In today’s article, David Yin, a marketing and insights expert with over 20 years of experience introducing groundbreaking consumer products – from CPG (Clorox, Avon), to start-ups (Eventbrite, Fitbit), to category leaders (Ancestry, Labcorp) – shares his playbook for building Research & Insights teams, uncovering transformative insights, and scaling these insights to fuel billion-dollar products.

A good insight is worth millions. A great insight is worth billions. A breakthrough insight creates an enduring company. The process to uncover insights can vary — from a very intuitive feel (any <10 person startup) to a very structured sequential process (think Apple).

Early on, you often identify insights based on gut feel — you’ve experienced the problem first hand and have been in the shoes of the customer — you know the pain, why existing products fail, and have a unique perspective on how to solve it. As you scale, the knowledge and connectedness to these insights varies. You hire new executives, new product managers, new marketers. Each coming in with their lived experiences and assumptions about who the customer is and what to build for them. 

As customer knowledge becomes diffuse, everyone in the company develops their own opinion about the customer, frequently lacking scalable data to back these views. Taken to its logical conclusion, each person believes their own opinion holds the highest value. These opinions become like different currencies. And suddenly you have hundreds of people vying for their own currency to be most valuable. Insights gathered from real customers are like a unified currency: when everyone agrees on their value – execution is accelerated. But when one person's 'dollar' is valued differently by another, progress grinds to a halt. Value alignment reduces friction. 

To address this, companies have gone to great lengths to prioritize customer centricity in their operating principles. Amazon has an empty chair in every meeting. Intuit displays a kitchen table at headquarters. Airbnb models meeting rooms after popular listings. These aren’t just cultural artifacts; they underscore how crucial customer centricity is to each company. This focus, often rooted in the founder's values, customer centricity, and the insights that it produces, is a competitive advantage.

Creating a Competitive Advantage

The job of the Research & Insights team shouldn’t be to “run surveys and interviews”. It should be to build the organization's data-driven intuition. Sometimes Research & Insights teams can get bogged down in hundreds of research requests on every little question. The goal is to make teams confident enough in their knowledge of the target customers/market that they only need to make research requests when they are confronted with new strategic questions or exploring new horizons.

 Without a strong commitment to customer insights, companies risk fading into mediocrity. That’s why they should commit resources to building a Research & Insights team that is given the remit to create competitive advantage. Bland offerings and uninspired releases often follow when Research & Insights teams are absent or disempowered. Often companies don’t realize they’re not approaching Insights the right way to get the outcome they want. Strong insights aren’t a luxury—they are the foundation of standout businesses in any market.

I’ll share how you can establish and operate a Research and Insights function that consistently delivers insights which fuel billion-dollar products. The performance bar is for the company and its executives to understand customers and the market so deeply, it's a competitive advantage. For this to be true, the team must demonstrate 5 core capabilities beyond just conducting the research: 

• Dig up capital “I” insights

• Nurture the faith

• Connect the dots 

• Inform the strategy

• Build customer champions

Let’s dive in. 

1/ Dig up capital “I” insights

What exactly is an insight? How is a fact or observation different from an insight? What is a capital “I” insight? People use the word ‘insight’ all the time and they don’t really know what it means. The definition I use and teach my teams is that a true "Insight" has to pass the three pillar test:

Below are two basic examples, one that passes the three pillars test and one that does not.

Let’s look at two illustrative insights around smart watches and an insight around fun.

2/ Nurture the faith

The effectiveness of consumer insights is built on faith. The company must believe that insights from customers are valuable in order for them to be actionable. It's like currency: if we don't both agree on its value, we can't exchange it to move forward. It’s important to actively nurture and develop an organization’s faith in customer insights and avoid pitfalls that can lead teams to believe “research doesn’t work”. For example, there’s a ton of lore about leaders like Steve Jobs and Henry Ford saying “consumers can’t tell you what they want”. Here’s the thing, a great consumer researcher will agree, consumers can’t tell you what they want - don’t ask them for solutions. What consumers can tell, or show, you is what they need, which can unlock all kinds of new ideas 

To nurture the faith with executives and cross-functional leaders, a Research & Insights team must connect with all their stakeholders regularly and manage the research for three key attributes: quality, clarity, and actionability.

Quality

• Quality: Ensure data accuracy and reliability through rigorous evaluation and continuous attention to detail.  Place an emphasis on the Research & Insights team’s technical research fundamentals in order to reduce biases and boost research reliability. Manage respondent quality by partnering with high quality vendors and creating processes to weed out poor responses. 

• Pragmatic Analysis: Identify which questions need robust research and which can be solved intuitively. Not all research efforts require the same level of fidelity.

• Find the Pattern: A single result isn't an insight. To deeply understand a customer, the Research &  Insights team must connect new findings with existing knowledge. At 90% confidence, results are by definition potentially wrong one out of ten times.

