Graphite brings unicorn product background to growth marketing

Graphite is part of a new wave of growth marketing consultancies launched by former product leaders at successful startups. With a specialization in SEO, and a client list that has included Masterclass, Thumbtack, Honey, Personal Capital, and more, its goal is to help make the difference for an ambitious company with product-market fit.

“Ethan and his team did excellent work helping Thumbtack build our SEO landing page strategy and our technical SEO infrastructure. Unlike most other agencies, they get deep in the details and help with execution, which was critical in our early days / initial growth stage.” Sander Daniels, Cofounder, Thumbtack

As founder Ethan Smith relates below, the remote-first team also has a vision to change the relationship between growth marketers and companies. Rather than being treated as relatively interchangeable employees who provide similar incremental value, growth marketers can be the main difference for a company that has a few rounds of funding and big unrealized dreams. So, why settle for a small piece of a big cap table? “In order to maximize the impact we can have on the world,” says founder Ethan Smith diplomatically, “we should work with many companies rather than only one.”

Graphite’s growth-stage focus

One of the most important metrics we look at is retention and whether a company has product market fit. Companies that are pre-product market fit should not focus on growth, they should focus on getting their product right. Once the product has fit, they’re ready to grow. We usually work with companies post Series B up to public companies because we believe we can create the most impact.

Why SEO?

SEO is one of our core foci, and it is shocking how little supply there is of SEO talent relative to the size of this channel. For many companies, SEO is not only the largest channel of growth, it is larger than all other channels combined.

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details about how it works. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup growth marketing agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already. 

TechCrunch: Tell me who you are.

Ethan Smith: We are a growth advisory agency that helps build scalable growth engines for consumer technology companies. We specialize in organic growth, SEO, content strategy, app growth, and conversion optimization.

How do you have this expertise, who are you personally?

Ethan Smith: We are a team of product leaders and data scientists who have worked with some of the top technology companies. Members of our team have spent over a decade building in-house product and growth organizations before starting Graphite.

My career started as a user researcher and user experience designer. I studied design and psychology and spent time in academic research before moving to industry. One of my biggest learnings early in my career is that you can’t just “build a great product” and expect that “users will come.” You have to find a way to get consumers to try your product and keep coming back.  This is how I got into growth.

Graphite founder Ethan Smith (left) and partner Marcos Ciarrocchi (right)

Why didn’t you stay in-house, most people would assume that the equity options are so exciting that you would be convinced to join a unicorn or something?

Ethan Smith: I love working in-house and being part of a team that builds something cool.  However, my goal is to create as much impact as possible. While in-house, I started helping other companies with their growth strategies like Thumbtack and Personal Capital. Over time, I learned that I can create far more impact by building a team that can help many companies grow their products rather than helping a single company.

SEO is one of our core foci, and it is shocking how little supply there is of SEO talent relative to the size of this channel. For many companies, SEO is not only the largest channel of growth, it is larger than all other channels combined. I’m excited to get the opportunity to help a wide array of companies achieve massive growth via SEO.

What’s different about you guys from all of the other growth marketing people out there, in-house or consulting?

Marcos Ciarrocchi: Our team didn’t start off in traditional brand marketing or paid acquisition. We started as product leaders, and we approach growth with a product-centric perspective and a focus on quality of product and content rather than cheap growth hacks. We also take a holistic approach to growth vs. narrowly focusing on one thing. We understand that growing SEO isn’t simply about links and keywords. It’s also about building a solid content strategy and a product that users (and Google) love.

One of our biggest wins came while helping build MasterClass’ content strategy.  MasterClass is known for having the best educational content in the world. Most agencies would approach MasterClass with building a bunch of cheap articles about popular keywords. Instead, our focus was on leveraging the incredible content team they have with our growth and data science teams. We built some of the most premium content content on the Web such as Gordon Ramsay’s Beef Wellington Recipe, and we now consistently rank #1 in Google.  If we had tried to grow with the standard growth hacks, we would not have seen long-term success that delights users.

At Thumbtack, we helped create a set of new growth strategies that have now been adopted by many other companies. We optimized our content strategy of 10 Best lists of service pros, created new algorithms that drive internal link architecture, and one of the most effective conversion funnels within the local space.

Great explanation. Do you see more growth people who are at the top of their game becoming consultants like this? Do you think you are part of a wave that is  building on this front?

Ethan Smith: The growth field is still in its infancy, and companies have only started to focus on building growth strategies. Many of the most talented growth people I know started off in-house and have come to the same conclusion that we have. In order to maximize the impact we can have on the world, we should work with many companies rather than only one.

Over the last 2 years, there has been a wave of growth talent moving to roles as advisors, consultants, and investors. Gallant Chen (formerly Zendesk), Dan Hockenmaier (formerly Thumbtack), Susan Su (formerly Stripe), Mike Duboe (formerly Stitch Fix), Andy Johns (formerly Wealthfront), Andrew Chen (formerly Uber), Gustaf Alströmer (formerly Airbnb), and many of the best growth people have all moved into roles as advisors or investors working with many companies. I see this trend continuing to grow over time to meet the demand of companies that need the best talent to help them grow.

Do you think this is just going to mean that the largest companies have to offer more equity to people like you to get you to go in-house? What do you think this is going to look like in 5 years?

Ethan Smith: Compensation needs to be disrupted. Nearly every company decides compensation based on market dynamics (what do other companies pay someone of the same department and level). The only exception is sales where sales professionals are compensated based on performance. No other role is.

This highlights the broader trend of massive inefficiencies in compensation. A 10x engineer is almost never compensated ten times more than her colleagues. Low performing engineers are typically compensated only slightly less than average. Free market economics tells us it’s only a matter of time before compensation will become performance based rather than department or seniority.

Growth is ripe for this shift in compensation. Unlike areas like engineering and product, it’s easy to measure the performance of a growth team. It’s also easy to show the business value created by a growth team just like it is for a sales team.

At Graphite, we strongly believe in having skin in the game for all our work, and we structure our projects by having equity in the companies we work with.  This aligns incentives, and means that we win together.

Your focus tends to be Series B to Series D companies, right? 

Ethan Smith: We have a small team and intend to keep it small to maintain the highest quality work.  As such, we cannot work with every company we talk to. Our goal is to work with companies where we can create 100%+ impact.

One of the most important metrics we look at is retention and whether a company has product market fit. Companies that are pre-product market fit should not focus on growth, they should focus on getting their product right. Once the product has fit, they’re ready to grow. We usually work with companies post Series B up to public companies because we believe we can create the most impact. Companies like Ticketmaster, Honey, and MasterClass already have large user bases. If we can come in and multiply that existing user base, that is a tremendous amount of impact.

Cool. How many offices do you have?

Ethan Smith: Early on we made the decision to build a distributed team.  We see remote work as the future of work, and we want to be leaders in that shift.  We’ve had great success so far, and I can’t imagine ever building a team that isn’t distributed.  Our office is headquartered in San Francisco, and our team is spread across the world in Mexico, South America, and Asia.

“They drove the initial strategy & execution for our SEO efforts.” — Mark Williamson, COO and board member, Masterclass
“In addition to being absolute killers on delivering growth outcomes, Ethan is a uniquely great team builder and strategic leader. Ethan and his team at Graphite are among the very few that I trust on using data and search to drive growth.” — Susan Su, Growth, Sound Ventures
“Ethan and his team did excellent work helping Thumbtack build our SEO landing page strategy and our technical SEO infrastructure. Unlike most other agencies, they get deep in the details and help with execution, which was critical in our early days / initial growth stage.” – Sander Daniels, Cofounder, Thumbtack