How I got into Growth

My career journey from Data Analyst to VP of Growth

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I didn’t start my career in Growth.

In fact, I never expected to be in Growth at all—because this field didn't even exist when I started working. Yet, here I am, and I wouldn't have it any other way. How did I get here? For all of you who are still figuring out your career path, this story is for you. 

I graduated college with a degree in statistics. Like most of my classmates with that major, I planned to be an actuary. An actuary is that person who figures out your insurance rate. I know—riveting. I didn’t know anything about the corporate world, but thanks to my mom, I landed an internship in the marketing analytics department of a large grocery chain (Safeway). My big project was developing algorithms for personalized coupons based on customer shopping habits, in an attempt to increase shoppers share-of-wallet. I found the work really interesting, but the slow pace of a large enterprise drove me insane. After 12 short months, I set out to find something else. 

Where did you look for jobs in the early 2000s? Craigslist, of course. Which is where I found a data analyst job posting from SurveyMonkey (back then <20 people large). I didn't know much about the tech industry but the promise of a scrappy, fast-paced environment, all while being surrounded by extremely smart people sounded promising. Getting into tech was not easy—the hiring process at SurveyMonkey took over six months as they were interviewing many candidates, and I only got an offer when I received another offer and ‘threatened’ to leave the hiring process. 

The offer was a step back from my previous position, both in title and salary. It was a hard decision: I was only making $50K/year and every dollar was a big deal. But despite my rational objections, my gut kept telling me to take a leap. I felt that this was THE place for me. A huge selling point was the fact that I was their first analyst hire, which gave me a blue-sky horizon to do whatever I wanted. However, I still remember my ex-manager talking down about SurveyMonkey as I gave the notice: “Why are you going to some tiny, nothing company? What a mistake,” she said. I’m glad I proved her wrong :)

SurveyMonkey not only lived up to my expectations, but delivered something that in retrospect is very unique. It became a place where I truly built my career. The culture was a perfect fit for me: no bullshit, data-driven, with high velocity. The bar was high and I loved constantly having to reach for it. Plus, I loved the team around me—they were supportive yet highly demanding. I invested all I had into the data career track and became a director within five years.

Despite my love for data, I was always extremely passionate about the product. For example, I was creating a new SurveyMonkey account every week to go through every possible user flow to help me generate ideas for analysis and product improvements. I never ended an analysis on the data—it always came with a slew of recommendations on how to make a product better, and even included my janky design mocks (made them Excel back then!) to PMs’ and Designers’ distaste. Fun fact: Me living in the product always led to finding a ton of bugs. I remember our senior billing engineer telling me he dreaded hearing my footsteps in the hallways, as he knew I was coming to tell him about yet another bug he had to urgently file and hotfix. But most importantly, this habit allowed me to be a deep expert in our product, knowing where anything and everything was. It became a superpower in the next steps of my journey. 

I loved my impact as a Director of Data, although management was really hard for me—I had a hard time letting go of my IC work. My manager back then had to give me an ultimatum: I had to learn to delegate by not filing a single Jira ticket or writing SQL query for 6 months. If I did that… the next promotion would be mine. That was one of the hardest tasks for me—I had the constant urge to just quickly do it myself vs. taking time to get someone else to do it. But she was right in making me do this and after 6 months of agony, my team and I came out stronger on the other side. 

By this point, I had my eyesight on VP title—to continue growing my impact and maintaining my velocity of learning. But since VP of Data or Chief Data Officer roles were uncommon back then (and frankly not needed in the company at that time), I kept asking for more responsibilities—even outside analytics.

Eventually, I was offered the chance to start a product marketing team from scratch. I had no idea what PMM was, but figured I’d give it a shot and eagerly accepted. I hired a content manager and product marketer under me and dug in. But after less than a year, I realized that I was a fish out of water. The product marketer that I hired was so much better at that function than me and I had no business being her boss. I never let go of my analytics team, so I asked to step back into running analytics only. And continued asking for more stuff to try.

That’s when I got the opportunity to start a Growth team. Initially, I was extremely skeptical about the concept of a "Growth team.” Why would one team be responsible for the growth of the company, I thought… Isn’t growth everyone’s responsibility? But hey, it was something new and beggars can’t be choosers, so I accepted this new challenge nearly right away. This was very early in the timeline of Growth teams emerging—the only mature Growth team that existed at that time was at Facebook (And SurveyMonkey’s CEO was the Facebooks’s COO husband, so I assume the idea was shared over a family dinner). 