Clarity

• Simplify Language: Use clear, jargon-free language for easy understanding by all stakeholders. Balance accuracy with accessibility, avoiding technical terms for those less familiar with the research. 

• Create Narratives: Many teams in an organization can easily become overwhelmed when too much data is shared at once. Create a story about the customer insights that can be more easily remembered - most people remember stories, not stats. Leverage executive summaries, so the audience can easily absorb all the findings. Still include a full report or other mechanism for those that want to ‘double click’ on the process and learnings.

• Visual Storytelling: Employ images, diagrams, charts, and infographics to convey insights intuitively. Using visual framing can be an effective way to show the audience the broader system and how an individual research read-out fits into the big picture. 

• Contextual Relevance: Provide just enough context to explain the significance and implications of the data. What you’ve learned about customers should fit into what the business is trying to accomplish.

Actionability

• Practical Recommendations: Translate insights into specific, actionable steps for teams such as product and marketing.

• Feasibility Considerations: Learn enough about what other teams do to ensure recommendations are practical and align with the organization’s capabilities.

• Business Impact: Highlight the potential business impact of research findings whenever possible to help prioritize efforts and resources.

• Follow-Up Mechanisms: Set up processes to track implementation and impact, making adjustments as needed.

• Partnership Style: Ultimately, Research & Insights teams are “influence” functions that don’t own execution. These teams should remember that how they communicate with other teams can be at the crux of whether learnings are put into action.

Delivering on those three dimensions is necessary, but not sufficient for nurturing the faith. Two additional building blocks are cultivating an executive champion and partnering with advocates.

• Cultivate an Executive Champion: an executive sponsor is a prerequisite to an effective R&I function. It's about leveraging your executive champion to get into the right rooms and ask the right questions. When establishing the function, understand where the executive demand for insights will come from, align on expectations for what insights will solve, and assess willingness to invest and adjust expectations accordingly. Once you’ve identified your executive champion, nurture the relationship by checking in regularly, understanding their biggest business issues, identifying areas where research could make the biggest impact, and closing the loop on “big wins” and potential opportunities that have been identified through the research. 

• Partner with Advocates: Identify and partner with your advocates across Product, Marketing, and Operations to ensure insights are integrated effectively. Not every person on these teams will be receptive. Find the individuals that are most open, create visible value for those initial partners, and expand partnership opportunities based on those visible wins.

How Insights can partner with advocates

Insights <> Product

• Collaborate Early: Engage PMs early to align insights with product needs for relevance.

• Define Target Users: Work with PMs to identify customer needs and use cases for high-impact features.

• Continuous Feedback: Stay involved in alpha/beta phases to synthesize feedback and prioritize features.

• Showcasing Impact: Highlight successful cases where insights influenced product decisions to build trust.

Application: At Fitbit, we implemented a 3x/year feature prioritization process with the product team to inform and refine the roadmap for maximum consumer impact.

Insights <> Marketing

• Define Target Audience: Partner with Marketing to refine market segments and target audience definitions.

• Pricing & Packaging: Use research (e.g., discrete choice models, etc.) to guide feature-pricing combos that drive adoption.

• Brand Health Metrics: Track brand and marketing efforts to measure  awareness, perception, trust, and key  attributes that influence the business.

• Guide Messaging: Inspire and refine messaging based on ongoing customer feedback and research.

• Effective Creative: Provide insights that inspire new creative. Test concepts in the early stages of creative development. Conduct creative testing early enough that insights are still actiable before campaigns launch.

• Support Press: Offer insights and data to enhance press coverage and media impact.

Application: At Fitbit, we conducted an annual feature-pricing conjoint to understand how new features would impact consumer choice across the portfolio and which ones most influenced purchase

One of the first things I do when starting Research & Insights functions is to set up basic Brand Tracking since their value is rooted in trends over time.

Insights <> Operations

• Customer Satisfaction: Partner with Operations to pinpoint and address key customer experience gaps using data.

• Gather Signals: Conduct regular experience & satisfaction studies to gather quality signals, especially during launch to help teams adjust quickly and drive adoption

• Correlate to Outcomes: Develop the relationship between customer feedback and key metrics.

Application: Similar to Brand Tracking, Customer Satisfaction/Experience Measurement is one of the first studies/processes I implement when starting an R&I function. It’s one of the places cross-functional teams find obvious value in order to start building trust and influence.

3/ Connect the dots

Insights come from across the business – customer-facing teams, sales, product, marketing, customer success – sometimes in structured output but often it’s less structured and emergent. There should be a team that is actively engaging across the company to gather signals and synthesize everything into a point of view based on the business needs. A team who also teaches and empowers the whole organization to champion the customer. That should be the Research & Insights team.

