If it's an app only business, it's completely different. As in the marketplace, the ecosystem that you're going spend most of your time are the app stores. And that's the biggest lever that you have, and then how you go and promote your app. I mean there are many different ways of doing it, through paid advertising and different networks, which, I don't necessarily recommend. There's a lot of fraud out there, and that continues to be a challenge for the industry. Now if you have a business, regardless if you have a bricks and mortar side of your business, but if you have an online business, and there's an app component, then it's slightly different. Because you got to define, how are you adding value to your customer through an app ecosystem. Remember when we're talking about the scientific method and the applicability of scientific method into testing your way through, and I mentioned the lifetime value of our app customers, it might look very different in another company or another industry. So what is the benefit, or what is the customer problem that your app is trying to solve? Once you have that well defined, then if you have a significant mass or the majority of your mass is coming through the web, hands down that conversion of web customers into app customers could be the most effective with the highest return Marketing Strategy that you could apply. You are leveraging your own assets. You're monetizing the traffic that you already captured, and driving them and converting them with no extra costs into a platform that would allow you to engage with them in more meaningful ways. Naber:  Cool. So you're avoiding initial acquisition costs. And you're taking someone and potentially even approving their longterm value based on a few of the attributes you said before around the hypothesis around why mobile app customers could have a higher lifetime value. Gabriel Garcia:  Correct. So, but again, you first got to define and understand, what is that customer journey? Where do they start? And depending on what your business is all about, right, the examples that I'm giving here are very e-commerce driven perhaps, and some of them very travel focused. But I think in general you have to understand the role that that your app plays. And also take into consideration when you look at the economics...and we spent years on this, even when I wasn't directly involved back then...the dynamics of the app stores are changing. So, Google and apple obviously figured out that there are ways of making tons of money out of them, as they do. So there is a lot to be said about app store optimization or ASO, as we call it, on having the right creative, the right copy when customers are searching for an app, within the industry,or whatever, they're looking for to make sure that based on that your app appears or features. So think of the SEO of app stores. But more and more so prevalence of paid ads within that ecosystem. So think of SEM, Search Engine Marketing, it's changing the rules of the game. Right? So now, now the application of data science, for example, within my team into these platforms is becoming critical to continue to optimize our spend on platforms Google, Apple, Facebook when it comes to driving app downloads. So those will be some of the fundamentals. App store optimization, and making sure that your, not only the creative on the app store, but the copy of your app store, is taken into consideration. So understand what Google is looking for or what Apple is looking for when someone is searching for an app. Understand the dynamics of that organic search result with the paid search results, so you can optimize your bidding of those ads. Take into consideration things your competitor will bid for your brand term. And that again changes dynamics, or adds challenges to those dynamics. And outside of that app store ecosystem, or organic view of the app store ecosystems is where the customers are gonna come from. And what are the different touch points that you can leverage in order to present your app? And let me say this, incentivized downloads incentivizing, incentivized installs do not work. There's a lot of fraud, and they don't drive lifetime value. So if you are a marketer, which is going to be assessed on how many downloads you drive, and that's it, you should challenge your boss. Because this is not about how many downloads you drive, this about what are the outcomes that a download is delivering, depending on what your business is all about. If it's transactions, if it's some sort of engagement, some sort of subscription, e-commerce, video games. Naber:  Awesome. Awesome. All right. I'm going to go, I have two more topics that I want to cover, and this has been amazing so far. Thank you. First one is a jump into Marketing Partnerships and Channel Partnerships. When I'm thinking about building out strategic Marketing partnerships and strategic Channel partnerships within my business, partnering externally, what does the planning process look in order to choose the right potential partners? And what do you think is the best way to start courting and having the right discussions so that you get the accurate partnerships that you want at the end of the day? So that the results are exactly what you want, to getting the right partnerships, and then ultimately to creating a ton of mutual value together. So what's the planning process look like? The coating process? And how do you make sure that you have the right aligned initiatives so you get the right results together? Gabriel Garcia:  So, there are a few questions there. So let me try to address one by one. First of all, unless there's the concept of value creation, there's no such thing as a partnership. So if you start identifying potential partnerships, or what you think will be apprenticeship based on the benefit that company would bring to your business, without thinking first of the benefit that you will bring to their business, you're on the wrong path. So value creation, number one. Number two, quite simplistic, but what's your objective of your Partner Marketing activity, right? Is your objective to create a marketplace that will allow you to tap into a set of customers that you cannot tap into otherwise? In our case, yes, hence I'm mentioning it. Is the objective related to a brand that will bring brand equity from a brand, from a PR perspective? That's very valid as well, thought economics and the commercial will look quite different. Is the objective to create a marketplace that you can go and monetize? And saying that in our case, we have partnerships, we call our hotels our partners, and airlines are partners. But then you have, Partner Marketing, which are companies, which is what I did for many years, and we would have a partnership with an airline in a different context. Which is the airline might want to have our hotel content for them to sell it in order to enhance their value proposition. Or a Telco that is interested in our loyalty program, in order to provide travel benefits into their customers. So, I mentioned value creation. Secondly, not only what is the potential business value, but what is the complexity on delivering to that partnership? I've seen many situations where when you go and scope out the business opportunity, it looks fantastic. And if there is an average, or not perfect, it's not only about average, it has to be perfect due diligence on what are going to be the technical requirements in order to deliver it to that partnership. Oh man, you can get into this 12 month, 18 month, 24 months project in which just the cost of delivering completely offsets any business value that that partnership was going to bring. Naber:  Do you have any suggestions on how much due diligence to do before you actually have the conversation with a potential partner? Or how deep to get into it with the potential partner before you go have internal discussions with your technical teams? Where's that balance? Gabriel Garcia:  Yeah. I would say starting with basic research about the company, it's important, but there's no need in my experience, unless you're thinking of an M&A opportunity, to go, incredibly, incredibly deep. You're going to learn a lot more by talking to people than what can you find publicly available. So obviously get enough information to have a meaningful discussion, and know if it's worth your time and their time. But certainly my experience engaging with a potential partner, the sooner the better. So that's one. Two, I normally or used to, coach my team on making sure that once they have that first discovery meeting, it's quickly followed by a meeting where, if you think of a pyramid you're bringing people from at least two different levels of that hierarchical structure. But more importantly that you get enough horizontal view, and you bring someone from Technology, someone from Finance, from very early days. If there's something to be flagged, or concern to be addressed, it's better that that happens early in the discussions, and these things tend to come up quite late, and they just add tremendous complexity when deal is already in progress. And thirdly, in terms of the people that you bring, just try to match them, right? There's no value of the potential partner bringing one of their engineering managers if your Biz Dev guy is not going to be able to fulfill their inquisitive nature on the tech side of the deal, right? So just match whoever is coming. Or even use as the leverage, the fact that you will bring someone, in order to get the other party to bring theirs. And then you start building relationships naturally, and organically, and accidentally, if you like. It's not accidentally, it's on purpose. But you start building relationships across organization, different levels of seniority. And suddenly that engineer will be having coffee, or more likely a beer or a spirit if they're engineers, with your engineer. And that goes a long way when it comes to getting a deal done. Naber:  Absolutely. I love the tactical guidance you just gave. I think that's gold around both encouraging, enticing and incentivizing, the other group to come to the table with the right cross departmental expertise. And making sure that you plan ahead for that in the first place. That is excellent tactical guidance.Love it. Okay. Hey, last one, Gabriel. So Marketing Budget and Planning process. You've gone through, you don't have enough fingers to count. I know, that's not a hint at you being old, but you're old. But the number of budgeting and planning processes cycles that you've been through is high volume, and you've got ton of experience. Do you have a process that you go through every single year in order to make sure you get that right? Gabriel Garcia:  Yes. Although the process has changed at Expedia, which makes everyone's life easier. If you're gonna utilize Technology and algorithms to predict a certain behaviors, why wouldn't you use it to predict what business cycles and financials would look like, right? So we do that these days, which very cool has changed dramatically the amount of effort and hours that we will put into. Having said that, once you have that initial view, it doesn't matter if it came from Finance, if it came from an algo, if you have the time, and your teams have the time, a bottoms up approach is always very helpful. Not in a level of granularity that would just kill your day, and weeks and months. But just to see ballpark, if the trend and the business trend, which the business thinks they'll be heading, actually make sense. And also, and the reason why I've done this over over the years, it gets your teams involved in the process, makes them accountable for delivering the number, and if they have any concerns, they will raise those concerns many, many times with incredibly valid business justifications. As opposed to that becoming a potential friction once the budgets are rolled out. So those are couple of things there. And I would say more often than not, when you get into the weeds of those P&L's, and try to make marginal changes, and put things up and down a notch, and convince other teams to be more aggressive or negotiate with your CFO why you shouldn't be that aggressive, or ask for more money...There's always, in my experience, a moment of oh, which is did a 360 here. So, over the years, whenever I'm realizing that I'm about to go into that moment, I go like, stop, just stop and drop it. It's easy to say because at Expedia, we go through those cycles every quarter. Every quarter we run our forecast, we adjust. Not our plan, our plan is our plan for the year. But we adjust our forecast, we change our Marketing mix. we manage it at a super granular level every quarter to bring into consideration market dynamics, the shape of the industry, competitors, geographical challenges, headwinds, tail winds, etc. So yeah, those would be the things I would leave the audience with. Bottoms-up if you can to get people to be a part of the journey. Don't get deep into the weeds, if you've done it before and you know that the change or adjustment is going to be marginal, it doesn't make a difference. It all normalizes in 12 months, more often than not. Naber:  Yeah. Good one. Good advice. All right. Amazing. Thank you so much, Gabriel. I've got two rapid fire questions for you. Gabriel Garcia:  Bring them on. Naber:  Okay. First one, best travel booking advice that you have? You work at Expedia, you've have to have said this 400 times. We've got a lot of travelers in the audience, so that'd be good. Gabriel Garcia:  Well, book in advance. Seriously. We do an air survey every year, and that's really we'll documented with a bunch of data points that we bring to look at different patterns, and what are the price differences in different times of the year in order to get the better price points, and be able to serve those to our customers, and give advice for customers. So rule of thumb, the earlier you book, the better, for sure. If you're going to travel economy, business is slightly different, but if you're travelling economy, more often than not you will find the better deals at least three months in advance to your trip. And I'm talking flights obviously. And better prices at least the last year, because it does vary year by year, not tremendously, but it does vary. Saturday or Sunday tends to be the best day of the week to book. That's what our data shows, right? Just looking at pricing trends. When it comes to hotels, and maybe this just sounds an Expedia pitch here, but hotels provide us with different types of hotel rates, right? And there's some that are called package rates. So the moment that you book a flight, that package rate is unlocked. So if you're going to book a flight and hotel, if you book the flight on Expedia, you're unlocking a hotel rate which is very unlikely you'll be able to find somewhere else. And that combo might actually result in significant savings. And that is big part of our value proposition to our customers. So those would be my top tips. Naber:  Gabriel, am I correct in that the unlocking of savings you get from the hotel bookings is actually valid for, not just right when you book the flight, but as also residual until a certain time after that ? Gabriel Garcia:  It is residual the day of your trip. So if you book a flight today, and your flight departs in three months, that preferred rate is valid until the day of departure. Naber:  Awesome. So cool. Okay, that's great. Thank you for that. And last one. I tell the audience this every single time, but I ask this question with people's birthdays. Actually, I've asked this question to you on your birthday. I think we were having a couple of drinks. What is the most important lesson you've learned professionally in the last 12 months? Usually I ask personal, but we'll go with professional right now. Naber:  In the last 12 months. Hmm, I have to say, and t's not new. I didn't learn this the last of months, but the last 12 months has been a good platform to put it in practice. And not only that, to share it with others...Is that things like empathy, and well being, and overall happiness are trainable skills. And the mind is trainable. So the reason why I say that in the context of the last 12 months is because this is something that I've been coaching and delivering a couple of courses, well some of the teams here, but also some of the people within my team in the US when I was recently in San Francisco, and some of the engineering teams there...on mindfulness, meditation, and the benefits of it. And the more that I bring into the workplace, and again following that scientific method, the more empirical evidence I have that that is factual. That it's true. Naber:  Very cool. Love it. I have to actually sneak in a bonus one here because you are very passionate about meditation. If someone's just getting started with meditation, can you give a couple of tips in order for them to get through some of the tougher times in the very beginning? When they don't think they're very good at it, inherently. Gabriel Garcia:  The fact that you are realizing that you're not very good at it, it means that you're on the right path. Because when you're trying to meditate and you realize that you're distracted, that's meditation. Meditation...normally the three very, very basic steps is that - you are trying to tame your mind...So the three steps are that you focus on something - and that could be your breath and then you will get distracte

