Operators Ep 21 Transcript
Delian: [00:00:00] Hi, everyone. My name is Delian and I'm a principal at Founders Fund, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco. This is Operators, where I interview non-VC, non-CEO, non-founder operators that make the startup world go round. Today, I am interviewing Morgan Brown, VP of growth at Shopify. Prior to joining Shopify, Morgan was the director of product management at Facebook, COO at Inman News and interim head of growth at Qualtrue and TrueVault. He also authored the book, Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success. I hope you enjoy the show.
Sweet one, Morgan. Thanks so much for taking the time to hop on the podcast. Really excited to have you on.
Morgan: [00:00:52] Yeah, super excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Delian.
Delian: [00:00:53] So we, before we dive into Shopify, which, we'll- we'll chat a lot about towards the end I want to first talk [laughs] about the beginning of your, let's say, career, but mostly, especially the education. I think you're the first person that I've ever spoken to on Operators but then also probably spoken to in person that has a degree in Zoology.
And yeah, w- walk me through, how that came about and what does one learn in Zoology and was that ever the longterm plan of being a, I don't actually know. Maybe it's just zoo keeping, but I seem I don't even know national geographic photographer type. A- are there potential career paths? Like where does one go with a Zoology degree?
Morgan: [00:01:26] Yeah, for sure. So I actually didn't finish the Zoology degree. That's what I studied, but actually it didn't make it all the way through. I came up about four classes, four classes short when I ran out of capital and my parents patients. But basically it- what the backstory is that, I was actually really bad at like second order thinking when I was younger. And so when I was a kid, I used to be really into computers pulled apart stereo equipment in the garage, in the basement. My brother and I built mini bikes. I like used to have... My first computer was a Tandy TRS-80, where I was writing BASIC. I didn't have a taped backup so I'd leave the computer on overnight. I'd start to cry when I turned it off and lost all my work.
But I got really fascinated on a trip to California with SeaWorld when I'm like eight years old or nine years old at this point. And the whales were like magnificent and I was like, “Oh, holy shit! This is what I want to do with the rest of my life." I wanted to these animals, swim with them and whatever. And so, basically carried that towards, through high school and I was like, “I'm going to be a marine biologist.” So I looked first. So I grew up in Connecticut and I was like, “Oh, where are you going to study Marine Biology?” It's like, of Miami, University of California, Santa Barbara,” you know of Southern Carolin- South Carolina.” And so, I went to and they have a great Marine Biology program. I enrolled there.
And, like your first course, like 10 minutes into your first Marine Biology course at UC Santa Barbara, they say, “Most of you are here for whales and dolphins. Unfortunately, megafauna make up less than 1% of all the biology in the ocean and therefore you will spend about that much time over the next four years on those topics. About 95 to 90, or about 99% of the biology in the ocean is a plankton. And so, you will be a commensurate amount of time on plankton,” which is like super crushing for the kid that was like, you know, really with whales. And then you kind of like in a and you're like, “Oh, there's actually only about like 26 jobs in the world that like make any kind of like meaningful living, working with like marine mammal research.”
And and so that caused a really hard kind of like a pivot for I was like “Oh, well, I have this I hate plankton.” and you know, I had some studies, I've that worked some professors there, I just couldn't get into it. And so, Zoology was like the pivot. And I was like, “Oh, maybe I'll go to Med School, take the MCAT.” but basically like ran out of and patience as I mentioned. And at the same time so is like 1997, 1998 I saw Netscape and all of the like- like that was just like... I was like, "Holy shit!" Like of course, like what are... You know, and all TRS the BASIC coding, you know, all of that came kind of back. And I "This is absolutely what I should be doing."
And at the same time, there one other key kind of pillar to this or piece of it is that, I had gotten pretty good at like community events on at Santa Barbara, like creating- creating building awareness and getting people together. And I actually won a University of Order- University of Order distinction for the work I did in community building. So I have this weird barbell distribution of no and a university or award of distinction at the same time. So yeah, so that's a very answer, but yeah, that's how I got through to where I'm at, at least in education
Delian: [00:04:41] and, sir, it seems like afterwards you kind of like, you know, started know, between like operations, marketing and like a couple of just like super early kind of like e-commerce retailers as an agency and then you know, also for you you I yeah, how did, you know, sparked the I mean, you said you sort of saw and saw that but like, yeah, you were doing sort of and SEO in like, you know, 2001, 2002. So they were probably... You were probably one of the first people in the world to be doing SEM and SEO and like really thinking about that. So like, yeah, I guess like what drew drew it to you and like, how do you think of it of those like kind of early days of like digital you know, right after the dotcom, era before it was really of a broader thing?
