Phases of growth for hyper-growth companies w/ Rodrigo Hutt of Viome (EP27)

Speaker A: So I think that one important thing that I have learned from working in startups and scale ups is that the importance of operating in phases, what that means is that you know, you have to have clarity about what the problem, what the problem is and you know, uh, and what is uh, the solution or the MVP of your product. Then you have to make sure that you have product market fit. Then you need to have a way to monetize and make sure that your unit economics make sense for the business. Um, and then you go to what I call the go to market fit. And the go to market fit is really trying to understand how you're going to distribute your products and what's going to be your go to market strategy. Is it going to be B2B? Is it going to be B2B2C? Is it going to be direct to consumer? And if you're going to be direct to consumer, what are going to be the main challenges that are going to help you acquire the customers and help you take the company from A to B?

Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Hyper Growth Experience. I am your host, Nima Gardiner. Today we're going to have Rodrigo Hutt, VP and General Manager at Viome Life Sciences on the podcast. If you don't know about viome, um, a D2C biotech company focused on personalized health systems by using and analyzing your microbiome and your gene expressions. It was quite interesting to just get an understanding of what that all means from Rodrigo, who's been in biopharma and just in the space for a long time, uh, with some experience as an entrepreneur and in E commerce. It was really wonderful to hear him talk about how he's been thinking about his career. If you have been an entrepreneur before or you're thinking about it, it's a really good conversation to listen to, to understand how he's thought about joining companies sometimes instead of founding them and helping them scale. He was very articulate about how he's been thinking about the growth of Viome in itself and generally how he sort of buckets companies into different phases of growth and how the teams need to be structured and how prioritization has to be thought about in these different stages. We start with, uh, him beginning to share what the connective tissue has been for him as he's been going through different industries and products and helping those companies.

Speaker A: You know, some things were planned, but as you know, many things in life are not planned. You know, however, however I would, I would say that there is a connecting tissue. You know, in my career And I believe, and I strongly believe that the, the driving force, you know, has been health innovation. And in addition to health innovation, also, you know, making sure that I work for mission driven companies who truly want to improve people's lives. And that has, has been, you know, kind of the impetus and, and um, definitely a key motivator in my life has been, has been that like, what can I do, uh, with my professional career and with my talents and my time that I have here on earth, you know, to try to improve someone's lives. And I've taken the route of health innovation and trying to tackle, you know, health outcomes and um, you know, and broadly speaking, you know, helping people to live a better and healthier life. Um, so yeah, that's kind of the quick summary. And as you said, I started my career in biopharma working for big companies. Then I became an entrepreneur. More than 10 years ago I started one of the first digital health companies in Latin America. Uh, then I worked for Mercado Libre, the leading e commerce company in the region, in Latin America as well. Super successful company and learned a ton about how to scale companies and scale teams. Uh, and then when I moved to the US three years ago, I decided that I wanted to be full on uh, uh, in health technology, in health tech. And that's one of the main reasons why I joined viome. Uh, and then finally the last piece is that I strongly believe that we are living in one of the most exciting times for humanity as we are moving closer to better understanding the human body and our health today. You know, the science, the technology, AI, you know, DNA testing, RNA testing and all of that, you know, it's finally converging and it's, you know, and I feel very excited to be part of the health revolution, or the health evolution, whatever you want to call it. But I strongly believe that this is a really, really an exciting time to, you know, for entrepreneurs or companies to create the new generation of health companies that will, you know, prevent diseases and you know, and cure some of the diseases that have been lingering for so long.

Speaker B: If we were to just sort of double click on the Marketo Libre portion of your experience. So what was the can you give us like the state of the company when you were there and then you said your learning was like scaling teams and building teams. What were some of the most important things you sort of carried with you from that experience?

