Building With Buyers: Startup Marketing and Growth Fueled By Customers

Blake Emal is CMO at Copy.ai. Prior to that, Blake was Senior Manager of Demand Gen at TalkDesk (a Series D SaaS startup that has raised almost $500M). Copy.ai was founded in 2020, has 18 employees, and is based out of … nowhere, bc it's a distributed team! Makes sense. Copy.ai is seed funded ($2.9M).  The tool helps you write better marketing copy, faster. Who doesn't love that? And it’s not...

Katie Perry (no, not the singer) is VP of Marketing at Public.com. I'm so pumped about this episode because Public has plowed through and grown SO much since launching in 2019. They've raised $310 million to date at a $1.2 billion valuation. 100 employees and based out of New York. No wonder they're so fast. Prior to Public, Katie held leadership roles at media and creative agencies including 360i...

Allan Dib is Managing Dictator at Successwise.  Also: he's the bestselling author of The 1-Page Marketing Plan (Amazon’s #1 global marketing book). I have basically memorized how this 1-page plan looks because I look at it so much. I have used it for my own business and for every single client I work with. Because it’s simple AND powerful. Link to this book is at the end of the show notes. he...

Prepare for something different, fun and fast! This is a BONUS 10-min. episode with Sergey Ross on the fastest ways to understand how marketing works. Because when your marketing is working, you'll know it. And this goes beyond attribution. Sergey is the host of the Media Camp podcast and now he's building out his Youtube channel (SRE. live) Sergey works on podcast and video production at Crowdlin...

Eric and I go way back. Eric Rasmussen is Head of Consumer Insights at 23andMe. Prior to that, Eric led research at Groupon, Shutterfly, eBay, and Yahoo! We both worked at Groupon a few years ago. We used to meet 1:1 to talk insights - I would share what we were working on with the growth marketing team, and Eric would share his team's research. 23andMe was founded in 2006, has 700+ employees and...

I'm intrigued by the blend of sales and marketing in business, and that's one of the reasons I had Scott on the show. He's also just an all-around great person. Scott Leese is sales consultant and strategic advisor to startups around the world. He's got deep experience building and scaling sales orgs at SaaS companies. Scott founded Scott Leese Consulting in 2016 with a focus on companies scaling...

This is one of those episodes where I definitely clicked with the guest. I think the feeling is mutual because if you listen to the very end, Kate says "love you." Kate Bradley Chernis is Founder & CEO of Lately. As a former marketing agency owner, Kate created the idea for Lately out of spreadsheets for then-client Walmart, and got them a 130% ROI, year-over-year for three years. Now at Latel...

Prepare for something different, fun and fast! This is a BONUS 10-min. episode with Sergey Ross on what you need to know and do when you're hired to head up marketing at an early stage startup. I met Sergey on LinkedIn! Sergey is the host of the Media Camp podcast and now he's building out his Youtube channel (SRE. live) Sergey works on podcast and video production at Crowdlinker. He's been makin'...

When I started recording the episode with Christopher Lochhead, I immediately felt like I was in the (virtual) room with a legend. Christopher is a retired entrepreneur and 3X Silicon Valley public company CMO. He makes content (podcasts, books, newsletters, links to all those at the end of the show notes) for entrepreneurs and marketers with a different mind . I found out about Christopher from L...

You can and should do voice of the customer research at your startup, ongoing.   Ongoing, because things change pretty quickly in the world, and you want to have a good pulse on what's happening in the world of your target audience.   In this episode I spoke with Nicholas Scalice, host of the top-rated Growth Marketing Toolbox podcast, on the topic.  Nicholas and I talked about the...

Ramli John is the Managing Director at ProductLed (community for PLG professionals) and host of Growth Marketing Today (top 5% podcast). ProductLed has a Slack community of 6,500+ product-led growth enthusiasts and world-class PLG practitioners. If you're trying to get both a high-level understanding plus dig deeper into PLG, this is the episode for you to listen to. Some more fun facts about Raml...

Prepare for something different and fun and fast!  This is a BONUS 10-min. episode with Kourtney Simons on perfectionism. I met Kourtney way back in 2006 at Accenture. Kourtney has worked on marketing at MSNBC, Disney, and Netflix. Here's what we hit on: What does perfectionism mean; I asked Kourtney if she's a perfectionist...and also shared myself; Why perfectionism is particularly hard whe...

Amy Volas, founder and CEO of Avenue Talent Partners, joined me on the show. She's such a fun lady. Amy helps startups hire sales leaders without the cringe. Amy has been a sales leader at ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and Yahoo! She has personally closed $100MM+ in revenue (and counting). She's got 70+ recommendations on LinkedIn. Woah. Amy also co-hosts the #1 weekly virtual sales happy hour (Thursday N...