Morgan: [00:05:14] Yeah, for sure. So I think like when I saw that scheme I "Oh, these are- this is like the thing. Like all- all of that energy and excitement came back from me about like this was the space to be in. Like without a degree and I'm like on- on my own I was like, "Holy Shit! Like, need to bring something to the table than everyone else," which I basically got down to the point where it was like, "Okay, it's just gonna be a hustle. And I am just gonna outwork everyone. Like, this is what I will I come and do any job better and longer than anyone else on the team and make that kind of my calling card where yeah, if I can get into kind a generalist role..."
With my first first job was with which a geo located retail sales database. You put your zip code, if you want a big screen TV, it tells you if it's cheaper to buy at Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, you know, wherever. Obviously it's of its time. There was no iPhone you we're building PalmPilots like WAP and- and like that. And they offered me a job which was essentially get data from offline data sources into this online website, which effectively meant looking for ways to source every Sunday paper in North America to be FedEx to us so that a team of like 100 people could like do the entry to get the information into the database, and then a team of, you know database managers like ensure the integrity and of it.
So that was... So I kind of out there, but startup, you know, like do something they just keep giving you more and more scope. And, what the founders of that did... Some of the big investors were Germany and Italy, and so they sent me to Germany to open up a German office for the product. We launched the product in German and Italian. I spoke neither of those languages. And I did everything from up local area networks to hiring people, to finding office space, to working on early business deals with our VCs in the country to get inventory onto our- onto our site and that type of thing. So it kind of built this very generalist of experience in ops and learning about product marketing. And some of the ways we were driving customer acquisition really started to spark my interest in terms of, "Okay, how is this thing actually growing."
Right at that point, the bust happened. my company imploded when I was in Germany and my founder called me and said, "Liquidate everything in the office and use what- those funds to buy your plane ticket home. and stop in London and do the thing in that office." And, so, I basically spent a mad like trying to find someone to buy all of our office furniture, buy a plane ticket and get home. And I got- came home to like no job. And that's what led the digital marketing agency, which is really where I to kind of build this, digital point of view, which was kind of different than, what you get out of like traditional marketing that type of thing.
Delian: [00:08:14] Yeah, I was gonna say, was it- I mean, it sounds like in some sort of like, you know, fire and wasn't like infinite options in terms of jobs in Silicon Valley. But I guess like, what gave you conviction to around? You know, after that, I feel like people and like sort of 2001 you just kind of, you fired and get to participate in the upside over the next, let's say, decade or two.
Morgan: [00:08:27] Yeah.
Delian: [00:08:28] And so, what gave you conviction to around? And then I guess, yeah, so like why the agency model and then what eventually maybe made you restless there and what made you wanna, you know, sort of shift back to rather like backup [crosstalk 00:10:05].
Morgan: [00:08:37] Yeah, for sure. So I yeah, so I get back no and I'm in LA at the time and the ecosystem in LA is like non-existent, you know. It's just like five not like it is- is today. And, I wasn't really, I wanted to stay in Southern California which again I think it's like bad second order, like thinking, and probably should have moved to like Northern California if I could like rewind. But, one of the, you the job market was if you go back to that time, rates are super high. And, there was a digital marketing agency that looking for an account coordinator and the things that they listed off were things that I did like: familiarity with like systems you know, kind of content digital marketing. I was like, "Okay, these I know and I can do and I actually really enjoy doing." And so, I applied for the job. Me to come down on a Sunday morning. I at the guy's I showed up in a suit and he's like eating breakfast. It's a very- very funny story. And they offered me the job I basically started off in the coordinator role but kind of built up.
Again, I was "I'm just gonna outwork and out-learn everyone here." And eventually ended up leading of the company's largest accounts, like learning digital strategy, learning... Like, we were working with like ads. So, you know go.com, all the the One Internet properties. But, and then I was also doing like information architecture, content design, building websites, rolling our own CMSs.
