#43 Explosive Growth: Lessons from Uber, Revolut & Bitpanda with Irina Scarlat

Luke Szkudlarek: Coming up in today's episode, what is growth and how to find growth levers.

Irina Scarlet: Growth is problem solving, and I can't solve a problem without understanding the root cause and without understanding what have you tried to do to solve that problem before? So I look at the data in order to understand what are the key growth challenges, and then it's actually a matter of, um, breaking down that problem and solving it piece by piece.

Luke Szkudlarek: That's Irina Scarlet, CMO at uh Improbable, and growth advisor at, uh Boon. Also today, how important is the quality of execution?

Irina Scarlet: I'm always asking what has been done before, but I'm not discarding immediately, okay, you've done this and it didn't work. Let's discard it. I'm always asking why it didn't work. How did you actually do it in order to understand if it's an execution issue or if it's a, uh, channel fit issue.

Luke Szkudlarek: That's all ahead on Fixing the Game podcast. Join me on a mission to unveil strategies and hacks that turn the tables on the tech giants. They created the rules, ensuring only they can win. It's time to fix the rigged system. Listen, learn, transform your mindset, and conquer the digital game. Your winning journey starts now. Welcome to Fixing the Game. Today I'm joined by Irina, uh, Scarlet, a powerhouse growth leader who helped scale Uber, Revolut and Bitpanda to millions of users. In this episode, we unpack her most powerful growth principles, tactical levers for scaling fast, and how to build growth engines that actually compound. Irina, welcome to the show.

Irina Scarlet: Thanks a lot for having me, Luke. It's a pleasure to be here.

Luke Szkudlarek: Thank you. You managed to work with some of the largest brands entering Romanian and Eastern European market. How did you manage to land these amazing jobs that for sure shaped your career?

Irina Scarlet: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the only job I directly applied to was the one at Uber back in the day. Uh, I think it was about actually looking at products that I like and brands that I actually want to work. And I think this is where we sometimes make mistakes when we look for jobs. It's not about finding just a job. It's about finding a brand whose mission you resonate and the company whose culture fits you as well. You must be a culture fit, and the company has to be a culture fit for you. And this is how I actually assess the opportunities. And then I work my way up to the top in the roles that I had. And I think is this grit and this drive that actually convinced my GM at Uber to make an offer and to hire me. M. And this is the same skill set that basically made Revolut hire me. And I think if I look at core differentiators, I think that would be. That's the grit, the working hard and showing up.

Luke Szkudlarek: Amazing. And do you see similarities between these three brands? All three of them actually are highly disruptive brands that also have slightly subversive element to them.

Irina Scarlet: Yeah, I think the common theme between the brands I've worked for, and I always try to work for companies that are very ambitious because I'm very ambitious myself. And I back to never settling. I, as a person, never settle. I never say, hey, this is my objective. And once I hit that objective, it's time to enjoy and relax. And I think it's this ambition, this drive, that is the red line between all the opportunities I've had the chance to work on.

Luke Szkudlarek: And do you know where it comes from? Because I'm always curious about it. I come myself from Poland, so I grew up in a culture of scarcity. Right. There is never enough, and there was a lot of opportunities, and I think we had to hustle to get something done. And I credited that to this hustling, or grit, as you call it, to also the upbringing and the hunger that was there from the start. Do you think it has to do with your culture, where you come from, or is that something you developed with time?

Irina Scarlet: It's a very complicated and very deep question. It's a matter of nature versus nurture, and I think it's both nature and it's also nurture on one end. I think some of us are born with being more ambitious, wanting more, being more competitive. But our, uh, upbringing, um, also helped. I'm Eastern European as well, and it was always about the desire to do more and meritocracy. And I think part of my drive comes from my father. And I remember him saying, in life, it's good to aim to be the best or aim to be the worst. If you're the best or if you're the worst in what you do, you're gonna stand out. Otherwise, you're just gonna lose yourself in the crowd. So do something to be the purple cow. And I think it's also about the ambition, and it's also about the fact that we didn't have all the opportunities and we didn't have everything. There was a lot of friction, and we wanted to work hard in order to remove that friction and to take advantage of the opportunities that there.

Luke Szkudlarek: I would love to also learn about how you approach growth and how do you define growth? Because when I also look at Uber, Revolut, Bitpanda, these are uh, large companies with amazing products. Right? The product is also a big driver for growth. I'll be curious how you approach these projects or do you see any kind of principles, patterns in your approach? And I would love to learn from that. When you, let's say, uh, get a brand new project or you hear of a product, what do you look for and how do you assess how to approach growth?