Speaker A: Yeah, so when I joined Mercado Libre, I think the company was valued at $7 billion in market cap. And I was there for Just over four years. And when I left, I think the company was valued at 80 or 85 billion in market cap. So it was a very interesting period. Um, uh, it was hard work, um, but also it was very rewarding. And I also learned a lot, ah, not only from my job, but also from learning other leaders in the company doing their work. Um, so. So, yeah, you know, one of the key things that I took away from Mercado Libre, it's people and culture. And Mercado Libre paid a lot of attention to making sure that they were bringing the right people on the bus and making sure that everyone was leaving the company's DNA. So they spend a lot of time crafting the company's culture and then making sure that everyone went through trainings to make sure that everybody understood what the company values were and that you were actually putting those values into practice. So beyond Mercado Libre, it's a technology company, it's an E commerce company. But more than the technology piece, I would say that the level of ambition that people had at Mercado Libre was really impressive. And also the amount of time and attention that the company placed on talent and cultural building was, I think, to me, um, one of the key things,

Speaker B: uh, that sounds like there was a bunch of training and programming for the culture to enforce it within the organization. Uh, was it also part of the interview process somehow? Like how are they filtering for and what are the sort of things that stood out? I think culture is, uh, in my experience, very sort of specific to the company. Um, and so there's like multiple ways to get culture right. But, uh, what were the things for from Marketa Libra that, um, you may have brought into Viome or you would want to recreate?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, uh, to answer your first question is like, yes, it started from the interview process. Ah, from that point, part of the interview process is to go through Mercado Libre's cultural values. Um, so, you know, ah, you actually ask the, you know, interviewees, you know, a number of questions to make sure if they, if they, you know, have had experiences or leave your values already. Uh, so let me give you an example. So one, one of, uh, the values was, you know, to have an entrepreneurial mindset. Right. If you don't have an entrepreneurial mindset, uh, which means, you know, it's like being an entrepreneur, it's a journey of failures. So you need to try things, you need to experiment things, and if it doesn't work, it's okay, but at least you're taking the Learning with you. Right. So that's one of the things that, you know, it's part of the value, you know, were part of the values when I was there, uh, that I strongly believe and that I took with me to bring. And then the other one, it's for example, you know, execution with excellence or speed of execution. So that's another value. So you know, it doesn't, you don't have to plan for ages and then, you know, make sure that you, you know, that you're going to have time to execute. You know, once you have a strategy or you have an idea of an MVP product or something that you're going to do, then the value is that you need to execute well and execute fast.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Because the faster the better. Because if you failed, you're going to learn faster and you're going to be able to add those learnings into the next process or next iteration of your product or strategies that you're trying to move forward. So I think those are, there were six values. I'm not going to go through all of them right now, but those are two of them. You know, speed of execution and having an entrepreneurial mindset, uh, are two of them. And the other one, it's uh, really collaborating and working in teams, you know, uh, you know, that's super, super, super important. Like, like work. If you work in silos, you're just going to be inefficient and it's going to take you more time, it's going to take you longer. So that's another key piece that making sure that you have the right leadership, the right teams, the right mix of people within teams and the right operating system in place to make sure that you have a lean team and that you are operating fast and with the right mindset. So those are just a few examples of things that I learned at MercadoLibre, um, that I've been able to take with me now to Biome. And then one final piece that ah, you know, it's uh, it's an interesting thing that I noticed when, while I was uh, working there is um, that and I believe that the founder and CEO of Mercado Libre, Marcos Galperin, I think that he assembled one of the most impressive leadership teams that I have ever seen. And he has, he not only build that team, his team, but also that uh, you know, the core team has been together for over 20 years. So they have been together and they have learned uh, through the ups and downs. And I think that that you know, tells you A lot that, you know, that management team has been working together for a long time.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very interesting point. I think at least in Silicon Valley that tends to not be the case. People hop around a lot and there is like sort of startups going through these volatile periods of growth and then you know, massive falls and so you end up working in a lot of companies. But I, uh, commonly have a different point of view on this as well. I've been working with my co founders for seven years, uh, and across three different companies. And similarly I think that's one of the better ways to produce work because you just fine tune the relationship over the years.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's not, it's not a rule, but it definitely helps. You know, I've seen, I've seen both work. But you know, I think that one of the key ingredients for, for, for mercadolibria, I think from my perspective is that they, you know, you know, the founder managed to really build a great team and, and he's been able to preserve that leadership for.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's quite interesting. I have a sort of personal