My guest today is Victoria Repa. Victoria is the founder and CEO of BetterMe, a fitness app based out of Ukraine. I'm very excited to have Victoria on the show because she has such an incredibly unconventional background and story that I find very very inspiring. In this interview, we talk about Victoria's early upbringing in a tiny village in the east of Ukraine, how she educated herself early on, her move to Kyiv, her transition from working on transportation logistics to technology, her work on viral content - and how that led her to building a company with global ambitions from Kyiv. We also explore her personal life and systems - which I find incredibly inspiring and intimidating for how she not only makes time and space for contemplation, but also finds this introspection essential to her work. What's also incredibly inspiring is that she's just 26 - and she brings to her life and work an intentionality that I find incredibly rare. I'm very excited to welcome Victoria Repa to How Things Grow.KEY HIGHLIGHTSVictoria's path from having zero experience in tech, to being CEO of a company behind the most-downloaded fitness and health appsHow Victoria learned to craft viral content for one of the biggest content companies in the world. How Victoria leveraged Facebook insights to discover niche topics and launch BetterMe.How Victoria and her team ‘test-drove' the early versions of the app by trying out the practices on themselves.Why BetterMe has 6 different health and fitness related apps in the appstores.Victoria's self-care and self-improvement practices – and why she says business is a “spiritual game”. Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/how-viral-content-can-trigger-habit-change-at-scale-with-victoria-repa-founder-ceo-betterme/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is one of the leading experts in the world on games and growth in games. He's a man who who has helped launch & grow many many hit mobile games. He started his gaming career at Playdom, where he helped the game Social City get to 5 million installs in the first week of launch. He was the founding product manager at Scopely, where he helped grow the daily actives for Dice With Buddies 30x. Yes, you heard that right - 30x. Subsequently he moved to Zynga, where he served as the Franchise Lead and Head of Product for the whole Games With Friends portfolio. Right now he's the VP & Commercial Leader at Blizzard Entertainment.  I had a chance to meet Josh when I was at Zynga not too long ago. I found him incredibly generous with his time and knowledge - and always eager to see people around him succeed. Today's conversation is a master-class on games, and about what happens behind the scenes that makes games such enjoyable experiences. If you've wondered about why hundreds of millions of players love Candy Crush, Farmville or Words With Friends and spend many many hours on these games, this interview has some answers. We talk about the early days of social gaming, the elements that make games habit-forming experiences and how Josh thinks about making, growing and learning about games. We also talk about how the same elements that make for great games also make services like, say, Spotify compelling. I always learn so much every time I listen to Josh - and I'm thrilled for this conversation. KEY HIGHLIGHTSThe secret to unlocking virality of games as a growth product manager, even as the bar for sharing content on social platforms has gotten higherHow Josh and his team found opportunities to improve upon an established game like Words With Friends 2How Words With Friends 2 was intentional about making it to the top of iTunes charts.How the concept of “core loop design” increases user retention for digital products What sets the games that have survived the longest apart from othersJosh's strategy for gleaning research from new games without playing them allWhy Josh says you need a “two-legged stool” on your teamCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/art-science-making-games-fun-with-josh-lu-vp-blizzard-entertainment/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is Elena Verna. Elena is a growth advisor - she advises a number of companies - and helps scale businesses with marketing, product, analytics and growth. Elena joined SurveyMonkey as an analyst a year and a half out of college - and found herself trying to understand a growth trajectory that was incredible. Yet this was a growth trajectory that no one on the team had insight into. As an analyst, Elena wrote the queries that helped answer many of the fundamental questions underlying the business and what was driving its growth. Over the next 7 years, she grew to become the SVP of Growth. In her next role, she became the SVP of Growth, Marketing, Product & Design at the cybersecurity company MalwareBytes - and much like at SurveyMonkey, she helped drive an understanding of exactly what was driving growth in a business where there was very little understanding of this. In this interview, Elena talks about what she learnt as she grew with the business, how she learnt that not every problem could be solved through quantitative optimization, how she learnt to trust her team and lead, about the death of the person who inspired her the most, about how she breaks down & understands the drivers of growth - and much much more.KEY HIGHLIGHTSHow the SurveyMonkey team started to figure out where their early growth was coming from – and what were the things that surprised Elena.What it was like for Elena to understand the qualitative aspects of growth.How Elena and her team's focus changed as the company grew.Elena's professional role model, how this person inspired Elena – and what it was like when this person passed away.Why Elena used to create a SurveyMonkey account every day during her time at the company.The persona of the user that was pivotal to the early growth of Malwarebytes – and how Elena's team zeroed in on this persona.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/decoding-freemium-the-unlikely-drivers-of-cybersecurity-adoption-more-with-elena-vernagrowth-advisor-ex-svp-of-growth-marketing-product-design-at-malwarebytes-ex-svp-of-growth-at-surveymo/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

