From Uber and Coinbase to Curve, VP Product Shares His Views on Growth

The 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 and better banking experience for consumers.

 

JD previously held growth roles at Coinbase and Uber, and his role at Curve morphed from growth into product fairly recently. It has been a natural progression, and through this lens, JD sheds great insights into why growth people need to have a degree of ownership over the product to control their own destinies. At Curve, the growth team lives within his product organization, and the coupling of product and growth is a trend Ethan and Sean have been exploring with recent guests from Buffer, Canva, and other fast-growing organizations.

 

The approach is working. Despite huge challenges during the pandemic that put a temporary hold on an aggressive hiring plan, the company still expects to nearly double its headcount from about 330 today to over 600 employees by year’s end. Strong product/market fit continues to drive growth, but JD sees partnerships as Curve’s next big opportunity. Leveraging relationships with company’s like Samsung, the company is able to extend its B2C go-to-market strategy to B2B2C and greatly expand distribution. 

 

With an understanding of how product and growth work together, we dive into Curve’s “helix” team structure where data-driven thinking guides the prioritization of experiments and ensures engineering resources are not wasted on efforts that will not move the North Star Metric. We learn about the company’s growth engine, and how building excitement for users early drives referrals and retention. And we find out how a growth mindset drives great product leadership. 

 

Take a listen. For anyone focused on growth, this is a valuable discussion.

 

We discussed:

 

* A better way of banking in the fragmented world of Fintech (3:45)

* Why growth people need to have some control over product (6:30)

* How data challenges led to the product/marketing teams formation (9:10)

* Why JD saw a huge opportunity at Curve (11:25)

* Curve’s dangerous exposure during the pandemic  (17:05)

* Partnerships and B2B2C as the next big thing  (19:50)

* Structuring for growth (25:50)

And much, much, more . . . 

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