Seeking: future growth leaders

What is growth?

When I landed my first job in 2011, 'growth' as a function didn't really exist. Since then, it's been through one revolution and AI is about to bring another. It is not a discipline for traditionalists or those who fear change.

Growth is a scientific framework and process to help businesses grow. Lots of things that could traditionally be called 'advertising' or 'marketing' or 'product design' or 'sales' could fall under growth. But it's a newer way of working that stemmed from Silicon Valley tech companies.

At Ballpoint we mostly help early-stage startups and brands like Thriva, Mother Root, Citizens of Soil, and Glaize. Businesses who are on their upward journey from small, unknown brands into household names.

And while growth can be very broad, for us, the majority of work we do is creative-driven performance marketing. Think of this as digital advertising that's focused on profitable sales. That means helping those brands acquire new customers through channels like Meta, TikTok, and YouTube.

Growth is highly multi-disciplinary and so suits people who are 'generalist' by nature. Perhaps like me, you always enjoyed writing, but also loved building computers or understanding how the internet worked. Creative and technical.

We are a new agency. We launched in 2023 and we're a tiny team. Our core team is 14 people in size, with just six of those full-time. That means working with people of all levels of seniority directly from day one. It also means that there is nowhere to hide, there is a lot to learn in this job and even more to do.

There is no set path into growth.
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Characteristics of people who will do well in the Ballpoint Graduate Scheme

• Can juggle a lot simultaneously – maybe you run a business in your spare time, or you ran the university newspaper, or you tour with a band, or maybe you've got a YouTube channel that's paid your way through university. Whatever it is, this requires a lot of context-switching and wearing multiple hats and are looking for people who can demonstrate this effectively.
• Both technical and creative – maybe you love writing but also have coded your own website. Or maybe you've always been great at stats programming, but also love taking photographs.  
• Curiosity – this is one of the job's most important characteristics. You will never learn how to sell something to someone unless you are curious about what motivates them, what their life is like, and how we can help them.
• Decision-makers happy to get things wrong – growth relies on probabilist over deterministic thinking. And so it suits those who are fast decision makers who are willing to get things wrong. Failing is learning sped up.
• Entreprenurial and ambitious – Not everyone is destined to be an entrepreneur, but because of the highly broad range of skills you'll learn here, it mirrors the ideal checklist for a founder. If not a founder, then we're busy training the next leaders: CEOs, CMOs, and chief growth officers of the next decades.
• Hard-working – this job requires a lot of you. It's going to be really hard and you'll be surrounded by a room of the smartest growth people we've ever worked with. Expectations are going to be high from day one.
• Problem solvers – creativity isn't just about writing smart copy or good design. Creativity is also about problem solving. If you enjoy the intellectual challenges of fixing things or understanding how they work, then you'll go far
• You love the accountability, responsibility and pressure that comes along with doing work that has an impact – The work you'll be doing will have a direct impact on the growth of our clients. Their businesses are often in make-or-break stage, and so within the first year you'll be actively contributing to their success or failure.

What you'll learn over three months

This is a three-month programme, with a role available at the end if you succeed. You will learn all of the fundamentals of what it takes to grow a business, including:

• Growth & Marketing 101 → the fundamentals of marketing and growth
  
• Strategy → the skills needed to analyse marketing problems and build strategies to deliver results‍
  
• Digital advertising → how to grow brands through digital advertising, specifically across Facebook and TikTok‍
  
• Creativity → how to turn ideas into ad creatives for platforms like TikTok and Instagram
  
• Marketing analytics → how to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns
  
• Customer psychology → how to interview and analyse customers to understand why they behave in the way they do
  

Who we are

We're nearly 2.5 years old and so are still a small, independent agency. But we are incredibly ambitious and want to become the country's most trusted and biggest growth agency out there.

Ballpoint was founded by Josh Lachkovic. Before he did this he ran another startup called Wine List, and before that was the first employee and head of growth at Thriva where he acquired their first 100,000 customers. His experience covers brands including Hims, Fy!, Yonder, Mother Root and many more.

