Verified Expert Growth Marketing Agency: Right Side Up

Right Side Up is not your typical growth marketing agency. As a former entrepreneur and in-house growth marketer for startups like Eventbrite, founder Tyler Elliston says he created RSU as a way to help his former self. RSU recruits a collective of expert growth marketers and partners them with various companies, but unlike a traditional agency, RSU actively encourages growth teams to hire their top talent.

It may seem counterintuitive, but two and a half years later, with more than 250 marketers in their “growth collective”, and having helped 120+ companies, Tyler seems to be fulfilling his vision. Learn more about RSU’s unique approach to growth marketing for startups.

On what makes Right Side Up unique

“There are a number of lessons that I learned as an in-house marketer and a founder, that have become the underpinning for how we operate the business. Great performance comes from great marketers, not from companies or brands. It’s really about the person doing the work. So, our goal is to find the best marketers as they are today, instead of training junior talent, which is a common agency practice.”

Advice to startup founders

“A lot of what we consider growth marketing is simply scaling a one to one conversation with a prospective customer. So, if you can get a prospect in front of you and you can persuade them, how do you do that? How do you talk about it? That’s your positioning. What are you offering them?

That’s your value prop. I would recommend doing one on one conversations at a small scale before you try scaling it. Be in touch with your customer and then think about growth as automating what’s happening on a very small scale.”

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup growth marketing agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.

Interview with Right Side Up founder Tyler Elliston

Yvonne Leow: Tell me a little bit about how you got into growth and why you decided to start Right Side Up.

Tyler Elliston: I came to the Bay Area in 2006 because I wanted to help build tech companies. I went to Berkeley to get my MBA and basically gave myself two years to figure out how to best plug into the startup community.

I eventually started a company and raised venture capital, but I really struggled to crack customer acquisition, and of all the hats I wore as an entrepreneur, growth marketing felt particularly fun and challenging. So, I went on this quest to find the answers to customer acquisition, and it was difficult to find people who could help me unlock growth channels. I often heard, “Oh, I did this for my company,” but it wouldn’t work for us.