How I Grew This

Today, most SaaS companies were started in the last few years or at the beginning of Web 2.0. Our guest Rick Stollmeyer, Co-Founder and current Executive Chairman of Mindbody, however, saw an opportunity back in 2001, when he started the company out of his garage. In March, Mindbody saw 90% of their appointments disappear through the platform, which led the team to innovate and drive towards a virtual fitness platform. Fast forward to today, and they see this as their most significant growth opportunity. Hear more on Rick’s story, including his leadership training in the Navy, the lesson he learned when his former boss refused to give him equity, his transition to Executive Chairman, and so much more on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more.

Our guest today, Siddarth Jena, has learned a lot about growth running the largest platform for fans of India’s most popular sport, Cricket. Siddarth came into Cricket.com at a time where they had to scale their marketing efforts from 0 to 100, he shares how they tested Google, Facebook, affiliates, and many other growth channels to capture the market. They were able to rapidly test then scaled their growth channels to drive 5 million installs in just 4 months. Hear more on Siddarth’s story including his love for travel, how he and his team adapted marketing during COVID, how to deploy empathy in your marketing efforts and so much more on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more.

Today’s guest, Chetana Deorah, talks about the role of design to drive business outcomes for some of the top companies in the world. Growing up in the hustle and bustle of Mumbai, Chetana’s curiosity and rebelliousness led her to dabble in the life sciences before finding her calling in UX design. She’s taken her success and translated it into not only hockey stick growth for profit-motivated companies but also inspiring the next generation of designers from under-resourced communities in the Bay Area through the Inneract Project. In her own words, the role of a designer is to ask not the what or the how, but the why. In a time where mobile and technology platforms are pushing to A/B test, fail fast, and use analytics to adapt to our new world, Chetana reminds us that oftentimes the sole goal of creating growth may be limiting. She reminds us we must start with why. Hear more about Chetana’s incredible story of how one becomes a design leader, the reason why she believes Netflix stays so adaptable (her answer will stay with you), as well as some of her own questions around what the future looks like in education, on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more.

Today’s guest, Nicole West, isn’t afraid of raising her hand and taking a risk, especially when it’s a project no one has ever done before. She’s built a reputation over her 14-year career at Chipotle in taking those tough jobs and turning them into big opportunities. For instance, in 2013, the then CMO asked Nicole if she would start up the new Ecommerce division of the marketing team. Pushing fear aside, she took the job. Today, she’s been at the helm as Chipotle has gone through a digital transformation which has seen digital ordering hit meteoric heights, with digital orders now accounting for over 20% of company sales. More on Nicole’s story of how she rose the ranks, her advice to those who are inspired by her story, as well as ways Chipotle is staying true to its mission of making the world a better place, on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and more.

Some people stop after creating their first successful company, but today’s guest, Sachin Bhatia, has created three products and companies that have flourished. Sachin shares how he got his parents' entrepreneurial spirit by selling water and other items as a child. He started his first company, MakeMyTrip, in 2000, and while they had a successful launch due to word of mouth, they weren’t able to keep up with demand. He learned his lesson, on the launch of his second company, TrulyMadly, they had the campaign to allow people to date not based on creed or religion in India which picked up a lot of press and was very successful. He then shares the story of how he and his Co-Founder teamed up again to build Bulbul, a video-based shopping app. More on Sachin’s story, including how his marketing campaign where MakeMyTrip asked for a second chance, his strategy for breaking down his campaigns, and more on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere you find your podcasts.

As product leaders, you might be looking at road maps for 1-3 years from now, but our next guest is someone who seeks a challenge that takes a decade to solve. Loni Stark is the Senior Director of Strategy and Product at Adobe; fittingly, she works for Adobe; she is both a technical product leader and a creative artist with hobbies like a painting. She was inspired by her mother, who was the only woman in her job and pursued engineering, eventually landing at Stanford, where she focused on product management. At Stanford and in her early work, she learned how many critical components there are to a product's success, like the right partners, vendors, timing, and market need. She discusses the bittersweet challenge of solving long term problems, and she dives into how switching to the cloud was one of those challenges for Adobe and how they came out successfully. More on Loni's story, including how she made fake product one-pagers to get advice from other product managers, how she's trying to make enterprise onboarding as easy as consumer products, and more on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and more.

Today's guest, Sachin Singla, is someone who didn't stick to one career or path but found his way to marketing via other paths like finance and consulting (not unlike our host Mada). Sachin talks about how marketing has adapted and how marketing teams have needed to pivot and become more agile in the age of COVID-19. Mainly looking at your customer segments, Sachin explains how the lockdown rules vary wildly in India and how brands need to make their messaging reflect their target market's current state. More on Sachin's story, how he has had to adjust with him and his team working remotely, his time in finance and consulting, and how the travel industry as a whole is adapting to COVID on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and more.

While he might not say it himself, our next guest Varun Dubey was able to have an extremely successful career leading the marketing for some of the fastest growing tech companies in India because of two things: being empathetic and analytical. In the early days of his career writing for “Digit” Magazine, he learned that many people only had a few hours of energy to use a day. Later at Qualcomm, he learned that many people had to choose between paying to charge their phones or eating that day. In those instances, he learned that truly understanding the user was critically important for achieving immense growth to hundreds of millions of users which he achieved at Practo. He also took a much more thorough approach than most when it came to tracking. At one point Varun stopping all marketing activities to make sure the entire site and product tracked all the way to billing. Once they did that they realized why users were bouncing and were able to get $2 net revenue for every dollar spent, which made the CFO their biggest advocate. More on Varun’s story including how he helped drive growth for a new category, his thoughts on Apple’s decision on IDFA, and how the marketing world has completely evolved from TV to direct response. All this and more on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere you find your podcasts.

Russell Stopford has led digital initiatives across everything from film to sports. He took his passions for the arts as well as his curiosity for emerging technologies and combined them to develop a powerful intersection between storytelling and digital product management. As both an award-winning documentary filmmaker and builder of mobile apps over the past decade, Russell is driven by a pursuit for perfection. As the sports industry transformed into an entertainment opportunity, Russell found himself highly sought after for his knack for weaving together brand stories and the end-user experience for the modern-day consumer. He’s currently producing a film series around the 50th anniversary of Paris Saint-Germain while in parallel working to bring a first of its kind sports app that could revolutionize its category. All this and more on this episode of How I Grew This.

Our guest on this episode of How I Grew This, Dan Bishop, is currently the Senior Vice President of Global Mobile and Digital Marketing at Citi. Most people that build a career in startups stay in the startup world and most who go to Fortune 500 brands stay in that world. Dan has built a career traversing through both. He got his start seeing innovations that would change the world years later, first at JumpTV creating Online TV deals before Netflix and then at UStream seeing the early days of live streaming. Being at companies that were years ahead of the rest of the world showed him what true innovation looked like and how to find the sweet spot of timing to build, launch and grow digital products. He shares his story of how he made it to Citibank and how most other large brands still have a Web 1.0 marketing tech stack in 2020. Beyond marketing software, Dan shares one of the most critical components is finding people who truly understand what innovation takes and how he finds them. More on Dan’s story including his time working with Jason Calcanis, the product he launched at TurboTax being able to scan and file taxes back in 2010 and how COVID-19 has changed the financial industry on this episode of How I Grew This. Listen now on Apple Podcasts Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher and more.