Dear subscribers,

Is there life beyond climbing the tech career ladder?

Elena Verna is a well known growth expert who was SVP of Growth at SurveyMonkey. After leaving her executive role, Elena took the leap to become a solopreneur advising and leading growth at great companies like Amplitude and Miro. 

I spoke to Elena about:

1. Why she left a full time role to work for herself

2. The five laws of growth and how they can be applied to careers

3. Her advice for people who want to explore solopreneurship

Check out our interview below.

Why Elena left a full time role to work for herself

Welcome Elena! At SurveyMonkey, what led you to grow from an entry level analyst to SVP of Growth?

During my 7 years at SurveyMonkey, I worked in analytics, product marketing, and growth PM before becoming an executive. My growth came from two areas:

1. I had great managers and sponsors who saw my potential and invested in me. There’s a little bit of science and a little bit of luck involved in this. 

2. I had the patience to stay at the company long term and work in roles that leveraged my superpowers. People often get impatient and change jobs, but joining a new company usually requires starting over again.

After SurveyMonkey, you decided to leave the tech career ladder to work for yourself. How did this happen?

The short answer is it came from failures. 

After Dave Goldberg’s (SurveyMonkey CEO) sudden passing in 2015, I went through a lot of emotions. As a result, I jumped to a new company too quickly that turned out to be a poor match.

After that failure, I tried to reverse engineer what went wrong in my interview process. I realized that interviews are inherently flawed:

1. Companies pitch themselves as unicorns because they want candidates to sign.

2. Candidates pitch themselves as the perfect fit to land the offer.

As a result, you often end up with bad leadership hires that leave a year or two into the job. I decided that I wanted to try before I buy for my next full-time role. I told companies: “Let me start advising you and if it works out, then we can try full-time.” 

How did you realize that your end goal wasn’t another full-time role?

Advising made me realize that there were benefits from not having a full-time job:

1. More time to do what I love. With advising, I could avoid all the parts of full-time jobs that drained my energy like creating decks, writing memos, managing forecasts, and leading huge teams.

2. Develop an industry-wide POV. Advising companies on B2B product-led growth was like running a multivariate A/B test. I was in a unique position to build frameworks and tactics that applied across the industry.

3. Less depending on a single company. Advising helped me chart my own path to be self-sufficient.

In those early days, were you scared not to be employed anymore?

Yeah, I was terrified. I had two kids, a mortgage, and car payments. I had groceries to buy and private school bills to pay. My kids were preschool-age and I was not financially independent. 

So yeah, I had a hard time sleeping during those early days. I constantly wondered: “What am I doing?” I had so much pressure to provide for my family yet I was taking a leap of faith into something new and unproven.

How did you de-risk this transition and land your first few advisory clients?

I tried to de-risk it in a few ways:

1. I met people who were already doing it. For example, I met Casey Winters, who was already a successful advisor. I asked him questions like: “How are you doing this?” “How much are you charging?” “How do you structure contracts?” and “Where do you even get healthcare?”

2. I converted job opportunities to advising. When recruiters and hiring managers reached out to me about job openings, I would respond with: “I’m not available full-time, but are you open to bring me on as an advisor?” To my surprise, 70% said yes because they needed the help right away. That’s how I closed my first few contracts.

3. I added my advisory roles to LinkedIn. This showed the market that this is what I do now and inbound requests started coming my way.

In addition to advising, you also served as interim CMO and head of growth for great companies like Amplitude and Miro. How did you find these opportunities?

Advising is great but sometimes I know exactly what a company needs to do and I just wanna shake them and say: “Please do this!” Being an interim growth leader is a great way to step back into my operating shoes without having to make a long-term commitment. 

Can you share an example of how you landed an interim role?

For example, Miro’s leadership team approached me after seeing me speak at a growth conference in San Francisco. I began advising them while I was holding a full time role.

A few years later they needed a growth focused marketing leader, so they approached me with an interim CMO offer. 

The five laws of growth for products and careers

Let’s talk about how product growth frameworks can also apply to people’s careers. Can you start by sharing your five laws of growth?

Absolutely. I think these five laws apply to growing any product or career:

1. PMF, then data, then growth. You cannot grow if you don’t have product market fit or data to help you make decisions. This order is non-negotiable. Companies that hire a head of growth without PMF or data are setting that person up to fail.