Speaker A: bias

Speaker B: towards it because my father uh, built something similar, uh, in his journey in Iran where he's now been running a company for over 30 years. And I think most of his VPs have been there from the beginning or you know, something like average is 25 years they've been working together. Um, and it's just such a special connection they've built together. But also they've just been able to get more done as they've gotten to figure out how to interact. Um, that's, you know, it's actually rare to see that in such a big company. Um, I think commonly these companies end up becoming sort of lifestyle businesses and um, I'm going to, after this, explore. I understand that team a lot more now. Um, so.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Getting into viome. Before we get into what the problem that you're all solving over there, can you just maybe give us a snapshot of healthcare in the US Generally speaking, but more importantly, these sort of markers that you talked about of the changes that are coming, it feels like, uh, and I'm just generally an outsider in biotech. Uh, but it seems like synbio is going through a revolution. There are cost curves that are really hitting the mark where a lot of production is even switching to synbio. So there's a lot of interesting things happening and then there is obviously revolutions on the genetic side. Uh, what's exciting to you and why are you Doing it in the US Because I know you've had opportunities to work outside of the US as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. And uh, yeah, so let me start by giving you, you know, by giving you a little bit of context of what's going on in the healthcare industry in the U.S. what's wrong and where the opportunities are, uh, at least some of them. But you know, the health care industry in the U.S. it's massive. You know, U.S. healthcare expenditures are over $4 trillion, $4 trillion, uh, in expense in health related expenses, direct related expenses in the health industry. And that, that uh, equates to 19% of the GDP of the U.S. so I'm going to say that again. Almost 20% of the GDP in the U.S. it's the size of the healthcare, uh, industry in the US uh alone. But the most interesting thing is that it's a country that spends the most in healthcare and yet life expectancy has not kept up. So let me tell you what's been going on. So for the last 20 years or so, life expectancy has been improving. You know, one year, a couple of years, every, you know, every X number of years. You know, the, the, you know, the life expectancy in the US Couple of years ago reached, uh, you know, we were at 78 years old, 78 years. And now for the last couple of years, life expectancy has started to decline. Right now we are at, you know, life expectancy, it's at 76, 76.5. So it's definitely not improving. Um, and I think that there are three things that are affecting the health industry. The first one is that it's super expensive. I don't know how often you get sick or if you have relatives that need to go to hospitals or seek decisions or doctors and so on. But you know, healthcare in the U.S. it's very, very expensive. The second one, the second one is health outcomes. And um, generally speaking, health out, you know, you will see, you will encounter poor health outcomes or not optimal. And I am generalizing, I'm not saying that everything, it's bad. I'm just saying that generally speaking, for the amount of money, uh, that people are spending, uh, in health, you know, people are not really seeing the value for the money. And then finally but not least, I think that they're, you know, the customer experience, the customer experience in the health industry, it's not great. Uh, so you know, when you go to a doctor, you know, and then you get, you get your bill, you never know how much you're getting billed until much later. Then uh, you know, it's not clear, it's not transparent. So I think that generally speaking there is lack of trust. There is lack of trust in the health industry. Uh, there is lack of communication and typically it's hard to navigate. So I think that the problems that we are seeing in the health industry are, are also some of the biggest opportunities that we're going to see that many of the entrepreneurs and new companies are going to start tackling. You know, to improve all of the things that I mentioned before. Then there's a, there's, there is another thing that is super important and this relates also to what we're doing at Biome. But uh, today, you know, chronic diseases, chronic diseases affect over 60% of the US population. So at least 60% of the people in the US have at least uh, one or more chronic disease. And um, 85% of healthcare costs go to treating and managing chronic diseases. So the vast majority of healthcare expenses in the US go to treating and managing, uh, chronic diseases. The interesting thing about chronic diseases is that, you know, most of them, not all of them, but most of them are lifestyle related.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: So that's something that you can do. It means that you can do something about it. You can prevent many of these, of these expenses and, and, and diseases, you know, down the road. Uh, so I think that the US is spending too much money and um, most companies or institutions or hospitals are spending too much time and focusing on certain areas of healthcare and technology. But there are many other things that the science and the technology that I mentioned earlier are now getting to a point where we're going to be able to see, you know, new technologies, new breakthroughs and we're going to be able to see better health outcomes and hopefully, uh, less expensive for people going forward.