4/ Inform the strategy

Implementing and operating a successful Research & Insights function is about teaching and influencing. While there are foundational skills for both qualitative and quantitative researchers, for the team to become invaluable to the organization, those skills aren’t enough. 

The team has to meet the organization beyond the research to teach and influence cross-functional partners, helping them to build their data-driven intuition and champion the consumer. Great Research & Insights teams eventually grow into strategic leaders by addressing foundational questions about the market and the customer, forging strong partnerships, and informing strategy by implementing effective 1) synthesis, 2) frameworks, and 3) processes. 

Answer Foundational Questions: There are two kinds of research: tactical and foundational. Research & Insights teams need to get beyond tactical research, that informs decisions in the moment, to foundational research that will act as the basis for longer term decision making. 

Research & Insights teams need to gather these bigger foundational questions as they come up, make space to invest in answering them at high fidelity, and set the stage for teaching and influencing. 

1) Synthesis: leverage the whole body of knowledge to influence; don’t get overly focused on the specific project or question you’re trying to answer. Connect work back to the broader business context and customer knowledge your team has been gathering. 

• Holistic Integration: Leverage the entire body of knowledge to inform decisions when possible, not just individual studies. Partner teams often have specific requests, but Insights should use historical and surrounding data to share patterns and context. Connect the dots across various sources such as customer feedback, market trends, and competitor analysis to craft the strongest narratives and recommendations.

• Focusing Documents: Regularly create insights summaries that synthesize and compile research findings across the body of work conducted to capture the most important and actionable parts of the customer and market narrative. Help cross-functional teams see the forest for the trees. 

2) Frameworks: teams often need help to frame their problems and questions. Insights teams can help to create clarity by actively developing rationales for how disparate ideas and findings are connected to one another. The ultimate goal is to build system-level thinking and guide choices that fit into a bigger picture. A useful approach is to use frameworks that help teams understand the broader context of their decisions and the customer perspective. There are many frameworks R&I teams can use. Five of my favorites for informing strategy are: value vs frequency, Kano model, benefit ladders, habit cycle, and attention/decision/retention. 

1. Value vs Frequency

When to use: Product Strategy

Helpful for contextualizing the value your product delivers and whether it’s sufficient for success.

Mapping out how often consumers touch each part of an experience and what they get from it can be useful for framing discussions and choices.

2. Kano Model

Source: Sol Mesz

When to use: Feature Prioritization

Helpful to delineate which features are simply nice to have vs ones that will delight customers.

The Kano theory includes a built-in way to frame survey responses into categories so there’s a better understanding of what is a “good response”.

3. Benefit Ladder

When to use: Product/Marketing Connection

Helpful for teams to create the link between product attributes and marketing messages/promises

Product and marketing can often feel like they’re on different pages. Actively creating a bridge between the work of the two teams through the customer lens can facilitate productive conversations. 

4. Habit Cycle

When to use: Product Role in Habit Formation

Helpful for helping teams understand the experience cycle with the product. 

The language around habit formation (trigger-action-reward) has made its way into the mainstream, but teams still need help connecting the role of their specific product in that cycle. 

At Fitbit and Ancestry the products were part of a consumer’s habits in different ways and identifying that intersection for teams can be a significant unlock (Is the product itself the trigger for the habit? Does the product require an external trigger to start the habit?)

5. Attention/Decision/Retention

When to use: Insights in Funnel Context

Helpful for addressing perceived conflicts in the consumer learnings. 

Teams will sometimes say “our insights are inconsistent/conflict with one another”. One of the main reasons for this conflict is that they aren’t considering the insights in the right context. What gets a consumer's Attention, isn’t always what drives their purchase Decision, and it’s likely not what drives their Retention. 

A classic example is shampoo. A particular message in an ad may have gotten someone’s Attention to check out a new shampoo. However, at the shelf, consumers generally grab the bottle, flip it open, and take a whiff before deciding whether to buy. If they don’t like the smell, they put it back, which may have nothing to do with the ad. Similarly, when they get the product home and use it, the reason they love it may not be exactly because of what they saw in the ad or even the smell.

3) Processes: build a shared, consistent understanding with partner teams on how and when to work with the Research & Insights team. Failure is when Research & Insights operates as a silo or a reactive service. The most effective model is when their work is integrated into the partner team’s workflows.

• Row Together: Establish a rhythm for regular activities like annual, bi-annual, or quarterly programs so cross-functional teams know when to plug in and incorporate into their workflows.

• Collaborative Sessions: Facilitate workshops where cross-functional teams can generate solutions, practice applying insights, and take ownership from insight to implementation. Help them build their data-driven intuition.

• Tools and Templates: Implement standardized research approaches to answer specific recurring questions and templates for research briefs, insights presentations, and action plans/roadmaps. 