But one of the things that I noticed in doing that is we were building some of these mini web products, like community and online calculators, and some these like very lightweight kind of products. And those were the ones that driving like a lot of ongoing growth, right? Like if you could get a community going, the traffic that that thing would throw off like punched above its weight to like a overture campaign or buying, know, banners on AltaVista or and so, it really kind of gave me this I "Oh, there are these like different ways to grow products and different ways to succeed, basically that are not by the book." You like most of the people "Oh, we need to do, you know, banner campaigns on you know, we're going for like and then you get some, you know, basic frameworks."
And I "Well, no, you have this honeypot a community that people are every day, commenting every day, the traffic is kind of through the roof." And- was kind of some of that which started spark some of the seeds of I took my career, which ultimately is at this intersection of marketing and product which we now call growth. And, yeah. So that's the early days anyway.
Delian: [00:11:03] And what was it like- what was it like, let's say the, like largest or biggest product or largest community helped develop during that time, like at the and sort of like, why do you feel it was it like just the brand had said, "Give devotees," that you could, you know, build up a community what kind of, you know, [crosstalk 00:13:20].
Morgan: [00:11:17] So two very random one. So one was Sunkist, and the- like Sunkist have we working with them, right? They were- that's like 2001. And and one of the we trying to build up like their email marketing list. Like, "Hey, this is an asset that to grow over time. We have demonstrated that with a couple of other products." And they're like great. How do we build it?"
We're in their offices one day and they have they have this little giveaway they gave away like trade shows and stuff like that called the Citrus Peeler, which is a molded piece of plastic that helps you like score [inaudible 00:14:02] fill it easier. And there were throwing them all out because they were they didn't want them.
And we're like, "Hey, let's- we'll take them. And we'll give away one to people who sign up for the email list." And essentially, we kind of put up this little form on website. We said, "Hey, get a free Peeler if you register for the email newsletter." that got picked up in some online food communities, like BBSs and stuff like that. And, like overnight, we had like 77,000 people that the- the peelers. And I was like, "Oh, wow! This like- that's a very material thing that basically we created from waste." we also did something the California Avocado which was like another random client that we had. And they- they had a real huge community of like avocado this is before avocado toast was a thing, obviously.
But but yeah. So just of like early things. And these- we're not talking about huge communities, we're not talking about millions of people, but we are talking about like, you know, low hundreds very targeted for were trying to figure out the digital space and also used to like banner ads that actually didn't do anything. So, yeah, it's an exploration.
Delian: [00:12:48] And so, I guess, what made you shift there to... You know, talking that was fascinating you was like, these social communities, plus marketing, plus product. And so I guess, what made you shift from there to sort of like a, you know, Mortgage and joining 00:15:32] product?
Morgan: [00:12:59] Yeah, basically what I figured out that I was good at is like the digital strategy and like piecing together these- these of the puzzle and kind of like finding the leverage, in these online channels just because I kind of looked at them a little I think. And so my, but at was unsatisfying to be very project-based, so, for example, like I would want double down on the community, double down on this like viral growth for the email engine but like, you know, based on like company's or budgets retainers or whatever, like there wasn't really the opportunity to continue to like really like see these things out as long would want to. And so my- a couple of my friends were starting a mortgage company and they're like, "Hey, we need someone who knows how to generate leads." And I was like, "I can do this. Like, I can do this at a very low I can do this very effectively." And so I started helping them out on this, off the side of my desk; helping them generate leads. I up a few landing pages, started driving some traffic to them that started working, and they're like, "Hey, you know, do you want to come do time? You can own the whole experience end to end. You can, you know, help us build this So, that became more appealing of some of the agency work you know, three and a half, four years kind of felt like, you know, a stuff. [crosstalk 00:17:00]
Delian: [00:14:11] What ended up happening with the company? Like I couldn't actually like find too much about it. Like, it ended up getting like out or like what- what,
Morgan: [00:14:16] the mortgage company?
Delian: [00:14:17] Yeah. Yeah.
Morgan: [00:14:18] It folded. It folded in the mortgage meltdown of...
Delian: [00:14:21] Oh, 2007, 2008.
