Listen Now

In one of our favorite episodes to date we had the pleasure of bringing on Erik Severinghaus a multiple time founder and current VP of strategy and development at Conexiom. Erik also has successfully scaled and climbed Mount Everest and talks about how that was easier then building a company! Erik shares the stories of entrepreneurship that no one talks about. He is very transparent on the challenges of being a founder and how hard it is mentality and physically to be successfully. It is why in many cases, founders deal with depression and talks about how to create a better support system. He shares the things he has learned that has lead him to launch his book, Be your own Everest: How to be a Resilient Entrepreneur, where he talks about these challenges and the best way to cope and keep driving your business forward. A super refreshing conversation that no one is talking about that I am sure people will enjoy. In Today's Episode you will learn:  What are the biggest challenges of entrepreneurship Why climbing Everest was easier then building a company  The dark side of being a founder and how it leads to anxiety and depression  How to create a more "real" founder ecosystem  His stories of climbing Mount Everest

In Today's episode of The Growth Equation we got to bring on Peter Zhi, The first growth hire at AllyO. Peter got to share his perspective of what life is like being the first growth hire and what growth means when you go from seed stage to all the way to being acquired. He had a very unique perspective on what growth teams should be focused at a very early stage and how they need to be focused on trying to experiment to learn and don't worry if something can scale. If you are looking to learn the purpose of a growth team in the early days then this is your episode. What is covered in this episode:  What a growth team does in early stage  How to drive growth with non scalable solutions  What AllyO did well when it came to growth 

Have you ever wonder what it is like to scale a fast growing company in an industry that is getting disrupted? Well in today's episode of the Growth Equation we got to bring on Steph, CEO of Tealbook. Steph is a two time entrepreneur who successfully built her own consulting company and then made the jump to starting her own tech company. Tealbook is disrupting the procurement space and growing at a rapid rate. Steph got to share her story as a solo female founder on the keys to leading and building a team that you don't get to hear many founders share. In today's episode we will cover:  What it is like leading Tealbook  The keys to building a high performing team  How to create an environment that has more female founders   The toughest thing when scaling a tech company 

In today's episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure to bring on Ralph Sadowski, Senior  Biz Ops Manager at Shopify. Ralph got to share his expertise of what biz ops does , how they can be a more strategic function and what is needed to be a high performing team. Ralph is a big believer on why biz ops is  the mix of strategy and execution and why it becomes a catch all and how this function will change as it becomes more mature. He got to share his experience both at Uber, Neo Financial and Shopify some of the leading business operations functions. This Episode will cover:  What  is the Biz Ops Function  How Biz Ops is changing over time  How Biz Ops is one of the key elements of growth  What Biz Ops teams are accountable on 

How you ever wondered what goes into bootstrapping a start-up and when it is time to start your next one while you  run your first one? Well in today's episode we got to bring on Diana Goodwin Founder & CEO of Marketbox & Aquamobile. Diana got to share her story of how she scaled and bootstrapped her marketplace company, Aquamobile.  We get to hear her story of scaling up her first company and when she made the decision to then launch her second company a SAAS business, Marketbox. Diana shares her amazing insights on what it takes to scale a bootstrap company and the keys of why building a marketplace company is so hard. We then here what motivated her to start her second company and what the difference is when building a SAAS business vs. a marketplace business.  In today's episode we cover:  The keys of scaling a bootstrap start-up  The challenges of building a marketplace  business  The differences of scaling a marketplace to a SAAS business  How to start another company while still running your first 

Scaling a business is hard but building a healthy high performing culture is even harder. People always talk how culture is so important no one knows what are the keys to building a culture that people can do the best work of their lives. Well in today's episode of The Growth Equation we got to bring on Larry Zolob and expert in building cultures. We had a great discussion on what makes a good work culture but also the right things  to focus when scaling a business. In today's episode we covered: - When to start building culture - Larry's 5 step framework of building culture - The areas of focus when scaling work culture - How to handle the changes to culture during COVID  

