Where I Started: Shiva Manjunath Experiment Nation

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Where I Started is a new monthly mini-series by Experiment Nation and Ontrack Digital that explores how Experimenters got into the field.

Podcast Version

Transcript

Andra Baragan 0:20
Welcome to where I started the interview mini series in which we get behind the scenes and find out how some of today’s experimenters got into CRO. This should be a fun little project that started with Experiment Nation to give you a bit of a get a bit of a get away from all those test results. But also it can be a source of inspiration for those of you that want to get started in CRO and don’t really know which path to take. Let’s see today’s guest

Shiva 0:52
Hey there. So my name is Shiva Majumdar. I’m a senior strategist at Spiro, which is an experimentation agency. Effectively what we do is run experimentation programs. But we’re also in the work of building better experimentation programs, conducting research, etc. I live in the United States, specifically Austin, Texas. I’ve been in experimentation for seven years. But the reality is, is I’ve been experimenting with stuff in my life for 30 years, everything from my breakfast, which is now entirely optimized, specifically optimized for efficiency in nutrients, rather than taste, which people I’m sure will argue that I am fixating on the wrong KPIs. But it’s efficient, and it works, man. It’s optimized, I did it. I optimized other things. You know, like my life video games. My pour over coffee is just on point. So I just love experimenting with things. And that’s probably why like, pour over coffee more to be honest. You could experiment and try different variables from like, grind size to pour over time to heat temperature water, I should stop. What was my career path for experimentation? That’s an interesting one. For me. I started off as trying to become a doctor, after realizing that like, no offense to doctors is just boring to me. Like, I just don’t like it. I don’t I don’t really care about medicine that much again, doctors are doing their doctors and nurses. Anyone involved in the medical field doing God’s work. Love you guys appreciate you guys, but it’s just not for me. I can’t do it. I don’t like is just boring. out of college after four years of undergrad, basically studying physiology and neurobiology. I realized, man, fuck this. I’m out. I got to do something else. So I started working at a digital marketing agency. I really liked it. I really liked it. Specifically around testing and kind of user research user design. I like that user experience that was just stuff that was like this is really cool. So I think that’s where I kind of started getting a niche. And then I started learning more buffed up on my statistics buffed up on my user research buffed up on my coding, and then just started running experiments and start build and from there started building that experimentation programs are some big companies. That’s where I really like kind of grew into it. It’s like this perfect mix of psychology and probably that’s, that’s probably like 60 to 70% of what I love about experimentation is that psychology piece and just learning about people, aka test to learn. But, you know, I really like experimentation for psychology reasons, digital marketing, user experience and design. You get to be really creative with tests like that. Coding statistics, it’s just it felt like a mishmash and Frankenstein of just stuff that I really love doing. Felt like a perfect career path for me. And seven years later, I’m still doing it still loving it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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