Growth Interview Series: #7 Nilan Peiris
VP Growth Transferwise. Startup growth advisor
1. Could you tell me a little bit about your background in Growth/Internet Marketing?
After I graduated in Maths. I Started as a developer in the first dot com boom. Crash happened moved to strategy consulting and big data. 6 years ago was building Accenture’s eCommerce practice in the UK — when I was invited to be interim head of eCommerce
2. What is a day in the life of Nilan Peiris?
No routine. I find myself:
- Spending half of my time reading stuff — to try and develop new alternate ways of solving problems
- Half of my time solving problems
In terms of time depends stage of company:
- Super early stage — thinking very hard about what we need to focus on in order to survive
- Then executing. May be offline growth hacks, getting performance marketing up and running or building product
- Growth stage
- Building systems and culture that drive growth
3. Why is growth hacking interesting?
Don’t think its interesting. Growth is interesting and figuring out how you get a business to get to traction is hugely hard and rewarding. Figuring out how you scale is a nice tough problem too
4. What fundamental technical skills would a Growth Hacker need to posses?
I don’t believe in skills — I believe in competencies / capabilities
I interview for:
- Analytic capability
- Creative flair
- Structure
- Drive
- Smarts
In terms of skills:
- Ability to analyse data
- Excel -> R
- SQL always useful
- Ability to wireframe
- Pen and paper
- Ability to build
- basic understanding of development
5. What are some good interview questions when hiring a growth hacker/internet marketer?
I interview around the above competencies — through case studies. I Don’t believe in CVs and experience — I believe in peoples natural talent abilities — and try to give the opportunities to demonstrate this in a case study
6. Do you think internet marketer/growth hacker need to know how to code?
They need an understanding of how the internet works
E.g.: cookies, TCP / IP, http headers, HTML, CSS, APIs etc
7. What are the most productive ways to spend time on the internet?
Curate your input feeds so that time spent learning / developing is very efficient
8. What advice to you have for someone who wants to build a career in growth?
Find anyone (a startup) — thats looking for help and volunteer your time for free to help them grow — thats how I started
9. What’s the best way to contact you?
Twitter: @nilanp
