The Breakout Growth Podcast

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Sampo Parkkinen, CEO of Revieve, an AI-driven beauty personalization platform that helps cosmetic brands and retailers drive revenue by improving their customer experiences. As physical retail cosmetic stores around the world close, this solution is increasingly important for driving sales online.In the interview, Parkkinen explains how Revieve didn’t really hit their growth stride until they realized what the true value is that they deliver. Since then, they’ve worked hard to align their team around delivering more of this value. While they largely have a traditional B2B sales process, Revieve is able to work with partners to closely track usage data and optimize their solution over time.Learn more about CEO Sampo Parkkinen at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sampo-parkkinen-b3262a6/Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.SeanEllis.me Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Sean Ellis interviews Nabis Founder and CEO Vincent Ning to understand what is driving their breakout growth. Vincent tells the story of how they went from a couple of guys driving a van to a 120 person company moving over $100M in wholesale cannabis products. The YCombinator backed business is now a logistics powerhouse handling everything from product distribution to compliance.  Vincent credits the biggest driver of growth to an industry that is booming. But he also says that their technology has played a big role in differentiating the service from competitors. For example, brands have complete visibility into the location of their shipments at any time.  This helps build trust which is critical for developing strong relationships with brands.This interview took place in March. Since that time a lot of businesses have been heavily impacted by Covid 19 and Nabis is no exception.   Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Brynn Putnam, CEO of Mirror, a smart fitness hardware and subscription service for better at-home workouts. The product is essentially an elegant mirror that is also a personal fitness studio with content ranging from on-demand cardio classes to boxing and yoga. An important part of their value proposition is that unlike most exercise equipment, the Mirror takes up very little floor space.  While common startup wisdom today touts that you should launch early with an MVP version of your product, the Mirror team wanted to ensure that they launched with a very polished product that could deliver a great experience. They also focused a lot of effort and marketing dollars to build trust in the Mirror brand.  In the interview, Brynn explains How her team builds desire for this cool productThe role of social proof in building trustHow celebrities were an important part of building initial interestHow rewarding experiences feed the referral loop Learn more about CEO Brynn Putnam at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brynn-jinnett-putnam-1311938/Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.SeanEllis.me Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Christoffer Pettersson, CMO of Minna Technologies, a SaaS product for banks. The product empowers banks to make recommendations to their customers of ways to save on recurring subscription fees.  Initially, Minna Technologies focused on offering this functionality directly to consumers but over time realized the best way to monetize was via banks.  However, because of their early B2C efforts, Minna Technologies was able to really refine their user experience based on a deep understanding of consumer behavior. They continue to maintain a direct to consumer user base as a “sandbox” for driving improvements in both the product and the way customers engage with the product.  This direct to consumer sandbox overcomes one of the largest challenges of working in a B2B banking environment, which is understandably a low risk tolerance.  By the time a bank wants to consider rolling out an improvement, Minna Technologies can present data showing that it really is an improvement.  In the conversation, Sean and Christoffer also discussed the typical communication challenges of growing a team from 5 people to 55 people. They explored how to use both a North Star Metric and OKRs to help drive alignment and coordinate execution cross-functionally.  Learn more about CMO Christoffer Pettersson at https://www.linkedin.com/in/christofferpetterssongbg/Learn more about Sean Ellis at www.SeanEllis.me Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

For this week’s episode of the Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis travels to Vilnius, Lithuania to interview leaders from their hottest breakout growth companies.  The panel discussion included the CEO, Thomas Plantenga, of Vinted which is Lithuania’s first unicorn. Thomas led the successful turnaround effort from struggling startup to a billion-dollar valuation. He shares details about what they specifically did to drive this turnaround.  The panel also included Jonas Karklys, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Tesonet, a company that creates security tools. The business has grown rapidly and is now almost 1000 employees. Tesonet sponsored Sean’s travel to Lithuania for a private workshop and was the key sponsor behind the event.Other guests included JB Daguene, a partner from 70Ventures, which funds and accelerates B2B startups from across Europe and Tomas Slimas, CMO/co-founder of Oberlo, a company founded in Lithuania that was quickly acquired by Shopify. Tomas now serves as the director of online marketing for Shopify where he continues to grow the Oberlo business.The conversation led to many insights ranging from finding product-market fit, to driving a successful turnaround to managing growth at massive scale.View a video of this panel discussion and Sean Ellis' Keynote at https://www.seanellis.me/sean-ellis-keynote-panel.html Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

For this episode, I interviewed Ankur Nagpal, Founder and CEO of Teachable, a SaaS platform that is disrupting the online education space. Ankur shares his journey from the grit driven growth of the early days to what is now a large eduction platform generating $1.5M in monthly recurring revenue in addition to significant transaction fees. We discussWhy it’s important to bake growth into the culture of a business in the early daysThe role that aggressive targets played in helping trigger creative growth programsHow early customer education programs help reduce churn ratesHow Teachable has evolved the growth and marketing team structureFuture growth plans for maintaining aggressive growth targets Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

