Setting Expectations Around Chaos: Paddle’s CMO on Leading for Growth

The Breakout Growth Podcast

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Andrew Davies, Chief Marketing Officer at Paddle. Offering a complete payment infrastructure for businesses in a single stack, Paddle is particularly valuable for PLG businesses, and helps more than 3000 customers in 200 markets set up and sell their SaaS offerings.

This year Paddle has acquired Profitwell, the recurring revenue growth platform, and raised $200 million in funding (bringing the company’s total valuation above $1.4 billion). As CMO, Andrew intends to continue driving aggressive growth by adapting a playbook he has developed in a career that includes serving as VP of Corporate Marketing at Optimizely and as co-founder of the “demand orchestration” platform, Idio.

Andrew is particularly honest about the challenges that companies face at this stage in their journey. He explains that “scale breaks systems” so it becomes really important to work towards a culture that is not super-prescriptive, but instead looks to “teach people the rules of the game, and then get them to play it themselves.”

Our conversation dives into everything from team leadership challenges, to what the CMO role is and how it creates impact in a fast-scaling organization. Ultimately, Andrew feels that Paddle’s success will be a product of its own ability to help customers drive growth in their own businesses. So jump in and hear how he intends to ensure that Paddle is well-positioned to drive that outcome.

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We discussed:

* Andrew’s Journey to CMO, including Idio co-founder and Paddle advisor (06:39)

* Why more complex approaches must replace original, more simple tactics (11:17)

* The Profitwell acquisition and the challenges of taming the chaos (16:08)

* Why leadership cannot be top-down when scaling up (26:15)

* “Tracking is always messed up” – so now what? (29.10)

* The massive shift Andrew sees in B2B marketing (44:05)

And much, much, more . . .

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