In today's episode, we take a very short break from regular programming - as I present to you my talk at my alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras last year. This is a talk called ‘The Unseen Forces Driving Mass Adoption Of Technologies' - featuring 8 key takeaways from season 1 of How Things Grow.    I spoke to some of the smartest engineering students in India - the Indian Institutes of Technology(the IITs) tend to be super-selective and have an acceptance rate of under 1%. Fun fact: in one of my favorite Dilbert strips, Asok says: “Luckily, I'm an IIT Graduate, superior to most people on earth, so I finished the project myself.” Dilbert asks him: “Are you tired?” Asok says: “I am trained to only sleep during national holidays.”(https://dilbert.com/strip/2003-09-15 ) These were the kind of kids I spoke to.   Anyway, while some of the effect is lost in podcast form because the actual talk was accompanied by a slide deck, I think you'll still find some of the takeaways & highlights from season 1 very interesting.   Without further ado, here you go on my talk: The unseen forces that drive mass-market adoption of technologies - 8 lessons from season 1 of How Things Grow.**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is Mauria Finley. Mauria has lived in very interesting times - and worked on some industry-defining products. Her first job out of college was at Netscape, where she not only saw from close up the large scale adoption of the internet but also helped build utilities and products for it like email, chat and browser features. She then worked on mobile in the days before mobile apps, when mobile was primarily a work and productivity platform - before working with PayPal and eBay. She started her first business Citrus Lane in 2011, which was born of a spreadsheet that went viral. After selling it to Care.com, she started her current company Allume that provides personal styling powered by data.    In this wide-ranging conversation, we delve into so many topics - from how she approached building utilities during the early days of the internet, to building infrastructure for the early days of mobile, to starting an eCommerce company in the age of Amazon - and how she thinks about combining data and human judgment to build a personal styling business.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat about working at Netscape compelled Mauria.What Mauria tells the class at Stanford as to how they should pick their first company.Why Mauria thinks a recession is a great time to build a company.Why there was a debate at Paypal about the potential of mobile – and Mauria's argument that swayed the decision.How Mauria's first company was basically a productized version of a spreadsheet that went viral.How becoming a mom helped Mauria prioritize better.How Allume combines data and human judgment to help women make fashion choices.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/making-the-internet-work-building-an-ecommerce-business-in-the-age-of-amazon-and-more-with-mauria-finleyceo-of-allume/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

App marketers are striking out in new directions, exploring platforms beyond Google and Facebook to acquire and engage users and experimenting with new formats, such as video and playables, The pay-offs can be huge, but complexity can be overwhelming. It’s clearly not enough to rely on valuable channels or proven approaches, but it’s also important not to scatter resources or budget. Our host Peggy Anne Salz catches up withBoram Ku, formerly Director of Marketing at Cookapps, a successful hypercasual games company, who draws from her long track record in UA to highlight they ways marketers can but through complexity in the ecosystem to identify uncontested markets and bold opportunities for growth. Boram, who is also a Mobile Hero in recognition of her UA accomplishments, speaks candidly about how marketers can find DSPs, optimize results and diversify channels. Finally, she walks us through a case study on the Amazon app store and how marketers can use this platform to drive UA efforts.