Speaker B: Is the reason sort of this exists. First of all, is this very unique to the US where three out of five people have chronic issues and is the reasoning for sort of why a lot of the cost goes towards it is that the general approach of, at least my understanding is of insurance companies is that they're willing to pay for essentially symptom, um, resolution as opposed to prevention of the symptoms to begin with. Like there seems to be like an economical and misalignment there as well.

Speaker A: Right. Uh, so, so the first question is. Yes, I think, I think the U.S. it's, you know, it's worse than other comparable developed nations. So if you compare the life expectancy, ah, you know, of the US versus Switzerland or Norway or Japan or Australia, you know, the, the US it's know, many years behind. Also, you know, pregnancy related deaths and uh, and the number of chronic diseases, you know, per capita. Yes. The U.S. it's, you know, slightly worse than, than other developed countries. And that has to do, that has to do with nutrition. You know, it has to do with nutrition, it has to do with lifestyle, it has to do with the environment, it has to do with many different things. You know, at viome, we focused on, on, you know, on understanding your, your microbiome. And then you know, we, we are you know, helping people by you know, actually the mission of viome, it's to empower people live healthier lives through personalized nutrition. And uh, I'll, I'll get more into the details of how, how we do it, you know, at Biome. Um, but I think that you know, the nutrition, your diet, you know, stress, uh, lifestyle and you know, all of these factors in the U.S. uh, are a little bit more learning, you know, than other countries. Not to say that other countries are immune to this problem. I'm just saying that relatively speaking, the eu, the US has, has a bigger problem. And answering your second question is that, you know, I moved to the US three years ago because I, I, I, I was very excited that in the U.S. you, you know, you can find a, uh, lot of the innovation in terms of the science and the technology and AI. Most of those technologies are being developed in the U.S. not only in the U.S. but you know, but also, you know, know, uh, I would say at least 50 or 60% of the companies that are developing these new technologies are in the US and you know, I'm originally from Mexico City. I've spent most of my life in, in Latin America and Europe and now in the US Now I wanted to spend most of my time, you know, focusing in the U.S. yeah, that makes

Speaker B: a lot of sense. And I think there is, there is definitely like an incentive here for healthcare companies because there's really no upper limit on how much uh, value they can create in the space. Um, so can you give us maybe an intro to viome? What is the sort of core insight on the technology that you guys are building on top of? And would you consider yourself a DTC healthcare company, uh, and sort of walk us through the current sort of growth trajectory and how it's been working thus far?

