Episode 12 – Hire Quickly, Fire Faster – Atif Khan – VP of business, ThirdWeb
This week on Growth@Scale, Matt is joined by Atif Khan, VP of business at ThirdWeb for a chat about the art of building your sales and development teams. Atif shares his experiences on how to look for the best people to scale your business and why a flashy resume isn’t always the best reason to make key hires. Atif also shares his positive outlook for the future of Web3 and how new use cases for the technology will change the way companies can reward customers.
Key Takeaways:
🚀 Partnership Strategies for Startup Stages:
- At the early stage, prioritize problem-solving over operations.
- Founder involvement in sales: Vital until hitting $50M ARR.
- Transition from the dynamic 'hunting' phase to the consistent 'farming' phase.
💼 Building Early Sales and BD Teams:
- Choose talent with startup spirit over flashy big company resumes.
- Use the 'hire 3, fire 2' strategy to get only the best on board.
🌐 Bullish Outlook on Web3 Use Cases:
- From gaming to travel, explore the vast potential of blockchain.
- Clearing the air on market volatility: A blessing in disguise?
Actionable Steps for Founders:
🎯 Reassess your partnership strategy to match your startup's phase.
🔍 Prioritize hiring for skills, not just big names on resumes.
💰 Keep a close eye on your budget to maximize your runway.
🤝 Engage in transparent talks with your hiring team for a long-term vision.
⏳ Test talent rigorously to ensure they align with your startup's DNA.
🎧 Listen now to start off your week with insights on strategic partnerships, impactful hiring, and the game-changing world of Web3!
Episode 11 – Turning duds into Ws– Ed Lee– Product & Growth Specialist, Adobe
On the latest episode of Growth@Scale, product and growth expert Ed Lee returns to talk about turning creative failures into learning opportunities and how to use cross-functional collaboration to unlock growth.
Some of the main topics discussed include:
Focused Growth Strategies: Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, successful User Acquisition strategies involve targeting your core audience where they are and speaking to them in a way that resonates.
Experimentation and Learning: The foundation of growth, especially for early-stage companies, is experimentation; success often means poring over creative failures to glean new learnings to leverage into future success.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: From creative and design, to data analytics, product, and sales, collaboration among different teams is a valuable way to share knowledge and innovate new strategies based on different experiences with the customer journey.
Integration of Product and Marketing: Both product-driven and marketing-driven approaches are essential and should be integrated, with successful companies leveraging strategies that unite both elements.
Budgeting for Growth: Decisions about spending on growth channels are based on data-driven test plans, with phased approaches and checkpoints to ensure money is spent wisely.
Building a Strong Creative Team: Building an effective creative team is a complex process that doesn’t stop at just hiring the best talent. You also need to establish effective test structures so you can get adequate learnings from every creative.
Creative Optimization: Dissect what works, understand the components of successful creatives, and iterate based on those insights. Sometimes you’ll see significant impact from something as simple as adjusting copy.
Listen at the link below and subscribe to Growth@Scale to hear new episodes every week.