Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:08 Welcome to the breakout growth podcast, where Sean Ellis interviews, leaders from the world's fastest growing companies to get to the heart of what's really driving their growth. And now here's your host. Sean Ellis
Speaker 1 00:00:24 Wakes up. So to the breakout growth podcast, Ethan Gar and I chat with JD Millwood, vice president of product at curve. JD previously held growth roles at Uber and Coinbase. So we were really intrigued to hear what led him to the VP product role at another FinTech company curve. Right? Everyone knows that Uber has one of the best growth teams, but with the more than $50 billion IPO at Coinbase, I was really excited for this interview. I agree. So, so what stood out to you, Ethan? No D described connecting growth and product as a force multiplier. That seems to be a recurring theme. We keep hearing these conversations with product leads, Georgia Viddler, who used to lead product that Canva told us. And even Maria from buffer that this there's really value in the tight coupling between these and we've discussed the impacts of a specialized growth team in our work.
Speaker 1 00:01:11 But JD pointed out that without some level of ownership over the product, it's really hard to drive sustained growth. Yeah, for sure. And I think it's the popularity of product led growth that really underscores this trend. In fact, uh, I was fascinated, not just in general, his thought of the importance of ownership of growth, but in particular, the area of speed to value, he highlighted how activation serves as a success driver across the entire growth engine. Yeah. And it really seems to be working for them even with pausing hiring last year curve is on track to just about double it's head count over 600 employees. Yeah, no, that's a good point. He, um, he actually said to us that they are looking for talent. So anyone who's out there in search of opportunities, as we often talk about in these conversations really fast growing companies have lots of opportunities.
Speaker 1 00:02:00 So you should, you should check them out if you're looking, they, uh, they, they are hiring. So Ethan, should we get to this? Uh, no first we should mention what's happening with go practice, right? So a quick heads up for anyone who is interested to go practice seems to be taking our comprehensive growth skills assessment that people got really excited about when we launched it with our last cohort, we're actually splitting that out and we're going to be making it available for free. So it's like a 45 minute growth assessment where it goes into all the key skills for growth and, uh, it's going to be available on product and we'll be launching on product hunt in the very near future. So keep an eye open for that. And, uh, we'll appreciate your support when it comes around. Actually Ethan, before we end this introduction, you also have something called coming up with growth hackers. Yeah. Actually I'll be hosting and ask me anything May 26th at 9:00 AM Pacific time. So if you have questions about mobile growth or the principles for sustainable growth that Sean and I discuss here,
Speaker 2 00:03:00 Visit the AMA page on growth hackers.com. So you can post your questions now. All right, let's get through this. Let's do it.
Speaker 3 00:03:16 Hey, JD. And welcome to the breakout growth podcast.
Speaker 2 00:03:19 It's great to be a show and thanks for the time and taking me here.
Speaker 3 00:03:22 Yeah. We are so excited to learn more about curve and, and all of your experiences together. But, uh, I also want to welcome Ethan Gar. My co-hosts welcome, Ethan. Yeah. So, um, let's, let's jump right into it. What can you give us a quick introduction to what curve is and, and the problem that it solves, maybe how long around, how long it's been around?
Speaker 2 00:03:44 Yeah, so I mean, first of all, curve is a brand new category creator in the space. Um, we understand that ultimately finance is super fragmented. There are lots of fintechs coming into the market every single day and what people really want. It's not a, um, another bank, they just wanted better banking experience. So that end curve is basically the world's first over the top platform for banking. And the goal is to be a new customer experience that sits between the consumer and their financial services. So the end state will be that you have a Netflix or Spotify, like experience to access all things, money without having to leave the banks and the services you enjoy today. So we think it's going to be potentially three to four players in this space. It's going to be a large temp. And what we're trying to do is differentiate ourselves in terms of the capabilities we do starting in the payment space, but then moving further, further into the money management opportunities.
Speaker 3 00:04:37 And so, so sorry for that guy. I really didn't go into, I purposely try not to, um, research too much about what companies do because otherwise I have the, uh, the curse of knowledge and then maybe the audience might not be able to follow as well. So, um, is it, is it, um, is it really like an online bank then? I mean, ultimately in terms of the suite of services that it's, it's heading toward, or does it, does it sit on top of banks or kind of merge banks?
Speaker 2 00:05:07 Yeah. So in terms of the practicality, you know, curve is fundamentally a MasterCard debit card and it has an app and the app is basically for now your digital wallet. And when you sign up to curve, you go through on boarding, you add all of your cards, your visa and debit credit, or debit cards. Um, and basically we can support that as well as MasterCard as well. We bring that tool into the system and then whenever you want to go and spend, so you just go into the app, select the card you want to pay from, and then you use your physical quad card to be in a payment transaction, or we put it through to the end, from the card you selected. But the trick there is that we're ultimately making the spending experiences the most rewarding it can be. And the way we do that by providing you cashback and rewards cards, you already have linked and we give you things like great.
Speaker 2 00:05:57 And we allow you to have multiple cards. That means that you can actually earn more of a Wars across a greater volume of cards and basically your entire wallet. And we supercharged the cop supercharged, the cards you have with additional benefits, such as the ability to move payments seamlessly between each other, or have them Apple pay, Google pay, or Samsung pay enabled, or their ability to use a credit card to pay off a bill that is not accepted by a credit card, um, such we call that feature fronted. And the idea because the curve caught is MasterCard that they call it. It doesn't have a block on the route that payment directly to the credit card that gives you more cashflow and liquidity in the market.
Speaker 1 00:06:31 So J D at curve and in your previous work, uh, at Uber and Coinbase, I saw that your all your roles previously were, were specific to growth. Now you're VP of product. And I'm curious if you could tell us about that transition if, for how you may have shifted your mindset for the new challenge of leading product.
Speaker 2 00:06:51 Yeah, I guess starting off, I'm thinking I'm going to be a CMO or VP of marketing in the longterm and need to learn a variety of skillsets. And it just so happened that I started off more on the technical marketing side of things, which soon rebranded into growth marketing and then growth more holistically, especially if you working with any of the U S companies compared to Europe, and you just naturally find herself attacking big questions along the entire customer funnel or funnel, and you're working out okay, what's the biggest impediment to growth. And, you know, it's not just acquisition, but it's the onboarding or conversion piece and then activation, and you quickly land on a conclusion that you ultimately need to have some control of products resourcing and a growth tech stack in order to have the most amount of impact, because no matter what you put through the funnel, if they can't convert because of product issues or, um, lack of understanding or friction, we're not just going to have the impact you need.
