Schedule for MobileBeat underscores the growing importance of mobile-first growth hacking

Whether your company is in gaming, commerce, publishing, or services, how to grow your mobile user base quickly and well is of vital concern. In 2015 there will be 2 billion smartphones worldwide with users spending on average 3 hours per day on them (more than on TV!), and the number of ways to reach these users is expanding exponentially.

What are the winning strategies for reaching mobile users, and what works best if you’re short on time? On both days of the MobileBeat 2015 conference, speakers will help to unearth Silicon Valley’s latest tricks for operating at the so-called “middle of the funnel.”

On July 13, panelists from fashion marketplace Poshmark, mobile communication services developer TrueCaller, and virtual keyboard maker SwiftKey will conduct a breakout session titled “Welcome to mobile-first growth hacking.” For an hour, these practitioners will address such questions as:

• How do you grow mobile users through massive install campaigns?
• What omnichannel strategies work with limited resources?
• How do you track ROI across vendors and campaigns?
• What parts of the marketing cloud do you really need?

But the topic of mobile-first growth hacking is so important that MobileBeat will carry the discussion over to the next afternoon, July 14, at a pair of fireside chats to examine how the techniques work for financial services company Visa, free-to-play online MMO game developer Machine Zone, and social media powerhouse Twitter.

Are you on the bleeding edge of acquiring and engaging mobile users? If you aren’t sure, you probably aren’t. But you can learn how to reach that edge with the help of the thought leaders at MobileBeat 2015.

Manish Chandra, CEO and Founder, Poshmark

Manish Chandra is the founder and CEO of Poshmark, the largest community fashion marketplace where any woman can buy, sell, and share her personal style directly from her phone. Chandra has always been passionate about building communities and founded the first social shopping company, Kaboodle, which was acquired by Hearst Corporation in 2007. With Poshmark, Chandra has applied his understanding of technology to change the way women think about shopping, and bring together a vibrant community of women everyday to express themselves and share their love of fashion. Manish received a BTech from IIT Kanpur, MS from UT Austin, and an MBA from Haas School of Business.

Tom Hsieh, VP of Growth and Partnerships, Truecaller

Tom Hsieh is Vice President of Growth and Partnerships for Truecaller, a search technology company that is transforming and re-imagining the mobile communications experience through callerID, spam blocking, and people search services. From Truecaller’s San Francisco office, Hsieh oversees Truecaller’s operations and growth partnerships in the U.S. Prior to Truecaller, he served as Head of Strategic Partnerships at Dropbox, where he led the business development group that spearheaded the integration between the Microsoft Office Suite and Dropbox mobile and web apps. He also led partnership teams at companies such as Google, Zynga, and Spotify. Hsieh received degrees from Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard College.

Joe Braidwood, Chief Marketing Officer, SwiftKey

Joe Braidwood is Chief Marketing Officer for SwiftKey. Based in San Francisco, Braidwood leads a growing marketing team of 15 on strategy and promotion of the company’s chart-topping predictive keyboard applications for Android and iOS. Under his leadership, SwiftKey has grown to reach more than 200 million devices worldwide, and the company has accumulated a long list of industry awards including a Webbys People’s Choice, Mobile World Congress’ Most Innovative App, and a CTIA E-Tech Award. Prior to SwiftKey, Braidwood worked as a journalist for News Corporation and Sky News in London, where he was a key driver behind a variety of technology and social media-based strategies. Joe holds master’s degrees from both the University of Cambridge and Brown University.

Shiv Singh, SVP Global Head of Digital & Marketing Transformation, Visa

Shiv Singh has worked in executive level positions on the agency side and at Fortune 50 companies over 17 years and across three industries. He has experience in brand strategy, product positioning, integrated marketing campaigns, digital product development, media planning, and marketing innovation. He has been recognized by Ad Age as a Media Maven and by Adweek as a Top 50 Marketer (no. 19). The award-winning and results-producing work done by Singh and his teams includes the definition and launch of multi-stakeholder Visa brand platform and communications model, the re-imagining of card innovation for major Visa clients, and evolving the Pepsi brand for the digital era, making it a media brand through the creation of a global media network. Singh is also author of the book Social Media Marketing for Dummies and sits on the DMG World Media Board of Governors to advise early-stage startups.

Deepak Gupta, Chief Revenue Officer, Machine Zone

Deepak Gupta first came to technology-focused mobile gaming company Machine Zone in 2011 after stints at casual MMO game company Outspark and the online gaming division of Electronic Arts. At Machine Zone, he is responsible for marketing, engagement, retention, monetization, and business intelligence and analytics. He founded Hovr, a mobile social gaming service that provides free ad-supported mobile games, in 2005, after a career as an investment banking analyst. Gupta earned a BA in Economics & Mathematics from the University of Rochester.

Janae McDonough, Senior Director of MoPub, Twitter

At Twitter, Janae McDonough (aka @JanaeR64) is responsible for MoPub, the world’s largest mobile ad server and real-time bidding platform. She joined MoPub in 2012 prior to its acquisition by Twitter, and led the growth of the exchange team. Previously, McDonough led sales strategy for Google’s mobile publisher products as part of the AdMeld team. Before moving into the advertising technology space, McDonough was in corporate sales at Time Inc., where she was responsible for agency and advertiser partnerships in the Northeast and Midwest. Janae earned a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of Rhode Island.