Rocco Puno is the Chief Revenue Officer of TANGGapp, an international remittance app that aims to make sending money to the Philippines affordable, seamless, and secure.

TANGGapp recently raised a $2.5M seed led by Ten13 and Goodwater Capital.

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

My mandate is to grow and retain revenue, which includes marketing, growth, business development, partnerships, and new market entry. 

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

I answer customer support requests! I find that it's the easiest way to understand customer's pain points and makes me feel like I have an ear on the ground. 

In understanding where a customer is coming from, we can use marketing as a way to anticipate their pain points so we can remove friction for them moving forward. 

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

The highlight of my career has been joining TANGGapp's amazing team. Never in my career have I been part of a team that moves incredibly fast, and aligned on a mission that truly matters to me. 

Joining as TANGGapp's first C-Suite hire has been an honor, and though I'm still learning so much along the way, it has been an incredibly rewarding experience. 

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

Aside from watching the trends in our industry within fintech, I love to watch the innovations happening in the metaverse (maybe that's because I was at Meta before Tang!). 

I find the existential and philosophical implications of what’s being built, including the innovations in AI and gaming, incredibly fascinating. 

While we're all glued to our smartphones today, the implications of living in alternate worlds and living digital lives that might be more entertaining or less traumatizing than our real ones are both scary and exciting! 

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

Learn how to understand and extrapolate insights from data. 

Customers will tell you what they want based on how they behave, even if they're unable to vocalize or articulate why they do what they do. 

Though data is not a silver bullet, the ability to use it to build great products is key to any success in tech!

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

Meditation and esoteric spirituality. I spent 3 weeks at an ashram in India and it truly changed my life! 

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

Movie: Amadeus. TV Show: The Office.

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Vanilla. 

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.