Speaker 2 00:07:45 You're going to have a higher customer acquisition costs. Meanwhile, I'm standing in front of finance and I'm telling them that the cost per acquisition is X and LTV for the customer is Y and we'll definitely be overspending, but I noticed that PM's, weren't having similar conversations to that depth. And I realized that, you know, we are incentivized growth. Uh, people in the growth space are incentivized towards owning certain metrics and having a holistic view of the funnel and the customer journey. So I naturally wanted to get more and more technical and more into that space to kind of destiny control of my own future. So that was something I had at Uber to some extent, more so at Coinbase. And then at, um, curve, the CEO, and I had a very aligned vision where growth is the most integral part of the business. And you enable it with as many product resources as possible to operate as a SWAT team, autonomous the up and down the funnel. But as a company grows into scale up mode, you need to think about how that's more integrated because you realize there's common issues and pain points that you can address being part of a wider integrated units in the product to me than being a SWAT team hanging out on the sides, attacking problems. That will
Speaker 1 00:08:50 I w when we were talking before you had mentioned that that growth reports into product, so you, you,
Speaker 3 00:08:56 You have both, but you just really have, have really the product set of levers is, uh, is really integral to growth as you were just saying. So, um, makes, makes sense.
Speaker 2 00:09:07 Yeah. And I think on this, actually, what's quite interesting is the journey of how that ended up happening because, um, I joined, I had a very small team of folks who are really the traditional sense from a European spectacle markets, marketers. We had CRM, we had some paid acquisition channels within the purview. And then ultimately, um, we started to look at, okay, what data can we use to inform our decisions? And we realize what the data wasn't, where it needed to be. So I'm thinking, how can I get a better control and quality of data coming my way? And as a result, I ended up forming the product analytics team and taking that team and use research into the growth domain. And then the second question is how do we tell compelling stories? So they let us up with the expectation of what the product is delivering.
Speaker 2 00:09:50 And as a result, we formed the product marketing team within the growth space. And then we finally asked the Salesforce, what can we do to be able to do everything from marketing and ad tech stack, as well as the capabilities to reduce frictions and add new experiences in the product, um, and et cetera, where people to the value of the growth in the value in the product, and as a result, I built out a growth product team. So by that point, the team was already structured with enough. I'm actually stepping into the VP of product for me. I got, in addition to that team components, I got, uh, product management and product design and user research. So it's a more of a full body team we're working together much better than we were beforehand because of that unity, but it's a bit of a happy accident.
Speaker 3 00:10:33 Yeah. It reminds me of, uh, one company where I was, I was tasked with growth. And then when I, when I really explored all of the growth hypothesis for the business, it was a, it was really still a pretty early stage company. I, I, I honed in like this, this is a great viral opportunity. There aren't, there aren't many other opportunities beyond viral that are going to make sense for this product. So this is where I'm really going to focus my efforts. And they came back to me and said, um, well, we really considered that product. So you figure out something else we'll work that lever. Now that doesn't make sense, you know, go, go all in on the, on the thing that's going to be effective. And, and I think for most companies, product is such a critical driver of growth or plays such a critical role that, um, it does make sense to, uh, to have, have those roles somewhat merged.
Speaker 3 00:11:28 Um, so one of the things that, yeah, just as, as Ethan was asking you, uh, that the questionnaire, it got me thinking, so Coinbase, Uber you've been, you've been a part of some amazing companies, Coinbase in particular, just, I don't know what their, what their market cap is on the IPO. I think, I think I looked at it in the last couple of days, like $60 billion or something for a company that's listed in, in the last couple of weeks. I'm not, not, I mean, that's, that's almost a category by itself of, of that level that quickly. And Uber of course, would be close to a company that, that debuted as a, as a really valuable coming in the private markets, they were, they were worth quite a bit as well. Um, now curve, like what, what was it that attracted you to curve when you've seen like massive successes and been part of massive successes at those previous companies?
Speaker 2 00:12:22 Yeah, I think it stems to two, two main considerations. First one being, how can I learn? What can I learn in the next opportunity? Uh, what problems am I exposed to? And really, can I go in and figure that out and have the autonomy and the team to do so. And, um, that was compelling for me at Quimby's because when I joined stood in the hundreds of people also, um, uh, fleets offices over weekends, do my interviews. It was miscounted counting for fun, part of my, my kind of job to see what I've done so far. But more importantly, they had done nothing in relation to the growth in paid acquisition space. It was very embryonic. So setting up them from spending their first a thousand pounds on a Facebook ad to 2 million monthly acquisition spent before I left was one of many activities. I felt that was a great new experience.
Speaker 2 00:13:13 Now converse the, when I looked at curve, I was speaking with members of the team, I'd use a product to some extent, and the more they explain the capability of what it could do near term and longterm, it blew my mind. And one of the things I look at when I'm joining the company is I want to know the, the modes, but essentially how enough of you gets in the way with this, you know, and at Coinbase, it was when I was buying crypto and they were charging me the fees they were. And I was thinking, how enough are you charging that amount of money? Because this implies you're a multi-billion dollar company. And the level of arrogance must means that there's something there worth digging into. When I look at, when I look at curve as a company and what they, what they can deliver, it is actually your mind, is it.
Speaker 2 00:13:54 And it's, it's very discrete in terms of the capability. So just to kind of bring that to some kind of context, you know, the company could have just said, we're not doing payments. We're just going to be a digital wallet experience. We're going to amplify some of the capabilities and allow you to bring all these services in the longer term, but they thought, no, let's start with the payments capability because we can build a relationship around them as frequent job to be done with customer, but also generates a ton of data. That data allows you to have a transaction history that transaction history allows you to analyze and bring other third party services and monetize or build capabilities from that transaction history in a bitch week. That means that every new product you build is contextually relevant as opposed to a net new upsell. And what's interesting to me is if you take, um, climber in Europe or affirming the U S kind of, this is, this is our ambitions, and it's publicly not public knowledge, we'll auction our products, um, at the moment credits.
Speaker 2 00:14:46 And what it ultimately allows you to do is not only buy now and pay later, but it allows you to go back time to any of the transactions you made over the last 12 months, and actually decide to pay it out and get a refund immediately and pay that down two installments. So just for context, um, as I'm testing this out in the beta phase, um, I've got a credit allowance interest free of a thousand pounds. I literally went to October when I bought an iPad from my parents, and I actually put that a thousand iPads on, uh, got refunded there. And then like, literally like to my, to my payment card and was able to actually have that now for the next, I chose nine months as Formance pay down to zero. And that means that you do not need to have much, much of integrations, like a form of climber.
