The Twenty Minute VCRyan Wiggins: Scaling WhatsApp from 0-100M; How to Build a Growth Team; Mercury Neobank | E1016
Episode Details
EPISODE INFO
- Released
- May 19, 2023
- Duration
- 50m
- Channel
- The Twenty Minute VC
- Watch on YouTube
- ▶ Open ↗
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Ryan Wiggins is the VP of Growth and Analytics at Mercury where he oversees a Growth team and founded the Analytics function. Prior to this, Ryan built Growth teams at WhatsApp, where he helped grow WhatsApp Business from 0 to 100M users, Workplace, and Facebook Ads. If that was not enough, Ryan is also an active angel investor. ------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Who is Ryan Wiggins? 3:47 Biggest Takeaways from Working at WhatsApp 8:47 What is an excellent growth loop? 11:49 What do Growth People Get Wrong about Growth? 13:43 The Metrics To Follow For Growth 18:07 When to Hire a Growth Team 20:11 How to Hire Your First Head of Growth 28:23 How to Structure a Growth Hire 33:47 How Much to Pay a Growth Hire 36:08 How to Onboard Growth Talent 40:45 Why I Don’t Do Post Mortums 43:48 A/B Testing at WhatsApp 45:18 Quick-Fire Round ------------------------------- In Today's Episode with Ryan Wiggins We Discuss: 1.) From US Department of Commerce to Leading Growth Teams: How Ryan made his initial foray into the world of growth with Facebook and Whatsapp? What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known when he made the entry into growth? What advice does Ryan have for people who want to change their career but are not sure what they want to do?
1. ) Who and When: Building the Team: Should we hire a Head of Growth or a more junior growth hire first? What are the different profiles of growth hires? How do they change with business model? When is the right time to hire your first growth hire? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make on the timing of growth hires? 3.) How to Hire: The Process: Structurally, what is the right way to hire for a growth team? What does the interview process look like? What do you want to get out of each meeting? Should case studies be used, if so, should they be used for the company hiring or of the company where the candidate is from? What does the comp package look like for different growth hires? Who should be brought into the growth hiring process? What stage should they be involved? 4.) Onboarding: Setting Growth Up for Success: What is the ideal first 30,60 and 90 days for new growth hires? What can leaders do to ensure they are set up for the maximum chance of success? What are three of the biggest red flags bad growth hires show in the first 30 days? What are the biggest mistakes founders make in the onboarding process of growth hires? ------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Ryan Wiggins on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rywiggs Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vc_reels Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ------------------------------- #RyanWiggins #Mercury #HarryStebbings
SPEAKERS
Ryan Wiggins
guestHarry Stebbings
host
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC, featuring Ryan Wiggins and Harry Stebbings, Ryan Wiggins: Scaling WhatsApp from 0-100M; How to Build a Growth Team; Mercury Neobank | E1016 explores from WhatsApp’s Billion Users To Mercury: Building Real Growth Systems Ryan Wiggins, former Facebook/WhatsApp growth leader and current Head of Growth at Mercury, explains how true growth comes from systems, not hacks or channels. He contrasts Facebook’s data-heavy approach with WhatsApp’s billion‑user, almost no‑experimentation journey, extracting principles around product‑market fit, simplicity, and reliability. Wiggins then dives into how to build and sequence a growth function: when to hire, what that first hire should do, how to structure experiments, and how to organize a lean, high‑impact team. Throughout, he emphasizes retention over acquisition, strong product experiences over spammy tactics, and hiring ‘change agents’ who can understand systems and ship impact from unglamorous roles.
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