Mikel Ayala
Growth Strategy, BizDev, Product Marketing & Analytics | Crypto, Web3, FinTech | Operator and Advisor
Couldn’t recommend Mikel enough. In our first session together he gave tremendous value, pulling from his industry experience and knowledge - and offering actionable advice on the best next steps. Not only that, he is a super genuine person and a great listener - 6 out of 5 stars on all fronts. If you’re looking for someone with serious growth marketing chops - Mikel is your guy. Look forward to connecting again :)
The mentorship session with Mikel was a perfect blend of mental frameworks, real-life examples, and practical templates around planning for a product launch. He also displayed professionalism by being prepared with pre-session research and showed pure passion for the topics discussed. I'd recommend Mikel, especially if you are doing early stage product launches and need the building blocks set up.
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A single meeting provided an outstanding amount of value, information, and guidance that has helped us progress towards our next goal significantly faster than we would have alone. I would highly recommend this mentor!
Bio
Hi, I'm Mikel. I'm Regional Lead for Europe at Backpack, a global crypto exchange and wallet. I am responsible for go-to-market and business growth in the region. Previously I was the Chief Growth Officer at Atani, a regulated crypto broker in the EU. At Atani I set up the distribution from scratch and successfully scaled it from 0 to hundreds of thousands of users and multi-billion trading volume in just 18 months, being able to raise $+10mn in venture capital. In addition to leading distribution efforts, I supported company-wide decision making, fundraising and led the execution of strategic initiatives. Earlier, I was Chief Marketing & Data Officer at The Cocktail, an international growth studio with 500+ employees and hubs across Europe and Latin America. In addition to leading the Marketing & Data Practices (~100 talented human beings) and being a member of the Executive Committee, I owned multi-million business relationships (+5mn USD annual revenue, +110%YoY growth), provided strategic advice and supported the transformation of leading Financial Institutions and FinTechs. I started my career at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where I advised global financial institutions on their most critical strategic, commercial and operational challenges. At BCG, I was selected to join BCG Digital Ventures (Los Angeles, USA) to work on FinTech business building. I have a strong background both as executive, operator and as advisor, in a wide variety of contexts ranging from large global corporations to early stage start-ups, and in a mix of growth and turnaround situations. I love getting deep into "discovery mode", scaling processes from scratch, assembling top-performing international & remote teams, building real stuff, making it work and delivering tangible results. In addition to that, I enjoy teaching and sharing my experience with others. I am currently a Visiting Professor of FinTech & Crypto at the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium), a postgraduate school of public policy and the leading institution for European Affairs. Previously, I was a Lead Mentor for MBA students at the Business Impact Lab of IE Business School (Madrid, Spain). 14+ years mixing Finance and Tech across Europe, Latin America and the USA. 10+ years hiring, building and leading global remote teams of tens to hundreds of contributors. 8+ years driving business growth and delivering P&L results in executive leadership positions. 8+ years lecturing on strategy, finance & tech at international postgraduate universities.
Expertise
Building a team
Broad experience hiring, building and leading international & remote teams of tens to hundreds of contributors. Expert in both setting up brand new teams from scratch and taking over and revamping large established ones, developing new leaders, assembling large cross-functional teams (business strategy, operations, data & analytics, marketing, sales, product, design, engineering) and enabling them to drive growth and systematically over-achieve business KPIs.
Go to market strategy
Hands-on experience conducting market discovery, prioritizing and experimenting across channels (BizDev & Partnerships, Affiliate Marketing, Community Marketing, CPC, Content, PR & Events, CRM and Marketing Automation), crafting the go-to-market strategy, building the team, operations & tech infrastructure from scratch and successfully scaling distribution for a global startup.
Growth marketing
Hands-on practical experience setting up an experimentation machine from scratch to identify, test, validate the traction and scale sustainable B2C growth engines. Built the team, framework, process and tools from scratch to execute +25 growth experiments per year (with countless variants per experiment).
