Shows
The Breakout Growth PodcastCracking the Viral Loop: Calendly’s Playbook for Freemium GrowthListen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTubeEpisode Overview:In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr sit down with Darren Chait, VP of Marketing at Calendly to explore the strategies that have propelled the company’s success. Calendly’s viral growth model and product-led growth (PLG) strategy have made it a must-have tool for millions of professionals, and Darren shares the lessons, challenges, and wins that have defined the company’s journey.From leveraging a natural viral loop to prioritizing retention and optimizing cross-functional collaboration, this conversation is pac...
2025-04-0852 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastAI as Your Growth Partner: Practical Strategies From Expert Justin KistnerListen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTubeEpisode Overview:In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr explore how growth professionals should be thinking about and using AI to win. Our guest is Justin Kistner, founder of CopyClub.ai and CopySub. Justin is on a mission to help individuals and teams unlock the potential of AI, and his approach will likely change how you think about and use AI to advance your growth playbook every day.From building a "context library" to rethinking how we prompt...
2025-01-091h 01
The Breakout Growth PodcastThe Duolingo Playbook: What Startups Can Learn From Gina Gotthilf's Growth StrategiesListen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTubeEpisode Overview:In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and co-host Ethan Garr are joined by Gina Gotthilf, co-founder of a stealth-mode education startup backed by a $13M seed round led by Khosla Ventures. Gina shares her journey from launching Tumblr in Brazil to leading growth at Duolingo, and now to building the future of college. This conversation dives deep into the lessons Gina learned from scaling some of the most iconic tech brands and how she’s applying them to her current venture....
2024-12-0353 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastHow Continuous Discovery Fuels Growth: Insights from Teresa TorresListen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTubeEpisode Overview:In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr sit down with Teresa Torres, Product Discovery Coach at Product Talk and author of Continuous Discovery Habits. Teresa is a recognized leader in the product discovery space, helping product teams integrate continuous learning into their workflows to drive growth and innovation.Teresa shares her thoughts on how teams can shift from being feature-focused to outcome-focused and why that matters. And she also explains how companies can build products that improve...
2024-10-241h 06
The Breakout Growth PodcastSequoia’s Insights to Finding Product/Market Fit with Vickie PengListen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTubeEpisode Overview:In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr sit down with Vickie Peng, a partner at Sequoia Capital and former product leader at Instagram and Polyvore. Vickie shares her journey from leading product growth to the world of venture capital and offers a deeper look into how Sequoia identifies and supports early-stage startups on their path to product/market fit (PMF).Through her experiences, Vickie outlines the critical factors that lead to sustainable growth, including why “co...
2024-10-101h 04
The Breakout Growth PodcastHow to Find Product/Market Fit: A VC’s TakeListen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTubeEpisode Overview:In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr engage with Pablo Srugo, a Partner at Mistral VC and Host of The Product Market Fit Show Podcast. Pablo delves into the essentials of finding and leveraging product/market fit from a venture capitalist's perspective, sharing unique insights shaped by his dual role as a VC and podcast host.What You’ll Learn:* Venture Insights: Pablo shares why he started his podcast and how it serves as a strategic to...
2024-09-2459 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastFrom Bootstrapping to AI-Powered Research: The GWI Growth JourneyListen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTubeEpisode Overview:In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr sit down with Tom Smith, CEO and Founder of GWI, a London-based consumer research software company. Tom shares the 15-year journey of GWI, from its bootstrapped beginnings to its current position as a global leader in consumer insights. The conversation explores how GWI has scaled by leveraging technology, particularly the recent integration of AI, to make consumer data more accessible and actionable for companies worldwide.What You’ll Learn:* Fr...
2024-09-1355 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastLessons from a Global Growth Adventure: Sean Ellis on 100 Days Around the WorldListen now on Apple, Spotify and YouTubeEpisode Overview: The Breakout Growth Podcast took a break while Sean Ellis was on an epic three-month world tour, where he connected with startups and growth teams across the globe. So, to kick things back into gear, Ethan Garr takes the interviewer’s microphone in this episode to find out what Sean discovered, shared, and learned on his journey.From the bustling streets of São Paulo to the tech hubs of Singapore, Sean shares the insights, challenges, and surprises he encountered along the way. Whether you...
2024-08-3049 min
Our Kids Play HockeyThe Ride to the Rink: NHL VP of Hockey Ops Sean Ellis on Handling Emotions and Respect in HockeyIn this episode of The Ride To The Rink, we're thrilled to have Sean Ellis, Vice President of Hockey Operations for the NHL, join us. Sean works in the NHL’s Situation Room in Toronto, making crucial calls during games that can turn the tide of play.Sean shares invaluable advice for young hockey players on how to respond to calls on the ice. He discusses the importance of managing emotions, whether it's a good call or a bad one, and how to use those feelings to fuel your performance positively. Sean emphasizes personal accountability, re...
2024-05-2314 min
Our Kids Play HockeyInside the NHL Situation Room: A Conversation with Sean EllisOn this week's episode of "Our Kids Play Hockey," we take you behind the scenes look at NHL operations with our special guest, Sean Ellis, a Vice President of Hockey Operations at the NHL. We dive deep into the mechanics and the thrill of managing the famed NHL Situation Room.Key Highlights:Sean's Hockey Journey:Sean shares his personal journey from playing junior hockey in Massachusetts to finding his path in the NHL. Discover the series of fortunate events and the pivotal decisions that shaped his career in hockey operations.
2024-05-181h 17
Statements of IntentEpisode 8 | "Don't Be Short-Term Focused" - Sean Ellis | Statements of Intent PodcastIn this episode of Statements of Intent, host David Mannheim talks to Sean Ellis, author of 'Hacking Growth' and founder of Qualaroo and Growth Hackers, about improving long-term growth in eCommerce. They discuss the importance of customer satisfaction and delivering value to ensure sustainable growth, the necessity of setting the right objectives, and the balance between focusing on revenue and growth. Ellis emphasises the need for cross-functional team alignment and the shift from short-term to long-term focus. The conversation sheds light on strategies for maintaining a strong customer base and the dangers of over-reliance on short-term success metrics.
2024-02-2123 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastApril Dunford Shares How to Position for GrowthIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with positioning expert, April Dunford, author of the best-selling books, “Obviously Awesome” and “Sales Pitch.” April had a successful career as a marketing and operations executive at companies including IBM and Nortel and it was in these roles that she developed her passion and approach to building effective positioning. Today she shares this passion and her knowledge as a consultant, speaker, and writer with companies around the world. In “Sales Pitch”, April lays out he...