5/ Build customer champions

The Research & Insights Team can’t be everywhere. What they can do is build the comfort level and confidence of the broader organization to champion the customer when they aren’t present. A crucial step in that process is to go on Insights Roadshows, proactively sharing, teaching, and reinforcing actionable insights for the cross functional teams to build their data-driven intuition. Research & Insights teams often default to presenting once and moving on, but repetition and practice with the data is necessary for teams to fully absorb and activate new knowledge. 

Two example of Roadshows from Fitbit:

• Annual Insights Year in Review: We synthesized all the learnings from the previous year and then proactively went around the company to share and reinforce the most important insights. In some cases these were meetings scheduled specifically for this purpose. Other times we joined existing monthly team meetings. We found what worked for each of the different teams to meet them where they were. One year, we gave the Year in Review presentation over 30 times.

• Segmentation Activation: Once we had the results of our market segmentation, we not only scheduled presentations with teams across the organization, but we also created a “segmentation workshop in a box”. As part of the share-out, we reserved time for hands-on exercises that gave team members the ability to practice with their new knowledge and build confidence that they truly understood the distinctions between segments. 

What to expect when a Research & Insights Team is living its potential  

A strong Research & Insights function plays a crucial role in enabling data-driven decision making and strategic planning through deep customer and market intuition. Expect the team to provide sharp market and customer insights through qualitative and quantitative research, gathering signals from across the org and customer journey, and strategic synthesis and framing that clarifies the way forward for growth. 

Stories, not Specs

In my 15 years in product marketing one of the most common grumbles from PMMs I mentor, coach, and manage is actually shaping the product roadmap. It comes in different flavors:

“I want to be more involved with inbound.” 

“I want to shape the product roadmap.” 

“I want to have a seat at the table.”

“I hear about features too late. I disagree with the direction and what product is prioritizing” 

“I want to carve out time to work with my PM on what we build, not just launch and outbound.” 

Time and time again product marketing is downstream of strategy and what is built. 

Many of the PMMs want Product to ‘pull them in sooner’. That treats the symptom. To treat the root cause a PMM should be working with their PM (and others) to craft the story before PRDs or product specs are written. 

It’s not just PMMs that want to see this change. Many executives and CEOs want congruency between their vision, narrative, and what the product team is actually building. The GTM side of the house — from the CRO to CMO — deeply wants an aligned story and plan that their teams can deliver against. 

The solution is simple but not easy. 

It’s developing a strategic narrative that has the support from the CEO to the PMs. 

In today’s post we sat down with Marcus Andrews, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Pendo to share how he developed strategic narratives at HubSpot and Pendo to shape the product roadmap and bring clarity to the GTM motions. 

In this post we’ll cover: 

• What is a strategic narrative and why is it so important? 

• How to develop and implement a strategic narrative 

• Common mistakes to avoid when developing a strategic product narrative

• How to bring a strategic narrative to life externally 

Let’s dive in. 

What is a strategic narrative and why is it so important? 

The biggest challenge at any organization is getting everyone to row in the same direction. If you can do it, great things happen. If you can't, you move slow and don’t achieve your goals. It’s pretty simple. It’s how small startups can defeat mighty category goliaths. It’s how hot startups flame out. It’s how big companies redefine themselves and become relevant again. 

A lot of literature and mindshare is focused on competitors and the threat they represent. But more often than not the cause of delicate, or death is internal rather than external. 

You might think, isn’t this more just having a great strategy? Yes but no. Great strategies fail all the time, because you can’t get alignment, understanding, and buy-in across your organization, especially if you have big product, marketing, and sales teams. There is a popular saying right now “your story is your strategy” and I love it with all my heart. The best strategies come to life via simple but powerful stories. Stories that encompass your strategy, inspire your teams, align them around a shared vision, and easily turn into a powerful message to the market through sales and marketing. This is a strategic narrative. 

At the same time, it’s never been easier to start a company. And every market, regardless of your industry, is flooded with companies all fighting for their piece of the pie. In these markets a funny thing seems to always happen. Every company's story starts to sound the same. There is a very natural pull towards the status quo messaging of the category, usually defined by the category leader. However, some companies refuse to adhere to this status quo. They have a similar product, but their story is radically different, and new, and compelling. And they break through by taking the time to design their narrative. Craft it, shape it, and make it central to their corporate identity. I call this Narrative Design and these companies and the individuals inside it - Narrative Designers. 

The outcome of designing a powerful narrative is this alignment I mentioned. All of a sudden, the product roadmap becomes more clear, the marketing message more powerful, the sales motion faster, the ICP(s) more focused, and much more. You can have a great strategy, but if it’s not coming through internally and externally through a clear, powerful narrative it’s likely to fail. 

How to develop a strategic narrative 

The process of building a strategic narrative is what I call narrative design (for business). In my experience there are only two ways to do it, both effective, but at different scales. You either go, top down or bottom up. 

