Building With Buyers: Startup Marketing and Growth Fueled By Customers

Tera Hudson, Senior Marketing Manager of Demand Gen at The Mom Project, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Prior to The Mom Project, Tera was at InStride (reinventing the education of today’s workforce in partnership with leading global universities) and TeleSign (communications platform as a service or CPaaS, a Series B tech startup). The Mom Project was founded in 2015, has ~270...

Peep Laja, founder of 3 companies (Wynter, CXL and Speero) joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Peep has been building companies for years. He founded a SaaS startup back in 2009 for building and selling online courses (it didn’t work out) and now running these companies. Peep has really grown his audience on LinkedIn and Twitter. 37k followers on Twitter and almost 26k followers on...

Grace Woods, VP Global Head of Marketing at Patreon, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Prior to Patreon, Grace held executive roles at Flexport, Kloudless (Series A startup), and Salesforce (for 5 years). Patreon was founded in 2013, has over 200 people, and is based out of San Francisco, CA. They've raised Series E ($258.3M total). Patreon is a creator-founded membership platform...

Jared Jost, VP of Marketing at PatientPop, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Prior to PatientPop, Jared was at Twistlock (cybersecurity startup that got acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and Smarsh (SaaS). PatientPop was founded in 2014, has ~450 people and is based out of Santa Monica, CA. They've raised Series C ($125M total). PatientPop makes it easy for healthcare providers to a...

Are you ready for this? A twist on the typical Anna + guest format! One of my listeners suggested I ask myself the same questions I typically ask my guests...so basically interview myself. If you ever wanted to learn more about me personally, this will help! And as an added bonus, I ask my 7-year-old daughter some of the same questions. The result is sometimes hilarious and always super cute. In t...

Aaron Pollack, CMO at Nanit, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Prior to joining Nanit in 2017, Aaron held various marketing roles at global brands such as Canary, BlackBerry, GreatCall and SiriusXM. Nanit was founded in 2016, has ~65 people, and is based out of NYC. They JUST finished raising Series C! ($75M total) Nanit has created an HD baby monitor that lets you track your baby...

Mark Kilens, VP of Content and Community at Drift, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Drift was founded in 2015, has ~400 people, and is based out of Boston, MA. They've raised Series C ($107M total). Drift helps companies (specifically, marketing and sales) engage in real-time, personalized conversations so they can build trust and accelerate revenue. Drift combines chat, email, v...

Jonathan Metrick, Chief Growth Officer (CGO) at Portage Ventures and Fractional CGO at Wealthsimple, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Lots of gold nuggets shared in this episode because Jonathan brings the insights from both a VC firm and startup perspective on growth. Portage Ventures is an early stage fintech investor, formed in 2016 and with a presence in Toronto, Montreal, Ne...

Michelle Heath, Founder and CEO at Growth Street, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Mixing it up! I usually have venture-backed startup founders and marketing leaders come on as guests. This time I brought on a fellow marketing superstar to share her experience and wisdom.  Michelle and I are clearly spirit animals, once you listen to this episode you'll understand why. Miche...

Sometimes I like to sprinkle in some raw and unfiltered thoughts.  In this episode I cover: The purpose of content; Before you come up with a content strategy, you need to figure out what your target buyer cares about, their challenges, goals, where they spend their time, etc; What is a content engine and how to think about creating content for the full funnel; Daily/weekly marketing ops acti...

Rob Singer, CMO at Remitly, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Remitly was founded in 2011, they've raised Series F (just raised another $85M July 2020), and have ~900 people. Remitly is a fintech company that leverages digital channels, including mobile phones, to send money internationally. There are millions of immigrants around the world that make the huge sacrifice of leaving...

Dan Frohnen, CMO at Sendoso, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Sendoso was founded in 2016, they've raised Series B ($54M total), and have ~370 people. Sendoso provides new ways to engage with customers throughout the buyer journey, including with personalized gifts, branded swag, eGifts, Cameos, virtual experiences & more. This directly impacts pipeline and revenue. Here’s wh...