2023-12-201h 02
The Breakout Growth PodcastInternational Expansion as a Growth Lever, Another Chat With AllTrails CEOIf you want to know just how awesome AllTrails is, just ask Apple! Out of over 2 million apps in the App Store, AllTrails is one of just three finalists waiting to hear if they have been selected as Apple’s 2023 App of the Year. So, of course, we are delighted to welcome back to the podcast, Ron Schneidermann, AllTrails’s CEO. Ron first joined Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr for a chat back in early 2022. At the time, the company was riding Covid-driven enthusiasm for socially distanced activities and had recently raised $150 million in pri...
2023-11-281h 03
The Breakout Growth PodcastBefore you Invest in Tools, Heed this Advice From Pendo’s CEOAccording to Todd Olson, Pendo’s founder and CEO, ‘the market isn’t just receptive to AI, it’s demanding it!’ So in this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr dive deep with Todd, to better understand what this and other changes in the world of product, marketing, and growth will mean for businesses. Pendo helps companies accelerate how they build and launch products that customers actually want by combining the power of analytics tools with messaging and customer experience features. For Product-Led Growth companies, this can be quite p...
2023-09-2553 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastBeyond the AI Hype Cycle: Moloco VP Explains How to Drive Real ResultsIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat AI and growth with Ben Jeger, Moloco’s Vice President of EMEA. Moloco’s machine learning-based advertising solutions help marketers take advantage of advertising opportunities outside of the “walled gardens” of Google, Meta, and Amazon. In the past year, AI has taken on a life of its own for good reason, but we wanted to dig beneath the hype cycle to understand how this technology will really impact the world of growth. With Ben, we got just that.
2023-09-131h 01
The Breakout Growth PodcastThrive Market’s Winning Growth Formula: Velocity x Win Rate x Impact = GrowthIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Jonas Klink, Thrive Market’s Vice President of Product Management & Design. Thrive Market is a subscription-based online grocery delivery service that aims to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone. And that is a perfect fit for Jonas, who has over 15 years of experience in eCommerce working at companies like eBay, Walmart, and WeightWatchers. As he thought about the next chapter in his career, Jonas wanted to find a mission-driven company where he could make a diffe...
2023-05-3058 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastBusiness-in-a-Box: CEO Describes doola’s Mission to “Initialize” New CompaniesIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Arjun Mahadevan, Co-Founder and CEO of doola, a launchpad for your first or next business. Most founders want to spend their time finding Product/Market Fit, but unfortunately, the work of just running a business itself can often get in the way. Doola looks to help founders remove these distractions by offering a “business-in-a-box” solution. The company helps you form your LLC, then manage everything from bookkeeping and banking, to taxes and compliance. O...
2023-04-2557 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastBusting Marketplace Growth Myths: SidelineSwap CEO Shares Why the Grind Never StopsIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Brendan Candon, Co-Founder and CEO of SidelineSwap, an online marketplace for sporting goods. “Recommerce” is becoming increasingly popular. Reusing, reselling, and recycling used items creates value for buyers and sellers, and the process of trading in and trading up can actually be kind of fun. Brendan and his team have leaned into this by making it easy for athletes, parents, and coaches to find new homes for gear that might otherwise languish in their closets or end up...
2023-03-0953 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastWill a Chief Growth Officer’s Hyper-Growth Journey Propel him to Success as a Founder?In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr are joined by Hugo Pereira as he describes the experience of bringing the lessons of leading a hyper-growth rocketship into his new role as a startup founder. When Hugo first appeared on the podcast in 2020 he was Chief Growth Officer of EVBox, a manufacturer of electric vehicle charging stations. The market was exploding, and Hugo had discovered that the more he and his team leaned into customer advocacy as a mechanism for leading their industry, the more success they...
2023-02-071h 00
The Breakout Growth PodcastAfter Record-Setting IPO in 2020, ZoomInfo CEO Gives us an UpdateIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr catch up with Henry Schuck, CEO & Founder of ZoomInfo. We first spoke with Henry after his company’s 2020 IPO. So in this conversation, we wanted to see what has changed for him and his team over the last few years. What we found is a much larger company, expanding into new areas, and taking on increasingly greater challenges. And for Henry, that has meant changes in how he leads his now 4000+ person team (it wa...
2022-12-141h 04
The Breakout Growth PodcastThe Role of IT in Growth: Accuray’s CIO Explains ConnectionIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr speak with GS Jha, who serves as both Global Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at Accuray, a manufacturer of radiotherapy technologies. When you hear GS’s story it’s evident where his passion for life sciences comes from. As a child growing up in India, GS saw firsthand the impacts of poor access to medicine on his community. And while he thought that his contribut...
2022-11-2953 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastLessons From Chameleon’s Big Pivot from Product-Led to Sales-Led GrowthProduct-Led Growth is all the rage, but it wasn’t working Today, things are looking good for Chameleon and its CEO, Pulkit Agrawal. Since we recorded this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast with him, Chameleon announced a successful Series A. But in 2015 the company was heading towards the startup scrap heap. That’s where co-hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr pick up this conversation. Pulkit and his co-founders had built a product that offered simple tools to personalize customer experiences with product tours and tooltips...
2022-11-1552 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastHarry’s CTO Explains How Their “Go-To-Market” Disrupts Traditional BrandsIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, Sean Ellis, and Ethan Garr talk with Sandeep Chouksey, Chief Technical Officer of Harry's, the company that manufactures and sells men's personal care products via online and retail channels. It turns out Harry’s has a superpower! They can spin up a direct-to-consumer brand in just a matter of weeks, and then–if the brand’s potential is validated–roll into an omnichannel marketing strategy almost as quickly. Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, and other giants o...
2022-11-0150 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastTech Meets Sports & Entertainment: San Jose Sharks Growth StoryIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, Sean Ellis, and Ethan Garr talk with Jonathan Becher, President of Sharks Sports & Entertainment. If you are a hockey fan you probably know the San Jose Sharks, the flagship brand of Jonathan’s organization, but in this discussion, we quickly learned that when it comes to growth, the sports team itself is just one component of an exciting and complex ecosystem. With its huge media presence, four buildings (arenas and skating facilities), and fans with varying interest levels and u...
