Podcast
The Breakout Growth Podcast
Hosted by Sean Ellis · EN
Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr interview CEOs and product, growth and marketing leaders from the world's fastest-growing companies so that you can learn from them how to take your growth to the next level. Sean and Ethan draw on decades of experience growing breakout success companies and products including Dropbox, Robokiller, LogMeIn, Eventbrite, Lookout and Uproar to ask the right questions.
seanellis.substack.com
seanellis.substack.com
13episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
International Expansion as a Growth Lever, Another Chat With AllTrails CEO
Nov 28, 202301:03:29Tap to summarizeIf you want to know just how awesome AllTrails is, just ask Apple! Out of over 2 million apps in the App Store, AllTrails is one of just three finalists waiting to hear if they have been selected as Apple’s 2023 App of the Year. So, of course, we are delighted to welcome back to the podcast, Ron Schneidermann, AllTrails’s CEO. Ron first joined Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr for a chat back in early 2022. At the time, the company was riding Covid-driven enthusiasm for socially distanced activities and had recently raised $150 million in private equity funding. Now, almost two years later, we wanted to hear how it has been going for this hyper-growth app that helps people have fun exploring the outdoors. After the pandemic, Ron and his team were determined to continue accelerating growth and that meant pushing in new directions while at the same time building on what was already working well. To keep moving forward, they made big bets on international expansion, invested in new areas like e-commerce, and kept the focus on improving mindset and execution. And the growth has continued. “Momentum begets momentum,” says Ron, and while the flywheel has accelerated and many of the bets have worked out, it hasn’t all been easy. In this conversation, Ron shares not just the wins, but the struggles and challenges that come hand-in-hand with managing rocketship growth. There is a lot to this episode. From valuable learnings when looking to expand across borders to a really important discussion on leadership and vulnerability. And you will find out what it means when Ron says at AllTrails “Authenticity is our currency.”AllTrails. So jump into this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast. And thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast. Don’t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featuredWe discussed:* Obsessing on growth, not just maintaining the status quo (08:43)* “Much harder than we expected;” pushing for international growth (14:40)* Modern growth structure. Is “head of growth” obsolete? (35:43)* Growth as a role of influence, not ownership (36:36)* People challenges and hypergrowth; avoiding toxcity (44:55)* Authenticity as a personal core value (52:16)And much, much, more . . . Get full access to Sean’s Substack at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe
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Before you Invest in Tools, Heed this Advice From Pendo’s CEO
Sep 25, 202300:53:46Tap to summarizeAccording to Todd Olson, Pendo’s founder and CEO, ‘the market isn’t just receptive to AI, it’s demanding it!’ So in this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr dive deep with Todd, to better understand what this and other changes in the world of product, marketing, and growth will mean for businesses. Pendo helps companies accelerate how they build and launch products that customers actually want by combining the power of analytics tools with messaging and customer experience features. For Product-Led Growth companies, this can be quite powerful as it helps teams intelligently use analytics to understand and drive specific valuable behaviors. In this spirited and fun conversation, we get a sense of Todd’s approach and philosophy, and how that has helped drive Pendo’s international growth over the past 10 years. From the outset, the company was focused on improving customer experiences in software, but in the past few years, they have been able to accelerate that mission by investing in machine learning. Todd says it’s really important to understand that the “mindset drives the tech,” not the other way around, and he’s built a culture to support that. Just as with our last podcast episode with the VP of EMEA from Moloco, Todd is laser-focused on building enthusiasm around outcomes from technology, not on the technology itself. He says teams have a tendency to celebrate when they ship software, but really the celebration should start when the desired outcome is achieved. It’s this kind of candid and thoughtful growt-minded thinking that made for a great discussion and undoubtedly has been foundational to Pendo’s success thus far. So jump in! And thanks for listening to the Breakout Growth Podcast. Don’t forget, to watch us and subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featuredWe discussed:* Building Pendo with a mission to improve experiences in software (06:10)* Speed of innovation is important, but we have to balance change (13:22)* What AI means for businesses and how to embrace it (18:14)* Marketing and product’s relationship to data has changed at a different pace (22:00)* In the future, every PM is thinking about growth (37:31)* Smarter and more efficient: the impact of a down economy (47:58)And much, much, more . . . Get full access to Sean’s Substack at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe
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BetterMe’s Founder & CEO on Growing Health & Wellness Apps to Over 100 Million Users
Mar 10, 2022Tap to summarizeIn this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Victoria Repa who is the founder and CEO of BetterMe, a Ukraine-based developer of health and wellness mobile apps. We have held off on publishing the podcast for a few weeks as the world has been focused on the tragic situation in Ukraine. We did not want to do anything to shift the focus but decided to share this episode now in the hopes that it could help Victoria amplify her messages to the growth community asking for help and support in Ukraine. Victoria shared these links with us and, if you are in a position to help, we hope you will consider doing so: https://how-you-can-support-ukraine.super.site/ and https://bit.ly/3IDf3tw Our hearts go out to Victoria, her 230-person BetterMe team, and all of those impacted by this war. BetterMe Health Coaching and BetterMe Mental Health are mobile apps created to make health and wellness more accessible. Victoria’s philosophy centers around helping people develop healthy habits that over time transform into an overall healthy lifestyle. In just over four years, the apps have grown to a combined total of more than 100 million users around the world. Driving BetterMe’s growth trajectory is an intense focus on experimentation and learning that is guided by a “fail fast and fail cheap mantra.” This approach allows Victoria’s team to continuously improve its understanding of users, their behaviors, and the problems they look to BetterMe to help them solve. Learning and evolving is critical in growth, and the BetterMe journey demonstrates how fast-growing companies use data to continuously optimize their offerings. At one point BetterMe had seven apps in its portfolio before eventually consolidating down to a single offering. Then, as B2B opportunities came into focus, Victoria’s team iterated again to add a second mobile app to address changing market needs. We hope this pre-war story will help shine a light on the contributions and achievements of Ukrainians. Please consider visiting the links shared above to find out how you can help. In addition, here are a few other organizations working to make a difference in Ukraine: https://wck.orghttps://help.rescue.org/donate/ukraine-acqhttps://www.care.orghttps://novaukraine.org We discussed:* Making healthy lifestyles accessible to everyone (5:50)* Victoria’s inspiration and journey to BetterMe (10:19)* The Silicon Valey growth approach powering the business (12:16)* Powering growth through data (28:33) Get full access to Growth with Sean Ellis at seanellis.substack.com/subscribe
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