Speaker 2 00:15:25 I could go to the editor, stole my curve card, make a payment, and be able to have that direct the integrated without the merchant, knowing it also means that I knew the economics are better from a integration standpoint, because there's no fee to the merchants and the same where there is a flow. And that's just one capability of being an over the top platform. They are, as well as having the card components without the core component components, we're following something similar to Kleiner or affirm in the credits. Um, and that's one of three verticals that I'm very excited to talk about. Other two is not the public religion,
Speaker 1 00:15:59 Even if you are excited to talk about the other ones, you can't got it. So, um, yeah. So JD, what are some of the key challenges you guys have had to overcome, and especially, I guess, in your role in product, what, what have you been, what have you been, have you been working on?
Speaker 2 00:16:14 Yeah, so you go from scale. Um, so you start up where you're, you're one big family everyone's working on the same issues and tackling it, and then you're thinking, okay, cool. We're now to a point of scale up and we fundamentally have a degree of product market fit, and we are now working out, how do we extend that to make sure that it's really able to help us reach adjacent audiences and users as they come in. And then we also have a product market fit expansion efforts such as the us, and also such as, um, curve creditors, as I explained. So for us, the balance between the two is very important because there's a bias towards building net new features, which are very complicated and highly risky, as well as doing the, let's say less sexy work, which typically falls into that space of optimization and modification.
Speaker 2 00:16:56 That really adds a 10 X value because the product was inefficiently built for a variety of consumers, not your core demographic. So that crossing the chasm has been quite challenging as we go from one stage of growth to the next. The other one is our business being payments related. Um, it was super exposed during the COVID pandemic. Um, we could tell where the con the country and where the markets were in terms of lockdown impact just by looking at how people were rebounding and spending on a regular basis. So, you know, I'm a loyal customer. If I spend with you every single time I need to spend, but if that's once a month, then it's once a month. It's not a really great place to be. So building products and extended features that will allow for people to not be tied in or be as constraint, um, have been a massive part of the 2020 focus.
Speaker 2 00:17:40 One example of this was our go back in time feature was only two weeks. You could only go back two weeks, be able to take a transaction from one call to the other. Uh, we actually worked on an initiative to meet that, um, up to three months and we enabled it. So it can be from a debit card to a credit cards. So that meant that everybody went crazy and bought the toilet or new role on the debit cards, thinking that we'll have enough money before they got furloughed or laid off, we're able to actually go back in time a three months and take all of those transactions and put them onto their credit card and immediately three of cash base, I guess we funded to them there. And then, so it's taken advantage of those types of opportunities, but they build fundamental capabilities for the longer term of that challenge of building features, where you don't see the direct impact immediately, but you see it three or four months later has been hard to guide that rapid kind of product development work you want to see.
Speaker 4 00:18:28 Yeah. So that's, uh, let's, let's kinda dive into the actual growth drivers that themselves, or at least like, uh, I mean, it sounds like it's as, as, as the pandemic kicked in and things like that, some of the growth drivers are probably going to change a bit, but when, when you look at kind of what, what has gotten curved to this point, is there one thing that really stands out as, as probably the most important,
Speaker 2 00:18:52 Yeah, we've got distributed feature sets and normally it's counted to have less single value proposition, not having a single value proposition that duo, but we have these components in the product itself that really speaks to certain segments of our base. So we've got those folks who are really troubled, focused. We're giving them the best travel congratulates you can find in a market. And for them, it makes sense when it comes to spending the boards, because it means that even if every single call is really bad on the effects, they can continue to spend from them those cards and actually enjoy those benefits. So that's like a nice sediments we see on that side. Another example of this is the ability to actually get cash back and optimize someone's cash back in real time in Europe, cash back is not attractive like it is in the us.
Speaker 2 00:19:36 Um, so for us to give you 1%, is the cash back in real time across any of your three sets of retailers is a super attractive proposition. Um, but what we, so those are like the main, the main things that gave us a good amount of scale to a certain subset of users when we first launched. But in terms of, uh, what takes us to the next level, the next wave of growth, it's been about distribution in terms of partnerships, we call them B2B to C kind of partnerships. And we launched, um, after a long amount of time at work, our partnership with Samsung and the UK, and some, some, we solved a unique problem for them, which is not many causes in the UK are actually Samsung pay enabled, and they have to go and set up relationships with all these different banks and they would have to be, and those banks would have to reissue or card issuers will have to reissue new cause that our content is enabled or supporting Samsung is a whole logistical nightmare.
Speaker 2 00:20:27 I think the same thing will happen in the U S as well when we expand there as well. But what we did is by adding your curve cards to, um, we integrated a direct, uh, solution inside the curve on the Samsung device. And every single time you go to Samsung to add your card, and it doesn't work, uh, quotes, um, some, some branded experience powered by curve. And the way we that partnership is that actually every single customer that comes through, they will know it's a Samsung partnership. Um, they will come through and be able to have their car connected to the Samsung. It wasn't beforehand, but actually they would have to go to download the app and be able to enjoy all the benefits and capabilities. So we still retain some degree of the customer relationship that gives us a massive bump, a massive bump in terms of costumers. And that now gives us an ability to be able to actually do a massive amounts of paid acquisition. Um, in a more, let's say inefficient way because the blended cost is actually balanced by the fact that we've got organic channels bringing us continually. Um, it's almost like tripling the size of organic for yourself in that context. So that gives us a bit of inefficiency, but an opportunity to scale beyond a certain point that would otherwise not be present.
Speaker 4 00:21:29 So it sounds like product market fit kind of the original driver, um, just just know a suite of services that people really needed. And then, and then this, uh, the partnerships are great for distribution themselves, but they, they increase that lifetime value to a point where it makes it so that you can, you can fund paid acquisition as well. Is that, is that kind of, uh, uh, a good kind of general overview of that?
Speaker 2 00:21:54 Yeah, absolutely. The core core proposition for the majority of our users is all your cards in one, and literally not having to carry a wallet and be able to just take one card and think about it. That's what I did to pay, wanted to take it from there. And then, like you said, the distribution plays on because we serve such a dynamic lead for these businesses, this a large something as a massive, obviously that's our scale and size and being able to survive and provide a functionality that is unparalleled in the market. It gives us an advantage that we want to press for a short term and continue to build out relationships like those. But distribution is key because we are, so if we can solve and be there at the point that those frictional, those people could survive, the activation rate is much higher. People understand that aha moment happens within seconds after signing up. Um, so that's the question now about how do we build better activation? Because we're seeing the activation is the inverse of churn for us, you know, the less we have to be, the more longer-term channel we see anyways. So it's the same to same thing to solve for. Um, so yeah, it gives us focus in many ways, but it does present unique opportunities.