2022-10-181h 03
The Breakout Growth PodcastHow Startups Should Think About SEO from Shopify's Former DirectorIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Kevin Indig, who at the time of the interview was the Director of SEO at Shopify. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an important growth driver for startups, but it is an easy channel to misunderstand and get wrong. We wanted to talk to someone who is best-in-class in this field to separate truth from fiction and find out how growth leaders can support, leverage, and embrace SEO in their businesses. Fortunately, Kevin brought his “A” game to t...
2022-10-1155 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastSetting Expectations Around Chaos: Paddle’s CMO on Leading for GrowthIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Andrew Davies, Chief Marketing Officer at Paddle. Offering a complete payment infrastructure for businesses in a single stack, Paddle is particularly valuable for PLG businesses, and helps more than 3000 customers in 200 markets set up and sell their SaaS offerings. This year Paddle has acquired Profitwell, the recurring revenue growth platform, and raised $200 million in funding (bringing the company’s total valuation above $1.4 billion). As CMO, Andrew intends to continue driving aggressive growth by adapting a playbook he has...
2022-09-2055 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastEnable Injections: Optimizing the CFO’s Role in Driving GrowthIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by SAP, the world’s leading ERP provider, Sean Ellis, and Ethan Garr chat with Tim Flaherty, Chief Financial Officer at Enable Injections. MedTech is an area we hadn’t explored before, but we often find that going outside of what you know can offer new inspiration and insights for all of us working to drive breakout growth success. Enable Injections is developing enFuse®, an innovative device designed to improve the lives of patients who depend on medical infusions. This less disruptive system for delive...
2022-09-0652 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastRevenueCat’s Winning Strategy for Helping Mobile Developers Power GrowthIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Jacob Eiting, Co-Founder and CEO of RevenueCat. Building the backend system to support subscriptions in a mobile app can take months. Jacob had done this work himself multiple times as an engineer and realized there had to be a better way. So today, mobile developers rely on RevenueCat’s APIs and SDKs to quickly add, manage, and grow subscription revenue in their businesses.For startups, time is a precious commodity, so being able to offload work that isn’t direct...
2022-08-3059 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastGrowth Snack: Finding Your First Growth ChannelHow do you find your first growth channel and is that what you should be thinking about today? That’s the topic of this week’s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. We dive into common mistakes startups make in searching for that first scalable channel, and offer some practical advice to help you make good decisions along the way. We also mention a couple of resources you might want to check out: * “Traction,” a book by DuckDuckGo Founder, Gabriel Weinberg of...
2022-08-1709 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastGetting out of the Way: Bootstrapping Netcore to Nearly $100 Million in ARRIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Rajesh Jain, founder and managing director of Netcore Cloud. Rajesh bootstrapped Netcore into existence in 1998. Today, still without any outside investment, this global marketing technology company earns nearly $100 million in ARR. More than five thousand brands use Netcore to help create digital experiences for their customers with email, personalizations, nudges, and other tools. In India, the company has captured about 75% of the B2C email market, and they are a dominating force in many emerging markets aro...
2022-07-2153 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastFTD Turnaround CEO's Survive to Thrive Lessons for StartupsIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Charlie Cole, Chief Executive Officer at FTD Flowers. In March of 2020, it was day one of a global pandemic, and day one of Charlie’s new job at a 110-year-old, global flower delivery company that had recently gone through a bankruptcy. The odds seemed stacked against him, but in this conversation, we discover that whether you are managing a startup or a turnaround there are fundamental similarities that power a winning approach. Most startup leaders–under tremendo...
2022-06-281h 04
The Breakout Growth PodcastGrowth Snack: Move from growth chaos to controlGrowth isn’t about doing everything, it’s about doing the right things. That’s the topic of this week’s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short. This concept came into sharp focus for Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr when they spoke with Charlie Cole, the CEO who has led the turnaround of FTD Flowers (full episode next week). A standout learning from that discussion is that startups and turnarounds often make the same crucial mistake: they try to do everything all at once. So where should you point your relentless focus? And what...
2022-06-2207 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastProduct-Led is All the Rage: CEO of Fireflies.ai Explains his Winning StrategyIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Krish Ramineni, Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai. The Fireflies.ai video conferencing bot is an AI assistant that takes searchable notes to help teams maximize their productivity on Zoom, MSFT, Webex, and other video conferencing platforms. We dive in with Krish to get to the heart of why Product-Led Growth has proven to be the right approach for his team, why it is not right for everyone, and why Fireflies now plans to move beyond their purely self-serve model. ...
2022-06-0855 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastGrowth Snack: Can you win with a “me too” product?Is differentiation always important? If you are trying to grow, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr, say it absolutely is, but it is not just about offering unique features. That’s the topic of this week’s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short. Learn why it iscrucial to understand what the must-have experience looks like through the eyes of your customers, and why that is important in helping you to differentiate your business even in a crowded market. You might be surprised as you learn how Sean approached differentiation when he was interim head...
2022-05-1109 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastCEO Explains Changes in Approach that Led to Uizard’s Remarkable Growth SpikeIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Tony Beltramelli, Uizard’s Co-founder and CEO. If you can picture a perfect up-and-to-the-right curve, then you can visualize what growth looks like for this AI-powered product design tool created for non-designers. To learn what is powering the company’s success we asked Tony to dive further into a LinkedIn post he published where he asked the question, “What did we learn and what did we do differently?” It turned into an amazing discussion. Product and growth peop...
2022-05-0357 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastGrowth Snack: How to Create Passionate Referral CustomersIf you want to generate more raving fans for your business build a machine to understand what drives some of your users from awareness to white-hot enthusiasm. That is the theme of this week’s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. The ”Perfect Customer Loop” is a way to visualize the journey that evangelizer-customers follow as they try, use, and fall in love with your product. In our last Growth Snack, we talked about the trap companies often fall into when they achieve product/market fit but fail...
2022-04-2709 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastMayur Gupta Brings Spotify and Freshly Experience to Transform Growth at GannettIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Mayur Gupta, Gannett’s Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer. Very few industries have been as dramatically impacted by digital disruption as the newspaper industry, so we wanted to learn from Mayur how he approaches and looks to drive growth in a world of constant change. Gannett owns USA Today and more than 1000 other daily and weekly publications. As the world has shifted from print to digital consumption of media, the company has had to evolve from its leg...
