Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Your guided tour of the world of growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, marketing, and life.
Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and have some fun talking about data-driven growth and lessons learned!
Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your
host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance
marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth,
marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and
have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.
Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. I'm your host, Ty
DeGrange, and I'm really, really pumped to have Lauren Nemeth with us today. What's up,
Lauren? Great to be here, Ty. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. It's awesome to see
you. Lauren is a definite badass, for those of you who don't know
her, she's an amazing leader. She's been grown in her
career in ad tech and leading teams, And, we're gonna have a
good conversation and dive into things. So I think it's gonna be a good chat. How are things out in SF?
Things are good. Don't listen to what the media says. Sarah says that's what
it's a great song. You still got it. Yeah. You know, the if it bleeds, it leads. Right? They're
gonna try to make it sound sound way worse than it is, and it still got it. Well, very
cool. Lauren, for those of you who don't know, Lauren is the CRO of Twilio, leading
a team, a team of teams, if you will, of over two thousand people. No big deal,
the go to market team, and a revenue book of business of over four billion. So
just just an immense amount of learnings and and achievement there. She's led ad
sales. She's led revenue operations and done so for brands like Nextdoor, Tern,
and UX, and Google, as well. So kind of a wealth of knowledge. I'm
just really grateful to have you on today and and dive into things. So maybe to
dive into a little bit for the audience, how would you describe what you do to a
fifth grader? Just super basic for those of you who don't know. Sure. I'll explain
maybe what Twilio does for a fifth grader and then specifically what I do at Twilio. So
Twilio provides communications for businesses to communicate
with their end consumers. So think of most times that you receive a text
message, a phone call, or an email from a business to you as a
consumer, vast majority of that runs through Twilio. We're the largest, what's called,
communications platform as a service, CPaaS company in the world, And that business line is a
little over four billion dollars globally. So what I do at Twilio is I am the chief revenue officer, as
you mentioned. Every CRO title, I guess, is a little bit different. It always means sales,
so I can guarantee you that much, which I spent a lot of my time doing. But it's
sales, solutions engineering, support, professional services, revenue
operations, actually, all of our technical operations teams as well, partnerships,
so on and so forth. Really anything that touches customers and is revenue generating for the business.
Our business is about a little over three hundred thousand companies globally work with
Twilio. As you can imagine, that's a long tail of developers that work with Twilio,
which is a lot of where our brand is. But it's basically most of the enterprise companies that you can kind of think
see out there as well. So we've got enterprise mid market and gross sales motions. That's
awesome. Is there kind of a minimum barrier, like, for for a brand to really connect with
Twilio and make sense for it to work? Obviously, they're working with and that's less than ten dollars.
We runs the whole gamut. So my nephew can Yeah. Create an app, and he can start to
send text messages and make phone calls with it. Or really large companies like
Google and Facebook and Salesforce, etcetera, work with Twilio. That's awesome. And and maybe give us
a little bit about about your background. How did you get into tech and ad tech specifically?
It's happenstance, which I think kinda some most people find their careers probably. I graduated
UCLA many, many moons ago, go Bruins. And my dad was
the president of a life insurance company. And I remember
he picked me up from a job interview I had at CB Richard
Ellis. And I was like oh commercial real estate that's like a you know dependable job that you have
at a college like isn't this what I should do and I remember telling my dad I was like god this is so boring
Right? There's these people sitting in these like cubicles and it's so quiet and like, I cannot
believe this is what I'm gonna go spend my life doing. And he's like, don't take the job. Why don't
you meet some of my friends in a group called YPO Young Presidents Organization?
And I did. And one of the first people I met with was a gentleman by the name of Mark Jung.
Mark was the CEO of iGen Entertainment. And I remember telling my dad, I was like, I don't
really wanna go meet with Mark because he, like, runs this, like, gaming men's lifestyle
business. They had Rotten Tomatoes, Ask Men, Game Spy, IGN, etcetera. And I'm
like, that's just not who I am. And he's like, just go take the meeting and talk to him. And I
remember walking in and it was like young people and scooters and energy and like,
you know, just seemed like the place you want it to be. And I sat down with Mark and Mark was like, your dad's
probably one of the best salespeople I know. You should go into sales. And I was like, alright. Like, let's
do it. So it was as happenstance as that in terms of starting in tech and
starting in sales. And really through that, I went through a lot
of different companies. So IGN, actually, within months of me being there, was acquired
by Fox Interactive Media at the same time as Myspace, which was an interesting way to start your career
as like a tech company that gets acquired by, like, an old print media corporation.