Speaker A: Sure, sure. Uh, so Viome, um, it's a health tech company and also a biotech company. Um, and we are primarily a direct to consumer company and we are also developing a B2B business. Uh, because we are developing new diagnostic products. Sorry, my phone went up. Um, ah, we're also developing, you know, cancer diagnostic, ah, diagnostics that are going to be, you know, ah, sold B2B through patients and hopefully getting FDA approvals and you know, insurance reimbursement and so on. But the main, the core business at Biome is it direct to consumer business. And that's the business that I, that I run, that I run and I spend you know, most of my time on. Um, so that's a little bit about the company. You know, as I said, you know, the company started as a gut, as a, as a gut microbiome testing company and it has evolved, you know, to become a personalized health company. Um, basically, you know, the core principle of viome and viome's approach, it's what we call biochemical individuality. So there is no such thing as an average person and we are all genetically and biologically unique. So when the founder and CEO of viome, uh, Naveen Jain, who is a very, uh, successful serial entrepreneur, he started the company seven years ago and he, you know, he came up with two key insights for, you know, launching viome. The first one is genes and the difference between DNA and rna.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And the second insight is the role of the microbiome. So let me tell you a little bit about those two insights. The first one is genes. As you know we have genes in our bodies. Ah, and you probably have heard of DNA and rna and the first thing to know is that DNA is not necessarily your destiny. So you get your DNA from your mom and dad. Um, and you know, and on the other, and on the other hand, most of chronic diseases turns out that are not associated with DNA. So DNA does not change with disease. So for instance, and knock on wood, but let's say that if tomorrow I develop a chronic disease like heart disease, my DNA doesn't change. If I develop Parkinson's, my DNA doesn't change. If I develop diabetes, my m. DNA doesn't change. So something was missing. Where so many companies and health institutions were focusing on DNA as the source of truth for understanding chronic disease, something was missing. So turns out that DNA is not necessarily your destiny, but RNA can be your destiny. What does that mean? Is that RNA measures your gene expression. The chief science officer at viome developed a technology called Meta transcriptomic analysis which focuses on RNA analysis and, and gene expression. So instead of just understanding your genes or your DNA, we are understanding what your genes are expressing, the biochemical reaction of your genes. So when you eat certain Foods, your, your microbial genes and your human genes interact with those foods and, and they create, they create a biochemical reaction. That's what I mean by gene expression.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The second, the second, the second insight is the microbiome. And the microbiome, just very high level now, not to be very technical here, is that in your body, you know, and this is super, this is very interesting. And I don't know if you know this but, and I didn't know this before I joined Biome, but turns out that we are less than 10% human. And I don't know what, you know, when I heard that for the first time, it's like what, what do you mean that I, we are less than 10% human. It means that uh, you know, we have 90, 90% or 95% of our genes are microbial genes. And that's a microbiome is the ecosystem of microbes that live in within our bodies. So those are bacteria, bacteria, viruses, fungi, all of those. And then less than 10% are the genes that come from our mom and dad. So why is that, why is this important is because the foods that we eat feeds our microbiome. If our microbiome, it's out of balance, then your immune system is out of balance and that creates chronic disease. When you have chronic inflammation in your body, that creates chronic disease. And that's what Biome does. Biome Biome analyzes your microbiome and analyzes your gene expression. And based on your results then we give you a, A And by the way, let me take a step back. So you, you go to viome.com, you buy a, you buy a test, you buy a home test. You get it, you get it at home and then ah, you collect stool, blood and saliva samples, you put it in a box, you send it back to our lab, we have our own lab. Then we analyze it, we do the gene expression analysis, we digitize the human samples, we send it to the cloud and then we apply our own AI algorithms to analyze your, your, your microbiome pathways and, and, and also your glycemic responses. And then based on that then we, we send you your uh, results in the biomap. And then biomap, you're going to be able to see three things. Your health scores which tell you, you know, how your body is right now. Number two, you will get food recommendations. We tell you precisely what are the foods that you should eat more and we call them your superfoods. What are the foods that you should minimize and what are the foods that you should avoid at all costs. And we tell you why. M Finally, we also give you supplement recommendations and probiotics and prebiotic recommendations. Why? Because, uh, you know, it's impossible to get all the nutrients that your body needs only with food, only from food. So we also got into, into, into personalized supplements. So right now, based on your unique biology, you know, we create a custom made formula just for you and we send you a box of personalized supplements and um, personalized probiotics once a month to your home, to your house. And then that way you can continue with a personalized health plan and you can retest every four to six months because your microbiome is dynamic and it changes. So, you know, in conclusion, Viome has become your health partner and your personalized nutrition coach in, you know, in just a few.