Irina Scarlet: That's a really good question and I think I can talk hours only on this question. So first of all, I think growth is more of a science than an art. It's a scientific and it's also a trial and error process in the same time. So to begin with, by defining growth, I think if you ask three people what growth is, you're going to get three different answers. For me, growth lies at the intersection of product, marketing and data. And it's somehow the place where I've operated my entire career and where I solve problems my entire career. Traditionally, if you look at product is the one that's in charge with the ah, core product experience. So making a great product. And I know there's a lot of debate in the tech world of um, which comes first, product or marketing? This is not a chicken or the egg question. Product always comes first. You can't hack your way into product market fit no matter how hard you try. And God knows there are plenty of products out there that try to do that and pour money into that. It's like taking money and burning it if you don't have that product market fit. So the core product experience always comes first. Then comes marketing, which is basically in charge with top of the funnel user acquisition on multiple channels. And here we're talking marketing. So growth is at the intersection of marketing and product. And growth is actually in charge with expanding the number of customers that experience that core value. And that starts from identifying and leveraging new top of the funnel growth opportunities to improving conversion, retention, monetization. So basically growth operates all along the funnel from acquisition to conversion, retention and monetization. And it's about finding new levers and it's about optimizing what you have in order to achieve better results, expand spending, basically helping more customers experience the core value of the product.

Luke Szkudlarek: Like your guiding principles that you use. Okay, that could maybe for the listeners also apply to any industry and any product because you, you focused heavily, I guess on SaaS and it would be great to hear Also something that is universal that you think applies to everything.

Irina Scarlet: I want to understand how your growth loops are looking today, from acquisition to monetization to retention and engagement. And then I asked a couple of questions consistently. I want to understand what have you done so far for growth? Because that shows depending on the life stage of a company, if it's very early stage, if it's uh, pre product market fit, post product market fit, a scaling company, they are going to focus on different stages of the funnel. Because obviously in the beginning you're focusing on top of the funnel user acquisition, and as you grow, your focus goes further down the funnel until you get to revenues. Growth is problem solving. And I can't solve a problem without understanding the root cause of the problem and without understanding what have you tried to do to solve that problem before. So I look at the data in order to understand what are the key growth challenges. And then it's actually a matter of um, breaking down that problem and solving it piece by piece. We talk a lot about product market fit in our world. What we talk less about, it's about product channel fitness because we talk about growth and we talk about growth loops. But truth is that depending on the type of product, you have a couple of channels that you can, you can use. So you need to understand what are the channels that you can use for your product. Then you look at the ones that you are using today. Some of them maybe can be optimized, some of them can be killed completely if they don't work and then add some new channels into the mix. And then it's also about model channel fit. So actually look at the um, LTV to CAC ratio and look how much you can actually spend in order to acquire a customer. Because you have some channels that fit your product. But depending on your business model, some of your those channels are going to be profitable and some of them are not going to be profitable ultimately. So I actually go through this exercise with my customers in order to narrow things down. And that is a lot about experimentation and it's a lot about, it's a lot about AB testing because truth is that, that there are very few inspirational leaders that actually see around corners and understand the product in and out. Just to give you the example of Revolut, even if you launch a product that's exactly the same as Revolut product and you deploy the exact same growth tactics that we deployed at Revolut in the early stage, it's not going to grow the same because the market is not different. The market Conditions have changed and it's not going to work the same. So it's about when you have playbooks, just make sure that you use them in order to have a steeper learning curve than without the playbooks. What keeps me excited working in growth, but what also helps me perform is always keeping a beginner mindset. No matter how many playbooks I have, I never believe that if I apply the same recipe abc, I'm going to get the exact same result as last time.

Luke Szkudlarek: I did it with companies like Revolut or Uber, these larger brands. How many channels did you manage to get work? Extremely well. Because I know that when you look for this channel and product fit, uh, you could, you have maybe 10, 20 channels that you could use. Is it important to have a lot of channels working okay, or did you focus on getting maybe two, three channels working extremely well?

Irina Scarlet: So I don't think you ever have a lot of channels working really well. Because depending on the life cycle of where on the product life cycle you are with the company, some channels are going to work better than others. And until you gain initial traction, I always recommend using owned channels in order to not pour money into things before being able to scale them. Then you can start using earned. Once you see initial traction, you start using earned channels. And only afterwards you start looking into paid channels. And here I'm talking above the line marketing, but I'm also talking about more above the line marketing, which is the last piece of the puzzle and not the first. Talking about performance marketing. I'm talking about paid influencers. And you gradually add new channels as your product matures. And I don't think we've ever had more than a couple of channels working really great simultaneously. And once the performance of a particular channel deteriorates, you start experimenting and you add other channels that are better fitted for your life cycle.