Top down is when your CEO is involved and you’re reshaping your company story. This is much easier to do at smaller companies that are more agile and where the Narrative Designer is usually a Product Marketing leader, a CMO or VP. You need to have enough influence to own the process and convince the CEO to design a new narrative. The second is bottoms up. This is where Narrative Design happens more at the local level. A new product line, or updated product, or marketing campaign. There it could just be a PMM and PM working together to create something new. I’ve done it both ways successfully at HubSpot and Pendo and seen others do the same at other companies using the process I’ve created. 

My process for designing a simple narrative follows a repeatable structure.  

Step 1 | There has been an undeniable change in the world 

Identifying a massive change in the lives of your audience is the first step of Narrative Design. The most adaptable companies are constantly assessing the horizon for changes looking for trends they can capitalize on. Whether it's societal, regulatory, or technological changes, they provide an edge which provides new opportunities. Examples are the shift to mobile in 2010 or the growth of AI today.     

Step 2 | This change has had a specific impact on your target market 

Unpack what this change means for your target audience. An example today is how AI has transformed every aspect of how white-collar work is performed, automating tasks, enhancing decision-making, and driving efficiency.

Step 3 | The smartest are already starting to adapt to this change - via a new game 

Tell the story of the winners and losers of this change. The most forward-thinking companies are already adapting to this change by doing something radically different. Because of their change they are winning. The companies that refuse to adapt are losing. Maybe it’s a sales team integrating AI into their operations, reshaping their strategies, and leveraging new technologies to stay competitive. Name the new game they are playing, in this instance, AI-led Sales. 

Step 4 | Adapting to this change is really hard

Illustrate, with specifics, why playing this new game is so hard. Make sure your audience knows exactly why adapting to this change will be a challenge. Maybe it requires significant investment in technology, upskilling employees, and rethinking business processes to fully harness the potential of AI. The challenges should all be real, but you’re choosing as set up to your solution. 

Step 5 | You’ve built something to help your buyer adapt

Introduce how you can help. To help your buyers adapt, you've developed innovative solutions to those specific problems. Maybe you simplify the integration of AI into their workflows, providing tools, training, and support to ensure a smooth transition and maximize the benefits of this technological evolution. Most importantly you enable them to play this new game, and adapt to massive macro change, but that happens through your solution. 

This structure does a couple of things. First, it avoids just talking about your company and how great it is at the start of your pitch. It positions you as a helpful expert in space. It starts with a big meaningful topic and quickly becomes relevant for just your audience. It outlines a new and different approach that is specific to your company. It avoids the extremely common problem <> solution trope most companies use to tell a story. 

Most importantly it serves as a storytelling vehicle for your strategy, internally and to your market. Where you chose to use this structure top down or bottom up, this is the structure you build with a core team you assemble to build a new narrative.

How to implement a strategy narrative 

Once you’ve got a new narrative it’s important to start with the internal focus. A new narrative can ignite your sales and marketing motion, but only if they really believe in it and get it. So, when done most successfully I see new narratives get marketed internally. The CEO presents it at a company meeting and writes a canonical memo that gets shared internally. This is also a great way to get valuable feedback on the story. 

From there a new narrative works particularly well when tied to a big launch or event. At HubSpot we’d run the Narrative Design process as part of our annual conference, workshopping the core narrative or inventing new ones that support new product lines. I worked with our CEO and Service Hub team to develop HubSpots Funnel to Flywheel campaign for instance as part of launching that new product line. Our CEO got on stage and delivered the story to an audience of thousands and at the same time a massive marketing and sales effort powered by the new narrative fired off. 

Common mistakes to avoid when developing a strategic product narrative

There is a reason more people don’t just design narratives. Doing it well is hard. The word is out that this strategy works and many companies and product marketing teams invest in it. But they often fail. Or worse they launch a new narrative that misses the mark, confuses their audience, and isn’t very interesting. 

The good news is that tweaking the story is pretty inexpensive. There have been plenty of times that I’ve taken a story to get feedback or even to market and it hasn’t worked. This is normal. You just have to be ready to make changes fast. Figure out what’s not working and why and iterate on it. This might be happening a lot of the course of a narrative's first year. While it’s good to take this approach, the biggest reason people get it wrong is because they think “inside out” and not “outside in”. 

“Inside out” means building your story by starting with what your company is trying to achieve, or your product, or your goals. “Outside in” means starting with your customer. What’s changing in their world? What are they struggling with? What do they need? This is the most important thing to flip in your thinking to build a great narrative, and it’s not easy to do . 

How to bring a strategic narrative to life externally 

I’ve seen great narratives power massive million dollar product launches, and simple blogs posts and webinars. When you have a great narrative, building great sales and marketing campaigns just gets easier. One helpful tip though is that the steps in my process can often be matched to your funnel. 