Speaker B: What I love about that is that this is the exact opposite of what I was talking about earlier where you're coming in way earlier. You're trying to fully prevent these diseases that come from inflation. Not inflation, sorry, inflammation. And you're trying to sort of be early in the cycle and sort of educate consumers on how to eat well. Um, funny enough, I've done some of this personally and it's fundamentally changed my life and I feel like the most healthy I have because I had microbiome issues. And uh, I do really believe that this is the future of healthcare. Um, and so you just had 20 minutes with me to explain all this to me. So what is a sort of marketing challenge for a company like viome describing all of this to consumers? How are you thinking about, ah, there is trust involved here. There is also, I assume, a price point that's not as, um, easy for people to get into immediately. So walk us through how you're thinking about these marketing growth problems. Yeah.

Speaker A: So to me, you know, you know, I always start from a marketing perspective. I start with, you know, you know, who you, who the target audience is, you know, and what are the use cases. And you know, from my perspective, you know, we've been focusing on three main use cases or three main customer segments and there are more. But um, we, you know, I've been focusing on those three primarily. The first one is, you know, and you, you were talking about prevention and you find you all, you know, you already like yourself. You, there are people out there that I call, you know, health conscious individuals who are into prevention. They are interested in eating the best possible foods, organic, they exercise, you know, and they just want to, you know, prevent diseases. They want to feel their best and they want to maximize their energy and longevity. So that's, that's one, one segment. The second segment is what I, you know, you know, it's the biohackers, right? So, you know, there is a, you know, there's a lot of people out there that are trying to understand as much as possible, ah, with the new wearable technologies, with new home testing and many other tools that exist nowadays to understand what's going on in their body so that they can hack their own organisms. Um, these people, this segment, they are very interested in data. Uh, so they come to viome because they really want to understand the data and what's under the hood. And then, and then finally, you know, the third segment, in my view, it's people that are trying to solve a pain point. Uh, in this case it's a symptom or something that has been bothering them, you know, for a while and they are looking for an alternative solution. Right? So someone may have, you know, ah, digestive disorders, some people might have a chronic disease or whatever and they are, you know, trying to look for an alternative approach and they, they come to viome because they are open to trying a new solution. So it starts, it, it starts with really understanding, ah, your target audience. Um, and then, you know, the, the second thing is, you know, to, you know, to viome one of the key philosophies and the key things that we do, it's education. So I, I like the term education based marketing because everything that we do is not just trying to sell you stuff. You know, we are, we spend quite a lot of time to educate, you know, uh, prospects and customers about the value that viome brings to the table. So I, when I think about, you know, our marketing, I think about, you know, our growth strategy and our growth model and I think of a growth loop. I don't think funnels precisely. And that, you know, it start with customer acquisition. You know, so people come and buy maybe a, a home test kit. And then eventually, you know, we do upselling, uh, because some people might want to choose to buy the personal personalized supplements or probiotics. And then the third piece, it's retention and engagement. So across, you know, if you go through the entire growth loop, you know, at every stage of the process, there is a lot of education. There is a lot of education. And, and also as you know, you know, to sell science and technology, we, you know, uh, you know, it's not necessarily easy because there is a lot of terminology and jargon and scientific terms that the average Person who is not a doctor or a scientist, we will struggle to understand those terms. So we try to break that down in plain English, but always support it with scientific evidence.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that's an interesting challenge. I do like the, we similarly speak about how every ad should be giving some form of value to people that are watching it, um, or seeing it. And education based marketing is a good way to put that in a phrase. You're talking about these growth loops, which is, I think generally, um, I like thinking about growing companies and formulas. If these four or five things cohesively work together, this machine starts growing. How have you structured the team and given goals to the different sections of the company when it comes to these things? Is one org owning the growth? Uh, is it spread across these three stages that you talked about? How have you done the sort of organizational design around this?