Morgan: [00:14:23] Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So and, was interesting that period when I got into that business, realized I really hated it. I like really disliked a lot their practices around mortgages and and you can imagine at that time it's very kind of buzzy and bubbly. And experimenting with... This was about the time like was around.
So I started experimenting with like blogs; for like search ranking, regeneration, that type of thing, and social media, where basically, you know, signed up for Twitter in 2007. Started a blog platform that around consumer advocacy to help people not get duped the mortgage process. Started ranking really highly in Google for like key terms, like loan modifications and like, you know, started to get hit with a bunch of traffic around this.
And so yeah, that's, again, kind back to that, "Oh, a different way to get leverage out of the online channels in this social media kind of emerging space." Really like we were getting hundreds of leads a month for free basically from- my blog. Ultimately ended up selling the blog to a company in- in I think it actually lives on today in some- some form formulation or another. But but, yeah. So it was kind of that- that that, yeah, there know, there's more leverage in this new emerging part of the web to kind of like achieve where
Delian: [00:15:37] and so I guess, yeah, part two of global crisis being, you know, very directly affected you know, part one working at a know, burgeoning dot-com shutting you down, and then Mortgage Provider with 2008. You know, probably being a well, so I'm sure that like kinda hit quickly. So yeah, I like, walk me through like, yeah, how- was it you one week to you know, as crazy and kinda figure out sort of what- what the hell to do
Morgan: [00:15:55] yeah, I was a little more drawn out than the first around. Yeah, I definitely call this period of like my life, like I got my degree from the school of hard knocks and basically all the great that came out of that. But, what had happened was, with the blogging that I was doing to kind of like grow the leads, I got as one of real estate's top bloggers for whatever that- that means.
The guy that owned the company which is Inman, which you see on in my resume was starting a company in San Francisco called TurnHere, which was a video based startup. And so, he flew down he was like, love what you're doing on like- your- like the way thinking about social media, the way you're using organic traffic and whatnot to kind of drive your business. We a really interesting opportunity. Here at TurnHere we're building this video platform." that company ultimately to become Smartsheet. It's still going on today. And I got their pre pre A. We raised from like the- the third week that was there. And then we built that built that up.
And so I responsible for marketing at that company, is kinda the next step- step in my journey. And I think one of the interesting threads is, you know, I kind of consistently of like just out- outwork everyone. Yeah, I kind of play with a on my I don't have a traditional background or degree in marketing. Just just like super driven. And so, I've really- every person that worked for has stayed in my life one way or another where like the guys that were founders at the first dot-com company in LA today, today he's my lawyer. Guy that hired me for he ultimately hired me again to run Inman. The guy that started the agency, he hired me again at Oak Creek Trail. So I have kind of this pattern of like, I that I great working with and then continuing to kind of do that over time.
Delian: [00:17:41] Yeah. Over the next couple years, it looks like you like had a couple of different things that you were sort of like juggling at the same like both, you know, helping a firm, sort of like an interim head of also doing this, like, you know, Inman thing, I me through went on. [crosstalk Was it like 2011 all the way through like almost like 2017?
Morgan: [00:17:56] Yeah.
Delian: [00:17:56] So you kinda balanced a lot of things, and I was supposed to book during that time too.
Morgan: [00:18:00] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So you're talking about the books thing, but no, the, so essentially I out with the mortgage company and the ad agency, and even TurnHere was that there was a pattern to early traction, right? Like there were things that I knew to do that were repeatable and valuable, like I could grow initial traffic, I knew how to like do some SEO to get search I knew how to grow email marketing databases and deploy those and I knew how to build some online products that could help, you create natural so, this like the learnings I had at basically three startups, I, you know, kind of three out of are startups, just maybe not, you know, how you would about them.
There was like a pattern to kick starting this digital acquisition program. And so as talked to other startups, like, you know, they wanted to do couldn't afford to hire at like the full rate that I wanted. And frankly I had gotten a point where Tur- like SalesMountain, like of my options, you know, might as well light them turnHere, you know, the same thing. They and they're still going today. But like when they recapitalize everything goes to- goes to zero. And so I wanted a way to get more bets on the field. And so I felt like, cool, there's this like and like set of things that you can do pretty much for like organic traffic and building this kind of initial customer acquisition engine that is like, you can plug it into many types of business models and- and whatever, and it doesn't require... Like I could do that in many at once, right?
