Anneka Gupta is the Chief Product Officer at Rubrik, a cloud management and data security company with a US$6B market cap. Before Rubrik, Anneka spent 11 years leading various teams at LiveRamp, including product, go-to-market, and operations.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
- How LiveRamp went from $30M to $200M ARR in 3 years
- Why the best product doesn't win
- Why specialist hires can backfire
- When leaders should get in the weeds
- Why Anneka makes her PMs go through the same training as sales reps
- Rubrik’s approach to building product
- Much more
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Referenced:
- Acxiom: https://www.acxiom.com/
- Acxiom’s acquisition of LiveRamp: https://tinyurl.com/2shm83de
- Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/
- Auren Hoffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/
- Dentsu: https://www.dentsu.com/
- Dentsu’s acquisition of Merkle: https://tinyurl.com/yvxe6fws
- James Arra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-arra-a43a06/
- LiveRamp: https://liveramp.com/
- Merkle: https://www.merkle.com/
- Rubrik: https://www.rubrik.com/
- Slack: https://www.slack.com/
- Travis May: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stmay/
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Where to find Anneka Gupta:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annekagupta/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/annekagupta
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Where to find Brett Berson:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
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Where to find First Round Capital:
- Website: https://firstround.com/
- First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
- This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:11) Inside LiveRamp’s unique growth journey
(12:18) Anneka’s first PM role
(14:20) Leading LiveRamp’s marketing function
(16:17) Why the best product doesn’t win
(21:06) Crafting products for different personas
(24:53) Transitioning Acxiom’s customers to LiveRamp
(33:54) Why Acxiom chose to buy not build
(36:40) Anneka's leap to GM and product leader
(38:22) How 17 diverse roles shaped Anneka’s CPO approach
(40:54) The hidden career growth hack
(43:15) Where domain experience is overrated
(50:33) Mastering the art of altitude shifting
(53:54) PMs should undergo the same training as sales reps
(59:37) Strategies for selling to new personas
(62:40) Lessons from Anneka’s mistake at LiveRamp
(67:56) Who had an outsized impact on Anneka