And then, you know, I wanted to go do something in startup land, which is where you and I met, the illustrious
AdBright. So many distinguished Never forgotten.
And honestly, my time at AdBright was short lived, but it was amazing. Like, it was a very
entrepreneurial, I'd say even developer first kind of focused business. And I think
that's when I first got a taste of, like, you know, there's a lot of money in advertising,
billions of dollars transacting. We would literally accept fax orders. We would
ship out tax orders. Right. We would email JavaScript tags back and forth. We
would expect a ten percent discrepancy or what what like, all this just nonsense
in terms of how this multi billion dollar industry was operating and I remember at the time there
was this thought of like oh ad exchanges are gonna come in and kind of disrupt everything they're gonna use software and they're
gonna use data and like sales people are gonna go away and like that's gonna be the future how
everybody transacts and I'm like I wanna go do whatever that is and I remember I
basically cold called and Interviewed at write media and ad cn and double
click And I was like, DoubleClick definitely has the right moat. Right? They have the biggest ad server in
the world on both the buy and sell side. If they can have this, like, auto magical exchange layer
just connect everybody, they're gonna print money. And, like, that's the place I wanna go be. So
I cold called the GM of DoubleClick's ad exchange and told him how why he needed to
hire this twenty four year old from San Francisco and how I was gonna go build a really big business. And
I had a really decent bet, which was basically that advertisers and publishers are not gonna
readily adopt really transformative technology overnight. They're gonna need some
service level middle layer, and that was something that DoubleClick was never gonna build. And so what I told Michael
Rubinstein at the time was, why don't you let me come out there? I'll move to New York, and I'll
start to build a completely new sales channel, which basically goes after ad networks,
what are now DSPs, SSP, whatever, all the different things that sit between an advertiser and publisher.
And within, like, month one, I closed fifty deals. And I'd say within the first quarter, I was up to, like, ninety
percent of the revenue for that business. And so then I ended up running sales for DoubleClick Sat Exchange.
Google bought that, whatever. It was a great experience. And then I just wanna try my hand at startups and,
like, continuing to ride that wave. So I did AppNexus. I did turn I mean, I did
a number of those, so the rest was kinda history. That's amazing. A lot of ideas
and questions come out of that. First of all, I'm gonna jump to another topic I was gonna save for
later, but you kind of outlined your ability to kinda see where the puck's going
Sure. And predict that. And I think that's awesome and commendable. Like, can you
talk a little bit like, it seems like you almost have a Midas touch. If you look at your resume, it's like,
worked here, acquired, worked here, acquired. How did you can you talk about,
like, assessing those things? Because we've had those conversations and doing your
best bet on the next one because it seems like you've done a really good job of that. Thank you. I
have to be so arrogant and awesome for me to be like, I do have a Midas touch. No. I really I absolutely
don't. I mean, I think look. In any job, I look for three things. I think typically when people are looking at jobs,
they overcomplicate it and they want, like, ten thousand different things. I think first and foremost is people. You work
for crappy people, you will have a crappy outcome. Every business is a people business. Don't care what anyone says,
but like you work for great people. And I mean that is high intelligence
but also high ethics, real culture that matters, but like great people that
you can go build something with and that you can really be shoulder to shoulder
lockstep with is very, very hard to find. I think the second piece is product. And
when I say product, it has to be transformative. I think a lot of people skate to where the
puck is today, or oftentimes even where the puck has been because that's kind of obvious.
Very rarely do you find people who are lifting their head up to skate to where the puck is going. So I think to the
point of like you and I working at Abbrite and me saying how ridiculous it was to be faxing
insertion orders back and forth, like going in and saying, like, look, this is where things
are going to go. I want to go be where things are going to go. And I think even in this time now with like artificial
intelligence, like that is the future period point blank. I don't care if you work in
ad tech, healthcare, like you name it. It's every single industry is going to be disrupted that way.
