Growth: 18 proof points
Every row that fits this shape of role: the rows the facts page shows first, then the rest in content order. Tom's own account of it: Growth. All shapes, the facts page.
| Role | Product | Situation | Task | Action | Result | Year | Skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat Opbeat, developer tools SaaS startup providing application performance monitoring. Backed by the cofounders of Facebook and Instagram. | New product came out of stealth and lacked traction. The audience was developers, who are allergic to advertising. | Build the brand, marketing strategy, team and channels from scratch, and get traction without advertising at people who ignore advertising. | Learnt the developer audience by sitting with the engineers in the team. Defined the core product proposition and the developer narrative, and told the story. Built the brand, the team and the channels from nothing, then ran growth experiments across them. The two biggest levers, the meetup video engine and the pricing restructure, have their own rows. | Trebled traffic and sign-ups in 12 months. The brand became known in the Python, Django and Node.js communities. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, experimentation, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
| Marketing Director, EuroDNS | EuroDNS EuroDNS, an ICANN-accredited international domain registrar specialising in unusual domain extensions. Customers included MailChimp, Lotus F1 and Time Warner. | Four years of decline when Tom joined: traffic dropping, online sales down, a legacy website, and SEO damage left by a previous agency's black-hat work. | Turn it around. | Restructured the marketing department (four direct reports), implemented KPIs and rebooted every marketing channel including the website, in under 8 months. Remediated the black-hat SEO damage. Analysed user flow and redesigned the website and ecommerce funnels. Collected customer feedback and repositioned the product. Launched over 500 new domain extensions, repositioning dry domains with Creative Commons photography of the world. First provider to offer a free SSL certificate with every domain. | Decline reversed. Organic traffic doubled in 12 months. Bounce rate halved, from about 60% to about 30%. | Feb 2013 - Nov 2014 | turnaround, growth, conversion, SEO, funnels, KPIs, launch, marketing, ecommerce, domains, team leadership, international |
| Web Designer, Host Europe Group | domain search Domain search on 123-reg: one text field that interpreted whatever the user typed and searched every ending asynchronously | Domain search was the key entry point for upselling hosting, and the UX was clunky. You typed a name, picked an ending from a dropdown and hit search, because each registry needed its own API call. One domain at a time, and users kept hitting taken names. Frustrating, poor conversion. | Nobody asked for it: the shop window of the business was a poor experience and worth fixing. | One text field, interpret whatever the user enters, search all endings asynchronously and show them together. First use of AJAX in the stack. | New revenue up 20% overnight. The approach became the industry standard: if you search for a domain anywhere today, this is how it works. | Feb 2004 - Aug 2005 | API, growth, conversion, funnels, domains, web hosting |
| Associate Product Director at Novo Nordisk (contributed, one of a team) | Wegovy Pill launch Wegovy Pill launch, consumer workstream | Pitched for and invited onto the launch team for a company-critical initiative to inject new thinking (very unusual for a digital role). Digital, packaging and direct distribution sat in separate silos, each with its own assumptions. | Lead the HQ consumer workstream. | Applied subscription-model thinking to connect the physical product to digital fulfilment: QR codes on the boxes linking to the digital experience, and work with production on bundling three boxes in a tertiary carton. | Contributed to the largest pharma launch on record. | Feb 2022 - Feb 2026 | pharma, healthcare, patients, growth, retention, launch, marketing, SaaS, team leadership, international, consumer, budget |
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare Wegovycare profiling and customisation engine, delivered as an interactive magazine | Research showed every patient journey is different and every patient has different needs. A linear app would not work, and the drop-off risks were different for each person. | Identify each patient's drop-off risks and act on them automatically, with a system that coped with real people who do not check in on schedule. | Tom's own idea and pattern, most of the algorithm his. Built a continuous profiling engine combining clinical data, usage signals and PROMs. Applied a consumer marketing playbook to act on the top risk: it decided what content was shown and could trigger a messaging flow. Ran on fuzzy logic, tolerating gaps and misuse. Output to the patient: an interactive magazine that changed with them. | Every patient got a personalised experience from one product and one codebase. Part of the launch that reached 10% adoption in the first market and became the fastest-scaling digital product at Novo. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | algorithm, API, regulated, pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, roadmap, launch, 0 to 1, marketing, team leadership, stakeholders, consumer |
