Growthmates in Review: The 1st anniversary 🎉
+ the preview of a new website and "The Holistic Growth Playbook"
I used to reflect on things quite regularly, especially when approaching special dates and occasions. Recently, Growthmates had its 1st anniversary, and this milestone inspired me to think of its origin, the mission behind it, and push the boundaries of where I want to drive it forward.
Here’s a sneak peek of it 👇
Before sharing all the exciting news about the new website and The Holistic Growth Playbook, which was created as a gratitude for this milestone, I want to share some open and unfiltered reflections on this journey. These reflections are never easy: there’s a lot of hesitation, worry, and uncertainty when it comes to defining the future of something that is always a “work in progress.”
However, it also helps to look back and recognize certain progress, as well as uncover what’s next. There’s no future without looking into the past, as they say.
In this special release, I’m going to take you with me back in time and tell a story of how it all started. To bring a bit of structure, the story will cover several phases of my personal growth and what led to Growthmates:
Phase 1: Personal aspirations that formed a mission
Phase 2: “The Growth Community of Practice” at Miro
Phase 3: Creating Growthmates podcast as a “Personal learning platform”
Phase 4: Creating something bigger than just myself — looking into growthmates.club as the next chapter.
Bonus: Sneak peek at the new website and “The Holistic Growth Playbook” 🚀
Maybe this story can be interesting for those who are thinking of creating their projects, products, or side activities and need a partner or fresh perspective from someone who has been going through similar things recently. If you’ve been following my journey and solopreneurship, I appreciate that, and I hope these updates will provide more value to you with the direction I’m going to take.
Let’s dive in.
Phase 1: Personal aspirations that formed a mission
I don’t want to start too far back, but it seems inevitable. Since childhood, I have been passionate about two things:
Creating art: I studied at a fine art school for five years, creating tangible visual artifacts that allowed me to express myself in a creative form.
Acquiring new knowledge: I was always an A-student, and recently I started questioning myself: was this driven by a developing ego, or was there another reason for my dedication to studying?
I realized that studying and learning were things I genuinely enjoyed as a child. I would wake up early on weekends to learn something new in Photoshop, and my favorite summer holiday memories are of reading new books in the garden.
This passion translated into my professional career. In 2014, I began studying Business & IT at university. While my passion for acquiring knowledge remained, my love for creating art seemed to disappear. To rekindle this, I decided to educate myself in Graphic, Brand, and Visual design, which led me into the design industry.
My first job (in addition to freelancing) was leading a student club and sharing knowledge on creating visual identities, illustrations, and user interfaces. I was literally “learning by doing.” This was the first time I deviated from the traditional path to create an education that inspired and fulfilled me, starting with self-education in User Experience Design. My formal education in Business & IT naturally combined with my emerging passion for UX design, guiding my career direction.
Without realizing it, I had already begun forming a mission 10 years ago: to constantly learn and share knowledge on subjects that evolve and change along with my career and interests.
This path eventually led me to my job at Miro, where I was eager to explore how to develop this mission further.
Phase 2: “The Growth Community of Practice” at Miro
Since I joined the company in 2017, the aspiration of "constantly learning and sharing knowledge" has been with me from day one.
Looking back retrospectively:
In the first year, I collected knowledge about every term I didn't know and took detailed notes at every meeting.
I did a lot of "homework" to understand both business and design by taking courses on the side and learning from leaders.
This led me to create frameworks to systemize knowledge and share it with the internal community within the company.
Eventually, I was honored to become a Miro champion in the category “Creating a better version of yourself every day”. 💛
Then, two aha moments happened to me:
Creating Miroverse (2020) — a platform for creators to share their knowledge and frameworks with the community. This was my last hands-on design project before transitioning fully to leadership and building a team. It resonated deeply with my mission of creating a space for others to learn and share best practices.
Leading the "Growth Community of Practice": At the same time, I began leading an internal event where we exchanged learnings within the Growth stream. We selected different topics, prepared small narratives, conducted research, and invited external experts. This meeting quickly became a favorite for many people.
This was essentially the first version of Growthmates. It started as an internal meeting at Miro, where both internal staff and external experts could exchange knowledge, get inspired by best practices, and take a break from back-to-back formal meetings.
