The Career-Defining Mistake That Shaped Animalz’ CEO
Ty Magnin thought he was getting fired. Instead, he got a masterclass in leadership.
Hey 👋 I’m Andrew - and welcome to the Delivering Value Substack, where I write about the stuff growth leaders don’t always talk about: lessons from the trenches, honest convos with other leaders, and what I’m learning as I build my business solo.
This post is part of my Candid Convos series, where I chat with SaaS leaders to unpack the toughest moments in their careers - and explore how they navigated ‘em.
Presented by Fullstory
Fullstory has been a core tool in my PLG stack for 10+ years, and they just dropped two new products I’m super excited about!
StoryAI: analyzes your behavioral data, flags opportunities, proactively suggests fixes.
Workforce: shows which tools your internal team uses - and where work gets stuck.
So, if you’re still guessing where your users (or team) are running into issues, stop.
Ty Magnin knew it was huge mistake.
He was cleaning up his desktop - and in the process, uploading a bunch of files to his company’s cloud file sharing system. It was administrative work he’d done a million times before. Digital housekeeping.
But this time, he uploaded a private document that nobody was meant to see.
At the time, Ty was leading the Web and Content teams at UI Path - and quietly wanted to take the SEO team under his umbrella. It was something he believed was right for the company, but didn’t have internal support for. So he’d been quietly meeting with an external Consultant to understand the pros and cons. And he’d been working on a document outlining his case for a re-org.
He knew it would be controversial - so the document was just for him to gather his thoughts. Eventually, he might start to “soft-pitch” the idea around the office down the road.
So, two days later, when the Head of SEO found his private document in the company Sharepoint, and immediately forwarded to their CMO with a message “What the f*ck is this?” - he knew it was bad.
Then his CMO called.
Ty’s path into tech wasn’t typical.
He studied film and English in college, planning to be a documentary filmmaker.
But with a young kid to support and rent due in Boston, he took a more practical turn: freelance gigs for local startups making demo videos.
That work pulled him into the tech startup scene.
He liked the energy, the pace, and the lack of stiff corporate culture. He got his first marketing job at WorkMarket, then joined Appcues as one of their earliest employees - and marketing lead. It was the perfect playground: no red tape, full autonomy, lots of room to build.
He helped scale Appcues from a few early users to $7M in ARR, built a 10-person marketing org, and developed a reputation for being both strategic and hands-on.
But eventually, he felt like he’d hit a ceiling.
So when an old boss called with an offer to join a fast-growing unicorn called UiPath - remote, global, with serious upside - Ty said yes. He’d get to work with proven execs. And learn what it meant to scale in a serious way.
“I’d built something scrappy. Now I wanted to see how the pros did it. And, honestly, I wanted to prove I could hang.”
Startup energy didn’t translate well to an enterprise scale-up.
Move fast and break things.
Ask for forgiveness later.
Own the outcome.
Those qualities get you high-fives working at a startup. But at a global enterprise? They ruffled some feathers.
It took a minute to recalibrate.
Early in his tenure, he’d made a change to the company’s global website navigation - without running it by anyone. It felt like an obvious change to make, and Ty figured he would just everyone know after it was done.
But within hours of pushing the update live, people across the org were not happy.
The French team messaged about broken pages. The SEO team flagged missing redirects. PMs and marketers raised concerns about campaign pages they hadn’t approved. And worst of all, senior leaders were pinging Ty directly to ask why they hadn’t been looped in.
“That was the first wake-up call,” he said. “I realized I didn’t even know who all my stakeholders were.”
He thought he could fix it by being right - by justifying the decisions, walking people through the logic. But logic isn’t what builds trust. Proactive and transparent communication is.
So while the navigation fallout stung, it was recoverable. He had some tough conversations. Started looping in more voices. Rebuilt some of the relationships that had been strained.
Then he uploaded the re-org doc.
It was never meant to be public.
But he wanted to be ready with a point of view in case the conversation came up.
So he put together a doc outlining the case. He saved it to his desktop. And then, in a moment of digital housekeeping, he uploaded it to the company’s shared cloud folder, without realizing what was in it.
Two days later, the Head of SEO found it.
“I went for a walk with my wife, and I just kept saying, ‘I’m fucked.’ I was sure I was getting fired. It’s not even about the doc itself. It was the how. The sneakiness of it. It looked like I was trying to go around people.”
In reality, he was trying to be careful. Trying to gather information, understand the dynamics, come prepared with a point of view. But that didn’t matter. Because the perception was that he was making a power grab.
He waited for the fallout. Wondered how much stock he'd lose if he got fired.
Finally, his CMO called.
He told a story (one that Ty didn’t share during our conversation) about a mistake he’d made early in his own career.
About undermining a colleague. About how his boss (in a completely different era) literally slapped him across the face and told him: “You don’t turn on your teammates.”
“You’re in the trenches with these people,” his CMO shared. “You win and lose together.”
That line landed.
Ty knew the mistake wasn’t just the upload. It was the mindset. The belief that if something was right for the company, it didn’t matter how he went about it.
“I had to eat a big slice of humble pie”
He started involving more stakeholders. Brought people into decisions earlier. Focused less on building a fiefdom, more on building trust. He stopped seeing people as blockers - and started seeing them as collaborators. It didn’t make him any less ambitious. But it gave that ambition a new focus.
Today, Ty is the CEO of Animalz, a content marketing agency serving some of the most well-known names in B2B SaaS.
He’s still driven. Still building. Still chasing growth. But the lessons stuck.
“I’m not here to be the smartest guy in the room,” he said. “I’m here to help other people grow.”
His energy these days goes into building culture, not empires. Coaching people up instead of proving he can do it himself.
The irony is that the document Ty uploaded wasn’t wrong.
SEO probably should have reported into his org. It might’ve even improved performance. But the mistake wasn’t about the content. It was about the approach.
How it looked.
How it landed.
Who it left out.
He owned it.
“My confidence wasn’t shattered, but it was definitely shaken,” he told me. “I just tried to move forward. Learn from it. Adjust. That’s all you really can do.”
He showed up the next week a little more humble, a little more thoughtful - and slowly started earning back trust.
That’s where the next chapter of his leadership journey started.
If you're ambitious, and trying to find the line between pressing and pulling back, you'll enjoy our full conversation.
Listen on Spotify
Ready to build your own version of what’s next?
Get my Free 5-day growth leadership email course
A set of battle-tested frameworks, prompts, and scripts I use with senior growth and marketing leaders to set priorities, align teams, and lead with more clarity.
→ Download the free Growth Leadership Toolkit
Book a 1:1 Coaching Spot
I work with a small group of ambitious growth leaders navigating what’s next—whether that’s a career leap, a team transition, or a more energizing way to lead.
→ Learn more about coaching