And I think really getting into those first principles of like where is AI going to make
the most transformative change short term versus medium term versus longer term.
And I think skating to where those pucks are going is like really, really critically important. And then
last but not least, like this one I think is most often overlooked is, like, real operational
maturity. I've worked for some first time CEOs. Let's just say they probably weren't so operationally
mature. And they had really big delusions of grandeur of what they were
gonna be and how they were gonna get there. But I think the companies that put in the operational
rigor that's like, look, I'm gonna take step one this year to get to step one next year to get
to step three the following year. Those are are actually the companies that end up building long term
sustainable businesses. And you need to have that operational rigor and honestly, just
honesty in terms of what your business is if you're gonna go be successful. So I typically look for those three things. It sounds
like a degree of self awareness from the founder of, like, hey. This is what we're good at or not. Is that kind of accurate?
It's partly that, but it's also like, you know, how much money do you need to raise to achieve
what? Like, what's the talent you need year one versus talent you need year three? They're very
different. And I think a very mature CEO who's sort of been there, done that, or even just a COO,
like some level of executive presence that knows how to scale a
business with rigor and understanding based on product market fit is very important.
Absolutely. Going back to what you mentioned earlier around sales and kinda
get into the game, what point were you kind of light bulb went off that you were like,
hey. I'm actually good at the sales thing. I I can do it. But I love people, and I love
money, and I've loved that forever. I mean, just to be honest, so I think, like, it does start there. By the
way, not everybody is motivated by money or really enjoy being around people. So I think
that is part of it. I have a really tough skin. Like, I don't mind people saying no to
me, if anything that sometimes can even be more fuel to the fire. So I
think there's some of those like innate things that you find in salespeople. And I think then
it's really about honing your craft. And it's about putting a lot of discipline and rigor
and metrics around the work that you do. But that real love and spark, I think,
is fundamentally in aid being great salespeople. Yeah. I I saw the quote
recently. It's been said so many times. It's like, this the higher you go up the food
chain, the more your job becomes sales. Do you feel like that's accurate? Well, I think
everybody's job is sales. I think it's, like, one of those skills that I don't care if you're an engineer or if you're
a HR professional, whatever it is. Like, everybody is in some form of sales and what they
do. I mean, granted, I'm biased, but that is what I think. I
love it. What part about may maybe it's good to talk about your current role,
but what aspect of it are do you find most, like, rewarding and interesting?
Maybe talk a little bit about that, and we can talk about some of the other roles as well. The best part of my job and the
hardest part of my job are people. Like, I love building really great teams. It is
super hard. And I think particularly when you're at a two thousand person plus type of scale,
You got a lot of problems every day. You know, every day I promise you there will be a people problem for you to deal with,
but there's also an opportunity. And I think I get the pleasure of working with
really talented people and it's really about then how do you put them in the right
roles with the right level of support to get the most out of them and continue
to keep them motivated and engaged and sort of at the top of their game. And that's a lot
of it is communication. How do we make sure all the trains are kind of running together on time
in sequence? And I think that everybody's rallied around one common vision. So that's the
stuff that makes me the most happy. It's what I enjoy spending my time. And I still love selling and a lot of the other core
operational parts of my job, but it's the people building piece that's probably the most rewarding. Yeah. We've
progressed so far and so so successfully that now you it sounds
like you get to kind of recruit, cultivate, manage, help, enable leaders
and salespeople. Is that accurate? Big time. And honestly, my direct reports are infinitely
more talented than I am. Like, I learned from I do. I learned from them every day. They force
me to think really differently and bigger about issues. I think we end up building a culture that
is quite frankly, very diverse from a set of opinions perspective to make sure that we're getting the best out of each
other. And I think that's been a really kind of successful plan that we've
put together. I love that. When you talk to potential recruits,
people that come into your org to be, you know, leaders, managers, like, what are some
of the big things that you look for? What are some of the things you watch out for? What are some of the things that you
really are kind of require of that team that you're bringing into your organization or
you're using as a guide for your current team? I also have three things I look for. Love
threes. Right? So I think first and foremost is people, like great people managers. And it's
about I think it's about vision. I think it's about how you inspire people. It's how you build culture.