In top of funnel marketing activities like PR, events, thought leadership talking about what’s changed in the world, and the impact that has had on your audience, steps 1 and 2 of narrative design is best. This part of the story also really lends itself to data and proprietary research and reports. Here you’re telling a broader story, that is very “outside in” and capturing attention. 

Steps 3 and 4 - how to adapt and why it’s so hard are great for more middle of the funnel content. Your website, blog posts and webinars, events, ad campaigns. This helps differentiate your approach in the mind of a more educated qualified buyer. 

Step 4 and 5 are really important at the point of sale and in the sales process. People have to know why adapting is going to be hard and how you’ll help. But luckily if you’ve done the first 4 steps well it’s easy to convince them of this by this point. 

Back to the Product Roadmap

We’ve covered a lot of ground here, but I hope it helps you start to think differently about the first paragraph of this article. If you want to truly influence the product roadmap, you need to shape the company or product story - fundamentally. Said a different way, if you’re not getting pulled in early enough on product decisions, no amount of asking will make that happen. You have to influence the larger approach and the best way I’ve ever seen it done is with a really great story. When you are the lead narrative designer, the roadmap will follow your story, and you’ll get pulled into every strategic product brainstorm. 

Marketing at a startup is unpredictable. 

You’re trying to find product-market fit, the team is evolving, and cultural norms haven’t been established. 

It’s an exciting time where high agency people can have a tremendous impact on the company. And just as companies evolve as they scale, the role of marketing can change dramatically in the early years. 

While there is plenty of literature on how to hire your first marketer and mistakes to avoid, there is little coverage on the actual first marketing hires at fast paced startups. 

Today, we share the first marketing hire at 30 well known startups across B2B and B2C. Some of these companies went on to become big winners in their space. Others ended up getting acquired, acqui-hired or shutting down. While the first person responsible for marketing is typically a cofounder, and sometimes they continue in that role, oftentimes they hire a jill-or-jack-of-all-trades that can handle all things ‘marketing’. 

Takeaways: 

1/ Founders are often the first marketer. In the early days, founders wear all the hats. And even if the founding team is mostly/all technical, someone is talking with customers, shaping the messaging, and acquiring initial customers. 

2/ Both sides, candidates and companies, are betting on upside. The companies are often unknown at the time of hire. And the candidates are often unproven as well. Most of the companies don’t have brand recognition to compete with FANG, so employees are often referrals or have high upside. 

3/ The background of first marketing hires varies greatly from directly out of college, to banking and finance, to consultants, marketing managers, PR, and interns. 

Year 0 Hires

Lyft

• Company Age: 0 years

• Hired: 2012

• Employee Number: <30

• Adam Fishman

• Adam’s Background: ecommerce and digital marketing

• Where was Lyft in 2012?

  • Transitioning from ZimRide to Lyft business model

  • Acquiring initial drivers and establishing ride standards

Hotwire

• Company Age: 0

• Hired: 2000

• Employee Number: NA

• Name: Cheryl Law

• Cheryl’s Background: CPG marketing manager

• Where was hotwire in 2000?

  • Just getting off the ground with $75M from private equity firm TPG

Asana

• Company Age: 0

• Hired: 2011

• Employee number: ~20

• Kenny Van Zant

• Kenny’s Background: COO-type business roles

• Where was Asana in 2011?

  • Had raised a modest ~$10M across its early rounds

  • Initial product / market fit

Neeva

• Company Age: 0

• Hired: 2019

• Employee Number: <25

• Name: Sandy Banerjee

• Sandy’s Background: product marketing

• Where was Neeva in 2019?

  • Just getting off the ground

Pulse (acquired by linkedin)

• Company Age: ~0

• Hired: 2010

• Employee Number: 1

• Cristina Cordova

• Cristina’s Background: college

• Where was Pulse in 2010?

  • Just getting started by two Stanford grad students

  • Was featured in Steve Jobs’ Worldwide Developers Conference presentation

StockX

• Company Age: 0

• Hired: 2015

• Employee number: 7

• Matthew Luber

• Matthew’s Background: digital marketing and social media

• Joined as employee #7 and the first marketing team member of StockX, a digital marketplace for buying and selling sneakers, streetwear, and collectibles, currently valued at over $3.8B

• Where was StockX in 2015?

  • Getting ready for their official launch in Feb 2016

Thumbtack

• Company Age: 0 years

• Hired: 2009

• Employee Number: co-founder (<5)

• Jonathan Swanson

• Jonathan’s Background: White House

• Where was Thumbtack in 2009?

  • Just getting off the ground

  • Pitching investors, with the first 42 saying no

Year 1 Hires

Uber

• Company Age: 1

• Hired: 2010

• Employee Number: 4

• Austin Geidt

• Austin’s Background: college

• Where was Uber in 2010?