| PM/GM at LEO Innovation Lab | TREAT TREAT, an app addressing underlying causes of inflammatory conditions through personalised nutrition advice, delivered as a decision-tree chatbot with nutritionists behind it. LEO Innovation Lab's first and flagship product. | The flagship product had a lot of attention, but was in trouble behind the scenes: massive tech debt, massive churn, no prioritisation, flaky metrics, unclear reporting lines and responsibilities, and no pathway to profitability. | Parachuted in with a 6-month mandate to stabilise it and assess viability. | Everything was on fire. Let some things burn and watched long enough to see which big patterns were broken, then started at the top of the funnel and worked through. Paused the service to refactor faster. Defined the value proposition and put KPIs into the daily workflow so the team steered by numbers. Set an experiment-led rhythm. Two levers: finding the fit before sign-up, and finding the fit inside the product. | Halved customer acquisition costs. Increased activation 7x. Both levers worked. | Nov 2016 - Aug 2017 | healthcare, ways of working, growth, activation, retention, funnels, experimentation, KPIs, roadmap, launch, 0 to 1, team leadership |
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat Opbeat, B2B devops startup backed by Balderton Capital and the cofounders of Facebook and Instagram | A small startup with no marketing processes, KPIs, reporting or budgeting, and a runway to extend. | Put the basics in and create enough traction to raise. | Introduced marketing processes, KPIs, reporting and budgeting to the business. Grew grassroots meetups and built a video engine to reach developers. | Traction that enabled a $2M bridge-funding round. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
| Independent Consultant | independent consultant Remote product and strategy consulting | Moved to Denmark after meeting a Dane on a ski slope; needed to finance the move and Danish studies (Prøve i Dansk 3) and wanted into the Danish startup scene. Former employers Host Europe (UK) and EuroDNS (LUX) needed product and strategy work; Everplaces (DK) was a local startup client. | Deliver product and strategy work remotely from Copenhagen while building a life in a new country. | Briefed senior management, product managers, designers and marketeers. Pitched products; produced user stories, specifications, storyboards and wireframes. Wireframed order funnels to improve conversion. Created the strategy to refactor the legacy control panel serving 3M domains. Wrote content and did SEO, including interviews with MailChimp, Creative Commons, the EFF, Rand Fishkin and Michael Palin. Remotely managed teams in the UK, Luxembourg and Romania. | Spotted Raspberry Pi before launch, got in touch and turned it into a sponsorship deal. The EuroDNS engagement turned into the Marketing Director role. | Sep 2010 - Apr 2013 | pharma, growth, conversion, SEO, funnels, launch, marketing, startup, domains, web hosting, team leadership, remote, international, stakeholders, partnerships |
| Sales Executive, Host Europe Group | alternative website an alternative ecommerce website made in his free time | The company website had high traffic (1M monthly visits) but was dated and cluttered. It explained the "why" poorly, and lacked focus and a core funnel. | Unasked, as a sales executive: this could be done better. | Built an alternative version in evenings and weekends, booked a meeting with the brand manager and pitched it. | Sales went up; moved to the web design team the next week and led it six months later. | Mar 2003 - Feb 2004 | funnels, brand, marketing, ecommerce, web hosting, team leadership |
| PM/GM at LEO Innovation Lab | company all-hands the monthly all-hands | Optimising the onboarding funnel at LEO Innovation Lab, on the hypothesis that more notification opt-ins would raise activation. | Test a contextually-triggered opt-in shown at exactly the right moment. | The split test won on conversion but activation barely moved: the opt-in sat too late in the funnel. Rolled out a simpler opt-in early in the funnel, lifting net activation, and presented the mistake at the next company all-hands. | The monthly all-hands changed from presenting vanity metrics to mistakes made and lessons learnt. | Nov 2016 - Aug 2017 | healthcare, growth, conversion, activation, funnels, experimentation, launch |
| Head of Group Strategy, UK2 Group | Midphase pricing Midphase, UK2 Group's underperforming US hosting business unit | The US unit had a downward revenue trend: two flat-rate monthly accounts, very few customers on the top one, high churn. Tom was the CEO's troubleshooter across the UK, US and Ukraine offices, working remotely from the UK. | Diagnose the unit and reverse the trend without a new product. | Lifecycle analysis of the customer base. Restructured the two flat plans into tiered accounts with term-based pricing (3, 12 and 24 months), framed so longer commitments were visibly cheaper per month. Ran an anti-churn programme for existing customers: free upgrades to the new plans, added features such as backup to justify the structure, and switching costs such as losing the free domain on downgrade. Repositioned the brand and marketing and created a product roadmap. | ARPU up, customer lifetime extended, recurring revenue locked in. Downward revenue trend reversed in 6 months. 8 products launched in 10 months. | Sep 2008 - Sep 2010 | turnaround, retention, roadmap, launch, brand, marketing, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, remote, international, budget |