So, basically, Full Stack just my own little agency that I started where I could basically advise companies; most of these are of people I had worked with before, or were introduced to. And, they're like, "Yeah, we need to get the ball rolling. Can you come help us do it and kind of like set up; all right, channels we're gonna go after, set up the visa of all the marketing programs," and basically this idea of a full stack marketer where I you know, from some of the had the kind of the technical capabilities.
You know, I am dangerous with CSS. Like I can like I can actually like hack around and get stuff done. I know a little bit of SQL, but enough to be like, "Hey, you can drop me in and I could get a bunch of stuff done really quickly for startups to kind of get the- get the ball so I kind of federated that at a time.
Delian: [00:20:16] Do you still imagine though that it's like relatively, like, you know, the way that one for example, you know, I familiarity you know, TrueVault just startup with this- was this kind of like enterprise healthcare thing that was a you know, need- needed to be but I imagine like, you know, growing, you know, that you know, Inman are like right? The- and customer is enterprise versus consumer. That's something entirely regulated versus, you know, media is, you know one although, you know, now with, you know, maybe become much more highly regulated with what we're allowed to say and not say.
But like, I just imagined that like, you can't like paste like the same, like good I guess like, how would you go in to understand like you know, the, you know, know, and what, growth strategy would work versus like wouldn't work at these
Morgan: [00:20:50] totally. Yeah. And I think you're right. And that's where my scientific background kind of started to kick in where this kind of, you know, hypothesis tests, learn iterate kind of approach, right? So like this kind of very like a feedback driven process trying to, like, you have a hypothesis about something's going to grow. You run some experiments and see if it's true and you kind of iterate from it. So, yeah, like, like even TrueVault they may see it. They're like one's a media company, one's like a API dev tool, but some of the early traction channels and the ways that we went about it are very similar, right?
So like TrueVault they pivoted to the enterprise model, but originally they a developer focused. And so we're kind of looking at the and, you know, it, it turned out that looking for HIPAA compliant APIs and that type of thing. There was decent search volume for them. But most of the big companies offer them are justifying them on pay for clicks. So like the paper clicks on these things where, you know, 40 bucks, 50 bucks a quick but the actual SERP was very low.
Built a couple of pages, like, what does it, HIPAA what is like HIPAA compliant cold storage. We built like five pages rank them. And like we rang number one and two for some of these like key head terms that were like hundreds of thousands of dollars of free traffic a month to them. And then we worked on like, knowing developers was the we actually launched the developer's guide to HIPAA compliance, which we published on GitHub and as a repo. And so really kind of using this, like, all the audience like, where's the intent? What are some of the hypotheses that come into play? What are some of the low costs channels that maybe are under utilized or like non-obvious and like, how do we get the ball rolling there?
Similar strategies on Inman. As a media company, the engine is much greater than a TrueVault for example, but kind of the same, same thought
Delian: [00:22:38] then I guess it sounds like an inmate you took, you know, it started off intro, sort of more, more involved until sort of took on like sort of a COO there. So yeah, I guess like why in men is like, obviously a very, let's say, know, different you know, company to sort of the prior ones you worked also the other ones that you're like, you know, I wouldn't describe it much of a- as a- as much of a startup in comparison to the rest or at least tech startup.
Morgan: [00:22:56] Yeah. Yeah. So, I think the- the reason I got in admin was basically because of the guy that owned, it was the guy that gave me the job. It turned here and he called me and he was like, "Hey, this business is falling over. It's failing, it's losing money every month. I'm thinking about shutting it down. Do you think there's anything I can do here?" And so I looked at it and I was like, "Yeah, there's obviously a bunch of broken stuff when it comes to organic search, the ad model was a mass in super optimal." Lots of like- lots of like... If you looked at it, "Oh, there's actually something there- there." And to your point, it wasn't a start-up. And I think this was one of the- the realizations that I had way too late in life was that there's a difference between products that like have an existing audience and product market fit and just need to grow into that fit right in, and really leverage it versus like companies that are pre product market fit.