Speaker 4 00:22:54 Yeah. It's just, it's amazing how just interdependent all of these things are though that like when, when one part start work starts working, it helps so much on the other parts. And, uh, and when, like, if activation is working, then, then retention is going to work, lifetime value is going to increase. That's gonna, that's gonna feed your ability more to, uh, cost-effectively acquire people. And so, yeah, it's, uh, sounds like you, you got the building blocks rolling there, but Ethan, sorry, I cut you off earlier. You were going to ask something. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:22 Following up on the Samsung, uh, example. I was just curious if those partnerships, uh, also present like a challenge in terms of how you're positioning, where do you think of brand? And in this, it sounds like in some cases you're going to be very brand focused and trying to get consumers to recognize her. Um, in other cases, you're relying on the partnership and it powered by curve, I guess. Um, but where is that a, is that a challenge for you at this point? Um, I think it is a challenge. We're the smallest, the smallest player in that partnership. So, you know, you always have a difficulty, but one of the things I'll call out is that our brand and what we're trying to do has given us partnerships, and it's given us negotiation opportunities. When we talk about commercials and business structures that are what you'd expect to see over our peers that are, you know, 10, $15 billion companies.
Speaker 2 00:24:12 Um, so we know that we're competitive and we have something that's unique in the market that can help us second proof points on this is that we, the fact that we were able to retain the user and have them come from, download the club app, as opposed to everything is from the Samsung experience, um, is another proof point of being able to retain our brand and that customer interaction and touch point with them. They see the brand, they see the capability, they see all the things that we can provide beyond just enable mental Samsung pay. And they, they are able to talk to the customer, uh, friends and families and refer them or bring them in, or they're able to continue to use some legal more than they will typically because of the benefits. So for us, that was a requirement of the partnership and it gave us an opportunity to meet people.
Speaker 2 00:24:53 Don't get washed away by having the big hit halo or Samson. And what's great, is it incentivized the right part of that partnership, which is Samsung is going to do everything they can do to solve that particular need for them as a business and push all those customers, um, for, with it. So push to the customer and communicate this benefit to the masses because it helps them on this. And we also see the terrible effects of people signing up and using our transaction. And because we give cash back in real time, we said that for them, Samsung will be one of your default cashback retailers. And they're also seeing a tailwind effect of basically people going online and actually ordering way more on that Samsung websites and stores. And they typically would, which makes them happy as a business makes us happy as our customers are getting value, you can see that virtuous cycle kind of closes the loop.
Speaker 4 00:25:38 Incredible. So w w when you, uh, when you actually look at like, how, how do you gauge success in the overall business considering that, uh, you, you worked with the Uber team for, for the time that you did. And they're one of the really well known companies that have executed on a North star metric. Is that, is that a concept that you've brought to curve? And if so,
Speaker 2 00:26:00 Yeah, so company-wide, I'm sorry. It might be company wide. And then also metric I'm mandating and operating for my team is actually around from of the active users, not for example, revenue and not for example, profitability. And the main reason is because of the strategy, we are ultimately building the operating system for money. And if we're building an operating system for money, it has some certain components, um, marketplace dynamics, and the ability to connect providers with consumers. And it's not going to be done in a typical way where you go in and you see a marketplace to having, you can see X, Y, Z, it's the, Oh, we see you going up coming back on payment for, let's say 5,000 cards we may want to put on COVID credits. And Kirk credit may give them options to multiple providers or just clarified it itself. However, that aside, um, that, that really works if you've got scale. And again, because our revenue strategy is around monetizing our base, that again, Honeywell at scale, so malice first and get to a certain volume of velocity. And then you have really unique opportunities to drive up revenue, generating opportunities or profitability opportunities at scale. So that's kind of been the company, the main focus there, and then obviously each product team will derive their own KPIs based on what problems in the customer space they're trying to solve that will have a net impact for the business. And then that will be the particular targets for the quarter.
Speaker 4 00:27:16 Uh huh. And then they're their own KPIs kind of feed up to the Mao or mal might be one of their KPIs now for their particular product. And then you, you'd also mentioned like activation. So how do you kind of think about the levers that move the Mao?
Speaker 2 00:27:31 Yeah. So, so this is actually very similar for Uber and then also for, um, uh, Coinbase too, but the same concepts that they're right. So you're basically saying, okay, we want to grow and have a large customer base. What is preventing customers from grant onboarding? Okay, what do we fix the bottom bought into that work? And then you look to measure that in terms of sign up to conversion rates and you'd have the T folks in that KPI now. And if it gets us sets of points, it has a net impact on the number of miles we have. So the team is focusing on miles per se, um, in the same way, the growth team, if they're focusing on paid acquisition to drive direct response, sponsor have as many signups in the first transactions through the funnel. They don't focus on. Now at that point in time, they're focused on how many people are coming through at the volume States.
Speaker 2 00:28:10 And we're finding it in terms of the targeting and the quality of user based on feedback with that folks in onboarding, coming back to churn, well, what are the top three reasons or drivers of churn? And it's very dramatic if you come back to the same conclusions and if we can drop term by X amount, um, then what does that do in terms of our model for mouths and therefore they have churn targets, but the activation piece was really interesting how we got to, it was also a very interesting component. We, most businesses will say, okay, we have zero to one, we're going to do our potential lines and see what's happening. And for us, we actually went out for the month and we actually said anybody within months, zero to one is actually the conversion stage. Anybody who actually hits month two, um, they are actually activated.
Speaker 2 00:28:56 We called them an activated monthly active user and as a result, which our conversion line from there and what we saw. So attention line, when we did that, we actually saw a completely different online behavior, which actually isolated the key critical business problem about the first stage from certain channels. And just pulling that line from different vectors gave us an opportunity to like, chairman's day for the entire business. See, we have an issue right here. That's quite loose, cause we don't need to be wasting time on winning back customers, hair dress, this issue up front, and it was sold for the rest of it, the components at this stage of our business. So we're trying to make sure the North star metric is mouse, but each team knows their specifically there's in the KPIs to monitor, to drive the outcome. Well, with that, I think I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the organizational process that you have. Um, you kind
Speaker 1 00:29:42 Of took us through sort of the organic journey that led to your leadership of a product that includes growth and other pieces. And obviously data is a huge component of that. Um, I'm just wondering, you know, you, obviously this curve has got, got to this place for, because that's, it made sense for the journey to get to that place, but what do you think is the ideal way for startups to organize their teams? Do you like, and I guess at different points in, in the, in the process, when do you suggest separate product teams or growth teams and marketing teams, when do you think they should be combined?
Speaker 2 00:30:15 Yeah. So I think as you start up, you have a similar vision when you're clear about what you do, what's your doing? So your operators are task. As I mentioned before, you have a clear alignment of what you're trying to deliver and you know, you have limited resources having budgets. So you constrain what they're delivering against the long-term strategy based in those constraints. And you have cross-functional team members, you can delve into multiple things and you get some degree of traction. And then once you hit some of the way product market fit, you start to attack. What can you do to extend, um, grow into your time? And it's at that point that you start to develop at work. Do you want to do scanning work that gives you infrastructure to be faster? Do you want to do, um, growth work, which is the tactical kind of hotfix is not really a lot of impact.