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat meetup video engine Opbeat developer community channel | The audience was developers, who are allergic to advertising. Brand-building and acquisition with no budget for ads that would not have worked anyway. | Reach developers where they already were, and have them bring the audience. | Advertised for a video marketing intern to travel the world attending developer meetups, unpaid but all expenses covered. Filmed and live-streamed the meetups on the company blog; speakers promoted the stream to their own developer audiences. No direct advertising in the video; the audience captured with retargeting ads, organic traffic and backlinks. | Grassroots meetup presence and a content engine that fed the trebling of traffic and sign-ups. Scrappy, high-leverage. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, SEO, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat pricing Opbeat pricing and free tier | The pricing model inadvertently disincentivised upgrading, and there were barriers at the point of entry for a product that needed developers to try it first. | Remove the barriers to entry and to upgrade. | Found the disincentive in the pricing structure and persuaded the CEO to restructure it. Put the emphasis on the free tier so growth came from the ground up: developers adopt first, teams pay later. Demoted pricing from the navigation to the footer to cut friction at entry. | Pricing that no longer worked against the product's own growth loop, feeding the trebling of sign-ups. No separate figure for this lever. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
| Marketing Director, EuroDNS | EuroDNS SEO remediation EuroDNS organic search | A previous agency had used black-hat SEO. The damage was part of why traffic had fallen for four years. | Repair the search footprint and get organic growth back. | Implemented remediation for the black-hat SEO damage, analysed user flow and redesigned the website and ecommerce funnels on the back of it. | Organic traffic doubled in 12 months. Bounce rate halved, from about 60% to about 30%. | Feb 2013 - Nov 2014 | turnaround, growth, conversion, SEO, funnels, KPIs, marketing, ecommerce, domains |
| Marketing Director, EuroDNS | EuroDNS domain extensions EuroDNS domain product range | A registrar whose edge was unusual domain extensions, selling them to a customer base that had been shrinking. Hundreds of new extensions were arriving in the market. | Reposition the product and give customers a reason to buy from EuroDNS rather than the giants. | Collected customer feedback and repositioned the product. Launched over 500 new domain extensions: where most registrars showed extensions as word art, EuroDNS showed .aq with a picture of icebergs, Creative Commons photography with the author credited, so a string of characters became a place. Rebooted the newsletter and built content marketing around it, including interviews with Rand Fishkin and the EFF. First provider to offer a free SSL certificate with every domain. | Part of the turnaround that reversed four years of decline in traffic and online sales. | Feb 2013 - Nov 2014 | turnaround, growth, conversion, SEO, launch, marketing, ecommerce, domains, team leadership, remote, international |
| Independent Consultant | Raspberry Pi partnership A partnership with Raspberry Pi | Consulting for Host Europe around 2011, Tom found out about Raspberry Pi before it launched, before anyone had heard of it. | Turn a hunch about an unknown project into something for the client. | Reached out to the creators directly and offered them a server for their downloads. Shaped that into a sponsorship deal for Host Europe. | Host Europe became a sponsor of Raspberry Pi before it launched. | 2010 - 2013 | pharma, growth, SEO, launch, marketing, web hosting, remote, international, partnerships |
| Sales Executive, Host Europe Group | sales competition First job, answering phones in web hosting sales | Graduated into the dot.com bust with no jobs. Got a foot in the door answering phones at a web hosting company: not his passion, but the way in. | Be good at it while finding the way to the web team. | Learnt to listen to customers by answering the telephone. Won the annual sales competition. Spent evenings and weekends on the alternative website (row 31). | Won the competition. Nobody expected it, so the prize changed from a Psion organiser to a record player, still in use. The alternative website got him into the web team the following year. | Mar 2003 - Feb 2004 | turnaround, SEO, funnels, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, stakeholders |
| Head of New Media, Host Europe Group | 123-reg 123-reg.co.uk, the group's domain brand | Running all online channels for a group whose biggest brand was a domain registrar in a market with several larger rivals. | Keep the registrar growing while the group went through acquisitions and a rename. | Owned ecommerce and every online channel for the brand: the domain search and order process rebuilt earlier, #1 organic rankings for "domain names" and "web hosting", the affiliate programme, online ads and early content marketing through the blog, and the KPIs and web metrics to steer it all. | 123-reg became the first company to register 1 million .uk domains, on a platform doing 2M+ unique monthly visits. | Jan 2006 - Jun 2008 | turnaround, SEO, funnels, KPIs, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, stakeholders |