My guest today is Eric Seufert. Eric is the Head of Platform at N3twork, the founder of MobileDevMemo.com, author of the book ‘Freemium Economics' - and one of the foremost experts on mobile user acquisition today. Eric started his career as an analyst at Skype, and went on to work with gaming companies like Digital Chocolate, Grey Area and Wooga - before heading up user acquisition for Rovio, in which capacity he headed up much of the launch activity for Angry Birds 2, which launched with over 25 million installs in the first week after its launch. Eric has also consulted with over 30 app development companies on their growth - and developed the growth and user acquisition platform Agamemnon, which was acquired by N3twork in 2017. Eric has worked on an incredibly wide variety of apps - and he's seen it all, from the early days of mobile growth where you could basically buy bot installs to hit the top 10 ranks on iTunes to today's increasingly sophisticated world of automation and programmatic growth. Indeed, his site MobileDevMemo.com is one of the resources I learn so much from and recommend very often to folks. In this fascinating and in-depth conversation, we dive into not only the state of mobile growth over the years and the forces that defined the evolution of mobile growth - but also into Eric's fascinating career and work that has led him to develop an incredibly nuanced perspective on the past, present and future of growth on mobile.KEY HIGHLIGHTSHow Eric got his start in user acquisition & growth from following his curiosity about freemium.How Eric's fears about the possibility that his company would fail impelled him to start his blog – and how his blog got him his next job.The difference between mobile and desktop when it comes to user acquisition.Do you have be a big established company with a huge balance sheet to build a commercial successful app?The anxiety that Rovio had before Angry Birds 2 about living up to the original – and Eric's team's strategy for launch.Why programmatic is so hard to make work.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/a-brief-history-of-mobile-user-acquisition-with-eric-seuferthead-of-platform-at-n3twork-founder-at-mobiledevmemo/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Today's is a unique episode. I have two amazing guests to offer two different perspectives about a theme that I've always been very very fascinated by - influencer marketing, and the economics of internet fame. Sophia Yeh(aka Sophia Beatbox, or Sophia Kiddbeatz) is a YouTuber and influencer manager. Sophia literally grew up with Youtube. She started making videos in high school, and really took off on the Youtube platform as a teenager making these really cool beatboxing videos. After growing her presence on Youtube for a number of years, she moved over to the business side of influencer marketing - in helping influencers strike deals with brands. Adam Hadi is the VP of Marketing at Current, and is known as one of the foremost experts in the world at influencer marketing, particularly for mobile apps. Adam began his career as an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and made his way into mobile app marketing for The Topps Company, in which capacity he stumbled upon the wild world of influencer marketing. Since then, he's headed up marketing for leading apps such as Draft, Quidd and now Current - and advised a host of other apps on influencer marketing. Between them, Adam & Sophia bring very unique perspectives on influencer marketing - on what it's like to be an influencer, on what it takes to grow an audience as an influencer, on the unique and peculiar challenges of being a creator and a businessperson, on how deals are made on influencer marketing platforms - and so much more.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat inspired Sophia to make Youtube videos in high school - and the first results she saw on her first 4 videos.How Adam stumbled upon influencers while running campaigns for a soccer app.How influencers like MiniMinter & KSI evolved with the Youtube platform and expanded their brand from just FIFA related content to much broader themes.How Adam essentially hunted down his target influencers at the conference PAX East.The most important factor that contributes to an influencer's early growth - and why ignoring this caused Sophia's Youtube to die down for a bit. How this factor impacts Youtube's algorithms.What catalyzes influencers who grow really big - or expand their brand in dramatically different ways?What results Sophia saw when she tested videos that didn't show her beatboxingHow marketers evaluate a new channel for influencers who are present on it. Is there a minimum audience size at which a platform becomes interesting for marketers?Why influencer marketing can be intimidating for performance marketers - since they dont have a lot of raw data to base decisions off of. What Adam recommends doing to make these assessments when there is imperfect data.Why platforms such as Google have had some reluctance to embracing influencer marketingThe Adpocalypse - and how that hit influencers badly, and how Sophia reacted to the hit her channels were taking. Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/the-inner-workings-of-internet-fame-with-sophia-yehcmo-at-most-amazing-adam-hadivp-of-marketing-at-current/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is Cameron Adams. Cameron is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, the graphic design tool website that recently was valued at over $1 billion. In today's interview, we talk to Cameron about his long and checkered career. We talk about his work on Google Wave, which seemed to be a product way ahead of its time - and which gathered some incredible buzz but saw limited adoption. In his next startup Fluent, he seemed to have everything going for him with a huge surge of user interest - in spite of which he had to shut it down. Cameron was third time lucky with Canva, which has a steady start and growth before it really took off in the last couple of years. In today's conversation we talk about Canva's gradual rise and the forces behind it. We go into some of the key product decisions they've made in their pursuit of the mission of making design accessible to everyone.KEY HIGHLIGHTSThe promise of Google Wave to rethink email as it was reimagined for the modern age - and what the problem with this approach was.How the economics of Cameron's next startup Fluent didn't quite work out even though it had 80000 users on its waitlist.What inspired Canva's onboarding process to make the design process seem less intimidating to users.How the proliferation of visual media like Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest helped drive the adoption of Canva.How Canva built up relationships with bloggers & social media marketers to support its launch & post-launch growth.How Canva's growth after its early year 1 growth was a function of its growth marketing strategy that was intentional about bringing users in the door.What Canva learned about why people tended to go with low-quality imagery - and how this insight led Canva to pick the freemium model and to offer much lower prices than alternatives.What Cameron had to learn as he progressed from a creator to a manager of large teams as Canva scaled.What drove Canva's huge wave of growth in 2017 that converted its user growth into tangible revenue growth.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/making-design-accessible-to-the-world-with-cameron-adamsco-founder-cpo-at-canva/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is Cat Lee. Cat Lee is the newest partner at Maveron, a $160MM consumer-tech fund, primarily focused on funding hyper-growth startups at the series A and seed rounds. Cat has had a long history of working on some groundbreaking growth projects - and taking huge leaps in her own career. She worked on the Facebook platform team starting in 2008, and helped drive the adoption of Open Graph, which drove some breakout growth for Facebook outside of its own platform. She then joined Pinterest in 2012 as the Head of Growth, and helped drive 3x growth in MAUs for the then fledgling platform - and set it on the path to scale & sustainability. After working on growth & marketing at Pinterest for over 4 years, she transitioned to being the Head of Culture at Pinterest, in which capacity she did some very interesting & tremendously impactful work, before she moved to being a VC at Maveron Partners earlier this year. In this fascinating & wide-ranging conversation, we talk not only about Cat's unconventional career choices but also explore the elements that made Facebook and Pinterest's growth machines as powerful as they were. We talk about the gender diversity problem in venture capital - and how Maveron's approach has yielded dramatic results. Cat has had so many dimensions to her work and career - and all of these make this a fascinating conversation.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat inspired Facebook's Open Graph. How Facebook's teams approached pitching Open Graph to publishers at a point when they didn't have a lot of leverage or clout.What inspired Cat to join Pinterest - and why Pinterest was invite only at first even when it had millions of users. How Pinterest's network effect was driven by content more than social interactions between users.How mobile traffic overtook web traffic in 24 hours of the launch of Pinterest's mobile apps. What inspired Cat to move to a head of culture role, even though this was a role whose success wasn't as objectively measurable as that of growth roles. How Cat assessed the possible impact she could have heading up culture - and how she approached changing the elements of the culture that she felt needed changing.What inspired Cat to move to the VC space - and her very elaborate research & learning process before making the move.Why the % of VC money going to women is so low(at about 2.2%). How the lack of diversity in the VC space impacts this. Why Maveron's leadership team's composition unusual in terms of diversity - and how this has changed their results compared to most VC firms(even though these results weren't something they tracked actively). What inspired Cat to go on a sabbatical after working on two high growth startups - and what her personal goals were during this sabbatical.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/facebook-pinterest-growth-cat-lee-maveron-vc-diversity/ **Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is Lomit Patel, VP of Growth at IMVU. Prior to IMVU, Lomit managed growth at many early stage startups including Roku (IPO), TrustedID (acquired by Equifax), Texture (acquired. by Apple) and Earthlink. Lomit is a frequent speaker at different conferences and recognized as a Mobile Hero by Liftoff. In today's episode, we talk about one of the pivotal moments in Lomit's career - when he presented a one word strategic plan to kick off a massive transition within his company IMVU. We go into the circumstances that preceded his one word plan, his thinking behind it - and how he not only rallied his team to execute upon his one word plan, but also drove some massive impact as a result of executing this plan, which resulted in 50% year on year growth after years of flat growth numbers. In this episode, we go very deep in exploring the anatomy of a huge transition that originated in Lomit's one word strategic plan - and I find some of the details in here incredibly fascinating.KEY HIGHLIGHTSThe context in which Lomit joined IMVU - and in which he presented his one word plan. Lomit's team's shock when he presented his one word plan.IMVU had an established desktop product - and there was a lot of skepticism around whether to make the transition that Lomit proposed. What Lomit did to get people comfortable around the transition - and the tradeoffs that the team had to make in picking features.When there is a major change, the impetus has to come from the top.Lomit didnt have a lot of mobile gaming experience. What gave him the confidence that he could execute the transition that he proposed.How it was such a freeing experience to enjoy being a kid in Malawi. As Lomit grew up and went to college, what inspired him to look at internet businesses - and move to America.How IMVU onboards users by having them take a small step - and gradually advance within the from there as they become familiar with it.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/the-one-word-strategic-plan-with-lomit-patelvp-of-growth-at-imvu/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is the Zack Onisko, who is behind some incredible breakout growth stories. Zack was an early team member at Tickle, which is generally considered to have pioneered virality as we know it - and did this at a time before Facebook existed. He then worked with Branchout that mastered growth through virality on the Facebook platform, before he led growth for Creative Market and Hired, solving very unique growth problems. Zack today is the CEO of Dribbble, which has been described as LinkedIn for designers. Zack has thought deeply not only about growing but also doing so sustainably. In this fascinating conversation, we cover not just how Zack grew from being a designer to a growth-professional to CEO, but also about what led to the rise & fall of some hyperviral companies - as also some fascinating insights about how his company Dribbble has embraced a fully remote work culture. So much of what he has done is uniquely creative & interesting - and I'm excited to dive into it all with him.KEY HIGHLIGHTSThe origins of the word ‘virality' in the context of digital growth.How Zack advocated for an autonomous growth team at BranchOut - and how this team's work compounded and resulted in 25 to 30 million users in 30 days.Why Dribbble is a fully remote team. Dribbble's meeting policies that let is maximize productivity.Dribbble's ingenious way to finance a team trip by going into the conference business.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/from-hypervirality-to-sustainable-growth-with-zack-oniskoceo-at-dribbble/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is someone with a very unconventional background. Nick Allardice is the VP of Product & Design at Change.org. Nick started his career as an activist - about as far from the world of tech products as you can imagine. He joined Change.org because it was a tech enabled social platform that could have larger impact than the world of activism that he was in. He led Change.org's internationalization effort - and subsequently the campaigns team before heading up Change.org's product team. In today's very fascinating conversation, we talk about not just what truly drives social change and policy change, but also how growth strategies helped Change.org make a very dramatic transition in its business model. We dive into the mechanics of online activism and how technology & Change.org have fundamentally shifted the way we bring about social change. I'm very excited for this unique and unconventional perspective on growth & social change.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat inspired Nick to move from activism to a tech enabled social enterprise. the ambition and scale that comes from being a venture backed social enterprise that makes them more effective than non-profits.How public benefit companies sit at the intersection of for-purpose and for-profit - and how these can unlock exponentially more capital for doing good in the world than currently exists.There are numerous tools available to activists worldwide - protests, events, rallies, calling up politicians, lobbying the press - and more. Why Change.org focuses on petitions.Why Change.org's lead-generation model wasn't sustainable. What they found when they looked at their fundamentals and their competition. What their new revenue model was - and what strategies made a difference to their transition, and what were the key things they did to make sure the team's culture changed.The common characteristics of petitions that take off. Change.org's principle of ‘winning loudly' - and how that is a principle behind magnifying petitions.How Change.org prioritizes countries that are socially important but have low revenue. How Change.org changed its legal structure to handle these things - and how Change.org isn't a revenue maximizing entity even though it's for-profit.What drives policy change? How petitions catalyze a constellation of media & offline coverage that magnifies the impact of the campaign. Why targeting companies is more likely to lead to change than targeting politicians.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-drive-social-change-at-scale-with-nick-allardice-vp-of-product-design-at-change-org/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is Wilson Kriegel - and he's going to tell us the story of a perfect storm that he lived through that in many ways shaped & pioneered the way we think about virality and breakout growth. Wilson is today the CEO at HrtBeat Audio, a wearable hardware and software company that could very well change the way we communicate and capture moments safely using handsfree devices. Wilson has been a leader in many companies in gaming and mobile since far before the first smartphones came on our radar. On today's episode, we will dive into the story of one of the earliest breakout hit games on mobile - OMGPOP's Draw Something, which Wilson was a huge part of. Draw Something was launched when its maker OMGPOP was less than a quarter away from running out of money. They'd let go of people - and were mentally gearing up to close shop when their new game Draw Something came out. Draw Something not only dragged its team back from the brink - but also saw some astronomical numbers and incredible viral growth that changed its team's fortunes literally overnight. Draw Something hit a million downloads 10 days after its launch in 2010, and 50 million downloads in the first 50 days after launch. Just as astonishingly, less than a month after Draw Something's launch, OMGPop was acquired for $210 million. In today's interview, we'll talk to Wilson about the early days of online games and mobile games, and go behind the scenes of the abrupt ascent of Draw Something & the flurry of activity and dealmaking that led to its acquisition less than a month after its launch. We go into incredible detail about what it was like to live inside the perfect storm that Draw Something found itself in the midst of back in 2012 - and this is an incredibly exciting episode that I'm very stoked to bring to you today.  KEY HIGHLIGHTSHow OMGPOP was on the verge of running out of cash when Draw Something's mobile version came along. How OMGPOP's CEO Dan Porter adjusted Draw Something's gameplay to be much less competitive than its earlier versions used to be. The analogy that he used to describe this casual competitiveness.How the OMGPOP team's focus on fundamentals and the foundational work for years was essential in supporting & amplifying Draw Something's growth when it did blow up.Users' having to set up a gamer tag to identify themselves was a friction point in their onboarding process. However, this also resulted in massive virality and discovery when users decided to share these gamer tags to find opponents.OMGPOP had hired bankers hired to salvage what they could of the company as they expected to run out of money. The bankers had to switch gears from thinking about a distress sale to maximizing a sale price - as they engaged potential buyers. The 5-day bidding war that eventually culminated in OMGPOP's acquisition.How a virtuous cycle of growth can also turn against a product whose growth begins to slow down. The lull in the social gaming space at the time that resulted in OMGPOP and Zynga bearing the brunt of the slowdown - even though Draw Something continued to show strong engagement & financials. How this lull culminated in the OMGPOP office being shut down. How this rise and fall is often a natural cycle in business and technology that affects many well-known companies.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/draw-something-zynga-50-million-wilson-kriegel-picsart/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

My guest today is Sean Ellis. Sean is widely regarded as the Godfather of Growth, and is credited with coining the phrase ‘growth hacking'. Where do I begin talking about him? Sean has held leadership roles with gaming platform Uproar and the remote desktop tool LogMeIn - and pioneered the cross functional approach to growing businesses that has since become known as ‘growth', ‘growth hacking' or ‘growth marketing'. All of that was before he worked on some of his biggest wins - most famously, he helped set up Dropbox's referral program. If you remember back in 2008, if you invited a friend to Dropbox, both you & your friend would get storage space for free from Dropbox. This was nothing short of revolutionary at the time. I remember this not only generating such incredible buzz at the time but also resulting in some breakout growth for Dropbox, laying the foundations for the unicorn that it's become today. Sean also founded Qualaroo, and advised many fast growing companies including Eventbrite & Lookout - and helped them grow faster. Today he runs GrowthHackers.com, a community focused around growth that organically resulted in a growth-focused SaaS product called NorthStar. Sean has also co-authored the books Growth Engines and Hacking Growth, which are considered definitive resources on growth.  In so many ways, Sean pioneered ideas about growth that were way ahead of their time - and he did this consistently over time. We'll talk about so many of these wins, and about the culture of growth & experimentation that he's both championed & helped drive the adoption of.  KEY HIGHLIGHTSSean was a salesperson early on in his career. The circumstances at his company Uproar that led him to shift his focus from selling to building the customer base via an approach that would subsequently become known as ‘growth' or ‘growth hacking'.What gave Sean the confidence that Dropbox was something special, even though it wasn't clear at the time that cloud storage could be a big market, and even though it looked like big competitors like Google & Microsoft could enter the market any time. What made Sean confident that referrals could be a strong growth engine for Dropbox(even though he'd been actually afraid to set up referrals at his previous company LogMeIn).What inspired the coining of the phrase ‘growth hacker' - a juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated words. How Sean feels about the way the phrase is used today - and why he has no regrets even though some people employ the phrase in ways it wasn't intended to be used.How GrowthHackers.com originated as a passion project that organically grew into a SaaS product.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/the-original-growth-hacker-and-inside-dropboxs-blockbuster-referral-loop-with-sean-ellis-from-growthhackers-com/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

