EP10: Alanna Gregory, founder VIVE and Sr Director at Afterpay, on marketplace economics, growth marketing at Afterpay, and how NFTs could become lot more mainstream

Paradigm Shift

In this conversation with Alanna we talked about pivotal moments in Alanna’s journey from working on emerging markets research on Wall St, to founding a YC backed marketplace startup, to growth marketing leader at Afterpay. Alanna has a broad and unique perspective on startups, fintech and crypto, and in this conversation we cover a wide range of topics across all three.
Episode Highlights

1. Starting her career on Wall St during the 2008 financial crisis
2. Culture working in finance vs tech
3. Founding VIVE — what drove her to marketplaces
4. Vision to build a marketplace that helps salons acquire customers
5. Explosive early demand — 14,000 customer waitlist
6. Challenging unit economics — trade-offs between unlimited usage and credit system
7. Explorations — marketplace vs SaaS vs bundling CPG products
8. Key learning — PMF is about finding and meeting demand in a scalable way, unit economics and margins important even at early stages
9. Joining AfterPay to lead growth marketing for engagement and retention
10. Approach towards consumer vs merchant, and checkout product vs standalone app
11. Thoughts on fintech and potential risks in the system
12. How startups build/validate a new lending product as a startup and risks to manage
13. Thoughts on DeFi and NFTs — both quickly going more and more mainstream
14. How NFTs and e-commerce could merge and enable new products and marketing levers
15. Thoughts on what might happen if interest rates go up — mental model on opportunities if markets retreat or become more volatile
16. Super powers on spotting talent and hiring, people who have her a break, and books

Links

• Follow Alanna @alannaeve on Twitter

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