I’m excited to share the winners for the third annual Pioneer Awards in eleven categories—Pioneer of the Year, Activation Accelerator, Data Culture, Marketing Insight, Product Innovation, Product-Led, Retention Driver, Revenue Monster, Datamonster of the Year, chAMP of the Year and Aha Moment of the year. These Amplitude users’ nominations were rated exceptionally highly by our panel of expert judges, including Amplitude CMO Tifenn Dano Kwan, Global VP of Customer Success Jenna Elliott, VP of Product Somer Simpson, Field CTO Blaise Pangalos, Director of Digital Strategy at Slalom Heather Roth, and previous Pioneer of the Year recipient Patrick Gordon, Head of Growth at JUMBO Interactive.
This year’s visionary data-seekers implement strategic actions based on data and span marketing, data, product development, engineering, and analytics. They harnessed Amplitude's power to enhance customer well-being, from refining existing offerings to introducing groundbreaking solutions, and exemplify innovation by optimizing efficiency and gaining profound customer insights. The Pioneer Award winners stand out for their transformative achievements, fearlessly taking risks, inspiring colleagues, and building impactful products, showcasing a progressive approach that makes them winners in their respective fields.
We are thrilled to announce the following 16 winners for the 2023 Pioneer Awards.
WINNERS
Pioneer of the Year
Dan Grainger at Haven
Dan led the charge to find innovative approaches to data analytics within the travel industry. His skillful integration of cutting-edge technology with creative problem-solving consistently yields revolutionary insights and solutions. Dan's impressive history of leading projects that yield tangible results, coupled with his unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of analytics, distinguishes him as a true pioneer in the field.
Loren Lam at SafetyCulture
As SafetyCulture's Group Product Manager, Loren oversees various teams. Facing economic challenges, SafetyCulture shifted towards commercial discipline, grounding its strategies in a nuanced understanding of the work landscape. Loren spearheaded initiatives to enhance company-wide commercial awareness, steering her team towards data and value-driven decision-making across all functions for a more resilient approach to operations.
Shin Okubo at LIFULL HOME'S
Dedicated to improving user experiences and driving business growth, Shin’s ultimate goal at LIFULL was to accelerate their experimentation speeds and elevate their decision-making processes through deeper insights. By implementing Amplitude, the team reduced data analysis time, leading to fast-tracking experiment speeds and increased conversion lifts. This improvement swiftly permeated through nearly 200 team members, proving the success of their approach. The remarkable output from their data-centric transformation has significantly improved the business and their team culture.
Activation Accelerator Award
Anastasia Kusmartseva at Appfire
While defining activation journeys for their top products, the team built out customer journeys within Amplitude and use the data to increase activation rates in those products. By implementing a PLG strategy, Anastasia and her team have seen enormous activation growth from where they started to where they are today.
Data Culture Award
Daniela Medina at Mercado Libre
Daniela is dedicated to instilling a data-driven culture within her organization, consistently emphasizing the significance of data in decision-making. She prioritizes equipping team members with essential data literacy skills and fostering continuous learning, and leads the charge in finding improvements that positively impact the organization's overall performance. Notably, Daniela has successfully transformed her organization's culture, embedding data as a fundamental aspect of decision-making at all levels. She further contributes to the industry by actively sharing knowledge and best practices, promoting the growth and understanding of the broader data community.
Josh Chan at Culture Amp
Founded in 2009, Culture Amp's mission is to create a better world of work. Similar to many fast-growing B2B businesses, it's easy to get lost in short-term revenue goals or become recency-biased by customer feedback, but with Josh’s help, Culture Amp leaped forward by pioneering the company-wide north star metric, Weekly Culture Creators, which anchored the organization on its vision and mission with a single quantitative measure of success.
Marketing Insight Award
Candas Demir at Ticketswap
Candas and the performance marketing team at TicketSwap have redefined the power of data-driven insights in a globally active marketplace. With a massive user base of 10 million, the challenge wasn't just about tapping into data but doing so with precision and purpose. Through an integrated approach to insights and action, targeted marketing at scale, and a commitment to optimal performance, Candas has integrated Amplitude into the very fabric of his organization and marketing operations, ensuring every decision is informed, deliberate, and geared toward customer satisfaction.