Soon, I built a design team and was fortunate to have more space and thinking partners who supported me in this endeavor. It was challenging to manage this ritual while also leading a team of 10+ people. This was when Oscar Torres became a thinking partner for the "Growth Community of Practice." Together, we started thinking about the future of this initiative.
Phase 3: Creating Growthmates podcast as a “Personal learning platform”
I remember that after one of the "Growth Community of Practice" sessions with Willie Tran, who was leading Growth at Dropbox at the time, I met with Oscar and we decided to share the Zoom recording internally as a follow-up. At that moment, I had a thought: why are we sharing it only internally when these insights could be interesting to people outside the company as well?
It was at that moment we decided to turn it into a podcast. If you had asked me a couple of years ago, I would never have imagined I’d be hosting a podcast. However, the idea of sharing insights with a broader community pushed me to continue learning and become a beginner again.
The first episode was released in Spring 2023, and it became a personal learning platform, providing access to conversations with fantastic leaders from top tech companies about both personal and professional growth stories.
The creation of Growthmates also coincided with my transition from a traditional career path to an independent one — I share more in this story:
I'm grateful to have Growthmates as a platform during this transitional period. It has allowed me to meet new people, learn from them, and engage in the creative work I've been missing.
Looking back, I couldn’t have imagined that I’d have the chance to host interviews with people directly working on these products. Here are some of the incredible individuals I was fortunate to meet through Growthmates:
Willie Tran — led Growth at Dropbox, Calendly, and Mailchimp (thanks for your trust and for being the first guest 🙏);
Janie Lee — Head of Product at Loom, shared a ton of value on a recent episode;
Iain Dowling — Growth Design Leader at Canva;
Adam Furness — Design Manager for Growth at Atlassian;
Verna Bhargava — leading Growth Design at Adobe;
Allen Jordan — design leader on Growth from Pinterest;
and more leaders who I was honored to meet.
In total, over the year, there were 20+ in-depth interviews, which also transformed into case studies, blog summaries, and other assets that I carefully collected over the last year.
An inevitable question that started chasing me as Growthmates' anniversary approached, and six months after I transitioned to my independent journey, was: what’s next?
Phase 4: Creating something bigger than just myself
One of the reasons I continued developing Growthmates after transitioning to an independent Growth Advisor was that it became something bigger than just myself. It evolved into a learning platform for me and others, as well as a more authentic networking tool that allows for deep, full-hour conversations with incredibly smart and interesting people. One of my clients recently shared that he listened to an episode with a company leader right after joining a new company, and it served as great onboarding material for him—I hadn’t thought of that either!
I began listening to what others needed, sharing insights, and most importantly, envisioning what I wanted for myself. As the anniversary approached, I realized it was the perfect moment to start a new chapter and create something bigger than just myself.
In gratitude for this milestone and as a gift to everyone, I began creating “The Holistic Growth Playbook”—a reflection of industry trends, conversations with guests, and special insights from respected industry experts.
To make this more comprehensive, I conducted a research study and surveyed 100 companies to uncover growth challenges and share best practices from myself and Growthmates guests on how to address them. My friends from Genbrand.design helped shape this into a beautiful format, resulting in a new website for the next chapter of Growthmates.
While working on this, I’ve been reflecting—how did I get here? Why am I doing this? What’s next? Tracing back to the origin helped connect the dots. So here’s why:
To keep constantly learning: I’m eager to continue researching new topics at the intersection of PLG and UX, meeting talented leaders, and learning how they’re building fantastic products and team cultures while growing in non-linear careers. I’ve discovered that doing research is one of my favorite activities, which led me to conduct a PLG survey and gather insights from 100+ companies, forming “The Holistic Growth Playbook.”
To share knowledge in different forms and shapes: I want to share insights to help others build and grow meaningful products that deliver the best user experience. The ways I share this knowledge vary greatly—advising, workshops, Q&A sessions, 1:1 coaching, courses, newsletters, and podcast content. I want Growthmates to become a home for all these activities.
To help others build meaningful products by leveraging PLG and enhancing UX together: I believe these two components are foundational. Throughout my career, I’ve been collecting knowledge and expertise in both areas. Now it’s time to turn that into action and support companies and individuals who share this mission.
