Over a year into my adventure at Fixel (a startup focused on ML based audience segmentation), I think it’s a good time to air some thoughts and questions that I’ve come across.
Unexpectedly, the most common question I’ve encountered is regarding my job title — Head of Growth.
What I thought is a rather trivial position nowadays, seems to raise quite a few eyebrows when I introduce myself.
The answer, to be honest, is pretty simple (though not as simple as “Senator, we run ads”):
We are a startup with a SaaS product for advertisers.
Let’s break it down.
A startup
I think this is what people find hardest to understand.
“you’re a startup, why aren’t you a CXO?” (insert random middle letter)
Well, I could. No one would really care or argue otherwise within our team. Heck, they’re CXO’s themselves.
But the truth is that C-level or VP is meaningless in such a flat organization. When our CEO or CTO go out meeting investors and partners, their title drives a certain conversation (Money or Tech).
But my primary focus, though still outbound, is our end users.
To these, Sales or Marketing titles might raise objection. C-level or VP can be seen as ridiculous when interacting with a small town online shop from Minneapolis.
SaaS Product
Our product is a self-serve solution by its nature.
We aim for users to be able to fully understand the product and the value it can bring them, and complete their registration, trial and checkout with minimal human interaction.
Not because we’re sociopaths (or are we?), but because this is the only way of doing things in a scalable manner.
This results in some very blurry lines between Sales and Marketing efforts. Moreover, additional efforts like Customer Success are also intertwined into the process.
We’re a lean startup. You can fit us all in a standard SUV, so there aren’t many toes to step on when you’re doing cross-functional work.
Ultimately, I wanted something to capture a wider span than just plain Marketing.
For Advertisers
Our solution was born out of a need we experienced ourselves as advertisers and analysts. So I can easily relate to their pains and needs.
This keeps me close to the product itself, borderline Product Marketing or even Product Management.
Being involved in the product development, roadmap, UI and more, has greatly assisted in achieving our KPIs.
Keeping an ear on the ground and making quick adaptations to our product is crucial when evaluating our Product/Market fit.
My two cents on Growth
A dear friend of mine, Roy Povarchik, holds this mantra:
“Growth is a marathon”
(yeah and it’s also a mindset and blah blah)
At the end of the day it’s not a one-off effort. Neither in the effort invested nor in the functions involved.
Marketing on their own can’t drive sustainable growth. Sales will drop the ball if there’s no coordination.
Sales on their own can’t drive sustainable growth. Marketing has to keep pumping their pipeline.
And both can’t expect to drive outstanding value while doing the same repetitive tactics everyone else is doing. Do things different.
Start by aligning your internal work to a common goal. Trust me on this one, most organizations I’ve met got it wrong.
Final thoughts
And finally, for the love of God, I’m no Hacker, Ninja, Magician or any other BS title people come up with these days.
