Calvin Rosser
Growth Marketer, Startup Operator, Writer
About
Calvin is a full-stack growth marketer, startup operator, and writer. As the Director of Growth at Mechanism Ventures, Calvin helps portfolio companies become profitable in their first year of business, with a particular focus on validating and growing acquisition channels, strategic business development, unlocking new growth opportunities, and building scalable operational processes. Prior to Mechanism, Calvin spent three years at Toptal, leveraging SEO, paid advertising, referrals, and business development to scale one of the company's business units from 0 to millions in revenue. In 2018, Calvin launched a blog that now has 500,000 annual page views and thousands of newsletter subscribers. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University.
Experience
Director of Growth at Mechanism Ventures
Mechanism Ventures is a startup studio that cofounds, launches, and scales companies across industries. As one of the company's first hires, I spent my first year building out our growth and operations capabilities. I brought our affiliate marketing, SEO, email marketing, and partnerships functions for portfolio companies from 0 to 1, hiring a replacement for each function once the basic infrastructure was built. I now focus on validating and scaling acquisition channels, strategic business development, unlocking new growth capabilities, and building scalable operational processes. My primary KPI is ensuring that our portfolio companies become profitable in their first 12 months.
Growth Manager at Toptal
After successfully launching and scaling multiple new advertising channels for the company's first two business units, I took the lead on launching a new business unit for the company. In the first 12 months, we scaled that business unit from 0 to millions of dollars in revenue. We leveraged SEO, paid acquisition, partnerships, and other tactics to achieve this.
Head of Community at Toptal
I led a 7-person team that recruited, retained, and engaged the thousands of freelancers in Toptal's network. We hosted hundreds of events in 50+ countries every year, created a public speaking training program, built one of the world's most engaged Slack communities, and developed an analytics infrastructure to measure the team's ROI.
Founder at Life Reimagined
I founded Life Reimagined (calvinrosser.com) as part of my mission to empower 10 million people to live a more conscious and fulfilling life. It's grown to hundreds of thousands of annual readers, thousands of newsletter subscribers, and a suite of scholarships that provides thousands of dollars to ambitious students every year.
Digital Nomad
From 2016-2020, I worked full-time while traveling to 40+ countries across South America, Europe, and Asia. I discovered this lifestyle after being an M&A banker in New York, and it helped me tremendously in accelerating my personal and professional growth. It was also heaps of fun and allowed me to meet many fascinating people from all walks of life.