2022-04-191h 01
The Breakout Growth PodcastGrowth Snack: How to Make Product/Market Fit a Tool for Driving GrowthWhat are the biggest mistakes companies make after they find product/market fit? Find out in this week’s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. It can be hard enough to find product/market fit in the first place, but even companies that do achieve this milestone often fail to build sustainable growth. So in this discussion, we tackle two key reasons why companies tend to stumble at this juncture. But more importantly, we talk about the strategies successful teams employ to avoid these errors and thr...
2022-04-1208 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastWhen Apple Made App Tracking Harder, AppsFlyer Rose to the ChallengeIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Oren Kaniel, AppsFlyer’s CEO and cofounder. AppsFlyer is a mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform. When Apple announced the vast app tracking transparency changes it deployed in 2021 it shook the Mobile Marketing Partner (MMP) ecosystem. So we wanted to learn from Oren how a fast-growing company like his was able to navigate and lead through this massive sea change. One of the standout moments from our conversation was when Oren explained that as these external force...
2022-04-051h 00
The Breakout Growth PodcastGrowth Snack: Prioritizing High Impact Growth Experiments with ICEPrioritizing experiments is a bit of an art and a science, but how do you get it right? Find out in this week’s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. When Sean was struggling to find a good way for teams he led to compare growth ideas across dimensions he needed a tool that would balance the need to move the needle with the need to move fast. He came up with ICE scoring, and since then, thousands of growth teams have used this as their sta...
2022-03-2910 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastBetterMe’s Founder & CEO on Growing Health & Wellness Apps to Over 100 Million UsersIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Victoria Repa who is the founder and CEO of BetterMe, a Ukraine-based developer of health and wellness mobile apps. We have held off on publishing the podcast for a few weeks as the world has been focused on the tragic situation in Ukraine. We did not want to do anything to shift the focus but decided to share this episode now in the hopes that it could help Victoria amplify her messages to the growth community asking for help and support in Uk...
2022-03-1054 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastRecognizing Value: Blueboard’s COO Explains Why Companies Send Employees SkydivingIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Kevin Yip, Blueboard’s Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer. Blueboard is a platform that allows companies to reward employees with amazing experiences; anything from a skydiving adventure to dinner at a Michelin-rated restaurant is fair game. How does a company with such a unique business concept not only achieve product/market fit but stay dynamic enough to retain it through challenging times? In this episode, we find out. While entrepreneurs often dream of bringing new ideas to ma...
2022-02-221h 00
The Breakout Growth PodcastGrowth Snack: Write the Report Before You Run the ExperimentHow can growth teams win by borrowing a bit from their engineering counterparts? Find out in this week’s Growth Snack: The Breakout Growth Podcast Short. Here, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr discuss the idea that growth teams win when they “Write the Report Before they Run the Experiment”. Ethan says growth teams that do this run better experiments, more frequently, with more predictable outcomes. Sean likes the idea because he has seen just how difficult it can be to get high-tempo testing to take flight. Because this tech...
2022-02-1508 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastFrom Facebook to Instacart: Head of Growth Shares Her Big Career Change InsightsThis week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast is sponsored by Rise with SAP and features Garima Sinha, Instacart’s Head of Growth. Instacart makes it easy to get groceries conveniently delivered to your home, but that is just the beginning. The company is working to bring that same convenience to a wide range of products we use in our daily lives. Garima joined less than a year ago after serving in growth roles at Facebook, so we wanted to learn more about what drove her successful transition and how her experience can help other growth professionals.
2022-02-071h 02
The Breakout Growth PodcastAllTrails CEO Shares Unconventional Growth Approach that Helped Land $150M in New CapitalThis week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast is sponsored by Rise with SAP and features Ron Schneidermann, the CEO of AllTrails. Conventional wisdom says that you need product/market fit before you can grow, but sometimes conventional wisdom gets it wrong. For AllTrails Product/Channel Fit came first. Today, outdoor enthusiasts love the AllTrails mobile app and website and use them to navigate and enhance their adventures with hand-curated trail maps, and other useful tools like crowdsourced photos and reviews. But, when Ron started, he found that the product was actually quit...
2022-01-251h 04
The Breakout Growth PodcastRocketship Jumping: Jon Chang Explains his Move from $45B Klarna to New Early-Stage StartupIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr speak with Jon Chang who recently took on the Head of Growth role at Nate. Nate is a new service that allows consumers to buy products from any e-commerce site with just one click. You may remember Jon from his first appearance on the podcast when he was a growth lead at Klarna, a rocketship Fintech company now valued at more than $45 Billion. His experience and approach offer valuable insights for leaders at fast-growing companies struggling to hire the right people to build on...
2022-01-111h 00
The Breakout Growth PodcastHacking Growth Coauthors Morgan Brown and Sean Ellis Discuss Latest Growth InsightsIn this week’s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by Rise with SAP, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr are joined by Sean’s co-author of “Hacking Growth” Morgan Brown. The book was published back in 2017, so in this episode, we get to hear the two guys who literally wrote the book on growth “geek out” about their most important growth learnings since their initial collaboration. Morgan’s perspective on growth has been shaped by the leadership roles he has held at Inman News and Facebook, and in his current Vice-President...
2021-12-131h 01
The Breakout Growth PodcastCrushing it: Truebill's Journey from Death's Doorstep to Hyper GrowthIn the last 48 months, the fintech app Truebill, which helps users manage their personal finances, has had 47 months of exceptional growth. But in this week’s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by Rise with SAP, Ethan Garr and Sean Ellis find out that before this hypergrowth tear began, the company was actually on death’s doorstep. Four years ago, the two-year-old startup had just three months of runway remaining, and Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Yahya Mokhtarzada was told by one of his investors that the only option was to sel...
2021-11-3059 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastHubspot’s SVP Marketing Explains How Company Has Become a $37B JuggernautShow Notes: In this week’s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, brought to you by Rise with SAP, Ethan Garr and Sean Ellis speak with Kieran Flanagan, Hubspot’s Senior Vice President of Marketing to learn what’s driving Hubspot’s unstoppable growth. With more than 100,000 customers and over $1 billion dollars in ARR, Hubspot is simply on fire. Kieran has been a growth leader at the company for nearly ten years. During that time the business has gone through massive changes. From its giant bet on Freemium to...