And there's still a ton of risks and I got those very wrong. And so I think I took a lot of like, reflecting back in hindsight, I took a lot of bats on pre-product market fit, where I could bring digital growth and acquisition to them, but they didn't necessarily have the fit to make that really stick. But I was taking on way too risk as like an early employee I
didn't really understand that risk reward trade off super well. When I looked at him and I was Oh, this company has been around for a while. Like, it has a good, like I talked a bunch of people, had a good brand had some context from my days about it. And so like in a bit, it more like poor execution and just like, kind of, not really yes, so I was yeah, I think I can fix a bunch of these things. And as a consultant, I fixed what I could. And Brad was like, "This is awesome that you're doing it with like 20% of your time; like turn the ad business traffic." He's like, "All right, you know, what can you do?" like, "Well, you should really build a product and charge for your news no one- like no one else is this while you're giving it away for free."
So we built a subscription product that quickly became 30% of revenue. And basically I there, it on like a $12 million annual run rate. And I got there when it was like less than $2 million annual run rate. So so like we're not talking but it was like a good turnaround story and kind of like created some for that business paradise where I'm, where it a new lines of business that like made that like, ultimately very- very for- for Brad.
And then really the reason I left in is I a call from my co-authors a friend who was a new team at Facebook and he was like, "Hey, we're here, you're good at, you know, growth and- and all that you to come work here." And I was kind of, you know, obviously I had company experience up until that. And then I thought that, you know, that was you know, like see if I could like go hang at a company like go from like a 50 person very scrappy to like, alright, I actually any good what I'd become?
Delian: [00:25:40] Yeah, I guess, I'm pretty sure you can confident that Facebook has, you know, product market fit know, the prior- the prior been in. I guess, before we like dive into Facebook days. You I guess if you were out on the job market today and considering something that was like maybe earlier stage, like, how would you go about assessing, let's say whether or not there was some product market fit or how would you have done, let's say, your job searches in you know, from 2007 through you know, differently now with the that you have?
Morgan: [00:26:02] Yeah. I think really trying to understand that level of fit through couple of different right. So depending on the stage company, I probably want if it's further along, I want to look at like core retention rates, like, does anyone stick around product once they come in and use it? And that's like a quantitative, you know, that's kind of a a market fit, like, do I have a stable J curve?
Or no. Before that though, I think there are some qualitative ways that you can go about it. Actually my author on my had kind this survey called the survey which is basically trying to an approximation of like, how disappointed would someone be if they could no longer use your product. And I think like probably the horror wrote about that for that you said at a super human and stuff like that.
But Sean Penick came up with that. I think that's, that's something that I to the table. I was like, okay, really go talk to customers interview them, get some and like, Hey, if we pulled the plug thing, would you care? And if they're like, yes, then there might be some there, there, if not, then, you you probably have do. And I thought the interesting insight on that is using disappointment as the framing versus satisfaction, because anyone can be satisfied.
Like, I'm generally satisfied with my electric company. But you know, but so like like, Hey, if I take this thing you, it kinda the loss of version psychology of it kind of gives a decent it's kind interesting, like Sean had a string of hits where he was able to kind of uncover kind of the market fit. While I was at Facebook, we, for some of the projects I was working on, we deployed that type of surveying to kind of see if it actually like better retention outcomes and stuff like that to prove it out. And the data was inconclusive, but like at least directional enough that it seemed like a promising is he, I guess, how has it transitioned know, something, you know, as Facebook and, you spent roughly, you years there from what were, I guess, what were some of the he worked on? How has that transition, do you feel like you sort of all of the skills applied or was lot of sort of like, you know, learning, operate in a larger organization like that?
Yeah, it was a, it was a bit of both. Like the the, a at any size, like the ability to like Marshall resources gets up, prioritize, get stuff, done, get validated learning all of that like pretty scale. And any role, frankly, I even today, like you know, VP of Shopify, person org, but like still being scrappy and trying to like get validated learnings and like that.
But yeah, at Facebook it was the biggest company I ever worked at. And ultimately I ended up the messenger or working on messenger kids, which is a messaging app and kind of that from, you new product into, many millions of monthly and I think what I really the most there is I had this idea of like the scientific method and data-driven and pretty technical in my customer acquisition and marketing. And when I got to Facebook, like I had already spent, I mean, they set the bar for you know, for the last decade. And like, Oh, I want to see if like, I'm reasonably as competent or like, I w I want to go learn, like two biggest things that I've always optimized for in my career are like, my rate of learning is number one. Right? So like the reason it to leave in men is because my rate of learning had started to like, you know, the slope it started to and so I'm always optimizing like, who's the smartest team I around.