Speaker 2 00:30:55 And then you have, um, you actually ultimately land on a situation where you have a feature like, which is the net new capabilities of wandering into your products and then the kind of market for expansion type of opportunities, which really do provide you a lot of unplanned, but long term impact. And for me, it's about the profile of the team. I want to maintain the team as possible, really, if I can want to, to front engineers, uh, to, uh, feedback and engineers and then supporting the teams and potentially a part of engineers in that domain space. So they build capabilities to understand how to tackle certain things, but realistically there's a trap to wants to build new features and to keep overdeveloping. And if you don't really build in a thoughtful way, you can almost take your product to a bloated state where there's too many things going on and it actually hurts.
Speaker 2 00:31:48 Your activation actually hurts the comprehension of your quotes for the new customers, the less engaged customers you kind of go into. Um, so for me having that thoughtfulness around, what are you trying to build and what is the smallest team I can build that with and how do I constrain? Um, the product work we do over quarters into themes is a really important one. And people always rave about customers and this and that following the customer, the customers we're trying to solve a need. Our mission is to simplify and unify the way people interact with money. That's clear. And our strategy is how we do that. But ultimately that's, what's going to constrain what properties we pick up first and deal with. And, you know, if you just follow every single bit of feedback, you end up taking your product into a completely different dimension.
Speaker 2 00:32:33 Um, LinkedIn is a great example of this. I hate it. And I love it at the same time. Uh, the inbox is frustrating me and I'm pretty sure a lot of the way that boats with the inbox capabilities was based on a certain segments of their users having certain needs. And they built it to perfection to support those needs, but it makes me stressed. So again, it's about being principle about what is the long-term health and success of that product strategy. And then what teams do you need on the ground to build towards that? Um, and then the second part of this, as well as being very confident of hiring amazing people, to bring them into the company, to take lead sometimes as a startup, you hang on to your nimble, a small team and you put them into significant positions of influence, but they don't have the experience and you end up suffering for me. The biggest thing I do in my role is actually go out and hire the best team. I can find the reward. Um, I'll put significant experience leaders into significant positions in the company so they can influence them, drive better outcomes. And honestly, that's been probably my best gift cuff to curve right now. Um, and that's been already in motion for when I was in the VP or fourth position. I don't think much changes in the product event. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:33:41 So how many people are in curve overall, overall and play date?
Speaker 2 00:33:46 Yeah, we've got well North of 300. Um, and we'll be somewhere between 600 by the end of this year. Wow.
Speaker 4 00:33:53 So grow growing really fast, but still, I mean, 300 still kind of a manageable size probably compared to the last couple of companies that you were with, or maybe by the end of, um, I'm not sure you said Coinbase. It was, it was relatively small when you started with them.
Speaker 2 00:34:07 Yeah, a hundred tonight, 2000. I remember Brian, one of the, all hands before I joined said that, Oh, you know, we're going to grow very quickly and we're only going to get to about 300, but I inappropriately burst out laughing because I thought he was, he was telling the joke, but it's a thousand within that. Yeah. So he was cleaning them up. We had a similar thing with, um, with, with curve in that we had a massively aggressive hiring plan up until the pandemic hit. And we decided to pause things just to conserve cash and to make sure during times of uncertainty, but actually it was really, really good because in this time this, uh, the, in that time we really took the company culture come due for it. And we thought about what we want to build and how we want to be thoughtful about who you bring into the company and org design and engineering design and product design and the groups.
Speaker 2 00:34:55 We had a very flat pilots, org stretched that out to have everything from an APM all the way down to a GroupM, which we only established a few weeks ago. So having that time to think about what you want to do and the capabilities we need, the zero to one type of people, as well as the people who could optimize a scale really well across multiple geographies. And last thing I'll say on this, um, even to the point about process and org structure, we don't even operate at the matrix level. We have a helix structure. And for those who are unfamiliar with that is you basically have two reporting lines. One is for the capability and the other one is for like, what do you do with your team? And there's no concept of a dotted line in that sense. Um, and just even adjusting the org to that kind of concept and getting them comfortable, fairly painful, but very rewarding because now we're seeing the benefits of it.
Speaker 4 00:35:45 So, so you talked about kind of that zero to one team and, and, and then more of the, the scale skills that come in, how do you do, how do you do that kind of where you, yeah, I I've, I've just when I've kind of gone from, from like, you know, companies where it's, I think there's eight people at Dropbox when I started there and, and you know, now it's thousands of people and I didn't really take the full journey with Dropbox with some of the other companies. I, I took it through NASDAQ listings and, um, it's, you know, it's, it's hard. Like obviously you want to, you want to reward the people who, who got you there, even if they may not be able to, um, be in leadership roles to get you to the next level, but how have you kind of navigated the, uh, the feelings and appreciation that, uh, that people deserve?
Speaker 2 00:36:36 Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a super good question. I mean, honestly, uh, I've been thinking about this in lots. Um, I've seen it time and time again, and it's super frustrating. And even for myself, at some point, I'll realize that and not wait for the stage of the company and that's fine. It's about the life cycle. Um, but the way I've been solved before this is recognizing who needs to be a manager and who needs to be a lead. And a lot of these folks, desserts are one folks. They have a certain skillset, you can not teach it. You can not find elsewhere in the market. Um, and you, you're better off putting them into a position of technical leadership and structure. And they can really design that books for either new product features or marketing launches or integrating sets and complex features into multiple markets.
Speaker 2 00:37:16 Um, and you know, in the engineering space, you always see, you see this quite common. You see the, the tech lead versus the engineering management kind of career path. Most teams could actually adopt the same structure. It makes a lot of sense. You can have a design lead. Who's going to be very much really sharp on design quality involved. And then you've got someone who's, a design manager is a false, false multiplier. They make the most average person on the team look like a rockstar. And I think it's about weeding out which ones have the propensity and the desire to do so, and then giving them positions to operate. But the last thing I want to have is someone who's not really experienced already, um, able to actually what potentials might mean word, right? That the potential kind of right experience in my opinion, but it doesn't have the potential or the experience to be, for example, a large team leader and then have them ultimately stress out the entire team. So they leave it's about understanding how do we structure and frame those narratives to make sure they know that they're appreciated, but they're going to be the point where they're most effective and where they're most passionate about.