It's your absolute must haves versus nice to haves. But I think finding
someone who has repeatedly built great teams, a manager that people wanna go follow
and repeatedly go follow to their next jobs. Like, those are the type of people you wanna bring on
board. The second, which is a very short like a close second to that number one of being a great
people manager is performance. You need people who are highly accountable, metrics driven,
performance in whatever it is that they do on that team and have a track record of consistently
exceeding those performance expectations. And then the last one for me is process, right? You
gotta be someone who has taken something either from, you know, zero to a thousand or a thousand
to a million or whatever that ends up being, and actually can build that repeatable process over
and over again. So you're not just, once again, skating to where the puck is today, but also where the business will be in a year or
so from now. That's awesome. As you've kind of, you know, navigated
various situations, whether it's, you know, having options presented to you, going to going
to roles where you're, you know, going through an acquisition process. What are some things that
maybe you've gotten data back from, you know, peers, managers, folks
within the organization, leaders that say that, hey. This is this is how Lauren kinda
separates. Obviously, you've talked about a lot of the things that have worked well, you know, some of the things
that you really phoned in on. I think you've kind of taught touched on this topic already. But what are
some of the things that maybe you've gotten this feedback to be like, well, I didn't know that was the case
or to show that, hey, you really separated from the pack or you've really, you've kinda kinda
nailing the the the role as you've discussed. Yeah. I think it's a few things.
Right? First and foremost, I'm very data driven. I don't make any decisions without data. Even though, like,
sure, I have instincts, etcetera, but I wanna substantiate them with data, I think is
very, very important. I think the second piece is I'm not afraid to take risks, and I
make decisions very quickly. So once I take all the data that I need, like I
need, I talk to a lot of different diverse opinions. Once I make a decision, I will make that decision
quickly, and I will enact on it. I will then also look at data yet again to
prove out that that was in fact the right decision. And if it wasn't, I have no ego about
pivoting and moving into another direction. Like, that's totally fine. So for me, that's probably, like, what's been
maybe the most successful there is, like, look at the data, get a lot of diverse opinions, make
decisions quickly, but then quickly validate that that in fact was the right decision and keep
tinkering, pivoting from there. Not to sound judgmental, but in our industry, do you
get a sense there's a, like, a question? Are there are there, like, talented, smart, crazy good
people that what part of that do you think they get hung up on the most or or maybe they get wrong
the most? The decisioning process. Everybody's afraid of failing. Right? That's kind
of a common one. So making decisions, especially big decisions
or big departures in terms of strategy, etcetera, like that scares people because that's usually
when they think they get fired or people will judge them or kind of wait for them to fail,
etcetera. And you've got to have a lot of faith in yourself and trust in
yourself, but also once again, validation in the data that this is, is the right decision. And you
gotta bring people along with that too. So it's not just you and your ivory tower making the decision,
but this is kind of the process that you went through with a lot of other constituents to make sure that this
was the right decision. I think the second piece is there's some level of, like, you know, humility,
lack of ego to be like, I screwed up or like we should make a change or the data is telling me
something different. I think usually when people make decisions, they get so locked in on
it. They're like, I have to stick with this because I put my name and brand behind it. And that is
a recipe for disaster ten out of ten. But I think a lot of it just starts with
like confidence, faith in yourself, desire to innovate, desire to do things
differently, willingness to fail, humility and admission when things don't go
well, those are usually less common. Yeah. For sure. I would agree with
you. Thinking about good decisioning, doing the right thing, leadership,
who are some of you touched on some of those, but, like, who are some of the folks that inspire you? Who are some
of the managers that you just think very highly of or or maybe just folks that have really
influenced your decisioning and how you operate? I mean, I'd have to say my current manager. Right? That'd be
so bad if I didn't. I mean, my current manager, he's the president
at Twilio. His name is Kuzaima Shipchandler. Look, Kuzaima is, really a
CFO and COO by trade. Right? He is he is, like, mister
a he forces me to be a lot more methodical in my thinking. So I think Khozaim has been a
really great mentor and boss. Michael Rubenstein is someone who I worked
with at DoubleClick into the Google acquisition and then also followed to AppNexus. So
Michael has the longest tenure as someone who I've worked for. Worked together for, like, seven and a half years total.