And what's my rate of learning rate of line, the number one, and then team number two. And so and so going to Facebook I thought I could really saw my rate of learning and also the team would be kind of best in the world. And so I got there learned I realized that what I thought was rigorous was, you know, kind of a sad that was my favorite learning is really how to ratchet up that that rigor of thought and structured thinking that that, that you can probably my biggest takeaway.
Delian: [00:29:37] Interesting, yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What is it like that, you know, Facebook has like a memo culture? It bringing data into the arguments you were making and like, you know, truly objectively yeah, w- w- what about their was it? Was it just like the structure of the thoughts? Is it just the data of the thoughts? Was it, you know, sort of doing the pre you know, explaining of time as opposed to just like, you know, debating it in a what were- what were of parts of that?
Morgan: [00:29:56] Yeah. Yeah, I think in marketing generally is typically data poor. It's actually very bad with data, right? Like customer acquisition, traditional marketing campaigns, the measurement understanding of what's happening and why is, is actually a pretty bad, it's surface level, get a lot of bandaid metrics. You get a lot of fuzzy kind of thinking and you know, in, but when you of like you and the default isn't like, yeah, that sounds like a it's like you say something it's like, "I don't believe you. Like, prove it." Right?
And so of that mental of like, Oh, okay. Like let's like get super at you know, structured thinking on the data when you have all the resources in the world. Basically like, how are you those as effectively as possible?
And so like, you know, going right to the bringing, you know, trying to and each piece of the decision making process was all stuff that when you're in like a lower, a small, like lower resourced environment, there's a lot more heuristics and there's a lot more kind of opinion. And so you kind of switch into a world where no longer the constraints. So when that's not a constraint, you need to leverage it to you to your to your advantage. And so it kind of like flipping that the a bit.
Delian: [00:31:07] And then, so last summer you decided to go over to Shopify [inaudible 00:38:02]. What led to that decision?` And then obviously, you know, now a public smaller scale you know, than Facebook and quite quickly. And so, yeah, what led to that and can you talk a little bit about sort of what you're working on at and, you know, kind of the focus
Morgan: [00:31:20] up to Facebook for three years straight during the week. So Monday through Thursday, I was, I had an apartment in Menlo park right behind a building 20, and then I would fly home Thursday night, spend the weekend with my family, and I have three kids and a wife, and then I would go back. And when I made the, when I made the call to go to Facebook, my wife and I made a deal that was basically like, you can go do that for a couple of years, because we think it's a really great opportunity for you to go learn, kind of stretch yourself, see if can like hang with these and the people in them. But after like two years, like to be over and like, you need to be home. And we already at like three, like pushing three and so I had been promoted to a director there and like the next stretch would be to VP, which was like another three, four years if I wanted to stay there. And by that time, my kids would be through high school and in college and didn't want to miss that. And so, yeah, the opportunity like first of all, like rocket ship company solving really interesting problems, went digital by default at the end of the pandemic, Facebook kind of equivocated around that. And so the to be home full time, do the stuff that I love at a foreign mission as a really important was kind of the initial then when I dug into it, I was like, Oh, my mom has run her own business for years. Like she's an entrepreneur.
She went from being a secretary to starting her own company and, and going through all the like, basically create the opportunities that I had in, in front of me, my grandparents were entrepreneurs as well. And so I was like, Oh, if I can actually bring some of the things that I'm good at to entrepreneurs kind of around the world at scale, contribute to that, that empowerment, to like economic self-determination that really impacted my life. Like that would be the, that would really meaningful. And that's when it really clicked for me. So there was kind of these surface level things that made sense. And then started digging in and I was like, Oh, that's actually, you know, something that I can and get behind.
And so, yeah, it sounds like you, you vibe to the Bishop, I know, what is like, it as what does the VP of growth do? Like, what are the sorts of things are sort of within your org? Is it yeah, just the of product and marketing, who are the people that you primarily would say, like, you know, interface and work basis? What does even just like the look like?
