The Breakout Growth Podcast

We 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 and his co-founders began looking for the most meaningful ways they could make an impact in the world. Artem had studied behavioral science and knew that behavior change requires a big data set. He and his co-founders realized that using weight management as an entry point into people’s overall health could unlock the giant data set they sought.  The company’s approach to solving weight problems is very different from other solutions as Sean realized when he recently began his own Noom customer journey. There are no point systems or physical locations, and the company’s mobile app focuses on intervention, not tracking. The system uses data and psychology to help change how people think about food. With this approach, breakout growth has come into focus, and Artem is intent on “building the machine to get things right.”   Rigorous experimentation and a maniacal focus on people and process helped drive Noom’s 2020’s revenue to around $400 million dollars (nearly twice that of 2019), but throughout the conversation, it became clear that for Artem, this is just the beginning. The company measures success by Quality-Adjusted Life Years, which means success for them is not just about dollars, it is about helping people live longer, better and healthier lives. So join us as we find out how sustainable growth is being built every day at Noom. We discussed: * A mission much larger than weight management (3:18) * How the question, “what would we be proud of having done on our deathbeds,” helped drive Noom’s founders (5:17) * Why Noom chose to focus on the consumer as the ultimate decision-maker but has kept enterprise partnerships on its menu (8:46) * How an early consultation with Sean helped bring a North Star Metric and a test/learn approach into Noom’s process (11:30) * Leaning on psychology internally to drive a more effective organization (14:23) * What drove Noom’s tremendous year over year revenue growth (21:23) * Why Noom believes “brainpower is greater than willpower” (23:01) * Building healthy relationships with customers to impact healthy changes (28:28) * Why 60 or so steps to onboarding works for Noom in the context of its mission (33:21) * Why Artem believes a maniacal focus on people and process is key for sustainable growth (38:18) And much, much, more . . .  Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

Is 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 and Ethan share their Principles of Sustainable Growth, and at the top of the list is the importance of “Dialing-in the ‘Must-Have’ Experience” first. Itamar, who developed his own GIST framework to help companies achieve breakout growth success, deconstructs his process for finding this fit and explains why many companies fail when they focus on validating solutions instead of truly understanding their customer needs. But this isn’t just a discussion for early-stage startups. Itamar and Sean explain that Product/Market Fit is not just an obstacle to overcome, but the foundation of growth. Organizations must continuously work to optimize and iterate to stay relevant, meet changing needs, and expand their audiences. Even new features in well-established products need to be evaluated through their own product-market fit lenses. So whether you are two co-founders with an idea, or leading the next big idea for an enterprise business, this discussion can help you find the focus, tools, and approaches to best position your organization to unlock growth. We discussed: * Itamar’s experience from software engineer to product lead at companies including Microsoft and Google (3:17) * Why many companies fall into the trap of trying to grow without Product/Market Fit (7:14) * Why Fit matters for both startups and established organizations (8:38) * Itamar’s GIST Framework for sustainable growth success (11:12)  * Why it can be so hard to accept that your idea is wrong (14:30)   * Whose job it is to find Product/Market Fit (17:45) * The “Renaissance Rep” and how this role can help understand needs (18:40) * How finding fit varies in B2C, B2B and Enterprise (22:24) * The role of luck and how to make your own (35:00) * Why these concepts should always be in focus if you want to stay relevant (46:21) And much, much, more . . . Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

In 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 learnings. Like many of you, during this tough year of transition, we have had rollercoaster rides of our own, and in this conversation, we start by sharing what we learned as we worked together for the first time in 20 years to launch a network-effects project to help underserved college students navigate through the pandemic. It felt good to do good, but it also forced us to sharpen our data skills, hone in on value delivery for end-users, and evolve our processes for rapid iteration. It was a scary time because while we enjoyed making a difference, we also knew that we would ultimately have to rethink our approach to our own careers. Sean was coaching and training growth teams around the world and Ethan was pivoting to a similar career from his success leading the mobile app, RoboKiller. We had to adapt so that we could help companies accelerate growth despite the emerging challenges. The journey has not always been easy, but it helped us to better develop our understanding of a set of core principles for sustainable growth, which we are excited to share over the coming weeks on a new website that will complement and expand on learnings from the podcast. We discuss these and many other topics, as well as the new things we are excited to learn in 2021 so that we can continue to provide valuable insights into the world of growth for our audience. We discussed: * Fear and transition in the face of Covid-19 (01:00)* Working together and putting growth skills into practice in response to the Covid-19 pandemic (4:08) * Sharpening our data skills as Sean launched GoPractice for the US market with Oleg Yakubenkov (7:00) * Upskilling ourselves and teams; the importance of being able to pull your own data (8:09) * What we learned interviewing leaders from the world’s fastest-growing companies (15:20) * Translating key learnings to make an impact on our clients and their businesses (17:33) * Adjusting our workshop formats to meet the demands of a remote workforce (21:05) * Forming North Star Metrics and making them useful within an organization (25:15) * The pursuit of “fit” (Product/Market, Language/Market, Channel/Market, etc. (35:30) * Guiding principles that we will highlight on our new site, BreakoutGrowth.net (42:42) * How value sits at the center of every growth engine and drives organizations forward (51:00) * What we are looking forward to learning and sharing in 2021 (55:00) And much, much, more . . . Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