Product Innovation Award
Novita Olivera at Tiket.com
Novita’s team focused on an initiative that centered around implementing a standardized operating procedure, AMEX (Amplitude Experimentation), to optimize experimentation and analytics using Amplitude. With Amplitude, her team was able to track user behavior, conduct experiments, and derive insights for enhanced user experience and product offerings. The challenges stemmed from prior inconsistent practices among product managers and the data team, leading to varied methodologies and interpretations. By standardizing the process, streamlining procedures, and promoting data consistency, Tiket made more data-informed decisions, foster collaboration between teams, and improve the product development process with faster responses to user feedback and more user-centric, data-informed offerings.
Zsanna Vantulek at IBM
Zsanna’s team recognized her exceptional passion and talent for designing and structuring complex information. Upon delving into the product interface, she identified the absence of structured data on user interactions. Although initially advocating for a dedicated data analyst, which wasn't feasible within current business constraints, Zsanna took it upon herself to learn Amplitude, reaching out to IBM Cloud for guidance on instrumentation and data visualization. Today, thanks to her efforts, all of the VMware product offerings on Cloud feature comprehensive instrumentation, measuring crucial metrics like Time on Task and Conversion Rate, achieved alongside her primary role as a designer.
Product-Led Award
Abid Ali at Pictory
Abid's vision was clear from the outset: to simplify the complex domain of video creation using AI and frictionless UX, and he achieved it brilliantly with Pictory. He championed a data-driven culture, ensuring that Pictory's strides in the market were not just about growth, but smart, sustainable growth. This ethos reduced churn rates, fostered innovative collaborations, and consistently enhanced product offerings. His strategic partnership with Amplitude further underscores his commitment to informed decision-making. Using its insights, Abid has deftly steered Pictory, refining user experiences and optimizing product functionalities.
Retention Driver Award
Becky Nobach at Lindywell
As an operation lead, Becky’s immediate business goals were to improve first-month retention, identify programs they wanted to continue to invest in, evolve, or stop to drive membership retention and identify any gaps in the customer experience lifecycle. Using Amplitude, Becky’s team quickly learned how important the first 48 hours of the new member sign-up process were and were able to enhance the experience to drive significant growth in acquiring and maintaining retention growth over the next several months.
Revenue Monster Award
Jake Heller at Rocket Money
Earlier this year, Jake transitioned into a new role, as the product manager leading Rocket Money's Monetization Squad. Since then, he's continually running monetization-focused experiments that drive meaningful results. He's found opportunities that others have overlooked, and with this ability to uncover formerly hidden opportunities, he has unlocked over several million dollars a year in unrealized revenue.
Datamonster of the Year Award
Artus des Robert at WeMoms, and John Scallon at Zaxby’s
Named in honor of Amplitude’s mascot “The Datamonster,” these honorees are the Amplitude power users who have continuously created and shared the highest number of insights through Broadcasted Learnings over the past year.
A Broadcasted Learning is a chart, dashboard, or Notebook created by an Amplitude user and then consumed by multiple team members within a seven-day period. Broadcasted learnings are an example of a North Star metric for the Amplitude team. We’re thrilled when our customers find and share insights that help their team learn and take action.
chAMP of the Year Award
Alexander Statnikov at Square
Over this past year, Alexander’s dedication, passion, and hard work have not only propelled him and his team to new heights but have also significantly elevated the reputation and success of Amplitude. His commitment to excellence and ability to effectively communicate the values and mission of Amplitude have solidified him as a champion who understands and shares the value digital analytics can bring to one’s organization.
Aha Moment of the Year Award
Cliff Kim at Fender
Providing their Fender Play®app for free for 90 days was a huge hit during the pandemic, but users weren’t converting. Using a Funnel Analysis chart, the Fender team uncovered where customers experienced friction, like being prompted to go to a redundant page as they were making a sale. Adjusting this flow boosted overall conversions by 27%—equating to a more streamlined, effective journey and thus a pleased consumer and a substantial increase in sales.
Please join us in celebrating these amazing Amplitude Pioneer Award winners, and stay tuned for more on their amazing stories!