2021-11-1652 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastCommunity-Led Growth is the Next Big Thing; Director of Product at Wyze Explains WhyIn this week’s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Ethan Garr and Sean Ellis chat with Mark Tan, Director of Product, Platform & Community at Wyze, a smart home tech startup offering affordable cameras, lighting, sensors, and other devices to more than 5 million customers. But this conversation goes well beyond just the Wyze growth story. Mark is a leader in the growing Community-Led Growth movement, so it’s through that lens that we look to understand how companies are leveraging their own audiences of passionate users to achieve success. Over our 50 episode history, we hav...
2021-11-0352 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastCreating Impact: How Heap’s CMO views team, company, and customer growth“Are you creating impact?” That is the fundamental question that drives Heap’s Chief Marketing Officer, Lynn Girotto. Heap’s analytics platform is designed to help digital product managers “know where to look” by automatically surfacing insights and identifying friction points across the customer journey. Thanks to a unique approach to capturing data, where every end-user interaction is tracked, Lynn feels Heap is able to drive impact in more meaningful and valuable ways for clients. This episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast struck a chord for hosts Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr. When data is democr...
2021-10-201h 06
The Breakout Growth PodcastAtlassian Offers a Masterclass in Growth; Senior Growth Product Manager Shows us HowAtlassian is the powerhouse behind popular productivity software brands including Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello. Their solutions help more than 170,000 businesses, and in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr are joined by Atlassian’s Senior Growth Product Manager, Andrea Ho. Today, Atlassian is one of the most respected and fast-growing companies in the world, but it took some time before the company was able to dial in growth. Andrea says she and many others in Australia have been attracted to this “homegrown unicorn” because the company is always i...
2021-07-0749 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastShutterstock Chief Revenue Officer Explains Focus on Culture and Creativity as Valuation SoarsYou likely know Shutterstock as a stock photography company, but in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, we discover that in its 17-year history, Shutterstock has grown into a creative powerhouse that provides everything from motion and special effects to music and full production services. When Jamie Elden joined as Chief Global Revenue Officer the company was positioning itself around its technology, but Jamie who comes from a creative background felt that Shutterstock primarily spoke to creative audiences. To drive sustainable growth, he believed Shutterstock would need to refocus as a creative c...
2021-06-231h 07
The Breakout Growth PodcastExperimenting with TV? Tatari and Vuori Show Why TV is No Longer a Crazy Growth GambleTelevision advertising used to be the domain of large, Fortune 500-type companies with deep pockets who could afford to invest in channels with low ROI visibility. For startups, TV advertising seemed to be an expensive experiment that would be pretty tough to prove its effectiveness. However, in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast with Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr, we find out that things have changed dramatically. TV advertising is now more accessible, trackable, and very scalable if a test yields positive results. To unpack the new potential of this medium we b...
2021-06-071h 02
The Breakout Growth PodcastFrom Uber and Coinbase to Curve, VP Product Shares His Views on GrowthThe lines between product and growth are often gray, and in this week’s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean and Ethan share more about this trend with their guest, JD Millwood, Vice-President of Product at Curve. Curve is a Fintech company on a mission to simplify the way people spend, send, see and save money. JD describes the Curve debit card as the first over the top platform for banking, and with innovations like the ability to finance purchases you have already made, he and his team seek to create a new...
2021-05-171h 02
The Breakout Growth PodcastHow Notarize overcame legal barriers to drive 600% growth in 2020In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean and Ethan have a learning-packed discussion with Pat Kinsel, Notarize’s Founder and CEO. Notarize provides an online service that makes the process of getting documents legally notarized fast and easy. Instead of meeting with a notary public in person, the entire process is managed digitally with integrated online meetings and digital signature technologies. The company’s journey began about 6 years ago when Pat, who had previously sold a business to Twitter, needed to get documents notarized When errors in the process turned into a stre...
2021-05-0347 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastRetention is Everyone’s Responsibility! A Conversation With Buffer’s CPORecently, we have focused the lens of The Breakout Growth Podcast on the role of product in driving sustainable growth. We had a super-interesting conversation with Georgia Vidler, Canva’s former Head of Product, and this week we picked up that theme with Maria Thomas, Buffer’s Chief Product Officer. Buffer provides social media tools to facilitate authentic engagement with end-users. Customers can pre-schedule posts on multiple channels, engage with commenters, create reports, and more using the service. Maria is relatively new to the company, having previously served as VP of Product Management at Bit...
2021-04-1453 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastTips for Building a Rocketship from Canva’s Former Head of ProductLooking back after you have stepped away from something is often a great way to gain valuable insights, and in this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean and Ethan have the unique opportunity to gain retrospective learnings from a conversation with Georgia Vidler, who, until recently, was Canva's Head of Product. If you are not familiar with Canva, their tagline says it all: “Amazingly simple graphic design software”. With a huge library of templates and a super-intuitive interface, Canva allows non-designers to create high-quality logos, social media ads, infographics, and more to power...
2021-04-0159 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastWhy UK’s Leading Online Pharmacy, Echo, Paused Growth at Height of Pandemic“Ultimately, what it meant was we had to figure out ways we could resonate with an older audience . . . Stop talking to 18-year-olds and start talking to 50-year-olds!" This turned out to be a key, data-driven learning for Bradley Fehler, Echo’s Head of Growth, and fortunately, he and his team started to figure this out before 2020 brought unexpected and explosive growth. Brad joins Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr on this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast to share Echo’s story of growing into England’s leading onl...
2021-03-1757 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastIs VR the Next Great Growth Frontier? FitXR’s Fitness App Makes the CaseSlip on your Oculus headset and FitXR will get your heart rate up. They are combining gaming, fitness, and virtual reality together to create immersive experiences where users can go dancing or jump into a boxing ring. The immersive part seems to really be working! “There have been some mishaps,” laughs Product Lead, Nejc Skoberne. “A few of our community members shared pictures of holes they accidentally punched in their walls.” Nejc is excited, because FitXR is on an accelerating growth trajectory, in a growing marketplace where the rules are yet to be written...
2021-03-051h 00
The Breakout Growth PodcastMobilizing Customers to Create a Movement: Virtuagym Saves Gym Owners and Trainers from RuinFew industries have been hit harder by Covid-19 than gyms, but despite the lockdowns and forced closures, many have actually weathered the storm. In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, we will find out how one company helped make that possible, and why their growth approach was crucial in supporting clients through these turbulent times. Daan Bakker is VirtuaGym’s VP of Growth and in our conversation, he explains that the company started with an app, and grew into an all-in-one tool that helps gyms and trainers navigate everything from scheduling to workout plans.
