Case Study: Building Tornado's Growth Engine

I was the Growth Engineer at Tornado. The job sat between marketing, product, and data: build the systems the growth team needed, then read the results. Data and analytics infrastructure Built the pipelines and analytics layer the growth team ran on. Customer count grew 390%, revenue 800%, engagement rates 400%. CAC payback dropped to under 9 months. Paid ROAS up 1,732%. Deposits up 1,025%. A/B/N testing framework Built in-house from scratch. Page conversion rates went up 200% once we could test features and design changes properly. Campaign personalization Wrote propensity-score models for marketing personalization. Month-over-month in-app engagement and DAU climbed 60-110%. DAU/MAU ratio doubled. 3-month retention up 745%. Learn & Earn Led the technical build. App DAU/MAU pushed past 30%, and the feature delivered over a million educational lessons. Scaling and efficiency Trading volume grew 1,400% while behavior shifted toward ETFs, ESGs, and diversified portfolios. Deposit CAC dropped 80%+. User base up 150%, engagement up 1,000%. Monthly spend scaled to $1M with 1-year payback efficiency intact. Overall CAC fell 90%. The analytics infrastructure won Amplitude's 2022 Pioneer Award for Product Innovation.