Luke Szkudlarek: It's actually when I listen to you and the explanation, uh, it sounds like a very logical analytical process. It makes a lot of sense.

Irina Scarlet: Yeah, I think it's less about creativity and art and more about science and being methodical in execution and disciplined.

Luke Szkudlarek: Right. So where does the creativity come in? Like, where do you need these crazy creative ideas? At what point in that, uh, process?

Irina Scarlet: You can have crazy creative ideas at any point in the process. And I, uh, think they are very useful throughout. But creativity is also a different way of solving an existing problem. So if you do things like everyone else is doing. Again, if we get back to the purple cow example, you're never going to get out of the crowd if you do things differently, you're gonna stand out. And this is why creativity is very important at every step of the way.

Luke Szkudlarek: And we talked about just this general context and universal principles. I think you put that very eloquently together. Can you share some examples from either these three brands or from your recent projects or other projects? Things that any kind of growth levers that really moved the needle, something that surprised you? Because of course, the premise of this podcast is also give people ideas about alternative growth strategies. So maybe you have something that you came across that you would like to share.

Irina Scarlet: Yeah, so I think it's something that we've done consistently in the early stages, and I'm going to quote Brian Chesky from Airbnb here with doing things that don't scale. So it's the growth lever that don't scale in the beginning that are often overlooked, and those relate to building a community around your product. At Uber, to give you an example, we were doing top rider dinners in cities. Of course, this is something that doesn't scale, and this is something that you can't do for long. But by doing that, we actually created a community of active supporters around the product that actually spread word of mouth and supported us in actually advocating for Uber and referring new customers to Uber. At, uh, Revolut, we were organizing in the early days what we called rev rallies, which were community meetups. And we were actually bringing together new customers with existing customers and sharing with them the roadmap of the product and what we are going to build. Of course, those type of events no longer make sense at the scale Revolut is today. But in the early stage, it created the mass required for network effects to kick in up to a certain stage, which led to the exponential growth curve. I would say don't be afraid of doing things that don't scale, because these are going to build a very strong foundation for you to actually reach network effects later on.

Luke Szkudlarek: And it's also more difficult to copy these ideas, right?

Irina Scarlet: Yes. And it's also, they are very authentic. It's about actually being very authentic and very transparent with your customers.

Luke Szkudlarek: And you mentioned, uh, paid media a couple of times as well. I like that you try to use it tactically, or once you have the product market fit, you know that something's working and you accelerate this with paid media. But outside of, let's say, paid media, what are the tactics where you think companies established and new companies waste most time and budget chasing?

Irina Scarlet: All the channels are good, provided they are a fit for your product and for the lifecycle of your product in a particular stage. I see mistakes when we don't see that fit, when we deploy a channel just because it's cool, just because everyone does it. And it, it's, it's not the right channel for us given the, the product life cycle or the business model that we have. Other than that, I don't think in, I don't believe in good and bad channels. I think I, I believe there are channels that are right for you in a particular stage. A sponsoring sports tournament where you haven't tapped into a lot of other channels. So doing performance marketing all your life so far, you don't have a foundation, you don't have a brand. And then once you have some money, you jump into, let's sponsor a football club. And how is this actually going to help you if you're not building a sustainable brand? Because that's the last piece of the puzzle and you want to just put it first. And you're putting the horses before the carriage instead of, instead of keeping them where they belong. So I think overall, be very mindful of choosing the right channel for your product at the right time.

Luke Szkudlarek: And also it's about execution, right? Because I know from some of our customers they maybe selected the right channels, but they also executed badly because you could have, let's say even paid search or more traditional online marketing channels. Sometimes people come to us and say, oh, meta ads never worked for us. But actually when you then look at the detail, how it was done, it's also not done correctly. So it's also the execution is really important.

Irina Scarlet: Execution is everything. I was telling you earlier that when I am working with new products, I'm always asking what has been done before. But I'm not discarding immediately, okay, you've done this and it didn't work, let's discard it. I'm always asking why it didn't work, how did you actually do it? In order to understand if it's an execution issue or if it's a channel fit issue, then you can discard it.

Luke Szkudlarek: Very good. And um, I'd love to also talk about growth teams because of course in the larger organizations and some of your clients you had to build up, you were the driving force, but you also had to, uh, create a culture of, uh, growth and build teams from zero. Can you talk about that kind of growth culture, how to cultivate that? Because you have this grit you feel. When I talk to you, I feel lots of energy, like this drive. It's obvious, but not everybody is like this so you work with different kinds of people. How did you construct these teams to make sure this grid is transferred and this is then reflected in the work?

