Mulenga Agley is on a mission to grow unicorns. As founder and CEO of growth marketing agency Growthcurve, Mulenga and his team employ the latest marketing techniques to help VC-backed startups grow exponentially.
After nearly a decade in the world’s leading global advertising agencies – including AKQA, Wunderman, Isobar and FCB and working with clients like BMW, Coca Cola, eBay and NatWest – Mulenga followed his passion for fast-growth tech and joined the founding team of Monese, the first ever fully mobile current account. As VP Marketing & Growth, he grew the business from scratch, successfully exiting after a $60M series B fundraise, selling his shares to PayPal.
While at Monese, he won a host of accolades including Visa Europe’s Financial Inclusion Programme of the Year and was named as one of Business Insider’s Top 40 Coolest People in UK Fintech.
He launched Growthcurve in 2017 combining the latest in web, mobile and marketing technologies with high impact creative and growth strategies designed for the digital age and his firsthand knowledge of building and growing successful businesses. Growthcurve grows unicorns and helps global clients tap into a start-up growth mindset.
To learn more, we caught up with Mulenga this week to discuss his incredible creative journey.
Tell us a bit about your role! Is there a “typical” day?
I usually start my day by checking in on the various growth streams we’re running for our clients, around the world. We have a set of live dashboards for each client refreshing hourly so it’s a great way to get a quick snapshot of the impact we’re having, and spot if anything needs adjustment.
I then spend a fixed amount of time doing the rounds on each of our client accounts, catching up with the team leads and then personally with our clients to make sure we stay aligned with the overarching growth strategy that we’ve mapped out.
Once that’s out of the way I’ll start working through my priority lists which are broken down by ‘business’ (tasks related to running the business end of Growthcurve and ensuring we keep growing), ‘client strategy’ (directly leading strategy on some of our larger client accounts), ‘capability’ (getting hands on with advanced growth marketing tasks to ensure I’m always one step ahead - so I can lead effectively and give confident advice on what’s possible with the latest tools, techniques and technology).
What was the biggest challenge in getting to your current position?
I was recruited into an American owned ad agency straight out of University where I’d studied a BA Hons in 3D Animation and Visual FX, a degree which sits at the intersection of creativity and technology. The biggest challenge I had starting out was that I needed to learn the discipline of marketing and advertising on the job from scratch.
The agency recognised at the time (2008 / 2009) that digital was going to heavily disrupt the marketing industry and brought me in as the first pure-play digital graduate specifically to benefit from my expertise in new-media and technology, as a result they were happy to invest in giving me top-class intensive training and education so I could quickly gain my professional qualifications in marketing and advertising.
I gained my diploma in integrated marketing communications at the very start of my career and was then thrust into live briefs for brands across industries. 15 years (and a lot of experience) later I’m still in the industry and loving it more than ever.
What is your personal background and what role did it play in your career?
I’m a South London boy. It gives me my edge. The challenges I faced growing up will always be harder than anything I’ll face in my marketing career. That perspective allows me to stay very upbeat in my work.
What is your biggest career-related win? What is your biggest loss?
Biggest win is being able to start my own agency with zero external funding as a solo minority founder. Even better that it’s profitable and still going six years later!
Biggest loss was the first competitive pitch Growthcurve lost. As a new agency, momentum is so crucial. For your self-belief, your team morale and client perception of you. A large US enterprise included us in their pitch roster and we were super excited to even be selected to compete.
We gave it our all and put forward what I was certain would be the best way to achieve the client's goals based on all of my technical expertise and years of experience. When we lost to another team I felt crushed. 1 - because I knew how hard the team had worked on the pitch and 2. because I knew that we would have absolutely smashed the client’s targets.
Anyway, it wasn’t meant to be, and we buckled down and went back to work doing what we do best. What followed was a series of smaller successive wins which really built the team spirit and got us enough steam to then win an even larger account later that year.
Which individuals and/or agencies do you gain inspiration from? Do you have any heroes in the industry?
There are several people who opened doors for me in the advertising industry and shared everything they knew so that I could be where I am today. Emma Seal, who was Operations Director at Draftfcb, gave me my first job and taught me management; Andy Dunbar who brought me into both Wunderman and AKQA (and got me obsessed with Excel formulas, scripting and automation); Jasel Mehta who was a true inspiration to me as a leader and trusted me to take a whole team from the UK to Japan to grow a huge client account and Marcus Exall who single handedly guided me into the world of startups.
Then other industry heroes include Ajaz Ahmed and James Hilton for what they achieved with AKQA, Rob Pierre for what he’s achieved with JellyFish and Daniel Gilbert for what he’s achieved with Brain Labs. Big inspirations to me and such a great example of what digital growth focused agencies can become.
If you could go back to your teenage years, would you have done things differently? Do you have any regrets?
Oh, we’re going deep. Is this Diary of a CEO? My only regret is that although I had taught myself to code by the time I was 16 and was very creative,I didn’t know much about business or marketing beyond my own natural entrepreneurial spirit. I wish I’d had a business mentor from a younger age and had started sooner.
Nowadays it’s possible to develop your own campaigns end to end from your laptop and reach millions of people. I’m passionate about being the mentor I never had and helping more people from a similar background to myself break into the marketing and advertising industry or start businesses.
If you weren’t in your current industry, what would you be doing?
Probably making films. I got a first-class honours degree in 3D animation and visual effects. Maybe Pixar would have me!
What’s your one big dream for the future of the industry?
That we remember to stay human. The incredible advancements we’re seeing in technology are not going to slow down, so it’s important that we still place value on creative work that brings people together and celebrates real world contact between us all.
What are your top tips for aspiring creative professionals?
Put more work out. However small. Growth starts when you share your creations with the world and learn from the response.
What are your top tips for other creative leaders?
Don’t compromise on your team or your vision. Creative work is the best when it’s the vision of an individual brought to life by an incredible team.
When you think about your team, what is the thing that matters to you the most?
Lateral thinking. Teams with multiple people that think in this way learn from each other and problem solve at such an accelerated pace that they are very hard to beat.
Do you have any websites, books or resources you would recommend?
Stash Media for exceptional campaign creative - stashmedia.tv
Underconsideration’s ‘Brand New’ for world leading brand projects https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/
The world’s knowledge really is on Reddit. Become a power user.
HackerNews if you want to know what’s happening in tech: https://news.ycombinator.com/news
ProductHunt for weird and wonderful digital product
https://www.producthunt.com/