Nice. Michael's a very just, like, thoughtful,
patient. He's actually slower in decision making than I am. But once
again, he also requires a lot of methodical rigor that I think particularly earlier in my
career, which is when I worked for him, I was much hastier in terms of my decision making. He did put a lot of
rigor around that as well. He also just gave me a lot of rope. Like, he was very
clear that, Lauren, if you put points on the board, I will keep extending you more and more
rope. And that was, like, exactly the type of manager that I needed at that point in time because
I didn't mind working sixteen hour days and investing wholeheartedly into my career. That's what
I wanted to do, but I wanted the sort of ROI in terms of that investment. And Michael
gave me that ROI in spades over those seven and a half years, so he was a very important boss too. That's
awesome. That's so cool. What are some of the things that you kinda want, you know, flipping it,
you know, as a leader now? What are some of the things that you're kinda striving for as a leader or
maybe some things that you've picked up on from folks that have appreciated your leadership and your counsel and your
support? Or what are you kinda learning through that process, and and what are folks kind of
sharing with you that you could you wanna share with the audience? In terms of, like, what I could do better?
Or Not so much that, but more like, do you feel like there are certain
highlights that are coming up for people that that say, hey, Lauren. Like, thanks for
doing x y z or you're the kind of leader that Oh, yeah. I appreciate. Like, what are some of the,
like, the highlights? Not to toot your horn too much, but, what are some of those thing?
I mean, it's actually funny. I just had a conversation with someone earlier today about this. I'm first
of all, I work as hard, if not harder than anybody on my team. So, like, you will never see me
ivory towering about anything. Like, I will roll up my sleeve. I'll do whatever work it basically
requires to run this business successfully and I have zero ego about that whatsoever. I think people appreciate that a
lot. I'm very direct. I'm a straight shooter as you possibly can find. And
by the way, that's not everybody's cup of tea but for people who do appreciate like really
direct feedback I will give it to you straight every single time good or bad
I'm very loyal to my team. And I think in return, my team is very very loyal to
me. And I'll pick up work for them when they need it. I'll stand behind them
when they need some support with promotions, time off, whatever it requires. But, like, I show
up in my actions, not just my words. Like, that is probably another kind of defining
character of mine. I love that. I would have to agree with that sentiment. So it's it's amazing
and very cool and and very impressive. There's more I wanted to ask about that that
came up that I'm trying to draw from, which is really interesting. Maybe jumping
over to another topic, and we may come back to that one because that's really interesting,
is kind of like the ad tech world. What do you feel like people get
wrong about kind of the ad space, the DSP world, the world that, you know, we've been
in for quite a while that that maybe is, like, not as known as people not
as known as it should be to the even the ad world or the tech world or the
folks that are that are looking at it from the outside. I'm just I'm just curious if you have some observations
in ad marketplaces, ad serving, DSP, all the stuff that we've dealt with that it's
kind of notable or interesting learning that maybe people don't know. I mean, this is not gonna sound nice. It's
just probably what the first thing that comes to my head, though, is, I just think we keep
admiring the same problems and topics, but we're not really
innovating through them. It's like, oh, data is really important. Oh, privacy is an issue. Like
but there's not really, like, stair stepping innovation. And I think even in this, once
again, we'll talk about artificial intelligence, but, like, as we think about AI and what
that's going to do to the marketer. Right? Like, once again, like, forget about ad tech and DSPs and
SSPs and all these acronyms and nonsense that we've talked about for so long. Like, how is this
fundamentally going to change the way a marketer interacts with their end
consumers or prospects? And I think getting back to those first principles, and
I think taking this moment today to figure out like, how do you actually completely turn this
on its head? As opposed to, like, tinkering with ad servers and DSPs as we've always known them,
how do you maybe rewrite a piece of technology that stair steps over all of
that? And that automates this in a way that is much more elegant and I think
allows marketers to have more trusted revenue positive
influential relationships with their end consumers. It's kind of that big systems thinking that I think is
very much lacking today. And I get all these conferences and I listen to all these panels and
whatnotness, and it's just a lot of little ankle biting
kind of topics. Sorry if that's rude. No. I I think that's an amazingly,
refreshing and thoughtful and and good take, and I think it's accurate. I mean, are are
there folks that you feel are closer to that than others and thinking bigger? Because I
think it is a challenge and a and an intelligent direction that, you know, we need to be thinking in. Are there
are there folks or or maybe resources that obviously, AI is kind of the foundational
change that that people are either chasing or gonna get a wave run over them
with potentially. So what are some folks that we should be, like, looking at, or what are some what
are some parts of that do you think people should kind of, be aware of at the very