Irina Scarlet: So that's a really good question. I've built and led teams of more than 200 people in my career. And I think there are a couple of things. Things first, talent density is paramount and talent density can make or break a company. We were talking earlier about execution. If you're not bringing in the right talent, execution is going to be poor and then you're actually endangering the success of your company. So it's very important for me to bring in A players. And how do I define those A players? I'm looking for grit. And grit is like this, never settling this, obsessing over solving particular problems. And I'm very cautious. I make sure to assess for grit and for track record, record of success, not for a preference of being a personality trait of being an extrovert or an introvert. Then I look for ownership because people that look at their, the product they work on as if it is their product are always going to go the extra mile. There's no such thing. I want people that go beyond job description. And I don't mean work all around the clock and I don't mean let's all burn out together, just caring and obsessing over problems. And if I see a problem that's outside of my area of expertise, I still look at it and I still try to solve it. And because I care about the um, I care about more than my own KPIs or my own metric. I care about the success of the product. And there are two more things. It's curiosity. First, I want people that are constantly learning because if you're not learning, if you're not curious, you're not staying in the same place, you're going back because the entire world moves forward and leaves you behind. And I also want people that are resilient to change. So I think a key ability in the five fast based world of tech is to actually be resilient to change and to be able to metaphorically kill your babies and drop the ideas you've been working on, drop the project you've been working on when something, a new opportunity, something better comes along. And I think this is a key, this is a key trait that we all need to build. And it's really hard to have it natively because as human beings we are resistant to change.

Luke Szkudlarek: Amazing. Because you actually, in your answer you've not mentioned skills that much. So it's actually a lot of it is this attitude, right? With the growth mindset and this willingness

Irina Scarlet: to grow skills, you can build skills you can build. And I think I've hired people at all levels, from junior to executives. If I'm hiring executives, of course I want to see the hard skills. They are in place depending on the role I'm hiring for. If I'm hiring juniors, I just care about their attitude, because if they have the right attitude, they are going to learn really fast on the job.

Luke Szkudlarek: Amazing. I think. Are there any other lessons or things that you would like to share or any examples to. To wrap up the conversation?

Irina Scarlet: Yeah, I think last but definitely not least, I think I'm very. I think one of the key ingredients for success is discipline, and I think it's underrated. And I'm a little bit scared about how we raise the new generations with the les effairs, to say it in French. I think we need to be. Be very disciplined and very methodical in trying to achieve our goals. And is this discipline, in the end, that makes the difference between success and failure ultimately? So I think it's hard, but again, like a red line. Working hard and showing up consistently is gonna get you where you want to be.

Luke Szkudlarek: And how do you stay disciplined yourself so that you stay on track and not get distracted with new things and also being able to learn.

Irina Scarlet: So I show up even when I'm not in the mood of showing up. I'm very structured with my. My schedule. Being a working parent has brought a new degree of complexity into my life. And if you're not disciplined with your schedule, a lot of things are just gonna fall through the cracks. So I'm trying to obsessively plan everything in order to make sure that I get the important stuff done first. And I show up even when I'm not in the mood. I'm gonna give you the example of sports. Sports. I normally exercise six, seven days per week, so almost daily. And there are mornings when I wake up, I take the kids to school and I'm just not in the mood. And I would do anything else. But still I show up even if I. I'm in the mood or not. And I get it done because I have to get it done. I don't give myself the option of not getting it done.

Luke Szkudlarek: That's for sure. The more difficult to find these days,

Irina Scarlet: these quantities of this, I think we can push ourselves. The only limits we have are, uh, the limits we set ourselves.

Luke Szkudlarek: That's amazing. Hey, thank you so much for sharing all the insights. I feel like we covered a lot in very kind of intense and quick fashion. So I think it will be a great episode and I think a lot of useful lessons for everybody. Thank you so much Irina.

Irina Scarlet: Thanks a lot for having me. Luke.

Luke Szkudlarek: That brings us to the end of today's show. My thanks to Irina. To find out more about what and what we do, go to our website, WOT Digital. And if the topics resonate with you, download my book of Hacks, which contains ready made recipes for growth that I've collected in my own client work at WOT and picked up from conversations with my guests on this podcast. You can find it on WOT Digital. Remember to subscribe and to look out for the next episode. You will find it wherever you get your podcast. That's all for now. Goodbye.