The second season of How Things Grow will become available next Monday - and will include transcripts as well. As you may know, How Things Grow tells the stories of the people who help companies, technologies and economic systems take off.  Each episode features an interview with one of the leading growth practitioners, entrepreneurs, experts or historians in the world today.     In our first episode of season 2, we'll dive into the origin story of one of the original referral sensations. I interview Sean Ellis, the CEO of GrowthHackers.com - the man behind many many incredible growth stories - the best known of which is perhaps Dropbox's pioneering referral system that drove some unprecedented growth in a space that was very very nascent at the time. Sean's other big claim to fame is that he coined the phrase ‘growth hacking'. There are so many amazing stories that Sean has to share - and I'm excited to bring those to you! In our subsequent episodes, we cover topics as diverse as applying growth principles to a social enterprise. We look at the early days of a now massive online community. We'll look at the story of an app company that was about to go bankrupt that launched a new app that hit 50 million installs in its first 50 days. You'll never guess what happened next - as I might say if I had to write a clickbait headline. All these - and so many other stories are coming up in the new season of How Things Grow. If you get any joy and pleasure from these episodes, please subscribe to How Things Grow on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast - or wherever else you get your podcast fix. Please also consider leaving a review, for this is very much a labor of love. I hope you enjoy listening to the show as much as I've enjoyed putting it together. I look forward to presenting to you the first episode of the coming season of How Things Grow next Monday!  **Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

  Every week BombAppromotion checks the best apps on the App Store. We choose the most interesting apps for you. Check out BombAppromotion PR & Marketing first podcast about mobile apps on the App Store […] The post BombAppromotion Podcast Top Apps of the Week 13-20 August appeared first on Mobile App Marketing & App Promotion Agency - BombAppromotion.

Affiliate marketing is a constant hot topic within the influencer community: people wondering about the best way to start, or those who have already started and are wondering how to do it effectively. Keep an eye on the responses, and you'll nearly always see someone mention how they tried affiliate marketing with Amazon Associates or Commission Junction back in the day, and didn't find it worth their while. That kind of negative thinking stops here. This week on the podcast, we're talking all about affiliate marketing: how to do it well, how to do it effectively, how to do it so that it maximizes the amount of money that you make. First and foremost, it should be a fit for the content you're creating. -Angel Djambazov To give us some guidance on ways content creators can best monetize, we're joined by Angel Djambazov. Angel has spent his professional career in the fields of journalism (as an editor on several newspapers and as founding Editor-in-Chief of Wyoming Homes and Living Magazine) and digital marketing. He launched Custom Tailored Marketing, becoming the agency of record for Jones Soda and KEEN, and was on the founding team and served as the CMO for the startup PopShops.com (later acquired by Rakuten LinkShare). In 2016 Custom Tailored Marketing merged with GTO Management to become Lab6 Media, an agency primarily focused on maintaining  elite level Affiliate Marketing and Influencer Marketing management, while expanding core Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Mobile App Marketing services. Listen in as Angel discusses: where to start with affiliate marketing the research you should do before joining an affiliate program affiliate posts and brand messaging posts, and how the messaging differs one way you might be missing out on potential affiliate revenue what makes an influencer attractive to brands (it's not all about the numbers) tips for better conversion from your content points of negotiation to consider what you can do to help encourage brand contact and followup Angel shares a ton of eye-opening info in a short amount of time, but we are sure some questions remain! Let us know what you want to know about affiliate marketing in our private Facebook group, Businessese HQ. Resources: Lab6 Media Contact Angel by email at angel@lab6.com or on Twitter: @Djambazov ShareASale The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

How in the world do you get users to a mobile app? What channels do you use to market? Mike Herman, Director of Customer Acquisition, talks about his marketing career and dives deep into the channels and strategies he used to market an app that helps children learn how to read.

Thank you so much for listening to How Things Grow! I've been truly humbled by the feedback and response that you guys have shared about the show and the episodes thus far.   The last 9 episodes have not only been a blast, but they've also been incredibly instructive learning experiences for me.    How Things Grow will take a short break, simply because each episode takes many many weeks to prepare and make.    I've already started working on the next season of episodes - and I have some amazing interviewees lined up. I'm truly excited to bring these new episodes to you very very soon.   I hope to see you guys around soon.**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

In this episode, we talk about the phenomenon of co-living, and how it's changing urban housing and community. We go behind the scenes of the tremendous growth of the co-living company Common. My guest today is Brad Hargreaves, the CEO and founder of Common and co-founder of General Assembly. Brad was separately recommended by two of the guests on How Things Grow - Jay Weintraub and Adam Lovallo. The more I researched Brad, the more fascinated I was by everything he's done in a wild variety of industries. Brad is perhaps among the very few people I've spoken to who've grown digital businesses as well as non-digital ones - and this is why I was keen on having him on the show. I certainly learnt a ton from his unique outlook on business & life. We talk about Brad's early beginnings in gaming to his experiences running a furniture business to challenges growing General Assembly to his current business that is changing the housing and rental industry. I'm particularly fascinated by Brad's thinking around Common, Brad's co-living business that recently raised a $40 million round of funding. We dive into how he thinks about growing a business that's firmly rooted in the offline world. I particularly love how he thinks about the 'real' world and the digital space as seamless experiences that influence each other - and how this worldview has indeed helped Common and co-living grow dramatically.  This episode gives you a peek into an emerging yet dramatically growing real world phenomenon - and I'm excited to bring this to you today.  Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/co-living-urban-housing-brad-hargreaves-common-general-assembly/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

