# Operating record


I build growth engines for companies operating where there's no playbook
      to copy.


Here's my track record so far.

Feb 2026–present

## Getting back in the trenches

In February 2026 I left a large org at Kraken to build growth from scratch at Breakout, a crypto prop-trading company in the same group. I wanted my hands back on the build, and a system I could own end to end, using everything I'd learned running growth at scale. At Breakout I'm building a fully agent-driven growth org in crypto prop trading, where agents do the work a growth org used to throw people at. I'll show the numbers when they're real. For now, the architecture is the proof.

Role: Chief Growth Officer / Company: Breakout (a Payward Company)

![Breakout](https://mhb.xyz/assets/breakout.273be9524cb6.webp)part of![Payward](https://mhb.xyz/assets/payward.7ef61892b5a3.svg)

![A chain of Jacquard loom punched cards draped in a curve](https://mhb.xyz/assets/tile-breakout.c3b53e22e321.png)

2023–2026

## Crypto at scale, and current

Then I went where the playbooks run out. I took over growth at Kraken, running a sixty-plus person org and a budget north of $250 million in the most volatile, heavily regulated market there is. Running growth in crypto is not running growth in SaaS with a different logo. The ground moves under you: regulation, market cycles, trust, all of it shifting faster than any plan survives. I've operated through that, at scale, and I'm still in it while a lot of people who were in crypto have quietly left.

Role: VP, Growth / Company: Kraken (a Payward Company)

![Kraken](https://mhb.xyz/assets/kraken.27c810011d28.svg)part of![Payward](https://mhb.xyz/assets/payward.7ef61892b5a3.svg)

![A rai stone, the carved stone money of Yap, standing upright](https://mhb.xyz/assets/tile-kraken.cf0f6bb0b886.png)

2017–2023

## Founder mode

The interesting part started when I stopped only running other people's growth and built something of my own. I co-founded Traffic Think Tank in 2017, a paid community for marketers, before the subscription-community model was something you could point at and copy. We grew it to around a million in recurring revenue inside a couple of years and sold it to Semrush in 2023. I've owned the outcome, not just the function, and that changes how you operate inside someone else's company. You stop thinking like a hire.

Role: Founder / Company: Traffic Think Tank (acquired by Semrush)

![Traffic Think Tank, a Semrush company](https://mhb.xyz/assets/ttt.ff53eaddbd22.svg)

![A telephone switchboard with patch cords plugged between its jacks](https://mhb.xyz/assets/tile-ttt.5d95fb4070fd.png)

2015–2022

## The playbook others copied

Before crypto, I spent seven years at HubSpot as VP Marketing. I joined in 2015 to build SEO and freemium acquisition, and by the end I was running a ninety-person global org across acquisition, customer education and community, while the company grew from around $1 billion to $40 billion in market cap. Monthly signups went from near zero to hundreds of thousands. The organic growth engine that team built has become the playbook for growth at scale, and plenty of companies well outside SaaS have copied it since. I was the one driving that team.

Role: VP, Marketing / Company: HubSpot

![HubSpot](https://mhb.xyz/assets/hubspot.883ba903494b.svg)

![A mill waterwheel turned by a running current](https://mhb.xyz/assets/tile-hubspot.40bea1412537.png)

Source: [https://mhb.xyz/operating-record/](https://mhb.xyz/operating-record/)