Navigating Growth Roles in the U.S. and Europe
Practical advice on how to transition between the U.S. and Europe
I did the following as a guest post on Adam Fishman’s Newsletter. I’m re-posting it here.
Q: How do I move from working in Growth internationally to the United States or from the U.S. to an international market?
Today’s newsletter is based on a question I have been asked dozens (maybe hundreds) of times in my career - moving between the U.S. and international locations as a growth practitioner.
Because I’ve never actually lived and worked internationally myself I invited Barron Ernst to write a guest newsletter on this topic.
Barron has held growth and product leadership roles at international companies like Snap, Booking.com, and Naspers. He has lived in Amsterdam, France, and launched products all over the world, including South America and Sub-Saharan Africa. He has also worked as a PM and product leader in the U.S. at companies like Intuit, Rewarder, and One Kings Lane. Today, he is back in the U.S. and holds the title of Chief Marketing Officer at Figure.
In today’s post, he’ll explain:
The differences between the U.S. and International markets for Growth roles.
Why you might consider pursuing an international role if you are practicing in the U.S. or why you might consider a U.S.-based role if you are working internationally.
How to break into Europe as a Growth practitioner
How to break into the U.S. as an international Growth practitioner
Hi - I’m Barron. I worked in Europe for 7-8 years across a variety of product and growth roles for Snap, Booking, and Naspers/Prosus. I led multiple different Growth and Product organizations internationally. I also have run growth and product teams in the United States for Figure, One Kings Lane, and IMVU.
Let’s begin!
I started working in Europe in 2015 for Naspers, which is a large international investor in companies like OLX, Byjus, PayU, Delivery Hero. They also owned more than 30% of Tencent at the time and continue to be one of their largest stakeholders.
When I first arrived I was exposed to Growth across their portfolio of businesses. In 2015 many international markets were behind the Growth trend in the United States, but the gap was closing fast. I had specific exposure to Europe, Africa, and South America. That’s where I’ll focus my energy for this article. If you are trying to break into India or China, I think there are more similarities with Growth in the United States due to the large levels of investment and competition in those markets.
In terms of a talent base, there were a small number of very senior product leaders, many senior PMs, and a lack of people in the mid tier (Group PMs and Directors). It meant that a very small number of people had deep experience with Growth in 2015.
Because of this, I ended up introducing the growth function at most companies where I worked. This usually consisted of hiring a growth product manager and making sure they were well resourced with design, analytics, and engineering. But growth was just the product side and marketing was still a self-contained, separate unit.
A lot of my time was spent educating the executive team of companies that I was advising or working for on the value of product-led growth and how it could change their organization. For example, I had multiple presentations introducing simple concepts like growth models, metric measurement, and how to build teams focused on growth that were used for companies of all different types.
By 2022, there were more growth roles in Europe than when I initially arrived in 2015, but it still did not have a seat at the table in the same way as a CMO, CPO or CTO. However, it is starting to become more common for companies to hire for Growth, especially in certain geographies where burgeoning communities exist.
There are pockets within Europe where the growth focus is strong. There’s a great growth community in Berlin, largely driven by Andy Carvell and the ex-Soundcloud crew. Paris has a strong growth community, many of whom I worked with at Zenly, but also at companies like BeReal, amo (ex-zenly), Voodoo, Ankorstore, and many more. The Family is also a great incubator that regularly brought in Growth experts to help educate and up-level people. These centers of Growth excellence were much less common in other international markets like Africa and South America.
To compare it to the United States, there are a few key differences that still exist:
Growth was not adopted widely throughout Europe. Certain cities or geographies had a stronger practice where you’d more commonly see Growth roles, like Berlin or Paris.
The vast majority of the time Growth doesn’t have a seat at the leadership table; especially at the C level.
There remains a lack of experienced practitioners, especially at the middle layer.
Many companies and executives were introducing Growth for the first time. This also meant there was some natural skepticism towards the function, especially regarding terms like growth hacking [AF Note: I have thoughts on this].
If you get hired for a Growth role in Europe it’s key to bring a strong methodology. You are not only proving yourself, but the function as well.
Why might you want to explore a growth role abroad?
The biggest advantage I found for pursuing a Growth role abroad is to get exposure to the different cultural, linguistic, and behavioral differences that exist between the United States and other markets. As you expand your Growth experience, international expansion becomes key. However, most U.S.-based Growth practitioners assume that they can apply the same growth model that worked in the US to all other markets. I found that this was not often the case.