  • Testing the service in NY and SF

  • Raised $1.25M angel round

  • Travis became CEO

YouTube

• Company Age: 1

• Hired: 2006

• Employee Number: 30

• Suzie Reider

• Suzie’s Background: sales and magazine publishing

• Where was YouTube in 2006?

  • Growing very fast and impacting culture with videos such as “Charlie Bit My Finger” and “Evolution of Dance” gaining millions of views.

  • Suzie joined prior to the Google acquisition in October of that year

Spotify

• Company Age: 1

• Hired: 2007

• Employee number: NA

• Sophia Bendz

• Sophia’s Background: PR & consulting

• Where was Spotify in 2007?

  • Invite only service

  • Officially launch in europe in 2008

Lattice

• Company Age: 1

• Hired: 2016

• Employee Number: 3

• Alex Kracov

• Alex’s Background: account management

• Where was Lattice in 2016?

  • Launched an OKR product

  • Raised a $2.8 million seed round

Hubspot

• Company Age: 1

• Hired: 2007

• Employee Number: ~5

• Mike Volpe

• Mike’s Background: marketing ops and business development

• Where was HubSpot in 2007?

  • Gearing up for official launch in December of 2007

  • Launched website grader tool

  • Hit $255K in revenue

Kickstarter

• Company Age: 1

• Hired: 2010

• Employee Number: 9

• Name: Cindy Au

• Cindy’s Background: content strategy

• Where was Kickstarter in 2010?

  • Early product / market fit with nearly 4,000 successfully completed projects and nearly $30M in funding.

Dropbox

• Company Age: 1 year

• Hired: 2008

• Employee Number: ~10

• Sean Ellis

• Sean’s Background: digital marketing

• Where was Dropbox in 2008?

  • Roughly 10 employees and 200,000 customers

  • Was scaling quickly with their free-space referral program

Year 2 Hires

Brex

• Company Age: 2 years

• Hired: 2019

• Employee Number: NA

• Elenitsa Staykova

• Elenitsa’s Background: growth and demand gen

• Where was Brex in 2019?

  • Only one year post official launch, they closed a $100 million fundraising round

  • Build out the growth and marketing team so Co-Founder Henrique Dubugras could focus on running the business

Affirm

• Company Age: 2 yrs

• Hired 2014

• Employee number: 40

• Ed Lin

• Ed’s Background: digital and acquisition marketing

• Where was Affirm in 2014?

  • Forging partnerships with ecommerce companies

  • Refining its underwriting

  • Raised $45M

Duolingo

• Company Age: 2

• Hired: 2013

• Employee Number: ~20

• Gina Gotthilf

• Gina’s Background: international market expansion

• Where was Duoling in 2013?

  • Grew from 3 to 5 million users in the year

  • #1 education app in the Google Play Store

Gusto

• Company Age: 2

• Hired: 2013

• Employee Number: ~11

• Jaleh Rezaei

• Jaleh’s Background: product marketing

• Where was Gusto in 2013?

  • Completed YC the year prior

  • processed over $100 million in payments annually

Clari

• Company Age: 2

• Hired: 2014

• Employee Number: NA

• Donovan Erba

• Donovan’s Background: digital marketing

• Where was Clari in 2014?

  • Refining its sales analytics and forecasting platform

  • Initial adoption in technology, telecommunications, and healthcare industries

  • $14.5M raised

Year 3 Hires

Stripe

• Company Age: 3 yrs

• Hired 2013

• Employee number: NA

• Krithika Muthukumar (also OpenAI’s first marketing hire)

• Krithika’s Background: product marketing

• Was Stripe’s first marketing hire (and only marketer for 3 years). Drove all product launches, new market expansion, developer and community outreach, sales enablement, and more.

• Where was Stripe in 2013?

  • Had closed $18M series A year prior

  • Nearly 100,000 developer accounts

Figma

• Company Age: 3

• Hired: 2015

• Employee Number: 10

• Claire Butler

• Claire’s Background: product marketing and demand generation

• Where was Figma in 2015?

  • Company was still in stealth preparing for their 2016 launch

Square

• Company Age: 3

• Hired: 2012

• Employee number: NA

• Arielle Jackson

• Arielle’s Background: product marketing

• Where was Square in 2012?

  • Starbucks invests $25 million in Square and makes Square its exclusive processor of debit and credit card payments.

  • Square closes $200 million in Series D financing.

Eventbrite

• Company Age: 3

• Hired: 2009

• Employee Number: ~30

• Name: Tamara Mendelsohn

• Tamara’s Background: consulting and digital marketing

• Where was Eventbrite in 2009?