least? I mean, these these are, by the way, Twilio customers as well as some Twilio products that I'm gonna shamelessly
plug because I actually do think it is attacking this in a way that's really interesting. So, you know, the
whole concept of marketers getting their data act together is not something that's new. I I think it's more a question of, like,
how do you do that in a way that is set up very effectively for AI and
automation? I think, obviously, Segment, which is a product that Twilio obviously owns and
operates today, is the, you know, market leading CDP for a reason. And
I think really understanding who your end consumer is and being able to easily take
all of your different disparate pieces of information across various data lakes that you might
have, Salesforce instances, ServiceNow instances, you name it. Like, people have data in so many
different places. Putting that into actually one centralized repository where you
truly understand who Ty or who Lauren is and attach all of that
information in a centralized fashion. I think that is like mission critical number one for marketers.
But then it goes into like the orchestration layer. And I think there's really interesting companies like Attentive
and Klaviyo and Postscript and Braze and Iterable, etcetera,
who are really thinking about, like, how do I create millions of campaigns
that are a hundred percent personalized now to the end consumer? Right? So when we think about
advertising historically, we'll take maybe an audience segment. We'll kind of, like, blast them all the
exact same message over the exact same channels or the end same end websites, which is kind of
silly. Right? And maybe you should actually be talking to Lauren over WhatsApp or actually
maybe emails. What's gonna be most productive for me right now or sending me a Facebook ad.
Like, it's very personalized. Like, what am I doing in this moment? What are my preferences as an end
consumer? How are you gonna get the best engagement with me based on what you're
trying to achieve? And I think those companies are doing some really innovative stuff. I love that. Makes me
wanna do, like, a series on just just the notion of personalization is is Yeah. A massive
opportunity. Been through a lot of really interesting, you know, successful acquisitions.
What what's something that you kind of has as an moment or something you're like, man, that
was a great learning or a learning that you kind of it sticks with you through some of
those acquisition experiences? Acquisitions are hard. I'll start
with that as number one. Look. I think the most important thing is the acquire like, the company that
is acquiring needs to have a singular executive sponsor that
is committed to the successful of that integration. I even see this now at Twilio. Like
we do a bunch of acquisitions as well today. The most successful acquisitions that we've
done are the ones where we've had great executive sponsors internally who are really
accountable and thoughtful about how do you make that the most successful. And you look that
across, you know, revenue expectations, people expectations, technical integrations,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think having sort of that singular owner within the
acquiring company is really important. And I think from the acquired company, a lot
of it is just attitude, right? Like I think the worst times I've seen this is like companies that have been
acquired and they're like, my culture is the best. The way we used to do things are the best. And they get very
dogmatic and, like, their identity is sort of that separate company as opposed
to, I think, being much more open to look, this is a much bigger opportunity. We're in a
bigger company today that probably has a different set of values, a different set of operating
cadences, etcetera. But this is gonna help us build a better business for our consumers, for our
employees, for everybody. And I think rally around a sense of, like, identity
and change management is really, really important to making those acquisitions successful and
rarely actually have I seen that be the case. That's awesome. Super interesting. I was
just talking to somebody today about that that onboarding and that
integration process and an acquisition being just super critical. So it's great to
hear makes sense that you're kind of underscoring that. What is a sliding
door moment in your career where you kinda had a couple options and you chose
one? Maybe you can share some of that if you don't mind or lesson learned
if if one was interesting or maybe one that you thought of what it Where I picked the right
door where I picked the wrong door. I've also picked wrong doors. I mean, I I think I think the wrong
doors are maybe more interesting. But Yeah. Maybe both. Like, yeah. Like, love to hear I think
we wanna be. They and ironically, they're probably the my two most recent. I went
to Nextdoor as a complete passion project. I think as someone who's like
worked in advertising for a really long time, I think you sort of get jaded maybe by a lot of
things. But also, if you just look at social media writ large, like, let's be honest, it sucks. Like, it's, it's
probably a net negative to society is probably the actual truth. And I looked at Nextdoor, I'm
like, dude, how cool would that be if you could actually help connect people locally? Like, you
could actually get people in their community knowing who one another are, helping each other, meeting each
other offline, supporting local businesses and local cause. You know, it's like
that's like the feel good stuff that we probably should be Yeah. Society. Yeah. And I think typically
technologists, like, they don't think about that. So I was like, well, that's a really amazing opportunity.
