After hiring its first Chief Growth Officer last year, fintech unicorn Bitpanda has completed its growth leadership team by either hiring executives from global tech companies such as Netflix, Strava, Rocket Internet, Lunar and HelloFresh or promoting from within the company. Now the company has a Vice President Marketing, Global Brand Director, Vice President Communications and Vice President Growth as well as a Vice President User Acquisition.
Upon returning from maternity leave, Bitpanda’s former Head of Global Growth & Business Development, Magdalena Hoerhager, was promoted to Vice-President Growth. In her role, she will employ her expertise across customer experience, business operations and scaling international teams to lead the market growth teams globally, as well as Bitpanda’s international expansion efforts.
Former Strava executive Gareth Nettleton now leads Bitpanda’s marketing function as Vice President Marketing. Nettleton joined Bitpanda after seven years of building up the global sports tracking app Strava, where he led all international marketing activities. Before Strava, Nettleton spent another seven years at AKQA.
With 10+ years of experience acquired in companies such as HelloFresh, Omio, and Rocket Internet, Natalia Ruban has joined Bitpanda as Vice President User Acquisition. In her role, she will be building an user acquisition machine, coordinating everything from performance marketing to affiliates, referrals and strategic partnerships.
Bitpanda’s new Global Brand Director is Will Rust, joining with the ambitious goal to turn Bitpanda into a global love brand. After spending 15+ years with Ogilvy & Mather, Rust took the helm at Pandora’s Global HQ as Director of Brand Design in 2019, revamping their global brand visual identity, feeding over 100 markets. For the past year, he has been the Head of Brand for Lunar, the leading fintech in the Nordics.
Henning Dorstewitz now serves as Vice President Communications with the clear ambition of making sure that Bitpanda grows into a fintech thought leader globally. Dorstewitz brings to Bitpanda 15+ years of experience in some of the world’s most respected technology companies, including Google, Twitter and most recently Netflix.
All Vice Presidents will report directly to Bitpanda’s Chief Growth Officer Irina Scarlat who joined the company in July 2021 after building and leading Revolut’s growth department and Uber’s marketing team in Romania.
Irina Scarlat, Bitpanda CGO, said: “I joined Bitpanda last year with a clear goal: to grow the company into the leading investment platform in Europe and beyond. The first and most important milestone was to build a growth leadership team to work together towards our ambitions. I am delighted to welcome 5 talented executives with an exceptional track record of success in global tech companies. We all have in common the fact that we’ve done it before and we share the drive to do it once again, as we shape the future of investing together. All new hires will be instrumental in powering the company’s growth and taking Bitpanda to the next level.”
This announcement follows a wave of senior executive appointments that have also included former J.P. Morgan executive Joshua Barraclough, who now serves as CEO for Bitpanda Pro. In 2021, Bitpanda surpassed several milestones, including reaching 600+ employees who represent more than 50 nationalities, and opening ten offices across Europe, as well as tech hubs in Krakow and Barcelona.
Bitpanda, which launched in 2014 as a crypto trading company, has since attracted more than 3M users, expanded into new areas such as stock trading as well as exchange-traded cryptocurrencies and is evolving more and more into a well rounded digital platform that offers investment options for any budget and risk appetite. Currently valued at $4.1 billion, Bitpanda has the clear goal to offer state-of-the-art investing experience to more than 10M Europeans and will enter new markets this year.
About Bitpanda
Bitpanda makes investing accessible for everyone. Founded in 2014 in Vienna, Austria by Eric Demuth, Paul Klanschek and Christian Trummer, Bitpanda removes the barriers to investing by harnessing the innovative power of digitised assets and blockchain technology. With more than 600+ team members and over 3M users, the company is one of Europe’s fastest growing fintechs. The user-friendly, trade-everything platform empowers both first-time investors and seasoned experts to invest in the stocks, cryptocurrencies and precious metals they want – with any amount of money.