Prepare for something different and fun (and fast!). Switching it up like I love to do, this is a BONUS 10-min. episode with Kourtney Simons on how to do marketing when you have a shoe-string budget or no budget.  I met Kourtney way back in 2006 at Accenture. Kourtney has worked on marketing at MSNBC, Disney, and Netflix. She has a wonderful personality and is a wonderful person. Here's what...

In this episode I was interviewed by Tristan Pelligrino, host of Recorded Content and co-founder of Motion, about a hidden treasure that’s within every podcast episode – beyond just the audio file. A podcast provides a way to have amazing conversations. And it also provides a way to present raw & unfiltered thoughts through solo episodes. But that’s as far as most podcasters go. B2B podcasters...

Christina Mautz, CMO and head of sales at Moz, joined me on the show.  This is an interesting episode because Christina has that unique experience - a CMO that also heads up the sales team. Christina's been a marketing executive at Amazon and Yahoo!, as well as a few Seattle VC-backed SaaS startups where she earned the nickname “Chief Problem Solver.” Moz was founded in 2004, has ~170 people,...

Meghan Hurley joined me on the show to talk about yummy food and marketing. Meghan Hurley is Head of Marketing at Farmer’s Fridge. She's also a founding member of Chief (the private network of women leaders that are helping and supporting each other). Meghan has held marketing leadership roles at Trunk Club, Peet’s Coffee, McCain Foods, and Whole Foods. Farmer’s Fridge was founded in 2013, has ~15...

I'm a huge fan of Chris Walker. He's actually one of the main reasons I launched this podcast. Chris started a company - Refine Labs - a demand accelerator for B2B SaaS companies. Chris started a weekly event, Demand Gen Live, about 1 year ago and still going strong with 45+ attendees every week. Chris has 60k+ followers on LinkedIn. Most importantly, he's such an inspiration to all sorts of marke...

Sara Kinsey is Head of Digital Marketing, Demand Generation, and Events at Gem. She's been there for 2+ years.  Prior to Gem, Sara was at Unifi Software (acquired) and Alteryx (IPO’d). Sara is a true B2B SaaS leader. Gem was founded in 2017, has 110 people, and is based out of San Francisco, CA. They've raised Series B ($48M total). Gem is the platform for modern recruiting. Like what Hubspot...

Daniel Huerta is Digital Marketing Manager at Udacity. Before that, Daniel headed up marketing at Workify (HR tech startup) for 4+ years, running their content and demand generation efforts. Daniel is also the co-host of The Modern People Leader podcast. We covered both Udacity and Workify during this podcast session.  Udacity was founded in 2011, has 2000+ people, and is based out of Mountai...

Cassidy Shield is VP of Marketing at Narrative Science.  Before Narrative Science, Cassidy served as VP of Marketing at Gogo, VP of Marketing at NetCracker, and spent 13 years at Alcatel Lucent (purchased by Nokia). He's also a fellow Kellogg alum! Narrative Science was founded in 2010, has 88 people, and is based out of Chicago, IL. They've raised Series D ($43.4M total). Narrative Science h...

Kyle Lacy, CMO (and Chief Mario Officer!) at Lessonly, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Kyle has been recognized as one of Indiana’s Forty-under-40, is the author of 3 books, built the content marketing team from scratch at ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce for $2.6B), led marketing at OpenView Venture Partners, and advises a couple of tech startups besides his full-time role....

Alvaro De La Rocha, CMO at Bespoke Post, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast.  Another Kellogg connection on the show! Plus the co-founders are also from Kellogg. What a team!  Alvaro has held previous roles at Ogilvy and Microsoft, on both the product and marketing side.  Bespoke Post was founded in 2011, has 73 people, and is based out of NYC. They've raised $8.9M in...

I spoke with Lesley Crews from Sweet Fish Media on the B2B Growth podcast.  They've been going deep into the world of demand generation for the month of April - sweet! In this episode we discuss modern demand gen for startups and the playbook I wrote up that outlines key themes in more detail, including: The difference between lead gen and demand gen; Old vs. new demand gen and the key differ...

Jeroen Corthout, co-founder at Salesflare, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Salesflare was founded in 2014, has 8 people, and is based out of Belgium. They've raised Seed funding ($406K). Salesflare is the perfect CRM for any startup or small B2B business that wants to make more sales with less work. No more manual data entry. The CRM fills itself out by synchronizing with your e...