I'd love to go there. And they were basically pre revenue when I started there and I'm like I want to go
help them build the biggest business possible get next door into every single neighborhood
and make this a swimming success. And I think the my intentions were good. I
think what I didn't fully understand probably going into that is really just how different
consumer is from b2b. And, you know, running
a revenue like organization for b2c, just in my experience was not very
fulfilling for me. And the main reason being it's like you're hot when you're hot and you're not when you're not.
And all I need is a few you know racist comments in the neighborhood or something off color to really
piss off Walmart or one of our biggest advertisers. And I'll see my revenue dip
like immediately day after day. And that's stressful control the growth or the engagement of the platform. And so you're kind of at the whim of like, oh,
the platform. And so you're kind of at the whim of like a lot of external
factors that I think make it really stressful and difficult to be a CRO for a b to c
company. So I really enjoyed my experience at Nextdoor. It's a great company. It's a great tool.
Everyone should use it. But, I think my stint in b to c is officially
over after that. That was not the right sliding door for me. And honestly like, probably one
of the best sliding doors I've picked is actually Twilio now. And honestly, I'm partially biased because I'm still at
Twilio. But like, you know, if I think back to the first principles of like, what do marketers need
and want? Like, they need and want trusted relationships
with their end consumers. And there's no better form of a trusted relationship than a consumer raising
their hand and saying like, I want you to email me. Right? I want you to call me. I want you to
text message me. Right? Like, as soon as you can get me these shoes at forty percent off,
like, send me a text message and I will be right there to purchase it. Like, that's Love it. Kind
of the holy grail and it's the earned media that everybody really wants to get towards. And I think Twilio
has a really amazing ability to help marketers harness that data,
facilitate those conversations in a way that is like trusted and impactful. And it's
been super fun because it looks, it walks and talks a lot like ads, right? It's a two sided marketplace.
It uses data. Like, it has the same connotations of fraud and wasted like, all
the same things that you see in ads. But I think applied to a set of
channels, I think, are future approved, and I think gonna be a lot more impactful. Love it. And you're
skating where the puck's going because of all the privacy concerns we have. So you're one step ahead
of everyone again, Lauren. You did it. I'm trying. You're awesome. And this
has just been, like, a chock full of awesome information. But what's something fun
fun maybe that people don't know about you, you know, personally in your life, what you can
share that folks don't know? I am married to someone I went to preschool with
who is a police officer, which is a very different profession than mine. So we have incredibly
different day jobs and fun dinner conversations as a result. Awesome.
I rescued a pit bull right before I had my kids. And so I'm like super
into pit bull advocacy and getting people to like, think in a way that is
much more aware of just how amazing that breed is and how lovely they are. Yeah. They
like to cuddle. Yeah. They're they're honestly, they're just like big family dogs
loving Sweet Peas. Anyway, ladies love my life. Her name's Lady, my dog.
And, I don't know. I live in San Francisco and like people, like making
money, like hanging out with you. So that's about it. Love it. It's amazing,
Lauren. It's, always a pleasure for folks that wanna get in touch, that wanna reach out to
you and maybe learn more, where where can they where can they find you? You can always find me on
LinkedIn. Send me a note on LinkedIn. Happy to chat. Beautiful. Always a pleasure, Lauren.
It was awesome. Great conversation as always, and, hope to see you out in SF again soon.
Sounds good. Thank you. Alright.