Gina Gotthilf is a Co-Founder and COO at Latitud, an a16z-backed platform supporting the next generation of iconic tech startups in Latin America through digital products, a community and fund. Previously, Gina led growth and marketing at Duolingo from 3 to 200 million users via organic strategies and was part of the executive team. She also worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign, helping oversee the creation of digital ad campaigns at a historical budget, and led growth and community for Tumblr in Latin America. In Today's Discussion with Gina Gotthilf We Discuss: Entry into the World of Growth: How Gina went from working on a farm to leading growth for Tumblr in LATAM? What are 1-2 of Gina's biggest takeaways from her time leading growth for Duolingo? What does Gina know now that she wishes she had known when she entered the world of growth? 15 Top Tips and Secrets to Being Featured in the Best Publications: What is the best way to get in touch with journalists? What mistakes do founders have when they reach out to journalists? Should founders get in touch with more than one journalist at a publication? Should founders be explicit about the embargos they have on a story? Should they stick to them? Should founders be more wary of being published in a publication with a paywall? What materials should they send to journalists to get their attention? Should founders send press releases in early messages to journalists? How can founders control in some way what the journalist will ultimately publish? How long before the company wants the piece to come out, should they reach out to journalists? How can founders create FOMO when trying to get journalists to write their story? How can founders create social validity with journalists, when they are a small company? Once published, what should the distribution strategy look like? How can you get people you know to like and share content you are featured in? What are the top tips and tricks to get people to share content with you in? Should PR and Comms be an ongoing effort or static projects with news stories? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make in getting their company in the press?

Noah Weiss is the Chief Product Officer of Slack, overseeing the product team’s strategy and development. Over his seven years at Slack, Noah has led various parts of the product organization, including the self-service SMB business and product-led growth; the Virtual HQ team that launched huddles and clips; and the search and machine learning teams. Prior to Slack, Noah served as SVP of Product and Analytics at Foursquare. He started his career at Google leading the structured data search team and working on display ads. In Today's Episode with Noah Weiss We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Product and Road to Slack CPO: How did Noah make his first foray into the world of product with Google? What are 1-2 of his single biggest takeaways from his time with Google and Foursquare? What model did Noah learn at Google that he applies to product today? 2.) Product 101: The Foundations: Is product more art or science? If Noah were to put a number on it what would it be? What are product principles? What makes good vs bad product principles? What are the biggest mistakes that founders make when instilling product principles? Does Noah believe with Gustav Soderstrom, "talk is cheap and so we should do more of it"? 3.) How to Master Product-Led-Growth: What are some of Noah's biggest lessons on how to master PLG? What are the biggest mistakes Noah sees early stage founders make today when going for the PLG approach? How does he advise them? When is the right time to move into enterprise? What needs to change? How do you change who you build product for? The buyer or the user? Why does Noah believe product speed will always be the most important thing in product? 4.) The Internals of Slack: How does Slack do post-mortems today? Who comes? Who sets the agenda? How has this changed in a world of remote? What does it take to do them well? How do Slack do product testing pre-launch of new products? Do they know when something is going to be a hit? What did they think would be a massive hit that turned into a flop? What does Noah believe is the biggest near death product experience for Slack? What happened? How did they get through it? Why do Slack buy other companies? How do they think through the decision of buy vs build? When do acquisitions work? When do they not work?