Leaders of B2B Podcast - Interviews on Business Leadership, B2B Sales, B2B Marketing and Revenue Growth

Tracy Kraft , Vice President, Global Revenue Marketing at Demandbase shares valuable marketing leadership insights on today’s show. Tracy’s role at Demandbase focuses on revenue marketing, a function that works closely with sales. She is also familiar with the company’s thrust to use software to help marketers succeed in account-based marketing. Tracy talks about the importance of sales and market...

On today’s show, Amanda Elam , Chief Marketing Officer at Bloomreach , shares valuable insights into digital marketing leadership. Amanda is a seasoned marketer and supports ecommerce customers. Amanda’s customers come from companies looking to move into ecommerce. The pandemic has forced businesses to adapt in order to survive. Amanda advises that businesses new to ecommerce should look at their...

Steve Baines , Vice President at Apps Associates , shares valuable leadership lessons. He brings a holistic leadership perspective to B2B. His insights come from moving up the corporate ladder, jumping into a founder role, and switching back to a corporate executive role after an acquisition. Like many leaders, Steve recognizes the value of hiring and retaining the best talent. His approach to ret...

Raj Sarkar , Chief Marketing Officer at 1Password , shares key leadership insights and marketing expertise. He brings a wealth of perspective coming from very successful startups like 1Password and Atlassian. Raj believes that the most important thing for the leader of a startup is to set the company’s foundation. This starts with the functional area. A strong foundation will poise people for succ...

John Street , CEO, Chairman, and Founder at Pax8 , shares his startup journey on the show. Pax8 provides smaller SaaS companies with great products which have much-needed marketing reach. Providing a marketplace for them gives them the advantages of a collective platform that can attract potential customers. When Pax8 started 11 years ago, the environment was completely different. This visionary i...

Moni Oloyede , Director, Marketing Infrastructure at Fidelis Cybersecurity , shares her simple yet valuable expertise on marketing success factors. It all boils down to communicating with your audience. Communicating with your audience is all about listening to your customers. This involves finding out what business problems they have. It also involves knowing what they are willing to do to solve...

Peggy Choi , Founder & CEO at LYNK shares how knowledge transfer and management greatly impact companies. Peggy is using AI to solve the business problem of efficient knowledge management.  The framework involves gathering data, interpreting that data, converting it to knowledge, which then becomes wisdom. Wisdom is when knowledge is applied to critical decision-making. The knowledge management pr...

Marion Mariathasan , CEO & Co-Founder at Simplifya and Chairman & Founder at Ceylon Solutions , shares his serial entrepreneurship journey. Behind the success, Marion has had his fair share of stumbles. He shares a few of these along with the lessons that came from them to help share and build the entrepreneurship community. Marion explains the importance of recognizing business problems, especial...

Phillip K. Naithram , Founder, DC Local Leaders shares his views on the power of connection and networking. He differentiates his podcast by connecting people in technology, government and military. This corridor is an extremely important one. It has always been a consistent contributor to growth and economic activity. An advantage of establishing a network of people with common interests is mento...

Firaas Rashid , Founder and CEO at Hook shares his insight on the value of customer success in B2B software. Customer success is a function that works directly with active customers after they’ve signed on. The role of customer success varies across different companies and according to their strategies. Rashid simplifies his outlook on customer success, he sees it as continuing to provide customer...

Samir Diwan , Co-Founder and CPO at Polly talks about throwing in technology to improve engagement. Technology and AI are often construed to be at odds with human resources. Diwan changes this up by using AI to help gain insights and not be intrusive to workflows.  Diwan shares how engagement can be accomplished with technology in three ways. Firstly by expanding and gathering the voice of the emp...

Eric Schmidt , Co-Founder and CEO at Glue Up , thinks entrepreneurs can improve their success through communities and interactions. A move to China made him realize the need for technology to grow communities with other business leaders. The pandemic transformed his product from a nice-to-have to a must-have for business associations and chambers of commerce. Setting up a business in a different c...

