20Growth: How to Master Product-Led-Growth, The Biggest Mistakes Startups Make When Scaling into Enterprise, How to Assess "Bets" in Growth; Which to Take and Which to Not with Gonto, Interim CMO @ Vercel

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Martin Gontovnikas, a.k.a Gonto, is a software engineer at heart who moved to the “dark side” to focus on Marketing. With this career transition, he found a way to combine his 2 passions by applying his “engineering thinking” model to Marketing. He is now a B2B SaaS Advisor to Vercel and Airbyte among others and Co-Founder & GP of Hypergrowth Partners. Previously, he was SVP of Marketing and Growth at Auth0.

In Today's Episode with Martin Gontovnikas (Gonto) We Discuss:

1. From No Idea to Growth Leader:

• How Gonto made his way into the world of growth when it was not a thing?
• What does Gonto know now that he wishes he had known when he entered the world of growth?
• Why does Gonto believe product and marketing is more important than sales and marketing?

2. Growth: What, When and Who:

• What is growth? What is it not? What do people misunderstand most with growth?
• When is the right time to hire your first growth person?
• What is the right profile for the right first growth hire? Junior? Senior?

3. Mastering PLG and Enterprise:

• What are the single biggest mistakes startups make when scaling into enterprise?
• Why does Gonto believe that all PLG companies should start with 6-8 design partners?
• Is it possible to do enterprise and PLG at the same time?
• How does one provide enough value in a PLG motion to convert enterprise buyers?

4. Data vs Intuition: Art vs Science:

• Is growth more art or science?
• Why does Gonto believe qualitative data is more important than quantitative?
• How does Gonto think about psychology when selling and marketing? What do so few startups? understand about the psychology of their customers?
• How does Gonto approach messaging and what is truly great product marketing?