Sometimes I like to sprinkle in some raw and unfiltered thoughts.  In this episode I cover: Startups don't have a lot of people, time or money. So how should you think about prioritizing your marketing efforts? I break it down into three parts; 1. Foundation - clean up your house; 2. Owned Channels - create beautiful spaces within your house; 3. Awareness - let people know you have this clean...

Paige LaNasa, Head of Marketing at Forager, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Forager was founded in 2018, they've raised Series A ($10M), and they're 75 people strong. Here’s what we covered: Logistics is the backbone of global e-commerce. Millions of dollars of goods move between the US, Mexico and Canada (cross-border). Despite that, it still happens to be a logistical nightmar...

Nemanja Zivkovic, CEO at Funky Marketing, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Mixing it up! This episode is a little different. I usually have venture-backed startup founders and marketing leaders come on as guests. This time I brought on a fellow marketing business owner to share his experience and wisdom. Nemanja started Funky Marketing in Jan. 2020, with a total of 6 employees at...

Anna McVeigh-Murphy, Marketing Manager at Curacubby, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Curacubby was founded in 2016, has 20 people, and is based out of Berkeley, CA. They are seed funded and preparing to raise Series A. Curacubby is an integrated business and payments platform for schools of all sizes. School management shouldn’t be a headache. With Curacubby, schools can focus l...

George Wojciechowski, Co-Founder at ShipBob, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. ShipBob was founded in 2014 and has raised Series D ($130.5M total). Based out of good 'ole Chicago, IL, ShipBob has ~650 people. ShipBob is a tech-enabled 3PL (3rd party logistics) that fulfills e-commerce orders for direct-to-consumer brands. You can outsource your logistics, from warehousing to deliv...

Matt Bendett, Co-Founder and VP of Ops & Strategy at Peerspace, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Peerspace was founded in 2014 and has raised Series B ($34.8M total). The team was ~85 people at their peak (currently a leaner team due to the impacts of COVID-19). Peerspace is your little black book for finding unique and undiscovered places to meet, create, or celebrate. Wheth...

MJ Peters, VP of Marketing at Firetrace, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. We covered: MJ's talent at challenging industrial companies to think differently about marketing; Marketing's focus shifting from trade-shows and sales enablement to driving strategy, segmentation, positioning and demand gen; A unique team structure that includes product marketers focused on specific custom...

I created a new podcast this year. Want to learn how I did it? Everything from outreach to setup to content and more, I'm sharing it all here. Consider this your ultimate easy-to-understand podcast creation learning module. Why did I start this podcast? For me, it all boils down to this.  I love reading books. In a way, having your own podcast is like having a never-ending library of books. E...

Nikolaus Volk, co-founder and CEO of Kyte, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Here's what we covered: How the Kyte team formed in 2019 and is already onto their second round of funding (wow!); How they've been able to achieve 20-40% MoM growth; Their sharp focus on retaining current customers through paid search, paid social, PR, email reactivation, and partnerships; Exciting oppor...

Jen Saxton, Founder and CEO of Tot Squad, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. Here's what we covered: Partnerships and relationships as a growth hack (versus paid ads); Intriguing and funny founder's story on how the company got started; The case for doing more of those things that you're passionate about on the job (versus not so much); Growth that's dependent on marketplace liquid...

Laura Kendall, VP of Marketing at MadKudu, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. We covered a lot, including: The team you need to set up in your company - the Customer Love & Community team; Who your first marketing hire should be (reporting into the Head of Marketing); How to ensure your brand is seen and heard in a noisy world, and especially during COVID; Narrow your focus on...

Michael Klozotsky, CMO at IMO, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. We covered: How storytelling makes the marketer's work authentic; On team building and starting from a place of care; How to swim downstream with your marketing when others are swimming upstream; How to ensure your MQLs are quality leads that the sales team will follow up with; How sales and marketing can become succ...

Alexander De Ridder, Co-Founder and CTO of INK, joined me on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. We covered: Marketing is a competitive sport and marketing campaigns can be as awe-inducing as great art; Why have 15 software developers at a 30-people total bootstrapped startup; Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to organize the inner-workings of the business; How 64 blog articles brought 100,...