Tim Hinrichs , Co-Founder and CTO at Styra , talks about his startup journey and growth strategy. Hinrichs and his co-founders created an open source language that powers authorization and policies. This is significant for cloud software, back-end systems, applications, and almost everything digital. Hinrichs describes his cavalier approach when he decided to become a founder. He left his comfort...

Chris Cheatham , Product Evangelist at Bold Penguin , shares clever insights on his journey from startup to acquisition. He founded RiskGenius as a means to revolutionize insurance policy reviews through AI. The company made big waves attracting the attention of Bold Penguin who then acquired it. Exits like these are considered success stories by many business leaders. Cheatham attributes his succ...

Patrick Ward , Vice President of Marketing at Rootstrap , delivers a mini-masterclass on marketing in this episode.  Ward talks about the transformation of marketing in three stages. Marketing has evolved over the years through their channels and objectives. First was the period where marketing campaigns were about creative ideas and casting a wide net. The second stage was a period where technolo...

Tom Glason , Co-Founder & CEO at Scalewise , dishes out a different perspective on scaling for startup founders. Glason thinks the biggest challenge in scaling comes when you need to expand your commercial team. Whether it’s called sales, business development, revenue, or growth—they all funnel to building your commercials. The problem is twofold. Firstly, startups don’t have the experience yet to...

Orlee Berlove , Growth Marketing Manager at PreVeil , shares how to leverage different marketing strategies to drive customer growth. PreVeil is a company that deals with data security and privacy. Companies like PreVeil were once focused on enterprises and government. Increased digital presence in business has expanded the focus to consumers, startups, and mid-sized businesses.  Berlove recommend...

Steve Garrison , VP of Marketing at Stellar Cyber , shares the exponential value that customer insight brings to marketing. Garrison is a proponent of field-focused marketing as a strategy. This calls for tailoring your product messaging after your customers’ needs. Garrison promotes working very closely with the sales teams to gain an upper hand. Being able to witness and understand the customer...

Prateek Chakravarty , CEO at Zinier , provides a fresh perspective for SaaS startups in this episode. His vision focuses on designing software for field workers. This sector is often overlooked when it comes to software. It includes workers in essential industries like trades, blue-collar roles, and others that power our society. Chakravarty experienced the business problems as a field worker when...

Eric Futoran , Co-Founder and CEO of Embrace , joins host Noah to talk about his startup journey and mission. Not having enough data to improve his mobile games was at the core of that mission. Embrace provides unified data on every metric that can improve the user experience on mobile applications. Futoran thinks that mobile will continue to be a disruptor. People need to be connected. Mobile app...

Alexander Hagerup , Co-Founder & CEO at Vic.ai , is using artificial intelligence to enhance a function that every business uses. His company’s platform helps finance and accounting professionals by providing them with autonomous help. Hagerup had his epiphany when he saw several common trends in accounting. Anywhere in the world, no matter what accounting system is used, it’s governed by rules or...

Abby Salameh , Chief Marketing Officer at CAIS , shares with us her incredible career journey. She spearheads the marketing at a company that opens more financial instrument options to portfolio managers.  Salameh shares how an opportunity can present itself when you ask. After an exhausting stint in corporate, Salameh thought it was time to retire. But when the pandemic hit and then eased off, sh...

Joe Hipsky , Co-Founder/CSO of IRALOGIX , joins the show to talk about pushing innovation to traditional industries, like those that deal with individual retirement accounts, or IRAs.  The IRA industry has evolved slowly in terms of technology, very similar to banking and finance. The conservative approach is essential to take because of the impact on people’s retirement savings. The downside is t...

David M. Wright , Founder & CEO at Disruptive Innovations , shares his insights on digital transformation and strategy. His firm helps enterprises, especially non-technical ones, navigate through this stage. ‘Digital transformation’ has been thrown around a lot. Its meaning is often misinterpreted. Wright defines it as supporting your business strategy with an IT solution; a strategy that supports...

Aimei Wei , Founder and CTO of Stellar Cyber , talks about the importance of cybersecurity in today’s world.  Cyberattacks were once viewed as an issue that plagued governments or megacorporations. As a response, they would hire expensive security experts, both to detect threats and establish responses. Today though, small businesses and startups have access to digital infrastructure through SaaS....