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Casey Winters

Co-Founder and CEO, SuperMe · 1 appearance on the record, plus 2 compilation re-airs.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

operatorexecutivefounderinvestorauthor@onecaseman ↗LinkedIn ↗caseyaccidental.com ↗

Winters scaled Grubhub's growth to an IPO, led growth product at Pinterest, and served as Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. He currently teaches growth strategy at Reforge and is the Co-Founder and CEO of SuperMe.

29statements → 5claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 4.13/5average certainty → 2.43/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 37said about them ↓

2 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 1 opinion · 23 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Casey argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Pinterest signed up over half the US population via Google SEO
“So as we did that, that was really successful, and we ended up signing up, you know, like over half of the US up to Pinterest with, you know, a pretty high retention rate.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 33:07 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
83% certainty 4
50% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

259 words/min while actually speaking · 0.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Casey Winters: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 14 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 7,584 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Casey Winters is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 0/10
pushed back at the host 3/10
setup questions received 100%

Everything Casey Winters said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Casey Winters: Proven growth leaders won't join startups that haven't prioritized growth
“There are perhaps 50 people that are capable, that have shown previous, like, head of growth experience. And they're not going to join your company until they've seen that you've already prioritized growth and shown that you value it inside an organization.”
Casey Winters Nov 25, 2022 ▶ 2:48 20VC: When to Make Your First Growth Hire? Senior or Junior? How To Onboard Them? How To Monitor Their Progress? from Growth Leaders @ Facebook, Instagram, Lyft, Instacart, Miro and more
Insight
Winters: Growth connects users to existing value, not new features
“Growth is about connecting people to the value that's already been created by the business, you know, either through Product or services or whatever. So growth is not about building totally new features, totally new products. It's about once we have those and …”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 7:15 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Casey Winters: Experienced growth leaders won't join until startups prioritize growth internally
“There are perhaps 50 people that are capable, that have shown previous, like, head of growth experience, and they're not going to join your company until they've seen that you've already prioritized growth and shown that you value it.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 10:48 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Winters: Scalable startup growth is limited to four core strategies
“Fire strategies, there's really only a few of them, right? You know, you could scale via sales, you could scale via performance marketing, you could scale, you know, content loops, or you could scale via virality.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 13:22 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Winters: Growth leaders exist to execute founder vision, not create strategy
“What a lot of product leaders make a mistake of, as well as growth leaders, is they think it's their show. They get to create the vision. They get to create the strategy. And it's like, not really. You're there to execute on the vision and strategy of the foun…”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 28:28 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Winters: Performance marketing over-reliance fails within five years without network effects
“The default towards performance marketing is the only channel that matters. It creates a lot of issues long term, especially if you're not network effect driven, where It's going to work really well in year one, not as well in year two, and in year five, you'r…”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 39:54 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Assertion Partly supported
Winters: Pinterest signed up over half the US via Google preview walls
“When people came in from Google, we would let you see a preview of the content, and then we would ask you to sign up to see more of it... As we did that, that was really successful. And we ended up signing up, you know, like over half of the U S up to Pinteres…”
Casey Winters Mar 25, 2022 ▶ 5:01 20VC The Memo: Inside the Growth Engines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Instacart with the Growth Leaders Who Built Them; How Instagram Went from 440M to 1BN, How Twitter Changing Their Signup Flow was a Needlemover and How Removing Card Payment Requ
Insight
Winters: Isolated growth teams fail long-term without organizational alignment
“While that can be really good at going fast, a lot of times by going fast, you're not going far because you're not as default biased to keeping the rest of the organization in loop with what a growth team is doing.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 9:41 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Winters: Do not hire a Head of Growth for initial traction
“You don't want to bring it ahead of growth to start Kindling things. You want to bring it ahead of growth to like really start the fire.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 13:06 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Casey Winters: Brand marketing is unmeasurable and speculative for early startups
“Brand marketing, which is neither measurable nor scalable and requires money. It's not a bad idea. It's just usually has a longer return, a more speculative return. So generally startups wait longer before they invest in that.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 18:20 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Casey Winters: Refusing interview case studies signals poor fit for startup roles
“Interviews should be for both sides, right? If I feel like that case study is beneath me, that's a problem. That means I'm probably not a good fit for the job right now, and you should be hiring someone more junior, right?”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 21:53 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Assertion Supported
Pinterest signed up over half the US population via Google SEO
“So as we did that, that was really successful, and we ended up signing up, you know, like over half of the US up to Pinterest with, you know, a pretty high retention rate.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 33:07 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Casey Winters: Enterprise SaaS companies should not copy Facebook's growth strategy
“So much of this is context-specific, and so few people in the startup community know even which context they're in. So they might, oh, I read Facebook does it this way, and it's like, great, you're an enterprise SaaS company. What Facebook does has, like, no m…”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 35:01 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Opinion
Winters: Organic social reach as a growth channel is dead
“Generally, anything organic, social related, just doesn't exist anymore, because the social networks are so good at taxing any reach that you want to have on the social channels. So that's one that feels relatively dead.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 37:55 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Winters: Scaling growth requires deep engineering work, not quick hacks
“Growth is done in a team, and it's not just hacks or experiments. Like, it requires understanding the growth model of the business, where the constraints are, and potentially doing quick hacks, but a lot of times deep engineering work to actually scale the bus…”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 39:35 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Casey Winters: Startups should build growth capabilities immediately after product-market fit
“As soon as possible after product market fit, that's when growth becomes the number one concern of most startups, and that's where you need to be building out that capability.”
Casey Winters Nov 25, 2022 ▶ 2:33 20VC: When to Make Your First Growth Hire? Senior or Junior? How To Onboard Them? How To Monitor Their Progress? from Growth Leaders @ Facebook, Instagram, Lyft, Instacart, Miro and more
Insight
Winters: Most successful Heads of Growth are early internal hires who scaled
“So a lot of the people that you look at that were head of growth, We're just really early employees that took an interest in that area and then scaled a team around it.”
Casey Winters Nov 25, 2022 ▶ 3:22 20VC: When to Make Your First Growth Hire? Senior or Junior? How To Onboard Them? How To Monitor Their Progress? from Growth Leaders @ Facebook, Instagram, Lyft, Instacart, Miro and more
Insight
Casey Winters: Product growth connects users to existing core value
“Growth is about connecting people to the value that's already been created by the business, you know, either through product or services or whatever. So growth is not about building totally new features, totally new products. It's about once we have those and …”
Casey Winters Mar 25, 2022 ▶ 3:13 20VC The Memo: Inside the Growth Engines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Instacart with the Growth Leaders Who Built Them; How Instagram Went from 440M to 1BN, How Twitter Changing Their Signup Flow was a Needlemover and How Removing Card Payment Requ
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Winters: Intuition-based growth experiments failed at every new job he took
“Every growth experiment I've recommended when I've joined a company, I'm fundamentally using more of my gut from previous experience. Every time that has not worked.”
Casey Winters Mar 25, 2022 ▶ 4:28 20VC The Memo: Inside the Growth Engines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Instacart with the Growth Leaders Who Built Them; How Instagram Went from 440M to 1BN, How Twitter Changing Their Signup Flow was a Needlemover and How Removing Card Payment Requ
Insight
Casey Winters: Startups must build growth capabilities immediately after product-market fit
“As soon as possible after product market fit, that's when growth becomes the number one concern of most startups, and that's where you need to be building out that capability.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 10:30 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Casey Winters: Product-driven growth requires one-week experimental projects over six-month builds
“A lot of what product driven growth requires is someone that can figure out a grand opportunity and then break it down into really small chunks that help them learn that they're not, you know, putting forth a six month project. They're putting forth a one week…”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 18:58 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Winters: Growth leaders must talk to users, not just analyze data
“Cause if our job as like a growth leader is to connect people to the core value of the product, we need to understand that core value almost better than anyone at the company. We need to know how to talk about it. We need to know the steps that get them introd…”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 23:29 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Winters: Startup executives must resolve inter-departmental conflict themselves
“I see a mistake a lot of executives make, and this is outside of growth too, where they're like, they'll expect their manager or the CEO to like take care of their problems for them. And it's like, no, that's not what happens. Like you got to go solve those pr…”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 26:36 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Insight
Winters: Visionary product founders prioritize core product evolution over metric optimization
“Visionary product founders, they are going to naturally spend more of their time thinking about how the core product evolves, rather than thinking about how can I move this metric up one, two percent, five percent, 10%, et cetera.”
Casey Winters Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 28:02 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit

Show 5statements(5 left)

The other half of the tape: Casey Winters's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 34 times in 12 episodes on 20VC. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 24Vaibhav Sahgal 2Mike Duboe 2Ely Lerner 2Brian Balfour 2Darius Contractor 1

Statements about Casey Winters, by other people (3)

Opinion
Balfour names Winters, Contractor, and Cabane as top growth practitioners
“Strategically would be Casey winners. The best person that has thinks about the psychological elements of growth would easily be Darius contractor. The person like a very specialty who I consider like a mad scientist is I call him G, but it's Guillaume Cabane.”
Brian Balfour Aug 16, 2023 ▶ 59:23 Brian Balfour: Startup Growth Secrets from HubSpot; Distribution Stratagies; Impact of AI | E1049 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Casey Winters scaled Pinterest signup conversion 5x via SEO
“At Pinterest, Casey turned SEO into a scalable acquisition strategy, increasing conversion to signups, five X.”
Harry Stebbings Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 0:47 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit
Assertion Partly supported
Grubhub expanded from 3 to over 1,000 cities prior to $7.3B exit
“Casey played an instrumental role in scaling Grubhub from three cities to over a thousand, and from a one million dollar series A to an IPO and a 7.3 billion dollar exit.”
Harry Stebbings Sep 22, 2021 ▶ 1:00 Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How To Structure the Process? How To Onboard Growth Teams? The Relationship Between Head of Growth and CEO and more with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer @ Eventbrit

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0010220420212022202320242025episodesmentions
02420212022202320242025episodes it came up in
00224420212022202320242025episodesmentions per episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 10 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
2022 16 mentions in 4 episodes 4 per episode
2021 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode

Appearances (3)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: When to Make Your First Growth Hire? Senior or Junior? How To Onboard Them? How To M compilation Nov 25, 2022 4m
20VC The Memo: Inside the Growth Engines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Instacart wit compilation Mar 25, 2022 2m
Welcome 20Growth: How To Hire a Head of Growth? What are Signs of World-Class Talent? How Sep 22, 2021 31m
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