20Growth: How to Build a Paid Marketing Machine: ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) 101 | The Rise of User Generated Content and How to Use It | TikTok Ads: Expectations vs. Reality | Hiring for Growth: When and Who with Sandy Diao
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 693 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sandy Diao is one of the most exceptional growth leaders of the last decade. Sandy has scaled products to over 200M+ users and led growth teams at Descript, Meta and Pinterest. She is also a prolific writer all on things growth here.
AGENDA:
03:59 Biggest Growth Lessons from Pinterest
08:01 What is a Good vs a Bad Growth Hypothesis
11:11 Common Mistakes in Growth Strategies
14:57 Channel Fit: When You Have It & What To Do
25:43 Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 101: How to Build a Paid Marketing Machine
30:08 How to Do SEO and Long-Term Growth Investments
33:22 Doubling Down on Successful Channels
36:31 The Unchanging Foundations of SEO
37:52 Generative AI Engines vs. Traditional Search Engines
41:12 Paid Marketing Channels: What's Overrated?
43:42 The Rise of User-Generated Content (UGC)
46:34 TikTok Ads: Expectations vs. Reality
49:55 Brand Marketing: What is Real vs What is BS?
53:33 The Importance of Feature Launches
01:01:50 Hiring for Growth: When and Who?
01:08:55 Quick Fire Round: Onboarding, Notifications, and Growth Channels
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is 20 Growth with me, Harry Stebbings. Now 20 Growth is the show where we sit down with the |
| 0:04.3 | best growth leaders in the world to discuss how to scale brand marketing, how to scale paid |
| 0:08.9 | marketing, how to create virality in a product, how to scale products to millions of users. |
| 0:14.1 | This show today is one of the most granular that we've done in years. I think you'll love it. |
| 0:18.8 | I absolutely adored doing it. I'm thrilled to welcome |
| 0:21.8 | Sandy Diao, one of the most exceptional growth leaders of the last decade. Sandy's scale products |
| 0:27.0 | to over 200 million users and led growth teams at Descript, meta, and Pinterest. She's also a |
| 0:33.4 | prolific writer and we've included the link to her blog in the show notes. I love it and it's |
| 0:38.3 | exactly what I love in a blog. Tactical, granular, so many good takeaways there. But before we |
| 0:44.2 | dive into the show today, Secureframe empowers businesses to build trust with customers by simplifying |
| 0:49.7 | information security and compliance through AI and automation. Thousands of fast-grown businesses, |
| 0:55.1 | including NASDA, AngelList, Doodle and Coder, Trust Secureframe to expedite their compliance |
| 1:00.6 | journey for global security and privacy standards, such as SOC 2 and ISO-27,01, CMMC, NIST |
| 1:08.1 | standards and more. Backed by top-tier investors and corporations like Google and |
| 1:12.5 | Kleiner Perkins, the company is among Forbes's list of the top 100 startup employers for 2024, |
| 1:18.5 | G2's best software awards for higher satisfaction products, and a recipient of the 2024 Cybersecurity |
| 1:24.5 | Excellence Awards, something I definitely never got in school myself. |
| 1:28.4 | Learn more today at secureframe.com. |
| 1:31.1 | And once Secureframe locks down compliance, Pendo makes sure your product truly lands with |
| 1:36.2 | customers. |
| 1:37.0 | Whether it's the software you build or the software you buy, your tech stack should be creating |
| 1:41.3 | results, not creating roadblocks. |
... |
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