Tye DeGrange (@tdegrange) is the CEO and Principal at Round Barn Labs, a growth-as-a-service agency that provides paid marketing and conversion rate optimization services for some of the world’s greatest brands, including eBay, Porsche, and ModCloth and startups backed by Andreesson Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and Google Ventures.
Prior to Round Barn Labs, Tye was a Head of Growth at Amazon, Harland Clarke (customer engagement for financial services), and Quotient Technology (acquired by coupons.com) where he tripled customer bases, lowered CAC by launching untapped marketing channels, and consistently finding and solving sticking points in the “customer journey”.
Tye also is an active member of the Reforge growth community, a San Francisco-based growth focused learning series led by world-renowned growth practitioners like Andrew Chen (Uber, Partner at Andreesson Horowitz) and Brian Balfour (HubSpot).
Tye holds a Bachelor of Arts in history from University of California, Santa Barbara.
This episode was very introspective. Tye himself is a humble, thoughtful, and excellent marketer with a wealth of knowledge in digital marketing. He’s incredibly good at what he does (customer acquisition), and thus an inspiration for someone like myself.
In this episode, we talk about growth marketing as a concept, the duopoly of Google and Facebook as behemoth ad marketing sources, and the inception & growth of Round Barn Labs. If you’re looking to reach your growth goals more efficiently, give them a peek here.
This episode is particularly valuable for 1) anyone looking for a foundational understanding of paid acquisition or the evolution of digital marketing over the past 15 years, or 2) anyone who has considered starting a marketing agency or consultancy and wants some 1st hand commentary from someone doing it well.
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Show Notes
- What does growth-as-a-service mean? [0:41]
- Web development as resources has been debated (for your agency?) [1:44]
- The way companies are structured, makes it hard to easily make product changes [3:09]
- How entering the world of the client, is knowing your customer well [5:27]
- Your company is the “Inception” of growth marketing. How do you market your agency? [7:02]
- How did you end up getting your 1st client? [9:26]
- How a good client referral can go a long way [10:16]
- How do you scale a company like Round Barn Labs? [12:39]
- A company that is deceptively small, but comes up larger through its brand or sales [16:20]
- What’s the difference between a startup and a small business or personal brand? [17:43]
- How would you describe a small business? [19:49]
- How you get into a stage of a small business, that it becomes a startup [21:33]
- How do you manage being a maker and a manager? [22:23]
- Is there anything else that’s working well, as you lean more into the manager role? [26:04]
- How can I help? [29:21]
- Where can we find you? [30:52]
Links from Episode
- Connect with Tye: LinkedIn | Twitter | Email
- Round Barn Labs
- Reforge
- ‘The shoemaker always wears the worst shoes’ meaning
- Moz
- Evernote
- Phil Libin (Co-founder of Evernote)
- Zero To One by Peter Thiel
- What is a T Shaped Marketer
- Round Barn Labs Blog (Growth Insights)