Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

An inside look at Deel’s unprecedented growth | Meltem Kuran Berkowitz (Head of Growth)

August 27, 2023

AI Summary

5 min read

Meltem Kuran Berkowitz, head of growth at Deel, a payroll, HR, and compliance platform for global teams, explains how the company scaled from under $1 million ARR in July 2020 to $295 million by early 2023 while remaining EBITDA positive. She emphasizes starting with basics like a fast website and clear positioning before expanding channels, focusing on where potential customers ask questions.

Answering questions in communities

Early growth relied heavily on cheap channels like Reddit, Quora, Twitter, and closed communities (e.g., YC Slack groups), where people seek peer advice on hiring internationally, compliance, or taxes. Deel tracks keywords for alerts and has team members (including founders) manually answer questions by explaining solutions first—adding value like "yes, it's doable but consider X, Y, Z"—before mentioning their product. This built word-of-mouth; it started at 80-90% of growth (15% of funnel initially) and now contributes to ~50% via non-paid sources including partnerships. Key: recognize audience size limits (e.g., win 10% of a 1,000-person subreddit) and always prioritize community value to avoid bans.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (04:28) **Deel Overview and Explosive Growth Stats**`
2 `* (06:34) **Cheap Growth Channels: Communities and Question-Answering**`
3 `* (16:29) **SEO Mastery: Traffic Light Framework and Content Ops**`
4 `* (26:39) **Early Prioritization: Build Skeleton Before Makeup**`
5 `* (35:07) **Partnerships and Product-Led Growth Levers**`
6 `* (47:10) **Hiring and Team Building for Growth**`
7 `* (54:53) **Deel Culture: Speed, Optimism, Customer Obsession**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

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Meltem Kuran Berkowitz is Head of Growth at Deel, which went from $0 to $300m in ARR in 3 years (fastest company in history to do so). Meltem joined Deel early to lead growth, and currently leads all of the growth and marketing teams including paid ads, content, product marketing, community, brand, and more. In this episode, we discuss:• How Deel found success leveraging low-cost growth channels• Why early awareness campaigns are a waste of time in B2B• How to create effective SEO content• Deel’s “traffic light” framework• When it makes sense to invest in paid ads• The art of structuring growth teams• Building a startup culture

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/an-inside-look-at-deels-unprecedented

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Where to find Meltem Kuran Berkowitz:

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/meltemkuran

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meltem-kuran-berkowitz-4721114b

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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