The Value of Diverse Experiences in Product Leadership

Anneka Gupta is the Chief Product Officer at Rubrik, a cloud management and data security company with a US$6B market cap. Before Rubrik, Anneka spent 11 years leading various teams at LiveRamp, including product, go-to-market, and operations.

In today’s episode, we discuss:

• How LiveRamp went from $30M to $200M ARR in 3 years
• Anneka’s jack-of-all-trades career
• Why specialist hires can backfire
• When leaders should get in the weeds
• One area every PM can improve in
• Rubrik’s approach to building product
• Much more

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Referenced:

• Acxiom: https://www.acxiom.com/
• Acxiom’s acquisition of LiveRamp: https://tinyurl.com/2shm83de
• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/
• Auren Hoffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/
• Dentsu: https://www.dentsu.com/
• Dentsu’s acquisition of Merkle: https://tinyurl.com/yvxe6fws
• James Arra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-arra-a43a06/
• LiveRamp: https://liveramp.com/
• Merkle: https://www.merkle.com/
• Rubrik: https://www.rubrik.com/
• Slack: https://www.slack.com/
• Travis May: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stmay/

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Where to find Anneka Gupta:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annekagupta/
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/annekagupta

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Where to find Brett Berson:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson

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Where to find First Round Capital:

• Website: https://firstround.com/
• First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
• This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:11) Inside LiveRamp’s unique growth journey

(12:18) Anneka’s first PM role

(14:20) Leading LiveRamp’s marketing function

(16:17) Why the best product doesn’t win

(21:06) Crafting products for different personas

(24:53) Transitioning Acxiom’s customers to LiveRamp

(33:54) Why Acxiom chose to buy not build

(36:40) Anneka's leap to GM and product leader

(38:22) How 17 diverse roles shaped Anneka’s CPO approach

(40:54) The hidden career growth hack

(43:15) Where domain experience is overrated

(50:33) Mastering the art of altitude shifting

(53:54) PMs should undergo the same training as sales reps

(59:37) Strategies for selling to new personas

(62:40) Lessons from Anneka’s mistake at LiveRamp

(67:56) Who had an outsized impact on Anneka