Blinkist CEO discusses how the company achieved breakout growth through iterative learning, cracking paid acquisition channels, and focusing on product value. They also talk about the challenges faced in the German market, the impact of COVID-19 on publishers, and the importance of engagement, cross-functional teams, and data-driven decision-making.

With a product management system that helps organizations get the right products to market, faster, by centralizing feedback and making insights from customers available all in one place, Hubert Palan, Founder and CEO of Productboard has created a new category.  The idea of a blue ocean awaiting a unique invention always sounds exciting, but in this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, we learn that in reality, building sustainable growth when everything is new and direct competitors do not yet exist, also comes with tremendous challenges. Sean interviews Hubert at an interesting time as the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformations around the world. Companies like Zoom, serving established markets, quickly capitalize on new demand, but for Productboard the problems they solve are less understood. Therefore, growth has required a constant effort to build problem awareness while expanding the solution to meet changing market needs.  We trace the company’s journey from its initial bottoms-up focus on emerging startups and SMBs to robust top-down solutions that now also include mid-market and enterprise businesses. We find out how the team has grown to hundreds of employees and evolved to serve over 3000 customers with both self-service and high-touch sales systems and why Hubert sees a whole-market strategy as the right approach to meet the needs of the market and defend against competition.  For anyone focused on driving growth, this interview includes valuable learnings about the importance of authenticity in creating value for end-users. Hubert says, “The reason why we exist is to make a world where every product is extraordinary and exceptional,” and it is clear this mission has informed the culture and mindset behind Productboard’s breakout growth.  Take a listen, this is one of our favorites . . . We discussed: * The company’s journey from serving the needs of small startups to a client roster of more than 3000 companies including Marriot, ZenDesk, Disney+, and more (2:18) * How the business model works from self-service options for SMBs to high-touch sales-driven approaches for mid-market and enterprise clients (4:10) * The recently launched free customer feedback portal that closes the loop between product management teams and customers and provides a viral loop to accelerate growth (5:49) * Hubert’s journey as CEO, and how he applied lessons learned from his Berkeley MBA professor, Steve Blank, to build the business (9:22) * Building the growth canvas for a blue ocean business model, and how iteration and prototyping helped solidify the vision (11:50) * How raising $45 million just prior to the pandemic is helping grow the team to meet market demand (17:30) * Why digital transformations are changing the potential market to include companies like Marriot, Sherwin-Williams, and Cartier, and why that was interesting for investors (21:56) * The challenges and benefits of moving upmarket (28:40) * Managing culture as the company has g Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

Brian 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 the company is challenging the notion that users must sacrifice their privacy for these services. The company makes money showing ads to its users, but it does no user tracking in the process. To be successful, DuckDuckGo has optimized for speed-to-value, elegantly showing users how its services protect and serve with every interaction. So what are the sacrifices and tradeoffs for a company that’s made search privacy its mission? Can users expect the same search quality they get from Google? And without access to user data how can DuckDuckGo effectively optimize for growth? We drill into these questions with Brian and learn how the company’s fully remote team embraces a culture of transparency and learning to drive sustainable growth. Few companies dare to challenge the Googles and Facebooks of the world, and even fewer are successful. However, in a world where consumers often feel powerless when it comes to trading privacy and security for access to the connected world, DuckDuckGo has found a way to grow and thrive.  We discussed:  * Why consumers feel powerless to protect their privacy on the Internet, and how DuckDuckGo challenges the business models of Internet giants like Google (2:04)  * DuckDuckGo’s advertising-based model, and how that works without user-level tracking (4:42)  * How the company looks to build parity in its functionality with its competitors relying on external APIs and other innovations (9:50) * The company’s approach to making good bets by looking for “ the smallest thing we can do with the highest impact, and lowest complexity” (14:24) * Founder, Gabriel Weinberg’s thoughts on “Traction” and what it means at DuckDuckGo (20:54) * The culture that challenges the company’s fully remote team to question assumptions (24:00) * Organization around growth, without a centralized growth team (30:12) * User testing movie nights to share learnings (41:02) And much, much, more . . . Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

