Sean Ellis

Interim VP of Growth

I specialize in taking exciting new startups to market and helping them realize the full potential of their product-market fit. I work hands-on with founding teams to design go-to-market strategies and growth systems that turn early traction into scalable, durable growth.

Earlier in my career, I led go-to-market execution for companies like Dropbox, Eventbrite, Lookout, and LogMeIn. Dropbox reached $1B in ARR faster than any prior SaaS company, powered by a product-led growth engine I helped shape. More recently, I’ve led growth efforts at high-velocity startups such as Bounce.

I’m the coauthor of Hacking Growth, read by 800,000+ founders, operators, and investors worldwide, and translated into 16 languages. The book introduced a practical, systems-driven approach to scaling that many modern startups still use as a foundation.

Today, I work with founders and leadership teams through keynotes, workshops, and hands-on engagements focused on go-to-market execution, experimentation, and growth leadership. I also teach through GoPractice.io and cohost the Breakout Growth podcast.

I’ve taught growth and entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, UC Berkeley Haas, INSEAD, Oxford, CKGSB, and other leading universities.

Author

Best-selling manifesto, "Hacking Growth," is a global phenomenon translated into 16 languages and embraced by over 750,000 readers worldwide. In this comprehensive guide, Sean and and his coauthor Morgan Brown unveil the process behind scaling startups to unimaginable heights, offering a blueprint for success that resonates across continents. Sean and Morgan have unique insights into growth success because of their combined experiences growing products such as Dropbox, Facebook, Shopify, LogMeIn, Instagram, Eventbrite and studying the growth engines and processes behind other breakout success companies. 

Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Growth-Fastest-Growing-Companies-Breakout/dp/045149721X

For a long time, intent meant one thing: search.

That’s no longer true.

Intent now shows up through behavior, product usage, and increasingly inside AI systems — often before anyone ever searches.

I put together a short deck on how intent has expanded, where it lives now, and what this changes for modern growth teams.

Curious how others are thinking about this:

Is intent becoming more powerful as it moves beyond search, or harder to leverage?

Blog at SeanEllis.Substack.com. Book me at SeanEllis.me. Author Hacking Growth - 750K+ books sold.

Intent has outgrown search

Funny that I have to keep reminding ChatGPT to speak in hypotheses.
 
Opinions ≠ facts. Even when they come from AI 🙂

Commonwealth Bank

Commonwealth Bank is the most recognised brand in the Australian financial services industry.

Key Responsibilities:

As an Agile Coach, I play an integral role in contributing to the successful agile transformation and continuous improvement at an organisational level. I work across utilities within the Chief Operations Office, developing leaders, and extending agility across the enterprise to enable the vision and strategic goals for the Commonwealth Bank. I coach, mentor and train teams and the organisation to cultivate a culture of continuous improvement and learning resulting in exceptional business outcomes.

Agile Coach

Mind Of Agile

Mind Of Agile is an agile expert company that helps executives transition towards agile ways of working.

Key Achievements:

‣ As an Enterprise Agile Coach, I supported business leaders, managers, and executives through broad large-scale transformation to achieve value-driven outcomes.

‣ Led and managed end-to-end business agility transformations at an enterprise scale, working with teams across the organization to build and support an agile ecosystem
    
‣ Acted as a coach for teams, facilitating the adoption and advancement of agile ways of working at the team of teams and value stream level
   
‣ Advocated and facilitated a culture shift within the organization, promoting an agile mindset and behaviours, ensuring these principles were deeply ingrained in everyday work
   
‣ Developed learning paths and provided individual coaching to team members to enhance their agile practices and mindset
    
‣ Identified and addressed systemic issues that impeded agile practices within organisations
   
‣ Fostered a continuous improvement environment, encouraging teams to inspect and adapt their practices to increase effectiveness

‣ Understood major agile frameworks (e.g. Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, LeSS, Spotify Model, Nexus, Scrum@Scale etc.)
    
‣ Excellent skills in Facilitation, Training, Mentoring, Consulting and Professional Coaching
    
‣ Good skills and knowledge of lean, servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency
   
‣ Knowledge of various well-documented patterns and techniques (example: scrum, Kanban, XP, DevOps, story mapping, example mapping, transformation plans, operating models, scaled agile frameworks)

‣ Knowledge of professional coaching approaches such as ORSC, Co-Active (CPCC), etc
   
‣ Agile Coaching Certification (ICE-EC, ICE-AC) and Professional Coaching Certification (ICF-PCC)

National Australia Bank is one of the four largest financial institutions in Australia.

Key Achievements:

‣ As an Agile Coach reporting through the Value Management Office (VMO), I was a custodian of the methods for ways of working across the enterprise and encouraged buy-in and adoption for their agile transformation.

‣ I was one of two Enterprise Agile Coaches for the Merchant Services Domain (Solution Train), comprising of 450 people, 3 Release trains (tribes) and 31 squads.

‣ Educated Squads on capacity planning best practices increasing the predictability & transparency of the Domain. 

‣ Used organisational design and workforce software (TeamForm) to define and categorise Domain squads into Team Topologies (i.e. stream aligned, complicated-subsystem, enabling, or platform teams).

