Success on the golf course and in business is rooted in having a solid game plan – and not being afraid to try something new. Director of Growth Marketing Vedant Jaitha excels at both. Whether on the green or coming up with fresh ways to bring new users to Houzz, he uses his ability to combine data with strategy to test new tactics and make a great approach even better. 

What did you want to be when you grew up?
For a long time, due to my keen interest in golf, I wanted to be a sports psychologist and even initially put down psychology as my major during my freshman year in college. However, in my sophomore year, I realized I enjoyed working with data, so I pursued a career where I could enhance and use those skills. As I did more data-related work, I found that I also liked solving business problems, and my current role allows me to do both. 

Tell us about your journey to Houzz. How did you go from sports psychology to growth marketing?
I was introduced to using programming and statistical methods to help understand, dissect and solve problems in a statistics class. After college, I joined an economic consulting and data analytics company. I really enjoyed it, but I wanted to continue to enhance my data analysis and data science skills while working on business problems in-house. Soon, I started working for a company where I could do just that.

Then I saw a data science opportunity at Houzz. I liked that Houzz was an earlier stage company, which allowed me to work directly with marketers to help solve problems earlier in the process. I was able to help lay out a lot of the infrastructure for measuring the performance and understanding the effectiveness of our new marketing program for Houzz Pro. I’ve moved around a bit, from data science to business operations and then to marketing. 

The people you work with are in different time zones and on various teams. How do you approach your work in our distributed, remote environment?
First, we try to meet as a team at least once a week at a time that’s convenient for everyone. And it seems to work, given that the team is in Europe and the U.S., without anyone being inconvenienced.

The second piece is that we can all work independently, and asynchronously, to a certain point, especially since we’re remote. People can try to work when they are most effective on their own schedule, as long as we are making progress on our goals. 

What does a typical day look like for you?
The day starts with looking through dashboards and data to see how things are performing and if there are outliers or opportunities to dig deeper and make quick changes. Then I go through emails to make sure everyone has what they need and there are no blockers to keep things from moving forward. 

After those two are completed, I try to go a little bit deeper on outstanding questions or projects that I’m leading or the team is managing, so we continue to make progress. And then fourth, whenever I get some time, I focus on exploratory analysis or research to figure out how we can further improve the marketing, the messaging and the way Houzz reaches out to our potential customers – and how we can make it the best experience for them.

What would you say is the best part about working at Houzz?
I think job titles don’t mean too much here. Ideas can come from anyone, even if it’s not your direct ownership area. As long as it’s a good idea and backed by research and data, people are willing to listen, scope it out and implement. This leads to more collaboration, because everyone has the same goal: to make sure we continue moving things forward to support the needs of our community. 

For example, I started at Houzz as a data scientist, and I was very interested in user experience and the design of our landing pages. I spent a lot of time on my own doing research and providing recommendations and, even though it wasn’t my direct area of ownership, people were willing to read through my research and recommendations.

What has surprised you about working here?
Our open and honest culture was very surprising in a good way. People are very open to providing and receiving feedback, welcoming it no matter which team it’s from. The level of honesty, collaboration and openness to feedback were all things I thought were pretty cool when I joined.

What excites you most about the future of Houzz?
We’re still scratching the surface and discovering new things every day. I’m really excited about the level of focus there is on our product, how we continue to challenge the status quo, and the potential to grow the business and improve the lives of professionals and homeowners who are on their home remodeling journey. 

If you were to give advice to someone either joining your team or Houzz, what would you say to them?
Be very curious. Talk to a lot of people. Try to understand what they’re doing and, most important, don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. That’s something that’s helped me a lot, and it’s something Houzz encourages.

​​If you’re interested in joining our team, we’re hiring! Check out available opportunities at houzz.com/jobs.