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So we have uh, a growth team, generally speaking, even though that, we don't call it like that. I, I think of the entire business and team that I lead as a growth function and that we have marketing experts, we have product experts, we have engineering experts, we have content experts, we have design experts, and we work together in each of these different steps of the growth loop or the growth journey, you know, to try to, you know, focus on the, on the right growth levers depending on where we are. Ah, you know, I think that one important thing is that, you know, we, we need to have a, you know, we need to answer the, the what and why. You know, that has to be super clear in the company. Like uh, what are we trying to achieve and why? And I've already explained that to you about, about Biome, which is super clear. You know, we are in the, in the business of empowering people to live healthier lives through personalized health and personalized nutrition. So with that goal in mind, then we go to the how and the how. You know, it's, you know, what is the kind of, you know, the operating system that we have in place. And as you were saying, start with, you know, the, you know, it started with the organizational structure but also with strategy. Um, so I think that one important thing that I have learned from working in startups and scale ups is that the importance of operating in phases. What that means is that you have to have clarity about what the problem is, uh, and what is, uh, the solution or the MVP of your product. Then you have to make sure that you have product market seat. Then you need to have a way to monetize and make sure that your unit Economics make sense for the business. Um, and then you go to what I call the go to market fit. And the go to market fit is really trying to understand how you're going to distribute your products and what's going to be your go to market strategy. Is it going to be B2B? Is it going to be B2B2C? Is it going to be direct to consumer? And if you're going to be direct to consumer, you know, what are going to be the main challenges that are going to help you acquire the customers and help you take the company from A to B? Right. So, and for us, you know, a key thing has been, you know, uh, A to have a growth mindset. And as I've mentioned before, you know, in this setting, you know, you have to be aware that entrepreneurship is going to be a journey of failures. And the same goes with, you know, when you're trying to fight to find go to market fit. You also need to have that in mind. And, and, and then the second piece. And B, is that you really, you know, what, what we tend to do is we need to have a testing roadmap and make sure that we think carefully about what are going to be the channels or the initiatives that we want to test and experiment with, uh, so that we can start then tracking and see which are going to be the, the strategies, tactics, channels that are going to be driving our revenue growth or, you know, or the, you know, customer acquisition cost or whatever you're trying to do. So at each stage of the process, acquisition, upselling and retention, we have very specific OKRs, objective and key results that we clearly define each quarter and that we track every week and every month to make sure that we are making progress?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty clear. And so are the teams then running their own experimentation sort of backlog based on the okrs that are sort of assigned in those areas. Um, so there isn't sort of one central experiment backlog that you're running. It's more like you're sort of managing the overall process of it and then the teams are following this sort of experimentation approach to figure out what initiatives are going to get you to the next stage.

Speaker A: And it depends because we have certain projects that are cross functional and we have a okrs and then there are functional specific experiments. So for example, the performance marketing team will have their own testing roadmap based on the OKRs that they are after for that particular quarter.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's quite, yeah, uh, I've seen that a lot and I think we have seen a lot of companies run these things. It's interesting to see folks um, try to prioritize in different ways. So I'm curious, as maybe a last question, you said it's important to think in phases and I assume the sort of change in phases is kind of the priority function. Like how are you choosing what to focus on based on the phase that you're falling into, what is your sort of framework and thinking about prioritization there? Um, maybe even this phase that you're at now which is kind of finding fit and distribution and your go to market. How are you judging these initiatives? Um, and what is the sort of directive that everyone's using to make decisions?

