Mada Seghete - Deep Linking, Mobile Marketing #111
Mada leads market development and culture initiatives at Branch and is also one of its co-founders. Branch specializes in deep linking for mobile applications. Mada was born and raised in Romania and she came came to the US to study Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. She later earned her Masters of Engineering and MBA from Stanford.
Mada enjoys playing the latest viral mobile game, binge-watching the hottest sci-fi show, and photographing Branch events. Mada regularly speaks about mobile growth at top tech events like Web Summit and SaaStr, and was included in Linkedin’s Next Wave: 150 top professionals in 15 industries all under 35.
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A note from Grant
Mada Seghete is originally from Romania. She did her undergrad in computer engineering and computer science at Cornell University before launching her career as a software engineer at Siemens Medical Solutions.
After her time at Siemens, Mada returned to school, this time at Stanford to get her master’s in Management Science and Engineering as well as her MBA. From that base of engineering, Mada Seghete pivoted into consulting, business development and product management for the likes of Deloitte and Yola.com. She then ventured out on her own to co-found Kindred Prints.
These days, Mada is the co-founder and head of marketing at Branch, a company powering mobile deep linking for the likes of Pinterest, Slack, Ticketmaster and Tinder. In addition to that, Mada is a regular public speaker on growth hacking and mobile, including via her own podcast “How I grew this”.
Stay tuned as we hear how Mada Seghete growth hacked her way from software engineering to co-founding a company that’s raised over $50 million in venture capital.
-Grant Ingersoll
Quotes
“I was dating a guy who said ‘you shouldn’t do electrical engineering because its the hardest’. So I had this chip on my shoulder and I was like ‘I’m going to do it just to prove to you that that I can do it’. That’s probably not the reason most people get into their major, but that’s how I turned out doing electrical engineering and concentrating in computer architecture.”
“So I had this professor at Stanford and I was helping him teach a small class and part of the design school. We were helping all the startups. We had a project with Mozilla. I remember telling him ’this is so fun, I love all these people starting companies but I don’t think I have it in me to start my own company’. He stopped and put everything on the floor and said ‘Mada, if you don’t start companies, who do you think will?’ And that was a moment that my work changed. At that point in time I was like ‘Yeah, maybe I could start a company’.”
“Mobile was not a free environment. It was owned by big platforms where their main goal is to make money and to keep people on their platform. So they did not come together and decide on a linking standard of how to take people inside apps. Apple and Google have very different linking standards and apps can be built in different ways.”
—Mada Seghete
Key Milestones
- What inspired Mada to get a masters in management science after studying electrical and software engineering in undergrad?
- After Mada got hert master’s at Stanford, how did she approach re-entering the workforce at Deloitte as a business analyst?
- What led Mada into business development and product management?
- Mada started two companies: Kindred Prints and now Branch. What are the founding stories?
- How does deep linking work? And why is it important?
- What is deep linking for mobile? And how is Branch innovating in this space?
Additional Resources
Learn more about Branch - https://branch.io/
What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture (book) - by Ben Horowtich
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups (book) - by Daniel Coyle
