Senior Enterprise Account Executive Mirko Brinker has been with Branch for two years, and recently celebrated a promotion before moving to Singapore with the company. In this interview, we covered everything from his career growth at Branch, furthering his education, relocating to Singapore, and his career advice for lifelong learners.
What does a normal day at Branch look like for you?
I’m a Senior Enterprise Account Executive and team lead. I work with prospects and existing clients in my region and think about how to use Branch to help them reach their business objectives: how we can grow their app, how we can get them more engagement, all of those kinds of things. I have the pleasure of speaking with a lot of talented people: product managers, digital marketers, the list goes on.
I’ve been at Branch a little over two years, sales all the way! I started as a senior account executive working remotely from London, and I’ve always been in enterprise sales. I also started during the pandemic, which was an interesting time. I was looking after the Scandinavian countries as well as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. August of last year was when I got the opportunity to transition over to our APAC team. Now, I’m based out of Singapore!
What have you enjoyed about living in Singapore?
Oh it’s incredible! I’ve never lived in Asia, so the opportunity to relocate to Singapore with Branch has been amazing to grow not just my career but my worldview as well. This was my first winter in a non-European country; my two boys and my wife and I got to have our first holiday photo with an artificial Christmas tree in t-shirts and shorts. It was so funny.
I still feel like a kid in a candy shop. Everything is new, exciting, and fresh. There’s so much food culture here in Singapore that I wasn’t aware of and so many cultural influences on life and on business. There are four official languages in Singapore and my eldest son, he’s four, is enjoying an international school with some classes in Mandarin, which presents its own fun challenges when he takes his school work home.
What have you enjoyed about the work culture in Singapore?
Working in APAC is definitely different from working in Europe. I’m still getting used to it; I find that Enterprise sales here are much more relationship-based, and each of those relationships, and the expectations around them, can be so different by country. For example, my meetings in Singapore have a completely different tone and expectation than meetings in Indonesia, or in Vietnam, or in Thailand. They all have their nuances. It’s interesting because, having worked in many countries in Europe, I saw the same trend country to country there as well: local differences have a huge impact on sales. It’s the same in Southeast Asia — just more for me to learn!
What was the most exciting deal you’ve won working at Branch?
When I was part of the EMEA team, we signed Puma Group. I still remember this one because it was taken up by German newspapers and had a big impact on the press. It’s always exciting to see the result of your team’s work in a public way.
How have you grown at Branch?
In a number of ways. And not just the recent move and promotion into a team lead role.
Working with a global team, expanding my understanding of the app ecosystem, and relocating to Singapore have been big learning curves, all of them exciting. In addition, the abilities that we have to further educate ourselves at Branch, like the learning budget allocated to us and management’s flexibility with our schedules, has also made a big impact.
I’ve been very fortunate because I’ve been able to do executive education at Kellogg Business School and also at Stanford. Remote courses of course, and amazing from an educational perspective. Overall, understanding the app ecosystem, and growing my overall business perspective has been challenging but a very rewarding experience.
What do you value most about the culture at Branch?
There are so many ways I could answer this question, but the first thing that comes to mind is the inclusivity; I joined during the pandemic, which was a big risk for me at that time. Everything was remote and I thought it would be tough to start somewhere new in that environment. But everyone during onboarding and beyond ensured that I felt welcomed and had what I needed to get started. When I transferred to APAC, it was exactly the same thing. Everyone reached out and made sure to have a coffee, lunch, or get-to-know-you meeting.
Inclusivity at Branch is top notch – you feel like a true part of the team from day one.
What are you passionate about outside of work?
I’m a big fan of sports. This story is from years ago, but is one of my favorites. I used to be a keen rower and had the privilege to take part in the Henley Royal Regatta, a rowing competition. Through bad or good luck, my team was put against the world silver medalists of that time! They didn’t even break a sweat and cruised to the finish line ahead of us, it was embarrassing in front of all these spectators. But rowing has always been a big passion of mine, and I was so excited to face off against them. Right before we started, I yelled over to them, “Wait for us at the finish line, we want to take a picture with you!” And they did! They were even kind enough to only beat us by about 30 seconds when they could have done much worse. There’s a video if you want to check it out.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career?
I’ve heard this from a number of people: not to be afraid of failure and take it as a learning opportunity.
There are always setbacks, all the time. Small ones, big ones. But the way to enjoy what we’re doing is to take any setback with a positive attitude, even when it’s hard. That way, the knocks that we get are less painful and keep our eyes looking ahead. Specifically in a scale-up environment like Branch, where everyone is running as fast as we possibly can, we face knocks all the time. Having this perspective helps us run even faster when we get back up. It goes hand in hand with “Never stop learning.”
Join Mirko at Branch
Branch’s sales team continues to grow; help us lead the future of mobile and work with world class brands to do it.