Mike Villar
Chief Executive Officer
Hi, I’m Mike! I am data-driven, Lean principles-guided digital marketing and business intelligence executive with extensive “big company” experience. Before co-founding and taking the lead at Growth Rocket, I was building and growing enterprise-level ecommerce brands and digital marketplaces. I’ve built and managed teams that range in size, from startups to NASDAQ-listed internet retailers with multi-million dollar budgets. After an eight-year run as Senior Marketing Director at CarParts.com, I got pulled in by the siren call of startups. I ended up working on three venture-backed startups as Chief Marketing Officer. Houman and I set up Growth Rocket in 2015, and I started working on the company exclusively in 2017. On May 2019, I was selected as a Growth Mentor at 500 Startups, the world’s most active early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator.
I (and Growth Rocket as an extension) treat marketing as a science. Our approach involves a lot of controlled experimentation, which is the reason we drive results for our clients. When I have time to spare, I read graphic novels and comic books.
Today I lead Growth Rocket’s work in SEO, GEO (generative engine optimization) and AI (artificial intelligence) development, and I draw on my background in product management.
As Seen On
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Freshworks Experience NXT
Last year has seen many businesses embracing the digital-first world. While the world began working remotely, even experiences moved from being from out there to in here, from physical to digital. The experience economy is at full throttle and digital experiences are the future. <br><br> The world as we knew it has changed. Building a great today is not enough, businesses need to stay one step ahead. They need to be thinking of what’s NXT. <br><br> Experience NXT is a platform to help millions of businesses do just this. It brings together experts and businesses to collaborate, inspire, and create the NXT.
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Freshworks Fireside chat on “How Culture Contributes to a Happy, Productive Sales Force
According to findings from our study with Harvard Business Review Analytics Services: “81% of very happy sales teams reported increases in annual sales over two years” That a Happy sales culture leads to superior performance is not new to a Sales leader like you. But how does this connection really work? How do catch-phrases like “work hard, play hard” impact the culture of the sales team? And does a happy sales team even lead to great performance?”
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Saola Accelerator
Mike is a Growth Mentor at 500 Startups Vietnam's Saola Accelerator. 500 Startups’ flagship accelerator has been named a Top 3 accelerator in the U.S. by notable publications including Forbes and Entrepreneur. 500 Startups has also been running growth programs in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The Saola Accelerator is 500’s latest step in its mission to back talented entrepreneurs all over the world, help them build companies at scale, and develop thriving ecosystems around the world.
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Digitize the Philippines
Mike is a speaker at Digitize the Philippines 2020. Digitize the Philippines is a digital conference launched by Axadra Ventures to address the growing need for digitization in the country. It aims to address, educate, and implement digital solutions for Filipino businesses to help them be competitive in the global market.
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Freshworks Fireside chat on "How to build a Future-Proof Customer Acquisition Strategy"
In this exclusive fireside chat, Mike talked about how to acquire new customers in a post-pandemic world and how having a future-proof and resilient customer acquisition strategy ensures that your business thrives today and in the future. He also talked about how small businesses need to adapt to the changing demands of customers and best practices on how you can maximize customer lifetime value in the current climate.
Articles About Mike Villar
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Mike Villar wants to put romance back into advertising
Read ArticleA battle-hardened marketing veteran, Villar wants you to practice constraint.
“Relationships escalate one step at a time. Selling without a story is like asking someone to marry you on a first date,” he told the dozen startup employees at Saola, an accelerator program run by 500 Startups.
The entrepreneurs come from a handful of early-stage companies; their biographies are combinations of data scientist, Silicon Valley veteran, Ivy League graduate, programmer, competitive gamer, mathematical physicist, computational biologist, 3x founder, and defecting corporate lifer. To some of them, ‘sales’ is a dirty word, an oil slick contaminating the purity of science.
That’s why 500 summoned Villar: a storyteller who’s obsessed with “putting narrative to data.” Villar said f– you to sales (as we know it) a long time ago. He levitates above the content scrap yard. He’s seen the matrix of advertising and he doesn’t want you to flush that precious venture capital down the toilet by buying tone-deaf Facebook ads.