If you are trying to grow a product in Sub-Saharan Africa, you will rapidly learn that the competitive set, the technological infrastructure, and the Growth methods often are very different.
When I was the Chief Product Officer at Showmax—the largest streaming video on demand (VoD) platform in Sub-Saharan Africa—I initially assumed I could leverage a similar Growth playbook to what we’d seen done at Netflix as they expanded into new markets.
I was wrong. We learned that in markets like Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria, we often had to innovate just to get our product adopted. Many people relied on incredibly expensive data plans for the internet and wired infrastructure was only just being installed (and was quite expensive). This meant that to achieve growth, the key was finding ways to limit data costs to enable streaming video to work. Growth through partnerships with telcos like Vodacom (South Africa) and Safaricom (Kenya) proved much more valuable than Direct to Consumer channels because we could leverage free or limited cost data bundling. Also, it meant we could use an existing payment channel for the user.
We also weren’t only competing with typical, known competitors. In Kenya, we interviewed many people to understand how they consumed content. For many, the way they got media and entertainment was from the “movie guy” in their neighborhood. This was usually someone who had a good enough data connection to torrent content and then sell it on burned CDs and DVDs. Over time, his recommendation algorithm was that he would ask his customers what they liked and didn’t and tailor his content for each user accordingly.
That is not the typical competitor you would think of if you are based in the United States. It requires taking time to understand the market and local dynamics abroad. Through being on the ground and having that lived experience we were able to craft the right type of offering that could solve for those unique challenges.
In Europe, you will get experience dealing with a much more complex localization challenge. Europe is smaller in total area than the United States, but it’s more populated and there are far more linguistic and cultural differences to navigate.
At Zenly, we localized the product in over thirty languages to account for the growing number of European and Asian audiences we were attracting. We did this by working closely with local language experts in those markets to match our unique linguistic style with slang and other wording that would attract our predominantly 18-30 year old audience.
As with Showmax, I found it much easier to understand the distinction linguistically and culturally by being there on the ground. When you are in the United States you don’t viscerally understand how different it can be country to country and region to region.
Why might you pursue a role in the United States if you are practicing Growth abroad?
I think this is a much more obvious answer. Some of the best thought leaders and Growth leaders are in the United States. Abroad, you are often learning how to do Growth on your own or from a limited and often less experienced set of practitioners.
In the United States, there are a number of incredibly strong leaders and companies that defined Growth like Meta, Uber, Dropbox and many others. The practice is generally recognized as a key function at most technology companies. It’s an invaluable opportunity to learn from the best and hone your technique.
Additionally, after two or three years practicing growth in the United States, you will have significantly more market power abroad. There is still a market for people who trained at great companies in the United States. You’ll often find that people with five or six years of experience in the United States can get much more senior roles in Europe than they would be able to in the United States. This leads to rapid opportunities for career advancement.
How to get into Growth internationally
Although this is a limited sample size, I searched for “growth product manager” in both Paris and Amsterdam at the beginning of February 2024. The results were quite sparse:
This doesn’t mean you can’t break into Europe in a growth role. You just have to get more creative.
I found that the easiest way to get into Growth was to start on the product side and build the function out over time. One approach for more junior folks is to start by finding a product role with an aspect of Growth to it—funnel conversion, CRM, virality—then work to grow that into an overall function. Once you have this background you can leverage that to move to other companies as well.
I think that anyone who is a strong Growth person from the United States could find a product job in Europe and then build the Growth function over time. Since many companies won’t be hiring for Growth leaders you can create a pitch that positions you as both a product leader and a growth leader (or as a marketing leader and a growth leader).
There are also some companies, like Booking, that are very conversion and optimization focused. That can be a great training ground and help you build the foundation before transitioning to another company and a more senior role.
If you want to go straight into smaller startups first, look to Paris. Paris's scene is very up to date on the latest Growth trends, so exploring something like Station F will lead to startups that understand the role.
One note is that it is common for Growth to be a marketing function in Europe. Sometimes, this will manifest more as a traditional marketing function with a Growth title. Other times, it will be a more Growth-centric role. Ask these questions before you accept the job (AF note: I’ve got a whole newsletter on Reverse Interviewing):
Who leads Growth at your organization? What is their background? You want to make sure the person has some knowledge and background in the space, that they know that there’s a product and marketing element to this role, and that they don’t just want you to optimize marketing channels.
