Shifting Career Altitudes: Insights from a CPO’s Journey Leading in Nearly Every Function | Anneka Gupta (Rubrik, ex-LiveRamp)

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) Introduction (02:11) Inside LiveRamp’s unique growth journey (12:18) Anneka’s first PM role (14:20) Leading LiveRamp’s marketing function (16:17) Why the best product doesn’t win (21:06) Crafting products for different personas (24:53) Transitioning Acxiom’s customers to LiveRamp (33:54) Why Acxiom chose to buy not build (36:40) Anneka's leap to GM and product leader (38:22) How 17 diverse roles shaped Anneka’s CPO approach (40:54) The hidden career growth hack (43:15) Where domain experience is overrated (50:33) Mastering the art of altitude shifting (53:54) PMs should undergo the same training as sales reps (59:37) Strategies for selling to new personas (62:40) Lessons from Anneka’s mistake at LiveRamp (67:56) Who had an outsized impact on Anneka