‣ Consulted with executive-level leadership to develop an agile vision and strategy to improve business agility. Fortnightly Agile Strategic approach meetings were used to define the 90-day P.I. Planning strategic roadmap and agree on clear Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that aligned with the Domain’s “Fin-Tech” cultural norms.

‣ Worked with Agile Champions to define Agile Roles & Responsibilities, artifacts, cadences and key cross-team interactions leading to better role clarity, performance expectations and optimised flow. 

‣ Established Squad Maturity assessments for the Domain and worked with squads to understand their maturity against the Domain model and Tech-Op Model, and coached them on how to achieve greater agile effectiveness.

‣ As an Atlassian Certified Expert, I have comprehensive training in how to adapt enterprise agile tooling and metrics at scale by using work management best practices and making work visible and transparent.

‣ Educated release trains and squads on how to interpret and use contextualised Enterprise Agile Metrics in Microsoft PowerBI.

Australian Taxation Office

The ATO is the Australian Government's principal revenue collection agency.

Key Achievements:

‣ As chief methodologist, I was a co-author and custodian of the ATO Scaled Agile Method (ATOSA) used to structurally migrate the organization to agile ways of working. 

‣ Assisted Executive Level leadership in reviewing & redesigning the current organisational structure to assist with specialist functional HR support. I consulted with leadership groups analysing, and contextualising two popular structures and Team Topologies (1. Spotify Model, typically used by “regulated industries” including ING Bank Netherlands or 2. Single Threaded Leader Model, typically used by “big tech” including AWS two pizza teams).

‣ Updated Official Agile Job profiles adding agile skills and knowledge and created a Product Manager Job Profile, enabling employees to now have agile career pathways. 

‣ I was a key member on the formation committee establishing the organisation-wide ATO Scrum Master Guild 

‣ Established a Director-Level agile working group & coached them 1:1 and as a team to adopt and embed new Ways of Working, incl. all relevant ceremonies, metrics, cadences, and necessary shifts in behaviours and mindsets.

‣ Within a branch I agile coached a broad set of individuals ranging from Entry-level (graduate/trainee) to Core Officers, Managers to General Managers, using demonstrated relationship management skills.

‣ Taught companywide training programs including; Agile fundamentals, Scrum Master & Product Owner Training, and Product Manager Training covering a wide range of Agile methods, Lean principles and DevOps practices.

‣ Navigated complexities of Agile in a regulated industry where Agile artifacts are required for auditing compliance.

‣ Established organisational processes and collaborated with the Project Management Office (PMO) to align core Portfolio, Program, and Project Management Methods with Integrated Scaled Agile ways of working

Resurge Digital

Resurge Digital is a boutique digital marketing agency servicing Brisbane, Gold Coast & Sunshine Coast. 

Key Achievements:

‣ Improved Resurge Digital’s ability to pivot amongst disruptive change. 

‣ Coached the Executive on Agile Marketing trends, agile frameworks & cloud technologies. 

‣ Mapped the entire value stream, and improved the flow of value from sales and client acquisition to delivery – supporting clients in real time with social media, marketing, digital strategy, & SEO.

‣ Aligned leadership teams to company strategy to achieve outcomes and prove value through metrics using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) 

‣ Excellent communicator, facilitator and influencer with a proven track record of enabling leaders deliver change at scale

‣ Comfortable with coaching executives and stakeholders across the organisation in high profile / strategic programs

‣ Relevant industry and academic qualifications (e.g.: Certified Agile Coach, Masters in Business Administration)

‣ Identified and prioritized key growth opportunities, using data and research to identify target markets and user cohorts

‣ Evaluated user behaviour, assessed drivers, and evaluated scalable opportunities to grow user market share

‣ Developed and implemented product experiments, such as A/B testing, to drive growth

‣ Measured the effectiveness of growth campaigns, and used insights gained to optimize future campaigns

‣ Researched, tested, evaluated, and implemented new product features, tools, and content

‣ Created, implemented, and maintained growth strategies

‣ Used data, analytics, and other tools to inform decisions and growth strategies.

‣ Knowledge of various growth-hacking tools, such as automation and campaign monitoring platforms.

‣ Expertise in marketing, online strategies, user experience, and business development. 

‣ Strong analytical skills, including A/B testing, web metrics, and sales metrics.

Beome

Beome is an online rental start-up for share housing enabling people to find each other and rent together.

Key Achievements:

‣ I successfully led a remote team of seven developers, to create automated property management systems using ERP software. The project was pitched to 200 stakeholders including the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur.

‣ Experienced advanced product management practices incl. Test Driven Development (TDD), Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), Hypothesis Driven Development (HDD), cohort analysis (to determine Product-Market Fit), green/blue deployment, design sprints, serverless containerised microservices, Platform as a Service (PaaS)

‣ As a servant leader and change agent, I inspired, coached and mentored teams on Agile principles, values and practices while role-modelling servant leadership behaviours.

‣ Facilitated and reinforced Agile practices for multiple teams working toward common business outcomes, including backlog refinement and prioritization.