Speaker 4 00:38:15 Yeah, it's a, it's interesting. I interviewed, um, uh, one of the earliest interviews on this podcast was, was, uh, are you familiar with Rezi in the UK? So it's a, it's a kind of a residential, uh, construction and renovation platform. That's that's UK focused and their CEO, Alex was taking me through like that. She came to the realization that some people were miserable in certain roles. And it was kind of, you sort of had these, um, uh, Explorer type people that kind of zero to one people. And then you have those people get really kind of bored in a more operational role where they got to just keep, keep things humming. And, um, and then the other people who do well in the operational roles tend to get, uh, tend to tend to not like the uncertainty of the exploration roles. And so just kind of, as you were saying, sort of finding the right seats for people and realizing where those strengths are.
Speaker 4 00:39:13 And, um, even though I, I, I th I just think one of the things that I've, I've struggled with a lot is like, uh, you know, pro probably leaving people in roles too long and, and other sorts of things for not wanting to, to hurt feelings, but at the same time, it's, uh, you know, you, you are doing a disservice if, if somebody is in the wrong type of role and, and, uh, being able to, to, to structure in the right way, I think you can really make the job a lot more rewarding for a lot of people. So it sounds like you're navigating that a lot better than I have in the past.
Speaker 2 00:39:45 It is tricky though. Yeah. And they're in subsidy to be tricky, and I'm pretty sure I'll fail like six more times in the process. But again, that speaks to having the great team I have around me to help balance out the trademark, the trade offs, and to get a good decision. But yeah, I think there's a lot I've seen in terms of engineering domain that are really, really poachable in terms of processes. And this run here, like most teams, if you're not going to be at people manage, you don't have the desire to do so. It seems like it's a bit of an engineering it's like, that's perfectly normal. Yeah. So Sean, I've seen this trend towards growth and product leadership being combined. And it's, you know, I think curve is a really good example of that happening in the real world. Do you think that's going to continue and do you see it as a, as a good thing for, for, uh, the future of companies trying to really execute on growth?
Speaker 2 00:40:34 Yeah. Yeah. I do. I do. I mean, starting from marketing, I was thinking, you know, what does it take to be an excellent marketer? And for me, I just felt that you really, really need to be accountable and data-driven. And if you look at all the developments that's going on in this space with Apple and others, it's becoming so hard to know exactly if what you're doing is working. Um, and you need to rely on resources from engineers to build out the spec. You need to do measurements and attribution, and you can't borrow it because we'll be at the bottom of the pack and all the way in constant prioritization. So you'd have some capability to manage it. So that was my big clear, obvious note that I realize this too, but like, you need to have some engineering control involvement and you need to be able to be trusted with those resources.
Speaker 2 00:41:22 Should they come your way? So for me, that's where my quit fought until I was okay, this is what I'm going to do. And then honestly, between working with engineers and product team, trying to solve the tough of why is onboarding so messy, or why do we have activation issues? And how do we structure these things with the engineer teams we have in the ground, and the difference of approach between some of the other product teams, where they were kind of void of the data when the feedback loops that we had already in a products and building things conceptually, which is a wonderful visionary talent and skill set, but sometimes it's not what the business needs. And for me, I was thinking, is there really a Delta between what PM does versus what the PM does? I mean, maybe in terms of where it starts off now, but given that the whole space is super new.
Speaker 2 00:42:08 I mean, you know, who's to say, so I do see, um, growth people, regardless of if they even are a growth product manager, firstly go in more into the growth product manager role and then going into a product related role. It just becoming a blended mix because ultimately if you're building a feature and there's no end result of growth, whether it's on revenue, whether it's on activation, whether it's on customers, then you're wasting engineering resource, and this is break it down this way. And engineering team costs the typical PM, maybe be a hundred, 150 grants and salaries per month. Well, I spent a hundred, 150 grand pay paid advertising. I go into finance at the end of the month and I tell them exactly where I spend the money and what the return is. Most PMs would have that conversation. So if that's the level of accountability I've got there, I want to build the same rigor with their product teams so that they're not focused on my Epic short-term return, but they do know how to validate and quantify the impact they're having on the ground.
Speaker 2 00:43:00 Um, and that's really important. Um, it almost structures your thinking in a certain way. Uh, last part on this is, so this is where I'll be thinking about my career and where, where do I want to end up the last part in this is around even the concept of MVP people think, okay, well, let me test. If I'm going to go to call them, we test the wheels and the Tesla chassis, and it's the finish slice of the experience. Do people want to move fast and test that first? Then you can test that fairly quickly. And a lot of the time, if it takes a very short term to be able to test out, if one of these something you don't need to do some research in this, in the Delta, in absence of being able to build something quickly and get it to market and get feedback, you need to do heavy research from the customer space and understand the problems.
Speaker 2 00:43:39 So that balance, I feel like there's a big chasm between talking in between those modes, um, based on like a traditional PM and the growth mindset, but I do see them converging over time. And I think it's great to, to see having two leaders take on teams and domains and build more interesting things with, like I was saying this before Connor is, is what these am, I suppose so many customers around the world. It's because by an Alpine, NATO is a channel. It's not a product. It's all about distribution or the product is what everybody's had for a long time. It's a loan. And if they choose to charge interest or not is optional, and if they choose to collect the loan payments immediately or later, it's optional, it's just a way to monetize the loan building. That distribution is a growth mindset to think about.
Speaker 2 00:44:24 It's not just build it and they come it's about how did you build it in such a way where people understand that they have a need and you're solving that need at that in time. Therefore, the activation is really, really, um, the new book is really, really short and then you figure out cool. You can go from web to download an app to making the repayments. And the next time I may not actually require it to be much. And I may just actually go on Peloton on buy a fixed four year plan for a bike and pay interest from day one. And the customer doesn't think of which prototype on my user. They think about how do I want to spread out my cost of repayments and what's the best option for me. And they see it as one product, but the channel is buy now pay later. But the furthering of that, or, you know, pinging over them,
Speaker 4 00:45:02 When you shifted, uh, into the product leadership role, had the, had the previous, um, VP of product or head of product, um, had they also had a, uh, a growth background or were they more of a traditional, uh,
Speaker 2 00:45:18 I had a product. So, um, we've never had a VP of product role before at curve and the head of product. Um, she and I get on really well. She she's super talented and she's coming from delivery. Um, and a wealth and depth of thinking is, is almost like a growth PM. She's super analytical. Can trade off this about distribution and has great product theory is what is good application and balances that well, so, well, that was one of the reasons why I was so excited to work in this role because that partnership we already had as partners before they've all changed. And then into this dynamic, she has a very good growth mindset. I'm not sure if she's like she did it definitely did it work in a growth team, but she has a way to operate in a similar mindset. But while bringing in the traditional side of PM, um, thinking that I may not have,
Speaker 4 00:46:04 That's what I was going to ask though, is that if it went, when you went in there, did you bring more of a, a kind of test learn, measure, mentality to it than, than they may have been approaching it
Speaker 2 00:46:13 Before by far, um, we were running. So a lot of the initiatives we built, for example, the Samsung partnership, um, they all like waiting on projects to build, and you're committed. You sign contracts, you need to deliver it. So it's more waterfall than it is agile. If anything, in terms of the product development in any way, you get to a point where you're committing a lot of your products, resources towards building experience one, but in terms of how do you make the experiences experience that you built better? You definitely need to go into growth mindset mode, and that's where the experimentation, um, the framework for experimentation. And I thought the G um, and, you know, you can apply that even on our marketing channels, when people do CRM campaigns, for example, they're talking about even testing subject lines, who cares, it's about the person you get this communication, actually go and do the business transacting activity you wanted them to do so.