2021-02-1756 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastFrom Onboarding to Healthy Habits, Noom's Growth is Powered by PsychologyWe thought Noom was a weight loss company, but in this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr discovered that weight management is actually just the gateway the company is using to meet much larger objectives. In-fact, as Artem Petakov, Co-Founder and President of Noom explains, Noom is the largest consumer-facing healthcare company in the world, and its goal is to help people make healthy choices and to change people’s lives. During the pandemic, Noom’s popularity exploded, but their journey actually began more than 12 years ago, when Artem...
2021-02-021h 08
The Breakout Growth PodcastUnlocking Sustainable Growth: Expert Shares How to Dial In Product/Market FitIs it just luck that determines which companies successfully find and harness Product/Market Fit? Or are there specific strategies teams can employ to systematically take ideas through this elusive gate? In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis digs in with product management coach, speaker and author, Itamar Gilad to answer these questions and explain and uncover what every organization--from early startup to established team--can do to find and capitalize on product/market fit. On BreakoutGrowth.net, the new companion site to this podcast, Sean...
2021-01-1956 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastFrom Fear in 2020 to Hope in 2021, Sean and Ethan Discuss the Transition Over CoffeeIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, we (Sean and Ethan) invite you into our virtual living rooms for a cup of coffee and a bit of a change from our usual conversations with CEO’s, heads of growth, and leaders from the world’s fastest-growing companies. Our goal with the podcast is always to make growth more human, accessible, and actionable for our listeners. So as we start this new year, we wanted to look forward to what is next in the world of Breakout Growth through the lens of our own struggles, fears, accomplishments, and le...
2021-01-061h 05
The Breakout Growth PodcastBlinkist CEO Shares How Two Key Inflection Points Led to Breakout Growth“It is a superpower for anyone working in growth to know how to get their own data” CEO Holger Seim and his co-founders developed Blinkist to help users fit learning into their lives by reading or listening to “Blinks” - 15-minute summations of non-fiction books. He explains, “sometimes you need a three-course dinner, sometimes you need a snack, we are the snack.” In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast co-hosts, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr dive in with Holger to learn how the company has built a sustainable growth engine where focused effort on imp...
2020-12-211h 01
The Breakout Growth PodcastBalancing Customer Privacy and Growth, DuckDuckGo Challenges GoogleBrian Stoner says that Google, Facebook, and many other companies have made it their business models to track you online, but in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, he explains to hosts, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr, that while regulation may ultimately be the answer to this problem, consumers can fight back today with DuckDuckGo’s all-in-one mobile and desktop privacy solutions. At DuckDuckGo, Brian serves as Vice-President of Product, shaping the company’s browser extension and mobile app experiences. Consumers use these solutions to browse and search the Internet for free, but t...
2020-11-2446 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastSkillshare's VP Growth Explains how They've Accelerated Growth by Sparking Creativity for Millions of Online LearnersIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr speak with Kyle Jansen, Vice President of Growth at Skillshare, an online learning community that offers 30,000 classes focused on creative pursuits. As Covid-19 dramatically increased demand for online learning, Skillshare has leaned into a culture of experimentation where everyone in the organization is encouraged to contribute ideas to power growth.Buoyed by a $66 million fundraising round in the midst of the global pandemic, Kyle explains that the already cash-flow positive organization is looking to accelerate growth on multiple fronts. From expanding its international...
2020-11-1249 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastUniverse App Empowers Entrepreneurs to Build Websites Using Only Their iPhonesWith the Universe mobile app internet entrepreneurs create complete websites using only their iPhones. Joseph Cohen, the company’s Founder and CEO started with the idea that if you could empower creators to “build the internet” you could unlock a wave of creativity (4:36). In this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast he shares the Universe journey with Sean Ellis who is joined by Ethan Garr for the discussion.Universe was built based on the realization that today, creators use their phones to do everything from editing photos and making music, to shooting videos and writing books. Being...
2020-10-2948 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastKlarna, a $10B Fintech Unicorn, is Changing How People Shop Around the WorldTechnically, Klarna is a Fintech company; a Swedish bank that provides online financial services such as payments for online storefronts, direct payments, and more. However, in this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast we learn that Klarna is not an ordinary Fintech startup at all. Their breakout growth success, which has seen a valuation increase from $2.5B to more than $10B in just the past year and a quarter (5:40) offers powerful lessons on how growth is built on a foundation of strong product/market fit coupled with great execution, and a data-driven test/learn process. The c...
2020-10-0848 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastHow Neurobiology can ‘Unleash Your Primal Brain’ and be Used to Drive Growth According to Author Tim AshTim Ash ran the strategic Conversion Rate Optimization agency, SiteTuners for over 20 years, a business that has generated over $1.2 billion in value for its clients. At the core of that success was a deep understanding of neurobiology, which Tim explores in detail in his new book ‘Unleash Your Primal Brain’. In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Tim to better understand how “what makes us bizarrely and uniquely human” can be used to help us drive growth. The conversation is spirited as Tim holds some contrarian views to Sean when it comes to drivin...
2020-09-2455 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastBiggest Tech IPO in 2020, ZoomInfo's CEO Shares their $13B Growth JourneyCurrently valued at around $13 Billion, ZoomInfo, made its Initial Public Offering on NASDAQ in early June. It was the technology sector’s largest IPO of 2020, and in this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews ZoomInfo’s, CEO Henry Shuck. We discover how using data, technology, and insights, Henry and his team have built a platform that today is used by more than 200,000 sales and marketing professionals at 16,000 companies to help them find their next best customers.Henry explains that the journey began when he was a law school student. Having worked for a comp...
2020-09-1050 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastHow Coursera Has Accelerated Growth While Helping 65 Million Learners Gain New SkillsWith more than 4000 course offerings on its online education platform, over 65 million people have found opportunities to learn new skills and improve their lives through Coursera. That demand is growing rapidly as Covid-19 changes how we work and interact with the world around us. In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Shwetabh Mittal, Coursera’s Senior Director of Product Management to learn how the company has built a 3-sided platform in its mission to provide universal access to the world’s best education.Coursera offers learners access to high-quality classes from top univ...