Is there a development team and data team to work with? If the answer is no, be careful. Without these functions or plans to build them you might be setting yourself up for failure.
Is there a belief in Product Led Growth at the organization? Does the company believe that the product itself should be a key driver of Growth, or are they just looking for hacks and marketing spend?
What about Growth people who want to come to the United States?
Transitioning to the United States is all about framing the work you did in Europe properly and then finding the right Growth fit over time. There is a better understanding of Growth roles in the United States and as long as you can demonstrate you have the skillset you can find your way in. Additionally, if you have done Growth in Europe or other locations internationally, that is often a skillset that’s in high demand for a lot of U.S.-based companies. Leverage that to your advantage, especially if you have experience with localization, dealing with the challenges of multiple different cultures, and currencies.
Some of the key growth tools I learned in Europe were:
The value of localization beyond just basic translation. At Zenly, we had networks of locals in our top markets who would help us understand the sentiment on the ground and would also help to make sure our product had the right tone and feel that fit our local, target audience. We had a playbook we could leverage to build this in each country, but we also had to build an adaptable localization framework to make it possible.
Rapidly developing markets present unique challenges. For companies trying to expand to Africa, India, LATAM, and many other markets, international growth roles will give you direct exposure to those challenges. As discussed above, you’ll learn that data connectivity and internet infrastructure vary a lot by region. You’ll need to build unique solutions to market problems. For example, in a number of markets, you can’t rely perfectly on address data from Google or Apple because they won’t be as up to date. Local delivery companies, e-commerce companies, and Uber have all had to modify or build custom data sets to enable their businesses to scale efficiently. This knowledge is hard to acquire while sitting in San Francisco, New York, or somewhere else with good internet access and reliable addresses.
Diversity of devices. This is still relevant in the United States, but internationally, you need to be much more active in using and testing on multiple Android devices and across a wide variety of browsers as well. The dominance of iOS does not extend everywhere. In Africa, it was common to see a number of cheap Android devices and to see a device split closer to 60% Android 40% iOS. You can’t just deliver a singular great mobile experience. Building a great Android experience that works across 20-40 different reference devices matters to achieve growth. If you are building a streaming video product this gets even more complex with a variety of different TV and set-top boxes.
For anyone working in international growth, I would recommend thinking about the key areas of expertise you have acquired. What is your niche? What markets do you know better than anyone else? What devices do you understand? Did you build a playbook that enabled rapid expansion for language, audience, and user experience that you can bring to a U.S. company looking to expand rapidly to another part of the globe? To start, build out a growth portfolio that you can share with American companies to set yourself apart.
Closing Thoughts
There are a number of key takeaways whether you are trying to get a growth role abroad or in the United States.
If you are pursuing a growth role in Europe:
Highlight your experience growing a company in the United States. Leverage that background as a domain expert to come in and build and/or lead a growth function
Be ready to build out the growth function from within the product and sometimes the marketing organization.
Ask hard questions of the company leadership to make sure they understand the value of product led growth. Make sure you aren’t just accepting a role where you’ll be stuck doing performance marketing or funnel optimization.
You may have to start with a more traditional product role at first while you help the company understand the value of a Growth organization
If you are coming from Europe and pursuing a growth role in the United States
Leverage the unique Growth learnings you acquired abroad. Focus on localization, cultural understanding, and depth of user knowledge as differentiating factors
Search for companies with strong growth functions. A great way to level up is to work with the incredible growth leaders in the United States to build a refined growth framework that combines your unique local knowledge with repeatable frameworks
Leverage networks like Reforge and other Growth communities to get in touch with Growth referral opportunities
As a last bit of advice, many people ask me if moving abroad was worth it from an experience perspective. To anyone who has the desire, I found it a deeply rewarding experience both professionally and personally. It’s scary and also wonderful to be thrown into a new culture. You have an incredible opportunity to advance personally by gaining new viewpoints, making new friends, and having a number of new cultural experiences.
Professionally, it exposes you to different mindsets about work and to different cultural perspectives as well. There’s probably an entire additional newsletter to be written about this, but I think it will make you a more well-rounded professional.
Not in the article: don’t work with ex Revolut people. Bad culture.