Building and leading a scale-up is hard but leading a company during turbulent times like COVID is even more challenging. In today's episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure of bringing on Naveed Ahmad, CEO of Heart Health Institute and leader of scale-ups. Naveed got to share his perspective of his key fundamentals of leading companies and what tech companies need to do a better when it comes to scaling. We got to hear his formula of what he thinks is important when building a company with sustainable growth and what he thinks is the negative consequences of growth at all costs. Finally he got to go into detail of how to navigate through turbulent times like COVID and how he thinks companies need to adapt. In today's episode we will cover:  The keys to building a high performing team  His formula of sustainable growth  How to navigate through challenge times like COVID  How companies can be accommodating to creating a remote work environment   

Marketplace are some of the toughest businesses to scale but what makes it so tough? Should you be supply or demand led when scaling? The jury is still out if marketplaces can ever be profitable and if you wonder wonder if these businesses can build sustainable growth then today is a can't miss episode. In today's episode we got to bring on Blake Connnoy, Founder of Hurrahome a consumer marketplace. Blake has dedicated years of his life within the marketplace space and shares his perspective on the keys and challenges of scaling these types of businesses. In this episode you will learn from Blake the following:  The right unit economics to focus on when scaling  If you should be supply or demand led marketplace business  Why marketplaces are so tough to scale  What will happen with marketplaces in a post COVID world 

Have you ever wondered how to create growth within your product? As channels become more and more expensive to acquire customers and people's willingness to pay go down, you need to think of new ways to drive growth of your company.  Well on episode #7 of The Growth Equation, we talk to Wes Bush, founder of Product Led Growth Institute and a massive advocate of Product Led Growth frameworks.     We had a great discussion on:  Attempt to define what product led growth is  Talk about why some companies who have a free-trial are still not taking a product led growth approach  Why product qualified leads are so much more qualified than marketing qualified leads  How to increase your freeium or free trial conversion  Some of the biggest mistakes when implementing product led growth frameworks 

In Today's episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure of bringing on Jesse Abrams, the CEO and Founder of Homewise. Jesse brought in an amazing perspective of someone who is a serial entrepreneur and has started his second company, first time in tech industry. He shared some of the untold stories inside a mind of a founder trying to scale a hyper growth business with radical transparency. You will not want to miss this episode to here a raw and transparent interview into the life as a founder and what they focus on to scale a start-up. In Today's Episode: - Jesse talks about how he started Homewise from scratch - What he looks for when building teams & culture - He shares the untold stories of the struggles of being an entrepreneur    - Why he is excited with the problem Homewise is solving for  

In today's episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure of bringing on Anthony Milto head of Product Marketing & Business Strategy at Intuit. With our conversation we got to cover what is product marketing and how you can create a strategic arm for your business if done right and talked about how to build sustainable businesses. Anthony is one of the thought leaders when it comes to how to build a successful product marketing org. If you ever ask the question what is product marketing, how can it be effective and how can I build a sustainable business? Then this is your episode! In today's episode we cover: - What is Product Marketing - The keys to building a strategic Product Marketing Team - The fundamentals of building sustainable businesses   - What metrics really matter when building businesses

In today's episode of The Growth Equation Greg and Rahul had a discussion and shared their thoughts of what does this post COVID world look like for the tech industry. It was a honest and raw conversation about how the entire industry will change forever. We had a chance to go in depth about what companies will be focused on post COVID, what industries will thrive and which ones will struggle and so much more. This has to one of our most in depth conversations we have had on the podcast.  What we covered: - What does the VC landscape look like after this - The focus areas for companies over the next 12 months - What industries and companies will form from this pandemic 