The senior Ballpoint team count even more incredible experience amongst it: AG1, TALA, allplants, Finimize, Hostelworld and Farfetch.

Our current client roster includes: Chatsie, Glaize, Tuza, Sipgood, Thriva, Mother Root, and Tilly Sveaas.

The majority of work we do is digital advertising (creative and management), but we also help with retention, pricing, conversion rate optimisation, copywriting, and design.

What you get

We're a tiny company but we're making conscious and deliberate efforts to build a culture we take pride in. We want you to see your years working at Ballpoint as some of the best of your life.

What we offer:

• £26,200 starting salary with promotions based on speed of learning (expect one-to-two in your first year)
  
• A highly-creative office in Clerkenwell/Farringdon where you'll work with the rest of the team for four days of each week (fully flexible Mondays).
  
• Share options in the company – this grants you future options to benefit from the company's success in the future
  
• Dozens of challenger brand snacks so we can taste the future clients we want to be working with
  
• 28 days holiday excluding bank holidays
  
• Summer Party for staff, clients, and close friends of the agency
  
• Monthly team socials – everything from pottery to go-karting, from Crystal Maze to lifesize Monopoly. We leave the choices here up to the team.
  
• Discounts for all client products – so you can get to benefit from working directly with them.
  
• 5% employer pension contribution – helping you build your longterm future
  
• 1x annual overnight offsite – to set company strategy, get to know each other better, and test out ideas we might not do day-to-day. This year we went to a chateau in the south of France
  
• 10 WFH days to use at your leisure – for when you feel like an extra day working away (can be used to work fully remotely for a week away if you like).
  
• 5% employer pension contribution – helping you build your longterm future
  

How to apply

The process

We're running this process in three stages:

1. Applications via our form below this will require a mixture of written and video answers.

2. Invite to a graduate day for our top 20-30 applicants. This will be an all-day session in our Clerkenwell office, with lunch and reasonable travel expenses provided.

3. Final stage 90 minute interview: split in two with different members of the team

Applications open today and close on 25th June 2025.

How to ace the first stage of the application

We've prepared a video for you from our founder so you can understand exactly what we want to see in application.

For the last two years, we've had over 300 applicants for each graduate programme. It makes standing out difficult, but we want to help you do that as much as we can.

Here a few tips for acing the process:

1. Be deeply familiar with what we're looking for: read and re-read this page and watch the video a few times.

2. Talk and write to us as you would a friend. Our education system teaches very bad writing habits, and AI defaults to wordy generics and formalities. Write like you were texting a friend or sending a voice note.

3. Bring your personality into the process – make the entire thing human wherever you can.

4. Demonstrate why you want this job. Look, we know how hard the job market is out there, and at the moment, just 'getting a job' is really important to be able to live in London. But this job isn't for everyone, and the placement has no gaurantee of a job after it – so make sure this is really something you love the sound of and feel passionate about. Only when you're clear should you apply, and then please make that shine through in your application.

5. Don't worry about having the right qualifications. Here's the university degrees of some of the best growth people we know: English literature, psychology, human sciences, liberal arts, economics and politics, environmental management, and anthropology.

6. While we bill this as a graduate scheme, it's open to anyone including those who have not been to university.

7. While there's a lot of criteria we look for, we don't expect you to tick every box fully. Instead, demonstrate deeply experience or stories that resonate with specific traits.

Apply now

We recommend scrolling through all the questions, then taking time to prepare answers before coming back to fill in the application later in one go.

We will have an auto-responder that confirms your application. We will then let all candidates know if they have made it through to the next stage within 5 working days of the application deadline.

The questions

Here is what the Typeform asks.
Written (150 word cap per answer)
1. What are your top 3 proudest moments?
2. What's a view that you hold that most people you know disagree with?
3. How do you think your feed/FYP differs from your friends and family?

Video
1. Tell us a story that demonstrates how you embody at least three of the above characteristics (3 minute cap)
2. Share a video explaining what you love about this role (1 minute cap).

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