From Head of Growth to Interim CTO

Took a ~887K-member LinkedIn community past 1,000,000 followers, then rebuilt the product experience and analytics infrastructure as interim CTO.

Measured externally: follower history via public archive, community/newsletter reach via Hacking HR's own pages + a published vendor case study.

The headline

A 1M-member community, and the technical leadership to rebuild under it

Signal	Oct 2024	Apr 2026	Change
LinkedIn followers	886,729	1,018,524	+131,795 (+14.9%) - crossed 1M
Live today (2026-09-21)	1,037,377

Follower history recovered from Wayback Machine snapshots of the public LinkedIn company page. The community is publicly described as the most-engaged HR community on LinkedIn, with 2M+ total reach and 1M+ newsletter subscribers.

Part 1

Head of Growth - community and newsletter funnel

Funnel signal	Public evidence
Newsletter subscribers	900K - 1M+ (sponsor page + Bitly case study)
Leads per LinkedIn newsletter post	500+ (Hacking HR for-sponsors page)
Sign-ups from one LinkedIn newsletter push	4,000 tracked (Bitly case study)
LinkedIn newsletter recap clicks	500-1,000 per post (Bitly case study)
beehiiv newsletter	still active, publishing weekly

PostHog analytics strategy (marketing + product)

Event tracking framework (23 events across main site + beta app)
Campaign attribution (30-day conversion, multi-touch)
KPI dashboards for signups, conversions, campaign ROI
Member extraction for email import (100 premium members)
Caught a stopped membership-conversion event that would have blocked $50K+ in marketing spend, and fixed it before budget deployed

Part 2

Interim CTO - app redevelopment and full tech overhaul

Took the CTO role to redevelop the app experience in the learning management system and run a full technical overhaul. Scope is fully documented in the committed engagement repo (153 files).

Platform architecture and modernization

PostgreSQL + serverless for the new app (vs. big-bang MongoDB rewrite) - saving 6+ months and $50K+
Phased MongoDB migration over 6-12 months
Database and infrastructure selection with cost and timeline modeling

App v2 / LMS redevelopment

User flows, role-based test cases (free / premium / premium+), browser matrix, and a structured UAT process for the rebuilt learning app

Internal systems

Internal AI support chatbot (researched Voiceflow/Botpress, built Python + Weaviate with curated knowledge base)
Tech-support SLA + triage - reduced developer interruptions from ~30/day toward a <5/day target
Self-service portal, automated triage bot, weekly priority planning
Platform health dashboard, automated regression testing, status page roadmap

Analytics and measurement infrastructure

5 PostHog dashboards / 50 HogQL insights (Revenue Health, Churn, Members, Engagement-Retention, Corporate/B2B) on an 82K-user Postgres DB + Stripe
Data-quality gates before business decisions (blocking spend until attribution was trustworthy)

Results

What moved

Signal	Measurement	Source
LinkedIn followers	886,729 to 1,018,524 (+131,795), crossed 1M	Wayback (external)
Community reach	2M+ members, 1M+ LinkedIn followers	Hacking HR public pages
Newsletter subscribers	900K - 1M+	Sponsor page + Bitly
LinkedIn newsletter funnel	500+ leads/post; 4,000 sign-ups from one push	Sponsor page + Bitly
beehiiv newsletter	still active, weekly	news.hackinghr.io (live)
AI chatbot / self-service systems	built + deployed	engagement repo
PostHog analytics	5 dashboards / 50 insights on 82K-user DB	dashboard report
Architecture savings	$50K+ avoided; $50K+ spend unblocked	CTO role docs

Engagement-reported (labeled, not externally measured)

40-50% email open rates on the beehiiv newsletter
180K SendGrid main-channel list
+50% revenue growth that year (newsletter funnel + sales push)

These are reported from the engagement per records. The only publicly-stated open-rate figure is the team's own 36% Daily Jam open rate. They are not presented as externally measured.

Honesty box

What is measured vs. what is reported

Measured externally: LinkedIn follower history (Wayback), community and newsletter reach (public pages + Bitly), beehiiv still-active (live check).
Documented in the engagement repo: all CTO-scope work (architecture, UAT, chatbot, SLA, dashboards) - verifiable at github.com/JakeMcMahon/hacking-hr.
Engagement-reported (dashboard-locked): 40-50% open rates, 180K SendGrid list, +50% revenue - internal dashboards and company financials, labeled as such.
Attribution caveat: follower growth is the community's trajectory across the window; it does not prove sole attribution to one person. That attribution is the client's to make.

Want this for your business?

Growth that moves a community, then the technical leadership to rebuild the product under it. That is the full loop.

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