We're responsible for the active merchant base that uses Shopify. So the number of merchants that use Shopify to run, to run their stores. And it's our goal and job to bring Shopify to the world to as many merchants as possible successful on the platform. And so that includes all of our customer so, you know, all of our paid and organic marketing email, all of that. And we a bunch of like growth products. And so I'm really responsible that acquisition piece. And then also so that's one part of the team.
The other part of the team is more of the growth product side, and they're really responsible for like onboarding activation, some retention metrics we're really you know, Shopify has so many lines, so many different products and those teams all have their product marketing, that type of thing, but we're really focused on active merchant base so much like Facebook's growth team is focused on like daily active users, monthly active users.
And then all the product teams build on top of that, we're focused on this active merchant base and like making more accessible to merchants as possible. So that the it's a big input the overall Shopify flywheel. So mostly working with a lot like channel and performance marketers, a lot of product Mark product managers and engineers on like our onboarding sign up, you know, flows from like these channels into our four product, and then what it takes for them to be successful short and longterm.
Delian: [00:34:53] And maybe if you were to like, you know, talk to a you know, you was also marine biology, but, you know, maybe thought that the would be like, interesting. Like, what do you feel like is the you know, now world, obviously the world's remote and things are very different than obviously, you know, 2001, but like, what do like is the of, if- if you new grad starting today and wanting to get into a role like this where like they're excited to work at a sort of like, let's say, large, you know, tech company in this sort of area of like product plus marketing, like, what do you feel like are ways to like, pick up and learn this like, is it sort of joining a is it, joining under, you know, to like be you what do you feel the best ways to learned today?
Morgan: [00:35:20] Yeah, for sure. So I think like the first thing is like, technical, like hard skills are- are the place to start. Like, I would much rather you hire someone with degree to work than someone with like a marketing degree, right? Me someone who cares about numbers or, you know, someone who is code or or data science. Like I would, you know, I'm even like telling my like, "Start with the- start with the hard sciences, hard skills. And then like, if you want to be a do it as a minor. Like, you know, start with math or like that, and then, yeah, add a minor on top of it.
So, start with the hard skills and build those. Like I taught SQL, I taught myself HTML. Like, you can kind of teach you can marketing automation systems. Of this requires a degree. It just requires practice. And, so, and then, so, I think the way to get practice is like twofold. One, obviously I'm super but if I have to do my career over again and like run it back, I would have at the big company. I would have gotten the mental bar kind of set right, and then like forward.
And I was kind of like self calibrating and got to this kind of like later in my career. And I think I lots of things kind of flipped you kind get- like get a the could look be like, and stuff. So I would probably say like, "Work on hard skills. Get great like RPM program or something of that, like a big tech company and- and try to build the and understand like; what's what like in the world looks like and then use that information to kind of like future decisions. And you'll meet like great founders, you'll met great, you know yeah, and- of stuff. So, I probably would have... If I like snap my fingers, I probably have flipped the order in which I did things. Started the big company, work too small, not the other way around. But so, yeah.
Hard skills, get with those first class companies where you can, and then the third thing is like, do it yourself. Like, I all this building websites, by building blogs, by... Like, you can- if you want to growth, like go grow Substack go Slack community, go you know, a ghost site, or teachable can... All of these things are experimental training grounds you can go zero risk, right? It's basically, go try to like learn some of these thing and like, "Cool, I want to build an email list. I want to drive e-commerce conversions." Set up a Shopify store and sell drop shipping items where you don't have to even hold any inventory. See if you can sell, you know, hand warmers or, you mugs or whatever.
So many low costs. One of the best parts about the internet is that it drives down the cost of like these learning options to zero. And so, like realize that these are valuable options that you now have. So this would be the three things I would do.
Delian: [00:37:52] Start a podcast or something like that. [laughs]
Morgan: [00:37:54] Start a podcast, right? Exactly. Exactly.
Delian: [00:37:57] Cool. Yeah, Morgan, thanks for, you know, coming on today. It was you know, conversation and, you taking the
Morgan: [00:38:02] yeah, for sure. It was super fun. Thanks for going back through the archives of me.
Delian: [00:38:06] Thanks for listening, everyone. If you'd like to support the podcast, please sign up for a paid Substack subscription, which we use to pay for transcripts, mics and other improvements. If you have any comments or feedback on what kinds of questions I should ask, who should come on the show or anything else, please do let me know. Have a great rest of your day.