For this episode, I’m joined by Ethan Garr, SVP Growth at Robokiller, to discuss the key commonalities and differences for breakout growth B2B companies featured in the last six episodes of the podcast. Ethan has also been helping write in-depth growth studies on each of the companies I've interviewed so he is very familiar with them (Lola, TripActions, Templafy, Valuer, Miro and Hubs (formerly 3D Hubs). Some of the areas that we explored include:How B2B companies are leveraging data to accelerate growthCommon factors driving their breakout growthHow a growth mindset is essential to fueling testingWhy it is essential to clearly identify target customersWhy B2B needs to obsess on value for all stakeholdersHow B2B growth is undergoing a major transformationRole of product/market fit in B2B growthWhy it is essential for B2B to collaborate cross-functionally Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Aryal Smith, Marketing Director at AfterShokz, makers of innovative headphones that are ideal for athletes who need to stay aware of their surroundings. Joining Aryal for the interview is Jeff Goldenberg, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Abacus, a leading performance digital agency that has been working with AfterShokz for over two years. Since 2015, AfterShokz’s annual revenue has grown by 2000% and its monthly output of headphones now exceeds 200,000 units. AfterShokz headphones use bone conduction technology which enables them to offer situational awareness and a great listening experience. In the interview, Aryal and Jeff share their insights into what is driving AfterShokz breakout growth.  They cover a broad range of topics including:The challenge of communicating how a physical product offers a unique experienceSome of the challenges of a multichannel approach to growthHow to effectively use video in online advertisingHow a digital agency works effectively with a high growth clientHow they used a grassroots approach to gain traction and continue to drive growthChallenges of marketing a very innovative consumer electronics productSee detailed growth studies on companies interviewed for the Breakout Growth Podcast at https://growthhackers.com/growth-studiesLearn more about Aryal Smite at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aryal-smith-8a552770/Learn more about Jeff Goldenberg at https://www.linkedin.com/in/goldenbergjeff/Learn more about AfterShokz at www.aftershokz.comLearn more about Sean Ellis at www.seanellis.me Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Ferdinand Goetzen, Director of Marketing and Growth at 3D Hubs, a B2B platform that connects engineers to a global network of on-demand manufacturers. 3D Hubs was founded in Amsterdam in 2013 and since that time the platform has helped engineers produce more than 4 million parts. In the interview, Ferdinand shares his insights into what is driving 3D Hubs’ breakout growth.  He covers a broad range of topics including:Why the $12 trillion manufacturing market was ripe for disruptionHow 3D Hubs offers an amazing aha moment when a new project can be priced in seconds compared to the weeks it takes via alternative solutionsFerdinand’s top priority tasks when he joined the team six months agoThe process that 3D Hubs follows to accelerate growthHow the 3D Hubs marketing and growth team fits into the broader organizationFerdinand previously ran growth for Recruitee, one of the fastest-growing B2B SaaS businesses in Europe. He shares some of the key differences between growing that business and 3D Hubs. He also compares some unique challenges of growing a B2B vs a B2C company and what it typically takes to be successful. See detailed growth studies on companies interviewed for the Breakout Growth Podcast at: https://growthhackers.com/growth-studiesLearn more about Ferdinand Goetzen at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdinandgoetzen/Learn more about 3D Hubs at www.3dhubs.comLearn more about Sean Ellis at www.seanellis.me Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast, Sean Ellis interviews Yuliya Malysh, Head of Growth and Self Serve Business at Miro, a B2C2B collaborative whiteboarding solution. Miro was founded in Russia and its viral breakout growth helped attract a $25M investment led by Accel Partners, a top Silicon Valley VC firm.  In the interview, Yulia shares her insights into what is driving this breakout growth.  She covers a broad range of topics including:How her team is organizedThe process that her team follows to accelerate growthHow her team fits into the broader organizationSteps the company took to unlock viral growth such as moving from a free trial model to a freemium planYuliya’s strong data background is an important part of her success as head of growth.  She explains that data is key to identifying large opportunities for growth, informing hypotheses and generating effective ideas for further accelerating growth. Data also helps teams remain objective and not “fall in love” with their ideas. Yuliya credits a lot of Miro’s breakout growth to an intuitive simple solution for the challenges resulting from the market trend toward more geographically distributed teams. She has clearly identified users that have the biggest needs for the solution and has also identified which users are most effective at accelerating viral adoption. See detailed growth studies on companies interviewed for the Breakout Growth Podcast at: https://growthhackers.com/growth-studiesLearn more about Yulya Malysh at https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuliya-malysh-66220669/Learn more about Miro at www.Miro.comLearn more about Sean Ellis at www.seanellis.me Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe