Over the past 4 months, I’ve been spending time with my family. I’ve travelled quite a lot, read plenty of good books and took better care of myself. Looking back now, the decision to take a break was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. It’s incredible how much clarity a break can give you. I’ve learnt so many things (that I’ll share with you in a subsequent post).

Back in March I was writing that I’ll consider my sabbatical a success if I manage to stay away from work for 3 months. 4 months later, I’m very grateful for having done it. However, this is the longest I’ve been off since the summer holidays back in school. It was about time to get back to business.

A world of opportunities

Choosing what’s next wasn’t an easy thing to do and I took my time to figure out where I want to go and what’s the next best thing for me in my career. I had no doubt that I wanted to keep working in tech. I embarked on this path 12+ years ago. This is the industry that I’m passionate about. This is where I can put my skill set at best use to bring a meaningful contribution. I realised quickly that my choices came down to three high-level options:

1. Start a tech company
2. Join a tech company
3. Advise a bunch of tech companies

I have to admit, I was in a privileged position. From the very moment I announced I’m headed for a break, I’ve been approached by exec search agencies, incredible founders and VC funds with different proposals, ranging from roles within their (portfolio) companies to advising or investment opportunities. I had lots of exploratory calls and I am really grateful for having met so many talented people from all over the world.

However, I did not want the next step in my career to be a reactive one. Life’s too short to make choices that end up making you miserable, so I wanted to make sure that I take an informed decision. As a result, I made a step back and took myself out for a coffee. If you’re considering making a career change as well, I highly recommend you do the same.

Taking an introspective look

What do I bring to the table?

First things first, it was important for me to understand what my superpowers are. What are those skills & competencies that bring the highest value to a tech company? One step further, which of these am I really passionate about?

After 12 years in product marketing, I have a holistic view of the funnel, having worked on everything from user acquisition to conversion and retention. While I’m a sucker for experimentation, community building & inbound marketing, my biggest strength isn’t my power to execute on product marketing strategies. Building teams in hypergrowth, fast-paced environments, and shaping the processes for them to succeed has been the highlight of my career so far. This is not only something that I am really good at and I’ve done before, but something that I envisioned myself doing going forward.

The process I went through is a personal and less formalised adaptation of Jim Collins’ BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). You can read more about this in “Built to Last. Successful Habits of Visionary Companies”, a book that I highly recommend.

What do I expect from a role?

One more thing that I consider very important is to understand what I expect from a role. This was an easy question to answer and I’ve come to clarify this during the exploratory calls that I had. For me, it comes down to:

• Learning. I am a serial learner true nerd and I love to learn new things. It’s very important for me to keep learning in my work;
• Building. I am a builder and a problem-lover. I love a good challenge and I am passionate about building things from scratch. This also comes back to the process-building part that I am good at as well;
• Having an impact. While this might sound like BS, this comes down to my time volunteering in NGOs and starting my own non-profit. I can only give my all and do my best as long as the work that I do has a purpose and a meaningful impact in the lives of the users or, even better, in the wider society.

Narrowing it down

Once I got through this introspective exercise, it was much easier to narrow down my choices. The easiest to discard was the option to advise a bunch of tech companies. This might be easier from many points of view. It would not entail a full-time commitment and would offer more flexibility and personal space. However, it would also be hands-off and I am a builder that likes to have full ownership. I still feel that I have plenty of things to build. So I decided to save this for retirement. 🙂

The very same exercise helped me discard the possibility of joining an early-stage tech company. I am good at and passionate about building teams & setting up the right processes to help them succeed. My superpowers would not be put at great use in early stage companies. Startups need more junior people, generalists & growth hackers, going above and beyond, experimenting and executing to put the company on a growth trajectory. While I can do the work and I’ve done it before, it’s not something that I want to do at this point in my career. Or, to be fairly honest, not for somebody else. Should I do the early stage work again, I would do it for my own tech startup.

So why not start a tech company now? That’s a question I’ve asked myself for a really long time. I know what it takes to build a startup and I definitely want to do this at some point in my career. The reason I am not doing this now is because I had the chance of meeting them at the right time: the Bitpanda team.

Why Bitpanda?

I had the chance to meet plenty of talented founders over the past months and, while I was impressed by them all, this opportunity stood out as being the closest to my heart. I first met Eric Demuth & Paul Klanschek on a late Friday afternoon and we immediately clicked. Not only were they passionate, ambitious and relentless in pursuing their goals, but they have also built a company with an amazing culture, balancing hypergrowth with care for their people.

For those of you that haven’t heard of Bitpanda so far, I am about to change this :). Bitpanda is Austria’s first unicorn, a fintech founded back in 2014 by Eric Demuth, Paul Klanschek and Christian Trummer. Their goal is nothing but ambitious: to bring the world of investing closer to everyone, everywhere. Initially offering cryptocurrency trading, Bitpanda has added more tokenised digital assets to the platform, such as precious metals, and, more recently, fractional stocks, allowing anyone to start investing with a minimum of 1 Euro. Bitpanda now has more than 2.7 million users and a team of 500+ people from 50 countries.

Europe is lagging behind the US & Asia when it comes to investment literacy and many people are unaware of the possibilities they have at their fingertips. I strongly believe in Bitpanda’s mission to change this by offering people instant access to financial products, as well as the resources they need to properly understand them. We can have a meaningful impact, together.

I am delighted to join Bitpanda as Chief Growth Officer. In my new role I will be leading the global marketing, growth & international expansion teams, while building the right processes to enable us to grow into the #1 investment platform in Europe & beyond. This is an incredible challenge that I am thrilled to be solving next to my team, as well as a great learning & building opportunity. And, by the way, we are hiring :D, so check out the roles available here and come to the dark side – we’ve got lots of work to do!

While I will keep being based in Romania, I will be spending lots of time in Vienna over the summer, together with my family. Kiddo is already approving of this choice and discovering everything this amazing city has to offer.

Here’s to new beginnings and the excitement they bring along! It’s time to grow again!