Scaling impact through process design and entrepreneurial thinking
I joined Frequence.com as the first female executive on a team of 20 passionate about democratizing advertising for small and local businesses. What started in a house in Mountain View became a journey to Broadway in NYC—watching our scrappy startup grow from $2M in annual revenue to a company acquired by Goldman Sachs with a staggering 69,900% increase in valuation.
Over more than a decade, I worked across every function of the company—from creative operations to engineering partnerships to people operations. My role evolved from optimizing individual team workflows to architecting company-wide systems that scaled our impact. I didn't just build processes; I built the infrastructure that allowed talented people to do their best work while maintaining the scrappy, innovative culture that made us special.
How do you scale a startup while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit that made it successful? In Silicon Valley's job-hopping culture where the average tenure is under two years, we needed to build systems that enabled rapid growth without sacrificing quality or burning out our team. Meanwhile, our creative team was spending 4 hours per ad design, our sales partnerships lacked data-driven tools, and we risked losing our culture to the pressures of hypergrowth and eventual acquisition.
Cross-Functional Systems Thinking: I worked with the CEO, engineering, client success, and creative teams to identify bottlenecks and design solutions that served multiple stakeholders. Rather than optimizing individual departments, I looked for leverage points where one change could create ripple effects across the organization.
Creative Workflow Redesign: I detailed a new workflow for the creative team that reduced ad design time from 4 hours to 1.5 hours—not by cutting corners, but by eliminating redundancies, creating reusable templates, and streamlining approval processes. This freed up our designers to focus on creative excellence rather than administrative tasks.
Data-Driven Partnership Tools: Working with engineering and client success, I helped construct the first "smart" dynamically data-driven proposal system. This tool pulled real-time performance data and market insights, allowing our partners to create sophisticated advertising pitches in hours instead of days. It transformed how we demonstrated value to potential clients.
Culture as Infrastructure: I collaborated with the people team to establish a culture where people wanted to stay—becoming "lifers" in an industry where two-year tenures are the norm. This wasn't about perks; it was about creating meaningful work, clear growth paths, and genuine community.
When we were acquired, I didn't just survive the merger—I thrived in it. I successfully integrated into the new organization while maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit that made our team valuable. Most significantly, I transformed my service-only team into a profit-centered operation, proving that our scrappy startup approach could scale within a larger corporate structure. This adaptability and business acumen demonstrated that I wasn't just an operator—I was a strategic thinker who could evolve with the company's needs.
The systems and processes I helped build became the foundation for sustainable growth. Our creative workflow innovations were adopted company-wide, our dynamic proposal system became a key differentiator in partnerships, and our culture of retention became legendary in Silicon Valley. The journey from a house in Mountain View to Broadway in NYC wasn't just about geography—it represented how thoughtful systems design and people-first culture could fuel exponential growth without sacrificing what made us special.
Scale requires infrastructure, but infrastructure doesn't have to kill culture. The best systems amplify human talent rather than constrain it. I learned that you can be both scrappy and systematic, entrepreneurial and process-driven.
Cross-functional work is where the magic happens. The most impactful innovations came from connecting dots across departments—seeing how a workflow change in creative could unlock new possibilities in sales, or how engineering infrastructure could transform client success.
Resourcefulness is a competitive advantage. Whether making commercials on shoestring budgets or transforming a service team into a profit center, I learned that constraints breed creativity. The scrappy startup mindset can and should scale with the company.