Shifting Career Altitudes: Insights from a CPO That's Led Nearly Every Function | Anneka Gupta

Anneka Gupta is the Chief Product Officer at Rubrik, a cloud management and data security company with a US$6B market cap. Before Rubrik, Anneka spent 11 years leading various teams at LiveRamp, including product, go-to-market, and operations. In today’s episode, we discuss: • How LiveRamp went from $30M to $200M ARR in 3 years • Anneka’s jack-of-all-trades career • Why specialist hires can backfire • When leaders should get in the weeds • One area every PM can improve in • Rubrik’s approach to building product • Much more – Referenced: • Acxiom: https://www.acxiom.com/ • Acxiom’s acquisition of LiveRamp: https://tinyurl.com/2shm83de • Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ • Auren Hoffman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/ • Dentsu: https://www.dentsu.com/ • Dentsu’s acquisition of Merkle: https://tinyurl.com/yvxe6fws • James Arra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-arra-a43a06/ • LiveRamp: https://liveramp.com/ • Merkle: https://www.merkle.com/ • Rubrik: https://www.rubrik.com/ • Slack: https://www.slack.com/ • Travis May: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stmay/ – Where to find Anneka Gupta: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annekagupta/ • Twitter/X: https://x.com/annekagupta – Where to find Brett Berson: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson – Where to find First Round Capital: • Website: https://firstround.com/ • First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital • This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast – Timestamps: [00:00:00] Introduction [00:02:11] Inside LiveRamp’s unique growth journey [00:12:18] Anneka’s first PM role [00:14:20] Leading LiveRamp’s marketing function [00:16:17] Why the best product doesn’t win [00:21:06] Crafting products for different personas [00:24:53] Transitioning Acxiom’s customers to LiveRamp [00:33:54] Why Acxiom chose to buy not build [00:36:40] Anneka's leap to GM and product leader [00:38:22] How 17 diverse roles shaped Anneka’s CPO approach [00:40:54] The hidden career growth hack [00:43:15] Where domain experience is overrated [00:50:33] Mastering the art of altitude shifting [00:53:54] PMs should undergo the same training as sales reps [00:59:37] Strategies for selling to new personas [01:02:40] Lessons from Anneka’s mistake at LiveRamp [01:07:56] Who had an outsized impact on Anneka