Speaker 2 00:47:00 And you can see that simply by just cohorting the users and having a control and treatment. So building that repetition of experimentation is great. And then it allows for you to do other things like apply across different channels or different products and initiatives. And then have that data. One example of this is in the team I joined, um, there was just very talented and capable, but junior guy, he came straight out of college, um, looking university, and he was working at curve and we talked about growth and the mindset and reading the blogs and literature to yours, and ultimately to the point where he was doing experiment analysis, that's all he wanted to do. Anytime the teams shipped and experiment, he will do the analysis part for a lot of people that was like the bulk work of the team, but he was hungry, like churn and metallic
Speaker 4 00:47:46 Over and over again, really curious about it.
Speaker 2 00:47:48 And you've got this, this, this way of thinking that honestly is so hard to teach and it gave him principals. I did not mentor him or teach him in any way, but he was quoting very well. Long story short, gave him a product team and he's been killing it. Like even now he's killing it. And I'm kind of, I would say help, awful PMs. We'll probably hire a senior and they'll be probably waiting at a PM level. But his way of thinking, um, with the growth mindset, I mean, honestly is just spectacular given that it's his first advocate and he's talking about things with like four, 400, 500% lift on activation on revenue and uptake. So it's really, really powerful to see that the principles, no matter who's doing them, if you do them right. Will pay out in the term. And it's about the commitment to understand what are the drivers, like you said about referrals or virality. What is that one thing you can double click on it builds value around.
Speaker 4 00:48:37 Yeah. I think a lot of the evolution and then I'll let you go, Ethan. I'm sure you're probably chomping at the bit to ask a question, but I think a lot of the evolution as we were talking about the kind of shift to moving growth into product and kind of merging those roles, but I think it really started with having kind of like it's, it's been table stakes in marketing for a long time to, to, you know, data and testing and, you know, optimizing your spend. And it's very, yeah, it just makes sense. It's you can, you can see, I, I spend it here. I make this much money. I spent it here. I make that much money times two. I'm going to spend it here. And so I think the challenge is that, um, it's just so single dimensional. That's just around an acquisition where so much of the growth as we've talked about is, is across that full funnel, that full foot, every step of that customer journey, there's another opportunity to drive improvement that makes everything else work better. Like we talked about activation improves retention, but it also improves your ability to acquire. Like, if you're really good at activating, you spend a lot more on acquisition.
Speaker 2 00:49:42 Yeah. This is actually, this is actually spot on it's back to your earlier question. I mean, ultimately the reason why I care about products is because I realized that if I wouldn't have more ability to Spence CAC, which is a derivative of the lifetime value, I need to improve the retention. Otherwise it won't be here to generate NFL TV for me to spend in the first place. So it was in my own selfish interest to deliver the outcome and just seeing how to do it was very eyeopening in terms of the product capabilities you had. And I realized, Oh, I've only been chipping away at the top of that iceberg. If I don't actually move down the funnel to see what's happening elsewhere, my spend will be super efficient and I'll be the one getting blasted by finance and the team for being inefficient when really is actually a whole bunch of, yeah.
Speaker 4 00:50:28 And then it's not just kind of today's snapshot of that customer journey and driving improvement, but it's also, if, if we had a couple more things in the product set that that are additional ways to monetize, then the LTV goes up even more. And then that feeds channels. And so there's just so much interdependencies to sustainable growth. You know, it all starts with product market fit in the first place, but being able to expand on that beachhead, um, it just, that's why I think it just makes so much sense that it's kind of marketing mentality went into growth, but it was still sort of, this sits, sits next to the product organization. And now you're seeing more and more, I think just even the growth product manager role. Um, if you just look up like, uh, the Google trend search on it, it's, it's up hundreds of percent over the last couple of years, even. And, and so, you know, and then just then, then thinking holistically about sustainable growth in the business starts to starts to blend into, into product overall. So that's a, that's a cool evolution. I like it a lot. But, um, go ahead. Do you think you probably, uh, at, at this point, um, uh, I'm putting it?
Speaker 2 00:51:36 No, no, not at all, but I know we're running a little bit short on time here. So, uh, just trying to, uh, I'll just kind of combine this, a couple of questions here, um, for you JD, like, as you think, you know, we've talked a lot about sort of that, you know, the initial stages with acquisition and activation, um, obviously product focuses a lot on engagement and, uh, and retention. Uh, but I'm curious, like how do you think about getting new customers to build a habit around curve and where does referral fit into that as well? It seems like a pretty word of mouth driven product as well. Yeah, absolutely. You know, if someone's going to refer someone they're going to do it within the first week or two or three early, early user, early, early enough time, um, they're excited about the product they're using it really well.
Speaker 2 00:52:23 And that's, if that's, even if you have no network effects, there's no benefit for, for you or for, for that user experience. Um, so what we're focused on is really building on that excitement and nudging them towards certain outcomes as early as they can, and to make it as easy to do so the discoverability is one key component, but also the experience itself. And then making sure you've got a line of sight of what you could be earning or what you could be seeing or what you could be doing if you were to execute to that referral piece. The second part is going back to what I mentioned about the benefit of being a payment type business is making sure that we can build things. And this is where we're headed to make sure we can build experiences that are contextually relevant for referrals in the first place.
Speaker 2 00:53:04 So the example of going to a restaurant, being able to split the bill between friends, how many we don't offer that yet something we could do. And the reason why I say that, something we can do is we could all go, I can actually meet the pigment users. We can split that bill in real time. So all three of us pay equal amounts during that. Um, but we could also say by the, if you pay with club with a new person smoking Coke, we'll give you 10 pounds off your bill and it's that situation or context of, of growth. And this is where I think as a PM, you build a core capability. And then in the same way, you may think, how do I monetize it? You can also think, how do I extend it into a growth capability? And you always go to the monetization piece because it's straightforward, it's in green, but the question or value is actually, how do you make this growth opportunity?
