You left Amazon to go where? Why?

I get this question a lot.?

Believe me, I didn't make the decision impetuously. A lot of deep reflection informed my exit from a highly visible position after eight incredible years at one of the most admired companies in the world.?

The tl;dr is that despite getting rewarded repeatedly with compensation, recognition, and praise, I couldn't pass on an opportunity to be a part of an inspired group of Engineers, Product Managers, and Marketing experts helping businesses like Shopify, TransUnion, Scopely, Dun & Bradstreet, and others looking to scale. Oh, and in the process upend some entrenched ideas about what it means to be a modern growth marketing agency.

The Backstory

I joined Amazon in 2013 as a Developer Marketing Manager. I quickly became a facile solver of customer acquisition problems there, maybe because I liked to solve business problems in a non-linear way. Within two years, I was awarded the Just Do It Award by Jeff Bezos, one of Amazon's highest achievements. The future, they told me, was bright.?

Whenever I interviewed marketing candidates, they'd ask me what it's like to work for Amazon. My answer? "You don't come to work for Amazon to learn about how to become a better marketer. You come to learn how to run a business - the Amazon way. And that's priceless."

It was the most effective organization I've ever encountered. Amazon’s leadership principles are a living framework for success, not just ideas to discuss but never implement. It’s an undisputed competitive advantage especially when the principles are applied thoughtfully and combined with Amazon's doc writing culture.??

So what changed?

There was so much to be grateful for in my professional life. Everything was going well and getting better. Still, my motivation to go to work each morning was waning— almost directly disproportionate to my career and income growth.?

It dawned on me one day, what was at the core of my discontent. I’m obsessed, seriously obsessed with growth and impact. And while I could have found clear avenues for growth and impact within Amazon, doing this for a single company didn’t excite me anymore.? I wanted to zoom out and facilitate growth challenges across multiple companies and industries. I needed something nascent, something completely innovative.

It was time.?

So I accepted a position as President of a tech-based marketing firm called Customer Acquisition, even though agency life was not what I imagined I'd be doing. Maybe it was the stigma I had around the typical marketing agency. We all know them. Being at the bottom of the totem pole, doing the work your clients don't want to do, surviving on low margins, and fighting for your lunch.?

So yes, at first glance you’d be right to say, “Why leave Amazon to join a marketing agency?” Simple. I was blown away by the founders and their vision for building a cross-functional growth team to help companies improve their existing growth programs. The foundational premise being a rigorous anticipation of needs rather than a relentless reaction to problems. It starts by partnering at the highest levels of each org chart, identifying the struggle with a responsiveness only technology can bring, and moving faster, so revenue lifts faster.?

It’s exactly what these guys did.?

David Mausolf is an ex-VP of Growth Marketing at Disney, ex-Head of Acquisition at Lyft, and managed over $300M+ in annual marketing spend. Dave Riggs was a former Head of User Acquisition at SafetyWeb (Acq. by Experian) and former engineer turned growth marketer. Between the two founders, they've directly managed well over half a billion dollars in media spend.?

You see, while the projected revenue of ad agencies in the US will reach $53.5B by 2024, most agencies operate off the same playbook. They are primarily people-driven organizations working on a percentage of media spend, incentivizing the wrong type of behavior, and moving at a pace that does not work anymore.

Customer Acquisition has a decidedly different value proposition.?

Because we have a cross-functional group of Engineers, Product Managers, and Marketing people we can deftly handle both strategy and workstreams. This kind of clarity, speed, and precision of execution enhance any client’s existing marketing construct. The team also has a speed advantage having built their own internal tools platform Alpha, which they license to growth teams and use to optimize client campaigns.?

One of the biggest problems we as marketers face is wasted time pulling data from multiple tools (Google Sheets, Tableau, Facebook, etc.) building reports, and making changes. Many marketers I’ve worked with waste more then half-their time on this type of routine and non-value added tasks rather then figuring out how to add value to the business.

Internal tools can help solve this specific problem, but they’re expensive and time-consuming to build. With Alpha, teams can build tools 10x faster, which has resulted in streamlining their workflows by up to 40%, which enables teams to focus more time on thoughtwork and how to drive business revenue and less on repetitive, low-level work.

When we leverage engineering and automation to deliver fast, precise, and comprehensive data sets, the surety of decisions is a natural byproduct. Today’s businesses can’t ensure growth without efficient customer acquisition and that simply doesn’t happen without accurate data.?

We’re a strategic agency that builds executive alignment and the detailed systems and processes required to implement those visions. Ultimately, our goal with each client is to work ourselves out of a job.

I know right? What does that mean?

For us, it means once a client buys into the process and masters the tech. We’ve done what we promised. Their growth is inevitable.?

I've been fortunate to have worked at some of the world's most admired companies, and it was an incredible run while it lasted. It is time to begin a new chapter. It is time to focus on helping more than just one company develop world-class growth programs.?

I can't wait to see what we can create and who will reap the rewards with our holistic, collaborative, technology-first approach.?

If you'd like to connect with me, or learn more about our capabilities, drop me a line at allen(at)customeracquisition.com or contact us here.