‣ Understood and supported the implementation of metrics to optimize delivery of KPIs through assessments of responsiveness, quality, productivity, and customer and business value.

‣ Supported multiple Agile teams to ensure progress toward objectives, goals and commitments. Guided assigned Agile teams to deliver the required product increments.

‣ Actively raised observed issues and removed impediments; resolved conflicts within and across teams. Anticipated challenges, identified risks, and recommended mitigations and solutions.

‣ Continuously assessed the Agile maturity of teams and individuals at all levels of leadership, and used education and mentoring to address gaps.

‣ Facilitated open communication among teams and stakeholders; promoted positive team dynamics to ensure members, collaborated and worked effectively within and across teams.

‣ Used coaching techniques that increased collaboration, transparency and promoted a culture of experimentation and innovation.

Agile Coach | Scrum Master

Vår Energi 

Vår Energi is the largest, independent exploration and production company on the Norwegian continental shelf.

Key Achievements:

‣ Delivered the transfer of new reporting systems & business optimisation software (XHQ) during an enterprise digital transformation, following the acquisition of ExxonMobil's operated assets in Norway by Point Resources (now Vår Energi) and private equity firm Hitec Vision. 

‣ As a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner and holder of the Prosci Integrating Agile and Change Management badge

‣ Excellent understanding of change management practices with experience driving and influencing change to deliver enterprise wide and/or large-scale transformation.

‣ Exceptional, and demonstrated relationship management skills.

‣ A customer-centric mindset with a broad understanding of customer needs.

Change Manager | Production Engineer

ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil is #8 on the Fortune 500, and the world's largest publicly traded international oil and gas company.

Key Achievements:

‣ Extensive experience in a product leadership position with a strong aptitude for coaching and personnel development.

‣ Played a vital role in shaping the product strategy and vision of the organization by emphasizing team coaching and mentorship.

‣ Facilitated and supported teams in comprehending and applying product principles agilely to enhance both team and business performance in delivering quality products.

‣ Steered teams towards adopting a product-centric mindset, along with adhering to relevant principles, practices, and standards.

‣ Offered guidance in crafting a value-centric product vision, roadmaps, and targeted outcomes that are in sync with the company's strategic objectives.

‣ Assisted teams in utilizing feedback obtained post-delivery to perpetually improve product knowledge, validate the roadmap, and foster discussions concerning the subsequent optimal investment for the product.

‣ Fostered and sustained a product community by promoting education and engagement.

‣ Evolved the Product training resources and learning modules to ensure they are apt and cater to the requirements of colleagues at both individual and team levels.

‣ Conducted training sessions encompassing the principles, practices, tools, and methodologies pertinent to Product.

‣ Evaluated the knowledge deficiencies of our Product Leads and assisted them in devising coaching plans for enhancement.

‣ Proven track record of coaching multiple teams simultaneously or having worked across diverse products and industries.

‣ Promoted a culture of learning and innovation that encompassed cutting-edge thinking in product strategy, organizational agility, and systems thinking.

‣ Developed organizational capabilities in understanding and managing product ecosystems, enabling teams to respond to emergent patterns and foster resilience and innovation

Product Owner | Production Engineer

Key Achievements:

‣  Empowered & trusted production crews to “get the job done” by recognising their front-line experience, enhancing the power of self-managing teams, & embracing the values of commitment, courage, focus, openness & respect. Capacity enhancement projects resulted in increased portfolio performance, and the development of global best practices.

Project Manager | Reservoir Engineer

Glencore

Glencore is #16 on the Fortune 500, and one of the world’s largest natural resource and mining companies

Key Achievements:

‣ Improved communication and information flow, reducing wait time (Muda), from hours to minutes by holding two-way toolbox talks with operators over shift change so crews were briefed on uncertain environments & situational priorities.

Business Analyst | Process Engineer

Australian Citizen with 10+ years’ proven experience including agile delivery as Agile Coach. During previous agile transformations, I have worked with executives and directors through the centralised Ways of Working (WoW) office on scaled & large organisations (Commonwealth Bank, NAB & ATO). 

My experience as an ICAgile Certified Expert Agile Coach coupled with working with small high-tech start-ups to large, complex Fortune 500 organisations (ExxonMobil & Glencore), offers me a “360 view” towards enterprise agile adoption at scale. 

I provide evidence-based coaching to the organisations I serve and am a passionate advocate for innovation and continuous improvement practices.

‣ Established experience as an Agile Coach in enterprise environments with expertise in software development
‣ Tertiary business qualifications (incl. Masters in Business Administration & Applied Project Management)
‣ 70+ expert agile and leading Project Management certifications including SAFe, Scrum, Kanban, PMP (PMBoK)

Selected Expert Level Agile Coach Certifications: 

‣ ICAgile Expert in Enterprise Coaching (ICE-EC)
‣ ICAgile Expert in Agile Coaching (ICE-AC)
‣ International Coach Federation Professional Certified Coach (PCC)
‣ Certified SAFe 6 Practice Consultant (SPC) 
‣ Certified Scrum Professional - ScrumMaster (CSP-SM)
‣ Kanban Coaching Professional (KCP)
‣ Atlassian Certified Expert (ACE)

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