Speaker A: I think that focus is super, super important and I love this quote that I'm sure that you know, like the main thing is to get, is to keep the main thing, the main thing. But, but that's really important because if you're trying to do so many things at the same time, you know, it's very difficult to get, you know, you know, ah, distracted and you know, teams, you know, going in so many different directions. So I think that's, that's something that it's very important. Um, one thing that I try to do and spend quite a lot of time is to make sure that we are prioritizing, um, as much as possible,

Speaker B: uh,

Speaker A: and also making sure that everyone is working with very specific okrs. Uh, so I'm not saying that okrs are the panacea but I personally think that it helps a lot to keep people focused on the things that we want to do and then finally in terms of how we prioritize. There are many different uh, frameworks to prioritize but I normally use a type of a scoring model that helps me think about what is the impact of this strategy or initiative or tactic. You know, what is the potential impact if, if we do this and it turns out that it's as long what is the potential impact? Number two is like what is the cost? You know, and, and the cost is sometimes you need to spend in paid media. You need to spend in, you know, in, you know, testing and experimenting in TikTok. So you need to spend money on not just paying TikTok, but also in creating content. And then finally it's the feasibility or the level of effort for the team to execute on something. So if you find something that it's high potential impact, low cost and low level of effort, then it's a no brainer that that's something that you need to prioritize and go get on with it. So that's something that we typically do. And then if you're operating in a, ah, in a startup or in a scale of things move so fast, so fast and priorities tend to change very often. So I think that you really need to ask yourself constantly, hey, let's go back to our core mission, what we're trying to do and why to make sure that you're focusing on your true North Star metric. Because it's very easy to get, you know, to get pulled in so many different directions. So one of the key learnings that I've, that I've had in my career and this might m be, this might be a little bit simplistic in a way, but it like the importance of, the importance of focus, uh, it's super important. And be relentless at prioritizing what you're doing. And then once you focus on things, try experiment, measure and then if you thinking like an investor, you really need to make your bets. You need to start tracking what's working, what's not. And then once you find a channel or an initiative that is working, you can double down on that one and you can kill the other ones that are not necessarily working, but also give yourself sufficient time to really test and experiment and also super important to do post mortems with your team. Sometimes people are so rushed that you don't take the time to stop, analyze, look back, reflect and ask the question, what am I learning from this experience? So um, that's one of ah, the things that we are doing right now as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that overall process makes so much sense and it's very clear you've been around the block and have done a lot of operations. So it shows the level of sort of deep thought you've put behind these processes. And I think we use the ice model as well, the sort of impact cost, effort and if we had more time, I'd want to get into predictions and how good we are at these things. And I think that in itself is a whole one hour discussion. But Rodrigo, thank you so much for coming on and uh, spending the time with me. It was a pleasure speaking to you and uh, we'll be in touch.

Speaker A: Oh, thank you, Nima. It's uh, great being here. Thank you for having me. Uh, and I look forward to, you know, connecting again with you.

Speaker B: All right, and that's a wrap. Thank you so much for being a listener of um, the Hypergrowth experience. We've been working on a lot of different channels for growing our company. At Paramel, and recently it's decided to pause working on the hypergrowth experience. Quite frankly, it's been more fun for me than anything else having these conversations with these folks and learning from them and understanding how everyone in this space thinks about growing companies. We've just been more successful at these other channels. We've been working on throwing events in the city, hosting webinars, and working with some partners to grow our company. And, um, we're just doubling down on those. But at some point, I think this labor of love will come back because I'm interested in it and I want to have some even deeper conversations with some of these folks, uh, about how they think about growing companies and really taking companies through exponential growth. It's just a topic that I'm personally interested in and it happens to not be as useful for growing Paramel, our company. And so we're going to put a pause on it. But thank you for being a, a listener. And if you want me to continue these maybe on a personal basis, please just feel free to email me@ah, Nima paramel.com and I'll be around to answer any questions and potentially think about a different series that's more focused on the founder side of this instead of the marketer side. But thank you so much for, for being here. Have a good one.