Product analytics
Deep expertise in building the product intelligence foundation and managing the end-to-end data analytics cycle. From defining the analytics strategy, to detailing the tracking and event taxonomy, choosing and deploying the right quantitative and qualitative analytics tools, automating data analysis, visualization & activation and implementing advanced machine learning models.
Product launches
Vast experience coordinating both new product and new feature launches across multiple channels (in BizDev & Partnerships, Affiliate Marketing, Community Marketing, CPC, Content, PR & Events, CRM and Marketing Automation) and employing different tactics. Built a beta-testing community, product launch methodology and product-growth workflows and operational processes from scratch, to support 20+ new product launches per year.
Sales
Built multi-million business relationships (+5mn annual revenue) with leading global Financial Institutions. Setup from scratch the Business Development & Partnerships team of an early-stage crypto startup: from 0 to 15+ team members in 12 months, built a network of 400+ KOLs, 100+ Market Makers, OTC Desks and Hedge Funds, and developed partnerships with top-tier exchanges and blockchain ecosystems.
Toolkit
Amplitude
7 years of experienceI am a Certified Insights & Analytics Expert in Amplitude. I have hands-on experience setting up Amplitude from scratch across multiple platforms (Web, Mobile, Desktop), and automating data analysis and activation (personalized event-based marketing)
Google Analytics
9 years of experienceExperience managing the end-to-end lifecycle of Google Analytics (web instrumentation with Tag Manager, data analysis and reporting with Analytics, Data Studio).
Google Tag Manager
7 years of experienceExperience managing the end-to-end lifecycle of Google Analytics (web instrumentation with Tag Manager, data analysis and reporting with Analytics, Data Studio).
Hubspot
7 years of experienceLeveraged HubSpot Sales Cloud to setup an international and remote Business Development team from scratch, define workflows, implement operational procedures and manage team performance.
Salesforce
12 years of experienceHands-on experience in the implementation of SFDC Sales Cloud and change management in a 500+ employee scale-up. Led a global project to implement SFDC Service Cloud and transform the service processes of an international corporate bank in 10+ countries.
Segment
7 years of experienceI am a Certified Analytics Expert & Certified Implementation Expert in Segment. I have hands-on experience setting up data strategies, detailing tracking plans and event taxonomies and planning integrations for personalized marketing automation.
Industries
Management Consulting
10+ years in consulting, digital, growth and venture studios. Owned multi-million business relationships and provided strategic advice to leading Banks and FinTechs. Also, led Marketing & Data practices (~100 team) and was ExCo member at a digital consultancy scaling from 250 to 500+ employees, hubs across Europe & LatAm and part of WPP (world’s largest marketing company). Expert in business scaling: go-to-market, offer definition, practice building, talent management & operating model design.
Cryptocurrency
4+ years working full time in Crypto. I lead the European business at Backpack, a global exchange & wallet, and previously led distribution for Atani, a crypto broker. I have led relationships with exchanges (Binance, Coinbase, OKX, etc.), market makers, institutional investors and traders. Also, I am an advisor to Web3 startups and protocols, an Ambassador of Solana, and a Visiting Professor of Crypto at College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium), the leading institution for European public policy.
Marketing
6+ years as a CGO/CMO. Set up from scratch the distribution for a B2C early-stage startup. Before, served a scale-up team of ~100 talented human beings working across B2C Acquisition (Search, Social, Display, Programmatic), Engagement (Lifecycle Management, Personalization, Marketing Automation), Brand & Creative, AdTech & MarTech, Analytics, Data Science & Customer Experience Optimization. Expert in driving growth: go-to-market, analytics, experimentation, team building, new product launches.
FinTech
10+ years of experience working on FinTech, with 4+ years in executive leadership roles at global startups and scaleups. Earlier, built and launched multiple FinTech & Digital Banking value propositions for a Top 5 European Bank (Open & Embedded Finance, P2P Payments or E-commerce Lending), and worked on FinTech business building with BCG Digital Ventures (USA). Also, Visiting Professor of FinTech at the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium), the leading institution for European public policy.