In today's episode of The Growth Equation we are excited to bring on Dan Gray, Director of Growth at Kotn. Dan brings on a very unique perspective of working for early stage companies and helping to build growth engines. We go in depth of how you go about testing different channels, what KPIs matter the most, how having a strong brand can help you scale & what he really thinks of paid channels. In this episode we cover:  How to test channel at a rapid rate  What metrics really matter when it comes to growth  The pitfalls of relying too heavily on paid channels  What he looks for when building out a growth team   

In today's episode of the Growth Equation we got to bring on Cristian Contreras, Product Operations at Shopify. Cristian brings an unique perspective of working for Shopify and providing his perspective on how to build proper ecommerce unit economics to scale a business. He also bring's a whole wealth of experience of some of his other past start-up/scale-up experiences on the keys for success. What we cover:  How to build strong ecommerce unit economics  The keys to build a platform  The challenges of growth in the start-up community     

In Today's episode of the Growth Equation we got to bring on Andrew Michael who leads Business Intelligence for Hotjar and runs a successful podcast on churn called Churn.fm. Andrew gets to talk about the challenges businesses struggle with churn and some of the most important fundamentals of retention. We get the pleasure of talking more in depth of all of the insights he has collected through his podcast and talk more about some of the things Hotjar is doing and how is leading their business intelligence team too.   What we cover:  Why not enough businesses talk about churn  How to know when you have a retention & churn problem  How to implement a Churn model that drives growth  What team owns retention & churn 

In today's episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure to bring on Sylvia Ng, General Manager, Start Product Line at Shopify. Sylvia had one of the most interesting perspectives of having a very experienced tech career doing a ton of different roles. She is a fundamental believer in building sustainable businesses then the growth at all cost mentality. We get to go at the leadership leader of an organization and how everything starts within a culture and how to build high performing teams. Really one of our best conversations yet!     This episode will cover:   Sylvia's interesting background & career journey  The key metrics to building growth that is built in the right way  The issues with the growth at all cost mentality  How to build a high performing team 

In Today's Episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure of bringing on Roger Figueiredo VP of marketing at #Paid. Roger had some amazing insights to share when it comes to demand generation and how to take a much more strategic approach when building a marketing growth engine. You will get to hear his perspective on how you first need to focus on who your is customer, work on the right positioning & then find the distribution based on the customer & your message. What we cover:  Roger's unique approach to building a demand generation engine  How to build the right channel diversification  How to balance paid vs organic marketing channels when it comes to growth   What he looks for when hiring for marketers 

On Today's episode of the growth equation we got to bring on Lachlan Kirkwood, Growth advisor for fast growing start-up companies. An interesting fact about Lachlan is that he is based in Australia (our first guest from there). Lachlan has a great perspective since much of Australia's tech scene is based on more bootstrapping then VC funded companies. This means that many companies need to focus on the fundamentals of proper unit economics to drive profitability when trying to acquire customers. In the episode we cover:  How to create channel diversification  The keys to building out a marketing growth engine  How to balance organic & paid channels  The metrics to sustainable business fundamentals   Insight into the growing Australia tech community 

In today's episode of the growth equation we had the pleasure of bringing on Connor Bradley from Jobber who leads up the growth team. We really went deep to understand how you build a growth team and how the team adds value at Jobber. He also goes into to define where a growth team sits in the org and how they build their experimentation plan. In this episode we will cover:  How to build growth teams What the growth team does at jobber What the metrics they are focused on   Balancing between optimizing and being bold in your experiments  How to lay down the fountain to establish a growth team  

In today's episode of the growth equation we got  to switch things up an interview our co-host Greg Leach, experienced tech growth leader. Greg explains his career and how he ended up becoming a growth leader and talks a lot about building sustainable growth and where companies get it wrong when it comes to growth & why. What we cover: His background and the core fundamentals he focuses on to be a growth leader  How to create sustainable growth within companies and why "growth at all costs" is the wrong framework to apply The things to focus on to have a career when becoming a growth leader  How to build a strong tech ecoystem within a community  What are growth teams and what do they do