48 - How Startups Should Use Insights To Fuel Their Marketing - Eric Rasmussen, Head Of Consumer Insights at 23andMe

Eric and I go way back.

Eric Rasmussen is Head of Consumer Insights at 23andMe. Prior to that, Eric led research at Groupon, Shutterfly, eBay, and Yahoo!

We both worked at Groupon a few years ago. We used to meet 1:1 to talk insights - I would share what we were working on with the growth marketing team, and Eric would share his team's research.

23andMe was founded in 2006, has 700+ employees and is based out of CA. They raised Series F ($868.6M total) and recently went public. 23andMe is the leading consumer genetics and research company. The mission of the company is to help people access, understand, and benefit from the human genome.

Here's what we hit on:

Marketing vs. insights - what’s the difference? How does insights fuel marketing?

What you're working on insights-related at 23andMe and how that has changed since your earlier days;

How does the marketing team use the insights your team gathers? How do you make this handoff successful?

How early stage startups should approach insights and research and customer-centricity;

Where do companies get insights wrong, and what's a better way (HINT: they want to cut right to the chase and make it about the product);

We talked about where Eric's insights/research impacted the various companies he's been at on a large scale;

How has a failure set you up for later success? (HINT: half the job is to answer Qs and the other half the job is to give it to people so they can go do something with it)

You can reach Eric on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ericrasmussen

Find out more about 23andMe: www.23andme.com

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You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com

Thanks for listening!