Friday finds (where are the growth leaders)
Hey 👋 Akis here from Qurioos! Every month I share the latest insights from the world of learning & AI. Join 1,100+ subscribers to get access to every post.
🧑✈️ Why growth leaders don’t work for learning and education providers?
Earlier this week I wanted to contact growth leaders that work for education and learning providers and something weird happened. I searched on Linkedin:
("head" OR "VP" OR "Vice President" OR "Chief") AND "growth"and I got roughly ~3m profiles.
Then I filtered the list down using the 3 main education-related industries on Linkedin’s industries list, and there were probably 5 people that were relevant…
The rest of the profiles were growth leaders that work for edtech companies like Chegg (Christina Lee, VP International Growth) or software vendors that sell to K12 and higher ed.
Then I tried picking the two industries that are closer to professional learning. Still, nothing. There were probably 11 people that were relevant… 🦗
And to clarify what I mean, here are a few good examples:
Mark Mashaw is the VP Growth & Marketing at Campus Org (Series A $29m) which is a modern community college that offers online, hybrid, and on-site degrees.
Maurey Bond is the VP Growth at Acacia University, an online university from Arizona.
Douglas Trudeau is the VP Growth, Sales, & Marketing at Bonfire Women, a virtual talent development training program for women.
Carson Bruno is the VP Growth at Coro Southern California, a non-profit leadership training organization.
Also, where are the women? I had to search a lot to find women in growth leadership positions.
Geet Kaur is the VP Growth at TALSMART, a sales training organization.
🧐 “The head of growth vs agency dilemma”
Neal from Demand Curve sent an email a few days ago debating whether it’s better to hire a head of growth or outsource to an agency.
I had the same experience with Neal:
“After spending a couple of months going through the agency's onboarding, they hit the ground running. They launch ad campaigns and build a few landing pages. But six months later, you find yourself in the same spot as before (just tens of thousands of dollars lighter). Starting to feel the pressure, you meet with the agency. "What's going on? It's been six months and we're not seeing any results." They inform you that ads might not be your best bet, and suggest content marketing instead.”
Growth is an in-house motion. EVERY single successful team I know have a growth lead that is part of the team, lives and breathes the mission and the value prop of the organization and pushes very specific KPIs across various channels and areas of opportunity.
My gut feeling is that education, learning, and training organizations don’t see that and they either rely on an in-house marketing team (☝️ note: growth isn’t marketing, it uses marketing), or they outsource to some agency that handles marketing in a productized way, which leaves a lot of money on the table.
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See you at the next one,
Akis 👋