Growth that early was very straightforward: Find opportunities in data, then run A/B tests to try to move the numbers. That’s it. We already had an experimentation platform at that point that Product was using, so I took over ownership of it. I was still running my entire analytics team, but I also became an IC Product Manager, with one engineer to code things, so off we went. Our small team quickly proved its worth—we tackled SurveyMonkey’s viral loops, trial flows, pricing pages, and onboarding experiences. We earned the right to get more engineers and even dedicated PM resources. It didn’t take long for us to take on self-serve revenue accountability and an entire growth funnel: from acquisition to activation to monetization and retention.  My VP and SVP titles followed. 

I absolutely loved the job, integrating data insights with actionable, quantifiable changes. Needless to say, I became a ‘Growth team’ believer (check out how i define Growth team). This was around the time I met Brian Balfour who was just starting Reforge and became one of their first ‘featured guests’ talking about how to start and run Growth teams. This is where my growth network started taking off. As a last hoorah, I ended up taking on SurveyMonkey’s performance marketing team (overseeing SEO, SEM, website, and email), which fit very well into my growth world. 

Everything was perfect—I was running analytics, growth products, and growth marketing teams, loving my life. 

Then… the tragic passing of SurveyMonkey’s CEO, Dave Goldberg, led to significant changes in… everything. 

Most of my beloved leadership team left and I found myself stuck in the past—constantly criticizing new directions and wondering what Dave would have wanted to do. After a few executive coaching sessions, it was clear that I needed separation to grieve. 

So after 7+ amazing years, I started looking for a new job. I didn’t have the financial independence to take any time off, so I quickly jumped into a new role at Malwarebytes, a cybersecurity product. In retrospect, it was a wrong move for me. The cybersecurity industry was too slow for me and the company's culture wasn’t a good fit for me. 

After 2 short years, I quit. I was very confused. I was longing for another SurveyMonkey-like job, hoping to find another 5+ year home, yet I had no idea how to find it. I kept getting outreaches to be CMO/VP of Marketing... WHAT!? That did not seem like a good fit (after my PMM fiasco, I wasn’t planning on taking that as a full-time role). And the interview process for other Growth positions was so messed up. Never mind the lack of liquidity within the job and candidate marketplace (it’s all about your network, not the best match), but both parties were incentivized to just sell sell sell. Nobody was hiring for long-term retention. Nobody talked about hard problems. Everything was just rainbows and unicorns and sign a contract on the dotted line. All of which kicked me out of the market for full-time roles and opened up the world of solopreneurship to me. (At least until my recent return to FT, as VP of Growth at Dropbox!)

A bit of an unexpected journey, huh? Well, the reality is… most Growth leaders didn’t start in Growth:

• Casey Winters, who led Growth at Pinterest… started in analytics

• Brian Balfour, who led Growth at Hubspot… started as a product manager and a founder

• Ben Williams, who led Growth at Snyk… started as an engineer

• Melissa Tan, who led Growth at Webflow… started in investment banking and strategy

• Morgan Brown, who led Growth at Instagram… started in marketing and operations

• Adam Fishman, who led Growth at Patreon… started in affiliate marketing

• Hila Qu, who led Growth at Gitlab… started as a business analyst

This trend reflects the truth that Growth requires a particular mindset (growth mindset!) more than a particular background. And the cross-functional experience is often helpful, as you have to bring lots of teams together and it's good to understand their perspective.

My advice to you

If you’re considering switching careers or want to get into Growth, here’s my advice to you:

• Leverage your current company's opportunities. Use the relational equity you've already built, rather than convincing a new manager of your potential.

• Communicate your interests clearly. Let your manager know what opportunities you want.

• Be patient and flexible. This journey takes time, and flexibility can open unexpected doors.

• Aim for a T-shaped career. Grow to a director+ level in one specialty before branching out. Leadership skills transfer more easily than individual contributor skills.

But remember that you’ll have to find your own path, and don’t try to copy what I ended up doing. I never could have predicted all of this, much less planned it! If my experience has taught me anything… it’s to expect the unexpected. 

I wish you all the best on your journey, wherever it takes you!

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Edited with the help of Jonathan Yagel—check out his awesome Substack.

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