By combining these 3 elements, I’m turning Growthmates into a platform for learning from industry leaders and an advising practice that guides companies in growing meaningful products by leveraging PLG and enhancing UX quality, together.
Let’s take a sneak peek into the next chapter of Growthmates 👇
Bonus: Sneak peek at the new website and “The Holistic Growth Playbook” 🚀
Element 1: Learning platform
The first element of Growthmates, which has always been at its core, is being a platform for learning from industry experts. We’ve already featured leaders from companies like Loom, Canva, Amplitude, HubSpot, SurveyMonkey, and more. Since people have different learning styles, the format will evolve into:
Podcast: In-depth interviews with industry leaders to advocate for high-quality experiences for sustainable product growth, share best practices, build empowering team cultures, and inspire the community with examples of non-linear career trajectories.
Playbooks and Industry Reports: “The Holistic Growth Playbook” is just the beginning, and I hope to continue sharing more playbooks and reports in the future.
Newsletter: Featuring frameworks, templates, and case studies from invited experts to dive deeper into their stories.
...and much more.
Element 2: The Holistic Growth Playbook
To celebrate this milestone of 1st Growthmates anniversary and as a gift to our community, we created “The Holistic Playbook for Growth Teams” – a comprehensive reflection of industry trends, insightful conversations with guests, and unique perspectives from respected industry experts.
What’s inside the playbook?
🔎 Insights from 20+ In-Depth Interviews, featuring leaders from Dropbox, Canva, Coda, Amplitude, and more.
📈 Emerging challenges for Growth teams and research insights from 100+ companies.
🤓 Frameworks and best practices drawn from 6+ years in Product-Led Growth as a Growth Advisor and former Head of Growth Design at Miro.
Who is this playbook useful for?
Founders and Company Leaders interested in building and scaling a PLG model across their company at different stages and uplifting UX quality bar.
Growth, Product and Design Leaders who drive teams and want to get fresh perspectives from other industry experts.
Product Managers, Product Designers, Researchers, and Marketers
who want to get practical frameworks, templates, and actionable insights to apply in action for Product Growth.
I hope you and your teams will find it valuable, and in the next weeks, I’ll be revealing some insights from it in this newsletter and other forums 🚀
Element 3: Advising practice that guides companies in growing meaningful products
While creating the playbook, I began questioning myself: how can I connect the dots between all the other things I’m doing? That’s when I realized that Growthmates' mission could become an umbrella for my services.
From now on, Growthmates will also be an advising practice that guides companies in growing meaningful products by leveraging PLG and enhancing UX quality, together 🚀
I’m eager to serve the needs of both businesses and individuals, helping them grow meaningful products through services such as:
Growth Advising (PLG, Research, UX) — to deliver personalized frameworks and best practices for your team to drive your Product Growth holistically (Activation, Retention, ARR) with leveling up product quality and team expertise.
Activation & Onboarding Audit — to uncover growth opportunities and improvements to drive Activation metrics with uplifting UX quality of the entire Onboarding experience.
Workshops / Q&A sessions with teams — to empower your team with new tools like the 5-step Growth Framework and Growth Design Sprint. Get a fresh perspective with facilitated Q&A sessions.
1:1 Coaching / Mentorship — For individuals and leaders in teams who’re seeking guidance to foster career growth, IC→ Leadership transition, and want to receive regular feedback to improve their work.
and more.
If what I’m doing resonates with you, I’m always happy to connect and explore how I can support you and your team in building "the next meaningful thing." Feel free to reach out and see how I can help.
I’m incredibly excited about the next chapter and nervous at the same time. This experience has shown me again how important human connections are in the solopreneurship journey — these connections became the foundation for Growthmates.
I’m incredibly grateful to Oscar Torres for starting and sharing this adventure with me, and to my friend from Genbrand.design for turning this into such a beautiful shape 💜
What’s next? Check out growthmates.club for “The Holistic Growth Playbook” and share it with your team. I hope you find it valuable 🙏
Thanks for reading and following my journey!
great progress and mission with Growthmates — way to go 🚀