This episode is the second part of a two part story - and it features the story of New York City - and how it went from a wilderness island in 1600 to the metropolis that we know it as today. If you havent yet listened to part 1, you can check out the interview I did with historian Russell Shorto on HowThingsGrow.co/episodes My guest today is Sam Roberts. Sam is a journalist who has written for the New York Times since 1983 - and is the host of the NY1 show The New York Times Close Up. Sam is considered one of the foremost authorities on the history of New York City. He is the author of four books - including ‘Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America' and ‘A History of New York in 101 Objects.' Sam was kind enough to host me in the fabled offices of the New York Times for this interview. In the last episode, we talked about New York's transformation from a wilderness to the trading town of New Amsterdam under the Dutch to the town of New York under the British. This episode picks up from where the last one left off - and talks about the city's history under the British and afterwards. We talk about the devastation New York experienced during the American revolution - and the big engineering project of the early 19th century that led New York to not only overtake Philadelphia, which was the leading city in America at the time, but also become a contender for one of the world's leading cities. We talk about how transportation and immigration fueled some dramatic growth for this city. We talk about New York's transformation from a trading city to an industrial manufacturing city - and then into a financial center and metropolis that it is today. Sam gives some remarkable insights into what drove these tremendous changes - and he manages to distill the key turning points from over 200 years of history in a 30 minute conversation.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/taking-over-world-a-metropolis-emergespart-1-2-the-new-york-story-with-sam-roberts-new-york-times/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Today's episode is a special one. Past episodes of How Things Grow have told the stories of how technologies and companies have taken off. Today's episode tells the improbable story of the rise of a physical ecosystem. This episode is the first of a two part story. This episode features the story of New York City - and how it went from a wilderness island in 1600 to the burgeoning trading town of New Amsterdam that was renamed New York. In our next episode, we'll talk about New York's story from the British rule in the 17th century to today. Before I moved from Bangalore, India to New York City for the first time, I knew nothing about this metropolis. As I Googled and poked around online about the city and its origins from a faraway land, one book kept showing up time and again. This book was ‘The island at the center of the world' - and the author Russell Shorto, is my guest for today. Russell is an author, historian and journalist. The NYT Books Review has said: “Masterly…. A new foundation myth….. Shorto writes at all times with passion, verve, nuance and considerable humor.” He's written six books. His most recent book ‘Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom' was released in 2017. This is the first of a two part series that covers the time period from before Manhattan's prehistory to its annexation by the British in 1664, the point when its name changed from New Amsterdam to New York. We talk about Henry Hudson's attempts to reach Japan through the center of North America. We talk about why the Dutch colonized this wilderness island to expand their trading empire, and how the Dutch West India Company's corporate failures led to the explosion of trade in New York City. We'll go into how power, money and geography prompted the British to capture the city from the Dutch. We'll conclude this episode in the late 18th century at the point of time when the British took over the city and changed its name from New Amsterdam to New York. We'll pick up New York's story from the British rule to the present day in next week's episode.  Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/from-a-wilderness-a-metropolis-emergespart-1-2-the-new-york-story-with-russell-shorto/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

In this episode, we talk about how technology & gamification have dramatically eased the process of language learning. We go behind the scenes of the meteoric growth of the language learning app Duolingo. My guest today is Gina Gotthilf, the VP of Growth at Duolingo.Duolingo has had a dramatic growth trajectory over the last few years. It's gone from 3 million installs to 200 million installs, doing very little paid marketing or advertising. Gina and her team drove much of this growth. Gina is, without doubt, one of the most engaging and smart people I've known. I recently introduced a friend to Gina. Immediately after my friend met Gina for coffee, my friend wrote me an email with the subject line ‘Gina is awesome.' In this episode, Gina talks about how she began her career as a philosophy major with almost no background in the hard sciences. We talk about Gina's very unconventional strategies for growing Tumblr and then Duolingo - by leveraging press and media coverage. We go into how she transitioned from working on PR and media outreach to working on the product and experimentation - and how she and her team engineered Duolingo so as to make language learning easy. This is not only an incredibly instructive episode, but also a very fun one that I'm excited to bring to you today.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/language-learning-growth-gamification-gina-gotthilf-duolingo-tumblr/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

In this episode of How Things Grow, we revisit the early days or ridesharing - and look at how bikesharing is beginning to evolve. My guest today is my good friend Dan Riaz. Dan's had a checkered career and an interesting life. Dan managed mobile acquisition at Zynga just when Zynga started to shift its business from web to mobile. He then joined Lyft when they were in just 4 cities to head up their mobile user acquisition. At Lyft, he saw from close up the ascension of the ridesharing industry - and its emergence as the widespread mass market phenomenon it is today. Subsequently, while he was at 500 startups, he worked with Grab Taxi in South East Asia, and catalysed the growth of ridesharing in South East Asia. Afterward, he worked with the bikesharing company Limebike, where he helped drive the early adoption of bikesharing.   Dan has been close to the action from the early days of ridesharing and bikesharing. He brings some amazing stories from the time ridesharing was practically at risk of being shut down by the law - to its rapid growth to being an integral part of our lives today. Dan brings a rare level of insight into the very many non-obvious forces that drive the economics of transportation that moves our world today. I'm very excited to bring to you this amazing interview with Dan!Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/early-days-ridesharing-dan-riazscaleup-labs-500-startups-ex-lyft-ex-zynga/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

    Welcome to this week's episode of How Things Grow! In this episode we explore the business of conferences, and of bringing people together. My guest today is Jay Weintraub, who is a true master of the art of the conference. Jay is a man who has started and grown 5 conferences in wildly different industries - mobile apps, call marketing, HR, lead generation and insurance. His conferences are such well-oiled machines and attended by thousands of people - and I've always wanted to sit down with him to ask him about what makes conference-businesses tick. Irrespective of whether you've attended conferences yourself - or merely passed by a trade show or a convention center and wondered why these halls seem packed to the gills, you'll learn what goes on behind the scenes in a business that is structured around bringing people together. More importantly, Jay will talk about his own journey from being a first-time conference organizer to his second act to where he is now, organizing 5 conferences a year. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Jay is also an angel investor with over 30 investments and 5 exits. Jay is indeed a man of many parts - and one big reason I brought him on was simply to showcase the clarity of his thinking and his inner monologue during some of his biggest inflection points.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/art-conference-jay-weintraubgrow-co-mobile-apps-unlocked-contact-io-insuretech-connect-feathr-hrtech-connect/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Welcome to this week's episode of How Things Grow! In this episode we dive into the mechanics of ‘invite a friend' flows - or referral marketing, testing ideas quickly and much much more. My guest today is the amazing Dominic 'DistroDom' Coryell. Dom founded his first company GarmentValet while he was still in college. He then founded the Talkable, which is one of the leading referral marketing companies in the world. He then became a partner at 500 startups, in which capacity he advised hundreds of startups on their growth. In his most recent role, he works as the VP Growth for the global shopping platform Grabr. Every time I meet him, he's working on multiple new ideas and projects. In today's episode, we talk about so much. We dive into how Dom recommends testing ideas quickly with minimal engineering effort. Dom gives some great examples, including one where he nonchalantly started a food delivery business over a weekend. We talk extensively about referral marketing - the ‘invite a friend' offers that you see all over the internet and on your phones. We explore why the ‘invite-a-friend' offers work, and how some of the smartest companies in the world structure their invite-a-friend referral programs so as to make a dramatic difference in their businesses. This is very much a masterclass on referrals - or invite-a-friend flows, which can often be innocuous yet very powerful parts of most digital businesses today.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/invite-a-friend-flows-referral-marketing-dominic-distrodom-coryell/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Welcome to this week's episode of How Things Grow! In this episode we dive into the nuances of how products go viral, about how companies and cultures are built for the long term - and much much more. My guest today is the amazing and wise Selina Tobaccowala, one of the most respected leaders in the Silicon Valley. She's had an uncanny knack of reinventing herself, starting over and succeeding time and again. Selina co-founded Evite right after she graduated from Stanford, which was acquired by IAC. She then worked as the SVP of Product & Technology at Ticketmaster Europe. In her next role she joined SurveyMonkey as President & CTO when it was a 20 person team - and helped grow its revenues over 10x in the next 5 years. She is now a co-founder at her most recent venture Gixo. In today's episode, we talk about it was like during the first internet boom when Selina started her first business Evite. We dive into the nuances of virality and freemium models. We also talk quite a bit about Dave Goldberg, the former CEO of SurveyMonkey who was a mentor to Selina. We go into health, the psychology of fitness - and how Selina's new startup Gixo leverages both consumer psychology and technology to help people get fit.  This is a wide-ranging, in-depth conversation that I'm excited to bring to you this week!Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/surveys-invites-surveymonkey-evite-selina-tobaccowala-gixo/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