2020-08-2750 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastHow Tally Overcame the Challenge of Trust for a New Financial Service to Drive Breakout GrowthIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Tally’s Vice President of Growth, Mark Powlen. Tally offers an automated debt manager, which analyzes a user’s financial profile to determine the best and fastest way to pay down credit card debt. Their algorithm finds the lowest available interest rates and leverages an integrated credit line to saves customers money as they reduce their debt. Tally only makes money when their customers derive this value, and this deliberate “alignment with users” is an underlying theme of Tally’s breakout growth success story (24:58).Making users less...
2020-08-1342 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastWhat's Driving Growth at the World's Fastest Growing Hardware Companies? Learnings from interviews with leaders at Mirror, Glowforge, EVBox, and AfterShokzIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis is joined once again by Ethan Garr to discuss what’s driving growth at the world’s fastest-growing companies. The conversation focuses on learnings from Sean’s interviews with companies nailing growth in the challenging world of Hardware. While Sean and Ethan expected growth for businesses building hard goods to be vastly different from their personal experiences leading growth for software and mobile apps, they found themselves pleasantly surprised as they honed in on learnings from hardware companies that are applicable for anyone seeking to drive breakout growth in their...
2020-07-3040 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastCEO of Leading Comparison Website, Finder.com, Describes How He Leads Global Growth via ReinventionIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews the Global Co-CEO of Finder, Fred Schebesta. Finder is on a mission to help people make better buying decisions with comparison tools, guides, and news, and their breakout growth story is one of constant reinvention. Fred wants Finder to be more than a unicorn, and to sustain growth long into the future (12:50). To do this, he believes the company needs to take big risks. Today, that means shifting the organization from a media company to a product and technology company.The company’s mobile app re...
2020-07-0252 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastGlowforge 3D Printers, Breakout Growth that Started with a $30M 30-Day Crowdfunding CampaignIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Marlo Struve, Glowforge’s Vice President of Growth. Glowforge is a 3D printer that allows crafters and makers to create unique and innovative things using a subtractive manufacturing process. Where traditional 3D printers add layers of material to create items, Glowforge carves away material using a CO2 laser to reveal a maker’s ideas for prototypes, parts, crafts, and gifts. Breakout growth started with a hugely successful 2015 crowdfunding campaign that yielded more $30 million dollars in 30 days, and while that did demonstrate incredible demand for the concept, it would actu...
2020-06-181h 00
The Breakout Growth PodcastWith 600 Employees, Growth Accelerated in 2019 for EV Box. CGO Explains How.In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Hugo Pereira, Chief Growth Officer of EVBox, a manufacturer of electric vehicle charging station solutions on a mission to drive sustainable mobility and a zero-emission world. Their breakout growth can partly be attributed to their focus of not just being a market leader in charging manufacturing and development, but instead on being an industry leader (27:56), building mindshare around electric vehicle adoption. To meet their mission and vision, EVBox shifted from a B2C to B2B2C approach and put an incredible emphasis on customer a...
2020-06-041h 03
The Breakout Growth PodcastEmplify's CEO Shares How His Team is Succeeding in the Face of COVID ChallengesIn this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Santi Jaramillo, CEO and cofounder of Emplify, a B2B company that combines software and consulting to deliver insights that unlock the potential in teams. We discussed: The challenging path that Emplify took to reach product/market fitHow Emplify drove interest using thought leadership and content marketingThe team structure that Emplify has used to convert highly engaged customersHow the Emplify team overcome the COVID 19 disruption to accelerate their company missionBeyond learning about Emplify’s approach to gro...
2020-05-2153 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastHitachi Solutions' Impressive Transformation to Agile Growth HackingIn this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Hitachi Solutions' SVP Operations Jessica Hawk and Growth Team Lead Dean Kroker. They both played a key role in driving growth from a small startup to hundreds of employees and an impressive acquisition by Hitachi.We discussed:How to overcome resistance to growth transformation in larger organizations.Their transformation over the last year from a traditional growth approach of an IT services business to one that effectively uses data and experimentation to accelerate growth. Their response to Covid 19 and how the...
2020-04-3059 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastStrong Mission Helps Sondermind Thrive in Covid 19 Crisis with New Remote SolutionIn this episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast I’m speaking with Mark Frank and Scott Orn from Sondermind, a company growing 20% month over month. The founding team of Sondermind recognized that mental health services are way too hard to get for many of the patients who need them. So they built a platform to make it easier for patients to find excellent mental healthcare professionals and navigate the challenges of paying for these services. Sondermind is needed now more than ever and due to their strong mission, they were quickly able to introduce a remote care option.
2020-04-1756 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastRevieve CEO, Sampo Parkkinen, Explains How Uncovering Value was Key to Unlocking GrowthIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Sampo Parkkinen, CEO of Revieve, an AI-driven beauty personalization platform that helps cosmetic brands and retailers drive revenue by improving their customer experiences. As physical retail cosmetic stores around the world close, this solution is increasingly important for driving sales online.In the interview, Parkkinen explains how Revieve didn’t really hit their growth stride until they realized what the true value is that they deliver. Since then, they’ve worked hard to align their team around delivering more of this value. While they largely have...
2020-03-2643 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastCalifornia’s Largest Cannabis Distributor Nabis CEO Shares His Growth Journey to Breakout SuccessIn this episode, Sean Ellis interviews Nabis Founder and CEO Vincent Ning to understand what is driving their breakout growth. Vincent tells the story of how they went from a couple of guys driving a van to a 120 person company moving over $100M in wholesale cannabis products. The YCombinator backed business is now a logistics powerhouse handling everything from product distribution to compliance. Vincent credits the biggest driver of growth to an industry that is booming. But he also says that their technology has played a big role in differentiating the service from competitors. For example, br...
2020-03-1951 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastBrynn Putnam, CEO of Mirror, on Launching a Breakout Growth Smart Hardware Device for FitnessIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Brynn Putnam, CEO of Mirror, a smart fitness hardware and subscription service for better at-home workouts. The product is essentially an elegant mirror that is also a personal fitness studio with content ranging from on-demand cardio classes to boxing and yoga. An important part of their value proposition is that unlike most exercise equipment, the Mirror takes up very little floor space. While common startup wisdom today touts that you should launch early with an MVP version of your product, the Mirror team wanted to en...