Speaker 2 00:53:49 So that's in relation to the referral piece, then the referral mechanism that we're building out in terms of awareness and discovery of referral for them and potentially any payouts, exactly the same capability we need for affiliates and influences, um, they may be getting paid out and so on. And you know, one of the key strategic insights we'd be focused on that curve is recognizing that with apples tracking, um, changes, um, the way it's going forward and most likely that Google and others will follow in a similar fashion in the next couple of years, uh, realistically I'm using, um, influences as a hedge because if I have X number of influences, let's say 20, 30, a hundred thousand influences, and they've got a combined reach of what, a hundred, 200 million across multiple geos with interest and penetrations. I've got a very targeted group of folks I can go to with product launches or new customer acquisition.
Speaker 2 00:54:38 And I can run that as a, as a ad network, so to speak, if I wants to feeding them content in a census, and they do a better job of explaining what covers that any ad creative can, they are sitting there and explaining it. And they do like a theme on boxing on day one. The next one is about how they actually understand some of the benefits. The third one is actually them going out there and spending, buying things that they talk about in the channel, regardless of us being involved with the cuff caught because ultimately curve is a window into your life. It helps you live your best life by allowing you to spend buy experiences. So that sits quite well in that space. And it's been one of our most successful channels that referrals has been a core part of our growth outside of some and other partnerships.
Speaker 4 00:55:17 Wow. That's such an exciting story. Um, um, I'm really, I think, uh, w w so how, how long have you been in the, in the product lead role?
Speaker 2 00:55:26 Uh, technically it's been about six weeks. Seven weeks.
Speaker 4 00:55:30 Okay. So I mean, just as, as you, as you kind of build roots into that role more and, um, like I, it'll be such an interesting journey I think, to watch from the outside, but, uh, well, and congrats on that, but, um, so we do like to end with one, one question and, uh, give you a heads up in advance. So hopefully you got a chance to think about this, but you know, when you look back, uh, particularly over just the last couple of years say, um, what, what do you feel like is the most important, maybe new thing you've learned about growth in the last couple of years?
Speaker 2 00:56:01 Uh, I'll say the obvious thing, first of all, is that fight club insofar as we don't talk about it, this is why I love this podcast because you do, but you know, most companies, they, they build a stock, turn off, build it, and they come, and it's a great way to raise capital and then venture on boats, you go in and you really see the individual turns of the flywheel that's needed. Um, and once you get a momentum going, you never want to stop. If you do, it's actually really hard to be swapped. Secondly, um, how much of a force multiplier having growth as close to the product domain and aligned can be for the business? Um, I've done it before. We've got it close to the product domain, but there was always a bit of misalignment in so far as who has what where's, the barriers is fluidity between the teams now is putting us in a super capable position and then lost the, how much, I don't know. I, you go into companies, you think Uber toolbox, it's not going to quite work. Okay. I'm gonna use my Quimby's toolbox, not quite working. And you have to rediscover what's going to be the growth engine cause yes, the tools are the same, but the context is what's different and you have to have the context plus the tools in order for you to be able to see the impact you need. Right.
Speaker 4 00:57:18 Yeah. In fact, that was one of the things we were talking about before, uh, before we even started is just like, beyond just like learning the business itself and what's going to be appropriate for that business. But it's, um, I think particularly in growth, just the, the variety of skills that you need to be good at it from copywriting to just like just understanding influence of people to data and feedback loops how to set up experiments in the right way. And I think the more you can holistically understand how those all fit together, plus understand the interdependencies of the business. I think that's another theme of kind of moving toward, um, understanding the business on a full level and not just your narrow view of the business of the things you're responsible for. It's a hard, it's a hard role to be good, but, um, like clearly, clearly you are, um, you're, you're an impressive guy for him, everything that I'm, I'm kind of hearing in terms of the, uh, and, and like I said, I think even before we were chatting that like, Uber is such a great background for this, because the Uber team between guys like Andrew Chan and ed Baker and ed had run international growth at Facebook, and Facebook's the other amazing company when it comes to growth.
Speaker 4 00:58:31 Um, I, I just think, uh, you know, being able to take those skills, bring them into a company like curve. Um, it's going to be really
Speaker 2 00:58:38 Interesting to see what you do there. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I mean, you're absolutely right in terms of the whole journey and yeah, like I said, I'm incredibly fortunate. I've just followed my intellectual curiosity in society problems of spaces, and it's just lend itself to another opportunity. And the products one is super interesting. Um, given where it covers, you have to explain it, all of the theory that you've built up on intuition, you have to rationalize that there is something that you can use to teach teams and people, but, you know, like I said, hiring is the most exciting part of the role. Um, we're doing that at lots of curve, but most importantly, bringing in leaders where in some capacity of the podcast, we get to learn and talk and discuss with other experts doing that in the product domain, um, and building out a more substantial growth capability, top two highlights for 2021 for me.
Speaker 4 00:59:25 Cool. So what, what type of roles are you hiring for? That's probably a really good thing to end on. So anyone who's listening, are you looking primarily UK based? You're looking worldwide in terms of the talent and, uh, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:59:36 We've got, so we're looking both in the UK and also in the U S we've got an office space in New York and we're launching later this year. Um, so we're looking for anybody in the PM, whether it's senior PM or associate PM, we're hiring product marketers here in the UK, as well as in New York, we are hiring data analysts with those locations on the data scientists. So honestly, if you're thinking something in relation to product or product execution, what teams we are hiring, and then of course we're hiring growth and other roles too. So do do reach outs either an intern or realistically, we have our careers page where we have pretty much every single role we're hiring for like a once a month, but it seems to be working
Speaker 4 01:00:25 Perfect. My, my daughter actually just, uh, signed on she's a third year in university and she just, uh, this summer is going to be in a growth product management internship with nuMe. And, uh, I was just telling her that's exactly the right skill set to be developing right now. Cause there's a lot of really good opportunities. So yeah, I'm super excited for her. And um, yeah, she's a, we, we geek out about this stuff a lot, so it's pretty, pretty cool. When your daughter actually cares about the stuff you work on. Ethan, did you have any other key takeaways you wanted to highlight Ethan?
Speaker 2 01:01:00 Yeah. I just love the way you really highlighted how the growth mindset drives great product leadership. And it was, it's so interesting to see how everything from organizational process to experimentation is driven by data within your organization. Um, yeah, you made a great point when you said if growth isn't a focus, why are you putting engineering resources into it? It's like one of those questions that people should be constantly asking themselves. So I thought there are a ton of ton of great takeaways that have more notes here than I can I'll ever be able to get through, but a really great to, to, to chat with your dad and learn so much about curve and your successes speaking with you both, it's been amazing and look forward to catching up with you guys in the future.
Speaker 4 01:01:39 Absolutely. And for everyone tuning in. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 0 01:01:47 Thanks for listening to the breakout growth podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform and while you're at it subscribe. So you never miss a show until next week.