  It's finally here! After months of procrastination and fantasizing - and many more months of eventual research, reachouts, edits and agonizing.... the first episode of the How Things Grow podcast is here! My guest today is a man whom I've admired for a long time. Adam Lovallo runs some of the best-attended conferences in the mobile apps space.But before Adam started his first conference, he cut his teeth in the whirlwind that was the daily deals space. He worked at LivingSocial, where he came in as an intern - and grew to be the Head of User Acquisition & Growth, managing 9 figure budgets and a team of 15 people. He saw the company grow from 4 people to 5000 people. He saw from close up the meteoric rise, slowdown, crash and steady-state settling of the daily deals space. We dive into so many things - including, surprisingly, the hyper-viral growth of early Facebook apps. Keep listening to find out why we go there. :).Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://howthingsgrow.co/1-rise-decline-settling-daily-deals-adam-lovallo-grow-co-ex-livingsocial/**Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

How Things Grow tells the stories of the people who help companies, technologies and economic systems take off.  Each episode features an interview with one of the leading growth practitioners, entrepreneurs, experts or historians in the world today.   How Things Grow is presented by Shamanth Rao, mobile growth leader and writer. Shamanth is the VP of Growth at FreshPlanet, and led or managed growth leading up to two acquisitions in the past. He also was the travel editor of Mint Lounge(formerly partner newspaper of Wall Street Journal in India) - and has produced many acclaimed feature-length pieces as a writer.  **Get more goodies here:http://MobileUserAcquisitionShow.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Andreas is the founder of Nibble Apps.  The team is behind some of the best selling Food and Drink apps for iPhone and iPad. Their most recent success is the FitMenCook app, which became a number 1 Food and Drink app in 82 countries. Beyond apps, Andreas is a believer in creating liveable cities and promotes cycling through LondonCyclist.co.uk Ian and Andreas discuss: Surveying/questioning customers to shape an app Sharing ideas for customer feedback Collaborating with partners with existing audiences Outperforming Snoop Dog  iOS & Android strategies Outsourcing development to Poland Company structures and dynamics Strategy for hitting the app store charts Scale up Future roadmap Audience Questions Show Sponsors:- Gym Plan App - Personal Trainer Get jacked & melt fat, no matter what it takes.

Steve Young from AppMasters is an indie app creator and knows how difficult it is to "make it" in the app business. He has a podcast, blog and YouTube channel called AppMasters where he wants to bring you the most action-packed advice about product design, app marketing, business and app design. Anyone can get anything built, but how do you know an idea is worth building? How do you design and launch it correctly? Steve covers all of this and more in this must-listen episode. Resources App Masters (app Marketing Agency) App Marketing (Podcast) Steve Young (YouTube) Steve Young (LinkedIn) Fortafy Games (Game Publisher) App Advice: (Reviews Of The Latest Apps) Sensor Tower: (Get App Keywords And Analytics) Mobile Action: (App Store Optimization)

Nat Robinson is the Head of Marketing at MileIQ, a mobile that functions as an automatic mileage tracker for driving deductions and expenses. It has revolutionized the workflows as well as saved time and money for a variety of users from self-employed professionals to large enterprise organizations. MileIQ’s parent company, Mobile Data Labs, was acquired by Microsoft in late 2015. Prior to MileIQ, Nat was the VP of Marketing at VMWare and worked with SlideRocket, a PowerPoint competitor. He started his marketing career at Oracle, where he spent 13 years ultimately serving as a VP of Corporate Marketing. The topics discussed in this episode include how your product could be your best marketing, an example of approaching acquisition from the bottom up, and the value of the emotional response created by your product.

How is the dating app space evolving, and what data strategies should you be looking at for your app? In this episode James Peng, Head of Mobile & Social Acquisition at the Match Group speaks with Mobile Growth President Dave Westin on Data Strategies, App Virality, and Mobile App Marketing trends to look out for.

Peggy Anne Salz continues the Mobile Heroes series showcasing user acquisition experts with Matt Widdoes, who talks about his transition from professional poker to app marketing. Drawing from his experience at brands including Red Bull and his current responsibilities at mobile games giant King, Matt gives his pick of tops tips and valuable advice to help us understand the tools, networks and approaches to A/B testing that will deliver positive campaign results. Why did Liftoff - a full-service mobile app marketing and retargeting platform - choose Matt to join the ranks of Mobile Heroes and UA Ninjas? Listen in and find out.

In this episode you will find out how Mr Jump earns $20k per day employing Chartboost's games-only platform for serving ads and why online video important for mobile app marketing strategy.

Mobile app marketing is mostly an art which is practiced in the dark. Marketers make very important decisions based on their gut feeling and competitors research because both App Store and Google Play do not have a mechanism for split testing to know the best working options. Even in the absence of A/B testing in app stores, it is possible to do split testing. Find out how to do that.

It is getting tougher every day to acquire new users for your apps and so the goal of this podcast is to make the complex nature of app marketing both clean and simple. This series of podcasts will cover the key topics of app marketing, which are: app store optimization (ASO), mobile SEO, app promotion, app ranking, app advertising, app monetization and so on. We will also discuss noteworthy failures in order to learn lessons from them.

In the current day and age, it is no longer a case of asking whether to focus on mobile app marketing or not. There were almost 1.3 million apps available on Google Play in July 2014. Similarly the number of apps available on Apple App Store was 1.2 million. Cost per install, also known as CPI, increased too. How do you make sure your app gets its time in the spotlight? This is where mobile app marketing comes in. It is a complex process, but if you follow certain guidelines, this process becomes as simple as ABC.

Google AdWords Doubles Down On Mobile App Marketing; Introduces New Enterprise-Class Tools  as David speaks  with Larry Kim, the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of WordStream who was on location and learned of the announcement.Related articles across the webMobile PPC and PPC Not Provided with Melissa MackeyWhy Social PPC is Becoming More of a Thing Than Paid SocialMobile PPC AdvertisingFacebook Exchange Why We Should Be Using? Tracking Offline Conversion Into Online SystemsNegative Keywords and Search Query ReportsHow Adwords will be Affected by Google Instant

Google AdWords Doubles Down On Mobile App Marketing; Introduces New Enterprise-Class Tools  as David speaks  with Larry Kim, the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of WordStream who was on location and learned of the announcement.Related articles across the webMobile PPC and PPC Not Provided with Melissa MackeyWhy Social PPC is Becoming More of a Thing Than Paid SocialMobile PPC AdvertisingFacebook Exchange Why We Should Be Using? Tracking Offline Conversion Into Online SystemsNegative Keywords and Search Query ReportsHow Adwords will be Affected by Google Instant

I love it when I can help promote the giveaway of FREE money! The Keller Williams Mobile App contest also makes a great study on the conversion funnel concepts applied to a 320 x 480 pixel screen of an iPhone. It requires a whole different level of thought process in designing the app, the advertising, the landing page, and follow-up sequence. In this episode I want you to enter to win 50 grand and take away some of the most advanced landing page strategies ever taught on the internet.

Hi there! To help Chasing Product grow, please take a moment to visit iTunes and give the show a 5-star rating. Thanks! After two episodes of bootstrapped product founders with Saas apps, I went mobile! Episode 3 features a talk with Andrey Butov, the founder of Antair Software & creator of more than 2 dozen Read More The post Episode 3: Mobile App Marketing and Double-Bootstrapping w/Andrey Butov appeared first on Chasing Product.

Hi there! To help Chasing Product grow, please take a moment to visit iTunes and give the show a 5-star rating. Thanks! After two episodes of bootstrapped product founders with Saas apps, I went mobile! Episode 3 features a talk with Andrey Butov, the founder of Antair Software & creator of more than 2 dozen Read More The post Episode 3: Mobile App Marketing and Double-Bootstrapping w/Andrey Butov appeared first on Chasing Product.