In 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 presence to helping companies bring creativity to their entire workforces, Skillshare is looking to capitalize on the strong product/market fit the company has established by helping everyone from hobbyists looking for better ways to bake bread to professionals trying to add illustration skills to their resumes. Interestingly, much of Skillshare’s growth, product and funnel optimization efforts were outsourced up until 2019, and in this interview, we learn how that impacted the business. We also find out how influencer marketing has been a crucial growth lever, and how Skillshare’s mobile app fits into the company’s online learning ecosystem. Kyle says the company’s Chief Product Officer always talks about “Doing the Brilliant Basics,” and in this episode, we get a sense of just what that means as Skillshare builds its breakout growth success story.We discussed:  How Skillshare’s dual-sided marketplace offering of both home-grown and creator-developed content drives value (4:03)The timing and purpose of the company’s recent $66 million fundraising round (7:38)Where the company’s mobile app fits into the ecosystem and how that has evolved over time (10:06)Skillshare’s international expansion and how product-market fit varies from market to market (19:49)The test/learn culture that drives innovation and growth and the growth team structure driving these efforts (26:59)  Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

With 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 able to build a website in that same environment is a natural next step for this mobile-first generation, and these websites allow users to create, promote, sell, and fulfill orders. Essentially, they can build fully-functional businesses without outside help using nothing more than a phone that fits in their pocket.Joe explains that his business model is tightly aligned with the goals of his audience. He feels strongly that the more Universe can help creators grow their businesses, the more successful the company will be. In this episode, we will learn how this approach has unlocked word-of-mouth growth, how experimentation helps the company find and amplify opportunities, and how a ship early and often mentality is embraced and shared with users.Through the lens of Universe’s growth story, including its recent $10 million funding round, this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast offers unique insights into the challenges and opportunities facing mobile companies looking to accelerate growth.We discussed: How the democratization of the web in things like photos on Instagram and video with TikTok has created a mobile-first creation mindset (5:00)The challenges of creating a website-building tool specifically for the small screen of a mobile phone (5:55)Universe’s original pivot to its current business model (11:35)How the companies North Star Metric closely aligns with customer success (38:30)The company’s approach to growth through experimentation and continuous improvement (39:45)  Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

Technically, 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 company is driving innovation and making shopping simple, safe and smooth for millions of consumers, and in this interview, Sean interviews Jon Chang, Global Head of Shopping Growth Marketing, who joined the company in August of 2019. In that short time period, the company’s US operations have grown 10X and Jon describes that success as being an output of “doing a good job of preparing ourselves to be lucky” (14:10). We discover exactly what that means as Jon explains how he and his team structure and execute their approach to accelerating growth.The company now has over 3000 employees broken down into 400 teams. More than 150 of those employees are focused directly on growth, and we find out that it takes very intentional culture-building effort to drive cross-functional alignment across such a massive and growing organization (24:06). Although the name Klarna may be new to you today, this is a company that is having a massive impact on the world in which we live.We discussed: Impacts of Covid-19, and how the company has responded and grown through the crisis (6:30)The company’s unique mobile app that “ingests the entire internet” to offer unique buying power to consumers (14:10)How the company has evolved over its 15-year history, including a pivot from B2B to B2C sales (16:58)Jon’s test/learn growth approach and how a marketing experiment recently yielded a 7x increase in installs (28:53)How the company culture which led to 10X growth in the US in one year, looks to do that again this year (41:40) Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

Tim 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 driving growth through high-velocity testing and optimization practices. However, there is also plenty of common ground as they discuss how the biology of the brain impacts everything from interpersonal relationships to politics, and how an understanding of these ideas can be applied to accelerate growth for businesses.Both Sean and Tim are passionate about the importance of driving value for end-users as the foundation for unlocking growth, and there are exciting learnings as Tim explains how “relentless dissatisfaction” can help companies find opportunities to drive significant improvements. According to Tim, “‘Unleash Your Primal Brain’ may help you make a billion dollars or even become the next Dalai Lama, but at the very least this interview will help you understand how a deeper look into your own brain can help you understand and influence others.We discussed: How neuro-marketing and principles from ‘Influence’ by Robert Cialdini’s helped shape Tim’s thinking and his bookHow the biology of the brain and cultural and genetic co-evolution impact our lives as humansThe do-nothing status quo and why companies fail when they try to be nice instead of appealing to our survival instincts to avoid painWhy companies need to focus on value over product and put the emphasis on learning from customersHow neurobiology and science fit into the test/learn approach to growthHow motivation, ability and triggers work together to drive action Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe