From SaaS consulting to magier: Gabriel's growth journey

Meet Gabriel, magier's Head of Growth.

His career started in marketing, but the path to where he is now was far from linear. With over 12 years of experience helping B2B software companies scale their customer base, a background in design & computer science, and a history of co-founding his own startups, Gabriel has seen the SaaS world from nearly every angle.

In this interview, he shares how he went from studying design to building growth systems, what drew him to magier, and the ONE thing he believes no amount of good marketing can fix.

Can you introduce yourself and share a bit about your journey before joining magier?

I'm Gabriel, and I work in marketing & growth. Before magier, I spent about 12 years consulting B2B software companies on how to grow their client base.

The way I think about growth is that it covers everything that increases the number of customers. Besides marketing, it includes sales, product optimization, offer design, analytics, and understanding the full user journey.

But my career didn't start in growth at all. I studied design originally. But I quickly realized that the purely visual side of things wasn't enough for me. I didn't feel connected to just working on pixels without seeing the broader impact. So I shifted into computer science.

The interesting part is that even before university, I had already founded my first company: a marketing agency. During my design studies, I built a platform that worked similarly to Fiverr. I eventually sold parts of the software we had developed and moved on to other ventures. Along the way, I co-founded additional companies, took on people management and CTO responsibilities, and kept building within the software space.

What made you realize SaaS was the space you wanted to focus on?

In my opinion, SaaS is by far the best business model out there, especially now with AI accelerating product development. But even before that, the appeal was always the same: it's iterative and it scales.

My first university had an entrepreneurship path where experienced founders would come in and share their lessons. I think that kind of environment is incredibly valuable. Compared to figuring everything out on your own, having access to people who've already been through it changes the trajectory completely. Those connections are what introduced me to the software world early on.

You've been teaching at Hamburg Media School for a while. How does that experience shape your thinking?

I've been a lecturer at the Hamburg Media School since 2020. It's primarily executive education where I teach business modeling and product strategy. The participants are people from large German media companies like RTL.

These companies need to diversify beyond their traditional business models, so they're exploring digital products and new revenue streams. My role is to help them connect those ambitions to viable business models. Through the HMS, I also picked up consulting clients from organizations like Meta, which gave me a broader perspective on how large companies approach growth.

What does a typical day look like for you as head of growth at magier?

My day always starts with the numbers. I check how our campaigns are performing, and then I shift into whatever mini-sprint I'm working on that week. That could be developing a new messaging angle for an offer, thinking about how people with a specific pain point would perceive it, and making sure the message is clear enough for them to resonate with it and take action.

From there, I work on more hands-on tasks: creating new ad creatives, sketching out landing page concepts, or setting up tracking and analytics infrastructure. Tracking is very important and having a technical background has been very helpful for that part of the work.

Beyond the daily routine, there's always a lot happening in parallel. Planning content, recording video sales letters, experimenting with new acquisition channels. The process is always the same at its core, though: gather data, connect it to what I'm doing, and optimize.

How do you stay informed and keep learning?

I subscribe to the Demand Curve newsletter. I also stay in close contact with a small group of growth practitioners who take a very experimental approach to their work. They test things on a large scale, e.g., running hundreds of ad variations for a single campaign or building assets programmatically.

That said, I'm cautious about following any one source too closely. There's a concept called cargo culting, where you try to replicate what someone else is doing without realizing that their context is completely different from yours. It might look like it should work, but it usually doesn't translate. I'd rather get inspired by something and adapt it than try to clone it directly.

For deeper reading, Substack is my go-to platform. And I think YouTube is one of the most underrated sources of knowledge for marketers. There's an incredible depth of content there that doesn't get enough credit.

This is your first in-house role. What made you choose magier?

It came down to the people. I thought it would be a good fit because of Sina and Max. Their approach to building the company felt thoughtful and interesting. After working independently for so long, I wanted to be part of a team and expand beyond what I could do on my own.

There was also a very specific moment that confirmed it for me. During an early conversation, the founders mentioned Tiny Capital, the venture fund by Andrew Wilkinson. His philosophy is to invest in profitable niche businesses and hold them for the long run, which is exactly the approach I take with my own ventures and investments. Not many people are familiar with his thinking. So when they brought it up and described their own approach in similar terms, it clicked.

How does working in-house compare to consulting?

There's definitely less flexibility. You have more processes to follow, more moving parts to keep track of, and sometimes you need to handle a lot of things on your own.

That said, you get a kind of depth and consistency that consulting doesn't offer in the same way. You really get to know the people you work with. During my consulting years, I built strong relationships with my clients because I would stay with them for extended periods. But that's still different from being embedded in a team and spending all week in the same environment.

Can you share a project or initiative you're particularly proud of?

One thing I'm really excited about is a new approach we've developed for evaluating lead quality. I built a system we call the "lead lab," and through it, we now have a dedicated signal called "qualified lead." It allows us to identify the high-potential contacts out of everyone who signs up through our newsletter, freebies, and other entry points.

The underlying challenge is a common one for growing companies. You end up with thousands of signups in your database, and most of them aren't immediately relevant. Without a system in place, it's very difficult to know when or how a person becomes a real opportunity. This engine solves that problem, and I'm proud of how it's coming together.

What's one lesson from SaaS growth that you think creative companies should take to heart?

As unglamorous as it sounds, everything ultimately comes back to the offer. If you're trying to sell something that nobody wants or understands, nothing else you do will compensate for that.

Besides that, I think it's important to understand how much the buying journey has changed. Ten years ago, it was fairly straightforward. You could run ads, place a form, collect a phone number, and call people to close the deal. That process is far more complex now. There are many more touchpoints and people take longer to decide. If your positioning isn't precise, you won't be able to stand out. To get your positioning right, you need to understand deeply who you're selling to, why they would care, and how they prefer to buy.

How would you describe the team culture at magier?

The team is small enough that everyone knows what the others are working on, and grown-up enough that nobody needs managing. What struck me early on is the bar people set for their own work. Nobody ships something they don't stand behind, and that isn't something anyone has to enforce.

It's also a place where things actually move. You get a goal and a lot of freedom in how you get there. Ideas get tested instead of sitting in approval loops for three weeks. At the same time the tone is relaxed. You can push back on someone's work without it turning personal.

When you're not working, what helps you unwind?

If I'm being honest, I'm pretty much always working. Between magier, my venture capital activities, and other projects, there's always something that needs attention.

But there’s one thing that pulls me away from the screen and that’s cooking. I cook a lot and take it seriously. My favorite thing to make is lasagna completely from scratch. I roll the noodles by hand, chop the meat myself, make the sauce from the beginning. I haven't quite gotten to the point of milling my own flour or milking a cow for the béchamel, but other than that, I do everything from zero!

I also make Mapo Tofu, and several friends from China have told me it's really good and genuinely authentic. That's probably the compliment I'm most proud of in the kitchen.

And now… last question! if your morning coffee gave you a superpower for the day, what would it be?

Being able to speak every language.

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