Farewell, G2 and Tech Bound. Hi, Shopify!

You can't plan opportunities.

G2

After almost two years, I left G2 at the beginning of December. We celebrated many successes, went through ups and downs, and learned invaluable lessons. I mean, truly invaluable. The type of lessons you cannot allow yourself to miss.

My reason wasn't unhappiness or problems. I loved my job and everyone at the company and left G2 at a high point. I'm confident it will continue to grow at the hyper speed it was putting up in 2020.

I wish I could share all the great things we accomplished, but I will keep it to an Ahrefs screenshot out of respect. Even though the traffic number is much higher, the direction is correct. That's what it looks like when good teams come together and get the right resources.

I surely did some of the best work in my life so far at G2.

I want to specifically thank Ryan, Godard, Adam, Lauren D., Mike, Sara, Marty, Andrew L, Yoni, Romana, Jed, Jesse, Hillary, Eddie, Brian S., Eugene, Dan, Lindsey, Brittney, Dave, Kelsey, Sierra, Marie, Kevin L., Kara, Tom, and Banks.

Of course, a big bag of gratitude goes out to my team: Amy, Ross, Alan, Evan, Lauren P., Mara, Rebecca, Deirdre, Scout, Mary Clare, Amal, Dibyani, Holly, Ninisha, Rajendra, and Sagar.

Without G2 and specifically Godard, I would have never discovered Conscious Leadership, the foundation on which I build my leadership style. It's a gift for life.

Shopify

What led me to leave G2 is the opportunity to join Shopify as Director of SEO. There weren’t many companies that could have pulled me away from G2, but Shopify was one of them. A former mentor and coach connected me with Luc, VP of Growth at Shopify, and things gained momentum from there.

I'm sticking to companies founded by Germans, but the opportunity to join the next FANG member, "arm the rebels", and work with people like Luc Levesque, Morgan Brown, and many others is hard to pass.

Alex Danco, Brian Peters, and many other bright minds recently joined Shopify, and I'm honored to count myself in.

My mission has always been to make "good" technology successful. Atlassian's mission was empowering the teams that make the world better. G2's mission is to help the companies that improve the world find the right tools to be successful. Now, at Shopify, I will work on "making e-commerce better for everyone". It is a mission that's near and dear to my heart. All my family members are entrepreneurs. I believe that entrepreneurship is empowering, in a certain way innate to humans, and can fundamentally change lives.

A healthy merchant eco-system is vital for society because it allows its members to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. That's in part the ideal the US was built on ("from dishwasher to millionaire"). It's more than selling stuff. It’s about freedom and autonomy.

I'm very excited to tackle the challenge and see how far I can take it. As part of the Growth team, I'll have a real opportunity to push the idea of “Organic Growth” forward.

Tech Bound

The price for taking this opportunity on is to put the paid Tech Bound membership to rest. I already refunded all paying members (over 125 at the end). I respect the ask to not charge for the knowledge I gain at Shopify and, of course, to not give away competitive advantages.

Every loss is also an opportunity.

I already started to send out a free, weekly email on Mondays called "Growth Memo". I learned that reading the newest content is not enough; we need to immerse ourselves in a topic to advance. We need to go deep.

The Growth Memo is precisely that: a deep dive based on recent events with a list of related content sources at the end, so you can further educate yourself. Check out the first two episodes for a taste: Embeds, the flywheel nobody speaks about, and Google's Freemium leverage.

The topical focus will be on "Organic Growth", a hybrid of SEO and Growth. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. It’s just a name for something I and companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, Eventbrite, G2, Atlassian, Amazon, and Shopify have been doing for a while that goes beyond "classic SEO". It’s about building scalable systems around inventory, listings, UGC, and content pipelines. It's SEO at scale, experiments, user experience, and the connection between acquisition, activation, and retention.

Not writing on a schedule anymore allows me to write deeper, longer, and better content. If you want to get the blog articles, you can opt-in to get the blog posts when subscribing to the Growth Memo. Articles will come out irregularly on Thursdays.

On a last note, I'm working on a redesign of my site. I have already made some cosmetic changes but plan to overhaul it in the next 6-8 weeks.

Thanks to all the loyal subscribers.

Thanks to everyone at G2 for their support.

Thanks to everyone at Shopify for giving me a chance.

Kevin