CMO vs Head of Growth

This is a question I’ve been actively thinking about as Superpower scales faster than my canva org chart can keep up. There are literally new faces every week.

Recently, I took on the role of Head of Growth — at the same time our new Chief Marketing Officer, Ben Acott (ex-CMO at Feastables, MrBeast’s chocolate brand), joined the team.

Ben’s a legend. He understands brand at a DNA level, and I’m genuinely excited to work alongside him. But it got me thinking…

What’s the actual difference between a CMO and a Head of Growth?

We throw the titles around like we know — but when you’re building fast, hiring fast, and expected to deliver outcomes… clarity matters.

So I wrote this to get clear for myself — and to share with our co-founders (Max and Jacob) and Ben.

Consider it a working doc. A living memo. An open letter.

The High-Conviction Summary:

CMO = Make people care. Head of Growth = Make people act.

Here’s how I’m thinking about separating the responsibilities between the teams.

🤝 How We Work Together

• Shared dashboards: We align on revenue, membership, CAC, and LTV.

• Creative sandboxing: Growth can run wild in tests. But brand integrity stays with Ben.

• Regular syncs: ensuring we’re on the same page about metrics we share (namely member growth)

Building out the Growth Team

To scale responsibly (and aggressively), I’ve structured Growth into three core pods:

1. Acquisition Experiments Pod

Responsible for testing experimental channels that bring in new members — UGC, paid creative sprints, influencer tests, new funnel surfaces.

2. Activation & Retention Pod

Focused on converting signups, reducing drop-off, increasing ARPU. The goal? Turn “curious clickers” into long-term members.

3. Growth / Marketing Ops Pod

The backbone. This team builds dashboards, runs automations, sets up attribution, and makes sure everything that happens is trackable and repeatable.

I’ve built it this way not just based on what Superpower needs right now — but also based on what I personally bring to the table.

As a growth marketer, I excel at metrics, data, automations, and AI. So I’ve leaned into that strength while making sure each pod is designed to be autonomous, fast-moving, and high-leverage.

👋 Final Thought

If you’re building a $10B company, growth isn’t just a department. It’s the closest thing to the revenue line.

This is how I’m thinking about it — and how I’m trying to make sure we scale without confusion, duplication, or a 200-message Slack thread about who owns what.

Open to feedback. Always iterating.

Until next time,

Ajay (now leading growth @ Superpower)

P.S. If you’re curious about Superpower and want to skip the waitlist — you can use my link below to join directly (US only):

Thanks for helping me hit my growth target this month 😉