What I've learned as a head of growth

It's been 140 days since the last edition.

Longest in the history of this newsletter.

And it's with good reason. I've been leading the growth and marketing team at Gumloop — a product I love dearly and use every day. Yes, I used an em dash.. sue me.

I've experienced a lot of challenges in this role:

• Learning how to balance PLG and enterprise growth motions

• Running growth experiment after growth experiment, with few successes

• Learning how to lead a team, mentor others, and give critical (and sometimes harsh) feedback

I've felt uncomfortable more days than I've felt at ease. But I love it.

Maybe it's just the nature of startup life. Or maybe it's the fact that we are an AI startup in San Francisco, and many companies are watching and copying us.

Either way, it's all been in service of growth (both personal and professional).

What I've come to learn about being in a leadership position is that I have to think about growth the same way a hedge fund manager thinks.

Instead of having "programs" that team members own, I've been giving my team distribution channels to own. This creates clear ownership and leaves little room for ambiguity on who owns what.

The goal of a Head of Growth, as I've come to learn (as you can see I've learned a lot lol), is that each channel should be treated as a part of the full portfolio of growth levers. Analyze which channels are bringing a positive ROI. Kill the ones that aren't, and double down (with energy and investment) on the ones that do.

Then, run experiments to uncover new channels. This means much of my work is coming up with hypotheses, running a controlled test to see if it works or not (most don't), and scaling the ones that do.

Here's what I've learned:

• SEO still works, it's one of our largest drivers of PLG signups as well as inbound enterprise. I pay little to no attention to "AEO" but our sign ups from LLMs have continued to increase month over month.

• LinkedIn ads are expensive af, but I've found the best way to approach them is to run webinars and IRL events - and repost them from a person in the company who is the most ideal persona. Then run ads boosting the repost (not the actual company post announcing the event).

• Meta ads work great for B2B when done right. Find the right offer (I do this by analyzing all of our Gong calls and salesforce data with a Gumloop agent), then have the right targeting (I do this by using Clay's Ad product to enrich work data with personal data - as IG/FB accounts are generally with personal email accounts).

• Signals based outbound. Or as our GTM Engineer calls it, "warm outbound." Have a point system in your CRM that tracks how people interact with your website and content. They like a LinkedIn post, 10 points. They sign up for the product, 40 points. Then sign up for a webinar, 20 points. Once it passes the 70 point threshold, an AE on the team reaches out to hop on a call.

• Conferences. Sponsor booths and have a gameplan for helping AEs book meetings on the ground.

As you can see, much of my work has been on the enterprise side of things. But I am now realizing that I need to focus more of my efforts on PLG again. Some of the best enterprise accounts have come from regular users of the product (PQLs).

But…

I've also realized the value of product marketing and having a firm POV on your unique angle in the market. Gumloop is an AI agent builder at its core. And many people compare us to Grok Bot, Claude Cowork, and other builders. And while I can go on about how Gumloop is so different, I won't make this into an ad. I don't care if you use Gumloop or not.

However, that brand part, and the ability to build a team to help bring that brand position to life is insanely valuable. And while I love all aspects of marketing, my true love lies in growth and GTM. So I'm hiring a Head of Marketing to work with me to take Gumloop to the next level. We have an amazing design and product team that ships every single day. Often, many of the agent builders of today are what Gumloop was 8 months ago.

So if you're in SF, and have 10+ years as a marketing leader, reach out and apply. It's an amazing opportunity to be at a fast growing startup leading the AI race (responsibly).

Besides that, I've been itching to give away all the playbooks and secrets I've uncovered these past few months. And I can't wait to continue telling you all about it in the next edition.

For the marketers out there, you, right now can feel like a tough time. But it's actually the best time to be a marketer. I can't tell you how many companies are begging to hire marketers with taste and craft. By taste, cause gosh that word is so overused now, I mean a level of care and attention to detail. If that's you, which I'm sure it is if you're reading this, you'll be okay. Actually, more than okay.

If you want any advice (or are interested in that head of marketing role), don't hesitate to reach out by responding to this email.

With that, let's get into what we have in store this week (lots of good stuff):

• Marketing news from the past week

• The GTM decision you can’t get wrong

• How to find great headlines in 5 minutes

• The 3 tiers of visibility in AI search

• Learn 97% of Meta ads in 19 minutes

• Ad in the wild

• Website of the week

• Cool marketing jobs

• And much more

🗞 In the news

• Meta’s Muse is outpacing ChatGPT’s early mobile launch

• Perplexity is betting big on creators

• Threads advertisers will no longer need an Instagram account

• Companies are putting Jev in charge of AI agent decisions

• Google confirms Gemini models hacked three companies in May 2026

🚀 All things growth & product

 🤖 AI, emails, & copywriting

✍️ SEO & content marketing

🧠 Psychology, paid ads, & branding

📣 Ad in the wild

Going after competitors… on a dual-spot bus stop ad, pretty neat.

 💡 A dose of inspiration

🏝 Cool marketing jobs

• Lifecycle Marketing Manager @ Runway

• Product Marketing, GTM @ Clay

• Head of AEO & SEO @ Stripe

• Head of Content @ Compound

• Head of Marketing @ Gumloop

Okay, that's it for now 🧡. See you in the next edition!

“The greatest mistake marketers make is trying to create demand instead of channeling it.” — Eugene Schwartz

Riddle answer: On a clock.