2. Scale with frameworks, not hacks. Frameworks are patterns that help you scale growth in a sustainable way across your team and organization. Hacks are one-off solutions that will burn your team and customers out.

3. Build loops, not funnels. Funnels are leaky and need to be fed constantly at the top. Loops, in contrast, are flywheels that can compound over time. Loops also help product teams think more holistically instead of optimizing funnel metrics in silos. 

4. Evolution, not revolution. Growth needs to be predictable, sustainable, and defensible.  Making drastic changes (revolution) brings a high likelihood of rejection (internal or by market). Consider investing in growth internally vs. bringing in an outside leader and expanding to adjacent users vs. picking a brand new persona - evolution is always a better path.

5. Turn failures into learnings. You will fail a lot when trying to grow your product or career. You must have a thick skin and adopt a growth mindset. Learning how to fail will teach you how to win.

I learned about “Build loops, not funnels” from your growth class at Reforge. What growth loops have you built as a solopreneur and creator?

Great question! I built two loops for myself:

1. Content loop: I post content on LinkedIn, people like it, and then re-share it on social or in their company. My content loop gives me new followers, content ideas, and qualified leads. People who follow me already know my frameworks well. So I don’t have to waste time discussing my qualifications if they ask me to be an advisor.

2. Word of mouth loop: I host free growth workshops with companies and half the time, these workshops convert to advisory roles. Even if it’s not the right fit, many of these companies would refer me to other clients because the founder network is small. So my word of mouth loop drives additional high intent leads to me.

Within these loops, how do you balance between free content and paid engagements?

I share all my best frameworks for free and monetize by helping companies implement my frameworks (which is the hard part). I basically have a freemium model.

I also love the “Turn failures into learnings” rule. The most painful failures are usually the best teachers.

Yes, failure shows that we have a perception and reality gap. Understanding that gap is the most valuable information that you can have in your product and career.

Companies that don’t know how to fail become disconnected from what’s happening in the market and end up getting disrupted. Careers operate the same way.

Elena’s advice for people who want explore solopreneurship

Many people in tech have lost their jobs recently. You’ve managed to take back your power by becoming a solopreneur and creator. How might others explore this path? 

If you want to pave your own path, here’s what I recommend:

1. Your employment history matters. I would not be where I am today without my SurveyMonkey experience. Use your full time jobs as learning opportunities and be patient - don’t try to go solo without a plan.

2. Be honest with your career goals. I thought that I wanted to be an executive or VP inside a company because it came with some sort of perceived value in society. But then I realized that I could make the biggest impact by going independent instead of relying on a company to succeed.

3. Seek career optionality. Start adding value to the world, not just to your company. Accept that public speaking engagement, share your knowledge on LinkedIn, and start your own blog. It can be a win-win for your employer too if you can find a co-marketing opportunity where you can add value. Career optionality takes years to materialize so start early.

4. Find the right positioning for yourself. Companies value generalists because they can throw anything your way to solve. But succeeding as a solopreneur requires unique positioning. Why should companies engage with you? Why are you worth an advising contract? I’ve held roles in marketing, data, and product. But I also have a very narrow speciality in B2B product led growth. So identify that superpower that you love and is better at than almost anyone else. To succeed as a solopreneur, you need to have unique positioning that tells customers why they should choose you.

I think many people feel imposter syndrome. They wonder: “Do I need to become a SVP first to have credibility to share my knowledge with others?” 

I have huge imposter syndrome even to this day. But I think imposter syndrome is actually a superpower if it can motivate you to take action. 

If you feel imposter syndrome, use it to make sure you really know your shit before you open your mouth. Use it to bring things to the table that you can back up. Use it to separate yourself from people who talk endlessly without any substance. 

When you feel imposter syndrome, you're actually learning and doing something outside of your comfort zone. Lean into it, because it could take you to the next level.

The funny part of being a creator is instead of one boss, you have thousands of people who are your customers. You effectively become your own product.

Exactly. Your brain is the product and how you monetize that product is your company. And yeah, you don’t have to wait years for a promotion from your manager. Instead, you’re gaining and losing customers everyday from your work. 

I only really started investing in creating content on LinkedIn in early 2022. And it’s incredible to see people actually reading and sharing my content. In some ways, it makes the stakes higher!

Thanks Elena! I think many people would be inspired by your journey.

Yeah. If you’re reading this - take the power back. Start the journey to define success on your own terms right now.

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