2020-03-1241 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastMinna Technologies CMO, Christoffer Pettersson, Explains the Advantages of Starting B2C and then Pivoting to B2BIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Christoffer Pettersson, CMO of Minna Technologies, a SaaS product for banks. The product empowers banks to make recommendations to their customers of ways to save on recurring subscription fees. Initially, Minna Technologies focused on offering this functionality directly to consumers but over time realized the best way to monetize was via banks. However, because of their early B2C efforts, Minna Technologies was able to really refine their user experience based on a deep understanding of consumer behavior. They continue to maintain a direct to con...
2020-03-0543 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastGrowth Leaders From Shopify, Vinted, Tesonet and More Share Keys to Their Breakout SuccessFor this week’s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis travels to Vilnius, Lithuania to interview leaders from their hottest breakout growth companies. The panel discussion included the CEO, Thomas Plantenga, of Vinted which is Lithuania’s first unicorn. Thomas led the successful turnaround effort from struggling startup to a billion-dollar valuation. He shares details about what they specifically did to drive this turnaround. The panel also included Jonas Karklys, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Tesonet, a company that creates security tools. The business has grown rapidly and is now almost 1...
2020-02-2749 min
The Breakout Growth Podcast$1.5M MRR Education Platform: Teachable’s CEO, Ankur Nagpal, Shares Growth Journey from Early Grit Days to Today’s Systematic Growth MachineFor this episode, I interviewed Ankur Nagpal, Founder and CEO of Teachable, a SaaS platform that is disrupting the online education space. Ankur shares his journey from the grit driven growth of the early days to what is now a large eduction platform generating $1.5M in monthly recurring revenue in addition to significant transaction fees. We discussWhy it’s important to bake growth into the culture of a business in the early daysThe role that aggressive targets played in helping trigger creative growth programsHow early cust...
2020-02-2041 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastWhat's Driving Growth at Fastest Growing B2B Companies? Learnings from Last 6 InterviewsFor this episode, I’m joined by Ethan Garr, SVP Growth at Robokiller, to discuss the key commonalities and differences for breakout growth B2B companies featured in the last six episodes of the podcast. Ethan has also been helping write in-depth growth studies on each of the companies I've interviewed so he is very familiar with them (Lola, TripActions, Templafy, Valuer, Miro and Hubs (formerly 3D Hubs). Some of the areas that we explored include:How B2B companies are leveraging data to accelerate growthCommon factors driving their breakout growth
2020-02-1350 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastAfterShokz Marketing Director and Agency Share How Innovative Headphone Company is Driving Breakout GrowthIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Aryal Smith, Marketing Director at AfterShokz, makers of innovative headphones that are ideal for athletes who need to stay aware of their surroundings. Joining Aryal for the interview is Jeff Goldenberg, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Abacus, a leading performance digital agency that has been working with AfterShokz for over two years. Since 2015, AfterShokz’s annual revenue has grown by 2000% and its monthly output of headphones now exceeds 200,000 units. AfterShokz headphones use bone conduction technology which enables them to offer situational awareness and a great listening experience.
2020-02-0652 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastB2B Platform Growth: How 3D Hubs Connects Engineers to a Global Network of On-Demand ManufacturersIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Ferdinand Goetzen, Director of Marketing and Growth at 3D Hubs, a B2B platform that connects engineers to a global network of on-demand manufacturers. 3D Hubs was founded in Amsterdam in 2013 and since that time the platform has helped engineers produce more than 4 million parts. In the interview, Ferdinand shares his insights into what is driving 3D Hubs’ breakout growth. He covers a broad range of topics including:Why the $12 trillion manufacturing market was ripe for disruptionHow 3D Hubs offers an a...
2020-01-3050 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastViral B2B Growth for Miro’s Freemium Collaborative WhiteboardsIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Yuliya Malysh, Head of Growth and Self Serve Business at Miro, a B2C2B collaborative whiteboarding solution. Miro was founded in Russia and its viral breakout growth helped attract a $25M investment led by Accel Partners, a top Silicon Valley VC firm. In the interview, Yulia shares her insights into what is driving this breakout growth. She covers a broad range of topics including:How her team is organizedThe process that her team follows to accelerate growthHow her...
2020-01-2335 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastTripActions: How this B2B Travel Unicorn Reached $4B+ Valuation in Only Four YearsIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Meagen Eisenberg, CMO at TripActions, a mobile-first corporate travel platform that has quickly achieved a $4B valuation. In the 10 months since Meagen joined the company, the overall team size has tripled from a few hundred employees to over 1000. In the interview, Meagan shares her insights into what is driving this breakout growth. She covers a broad range of topics including:How her team is organizedThe process that her team follows to accelerate growthHow her team fits into the bro...
2020-01-1641 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastThe Templafy Story: Can Growth Hacking Work in an Enterprise SaaS Business?In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Casper Rouchmann, Templafy's head of growth and product owner, Oskar Konstantyner. Templafy is an Enterprise SaaS platform for helping companies stay consistent with their branding and compliant in their messaging. Their solution helps teams keep templates consistent ranging from PowerPoint to email. Templafy is one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe and was recently ranked as the fastest-growing company in Denmark. Oskar and Casper explain that some of the key advantages supporting this rapid growth are a great product, rapid deployment across an organization once i...
2020-01-0957 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastLola.com CEO, Mike Volpe, shares how he is aligning his team to disrupt the $1.3 trillion business travel marketIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola.com, a SaaS platform disrupting the $1.3 trillion business travel market. As the former CMO at Hubspot, Mike provides an interesting perspective on growth since he now oversees all of the key growth levers in the business. Initially, Lola wasn't focused on the B2B market. The founder previously helped build Kayak.com so he has a strong background in the consumer travel space. But by studying their early passionate customers the Lola team realized their product was resonating most with busi...
2019-12-1936 min
The Breakout Growth PodcastWhat's Helping Valuer Decrease the Sales Cycle for Enterprise B2B Clients of Its Match Making PlatformIn this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Dennis Poulsen, CEO of Valuer, along with their CMO, Taylor Ryan. Valuer helps major enterprises tap into startup innovation strengths via their AI-powered matchmaking platform. Sean’s goal with this interview is to understand what is truly driving breakout growth success for Valuer. Since launching in early 2018, the Demark based business has scaled rapidly due to a surprisingly short sales cycle and an effective lead gen program.In the interview, we explore the problem that Dennis and his cofounders originally set out to...
2019-12-1254 min