  • Trying to get the flywheel going as VC funding had dried up

  • 2009 Webware 100 award for Best Commerce Site by Webware, a CNET site

Year 4 Hires

Calm

• Company Age: 4 years

• Hired: 2016

• Employee Number: NA

• Alexander Will

• Alex’s Background: co-founder of consumer focused startups based in London

• Where was Calm in 2016?

  • Raised ~$1.8M across two seed rounds

  • Around 5 million downloads and catching momentum

  • Co-founder Alex Tew had played a key role in early marketing wins given his background in viral marketing, including The Million Dollar Homepage, earning him $1 million in five months.

Netflix

• Company Age: 4

• Hired: 2001

• Employee Number: NA

• Barry W. Enderwick

• Where was Netflix in 2001?

  • Dot-com bust was in full swing

  • Blockbuster had 52 million members and around 7,000 locations

Pinterest

• Company Age: 4 years

• Hired: 2012

• Employee Number: ~50

• Name: Annie Katrina Lee

• Don’s Background: online operations and sales

• Where was Pinterest in 2012?

  • Publicly launched in 2010 by 2012 the app was rapidly scaling from 9 million to 40 million users that year

Grubhub

• Company Age: 4 years

• Hired: 2008

• Employee Number: NA

• Casey Winters

• Casey’s Background: digital marketing and SEO

• Where was Grubhub in 2008?

  • Had closed their $1.1M series A the year earlier

  • Had 40k users and were quickly scaling

Year 5 Hires

MongoDB

• Company Age: 5 years

• Hired: 2012

• Employee Number: 8

• Name: Meghan Gill

• Meghan’s Background: banking

• Where was MongoDB in 2012?

  • Solidifying its position as a leading NoSQL database provider

  • Raised $311M

Year 6 Hires

Tesla

• Company Age: 6

• Hired: 2009

• Employee number: NA

• Ricardo Reyes

• Ricardo’s Background: communications and policy

• Where was Tesla in 2009?

  • Selling out of the Tesla Roadster without any advertising. Launched Model S and Model X. Preparing for IPO in 2010

Moat

• Company Age: 6

• Hired: 2016

• Employee number: NA

• Nicole Silver

• Nicole’s Background: demand generation and sales

• Where was Moat in 2016?

  • Recently raised series B.

  • Marketing organization was just forming

  • Later acquired by Oracle for $850M in 2017

BTW, check our consulting service if your company needs support with fractional marketing. And if you’re looking for 1:1 coaching or advice on GTM, team building & recruiting or interview prep, please reach out.

If you can’t master executive comms, you can’t become a world class marketer. 

It doesn’t need to be your strongest asset, but you must become good at it in order to move forward in your career. Many years ago when I was a teaching assistant for Power and Negotiations at MIT, I gained an even deeper understanding of the importance of communicating effectively in order to get an outcome you desire. And this ability is useful across every facet of life, not only professional. In your career, your ability to communicate up, down and across the org chart in a manner which is effective will pay dividends for your career. 

In most of my past roles I’ve often found myself pulled into communicating with the executive team — CEO, COO, CMO, CPO. Whether it’s projects I’m leading (expected), projects I’m a key stakeholder to and  the team enlists me me to drive executive comms (flattered), or it’s my boss or skip level boss (flattered and a bit annoyed) who have asked me to communicate progress or outcomes to CxOs. I have often found myself being the one selected to lead and craft executive comms. It may sound like a humblebrag, but I think it's a skill that comes natural to me and one I’m fairly good at and I want to share with you some of what I’ve learned so you can leverage them to become a better communicator. 

Today I will share my playbook for effectively communicating with executives on your team and at your organization. I break these into three buckets: general principles, written communication, and executive presentations. 

General Principles

Know your audience

The first and most important rule of all communication is know your audience. Who are you communicating to and what can you learn about them – this includes their goals, their concerns, their timeline, their personality and more. If you have little or no previous interaction with this stakeholder, you must do some research. There are dots you can connect to better understand your executive audience. All hands recordings, documents they’ve authored, comments in forgotten google docs and slides, and quick checks in with others in your orbit who have a relationship with that executive. Being familiar with the content of your presentation or writing matters but also understanding the personality of the executive matters to. For example, what is their general inclination around the thing you’ll be discussing – are they worried and what specifically worries them, are they excited about the opportunity and how can you lean into this etc. Doing this work will be incredibly helpful so you can ensure your preparation is tailored to the expectation and temperment of that person.

Reduce response time

From my experience there is a direct correlation between response time and the successful execution of the ini. Obviously your response should be thoughtful, substantive and move the conversation forward. But all else being equal, the person that responds quicker is more likely to drive more impact and advance quicker over the arc of their career. If you are not able to craft a thoughtful response without input from others which will take time, a general rule, you should respond to confirm receipt with a note on when they can expect an answer. As Sriram notes, response time is often a very accurate signal for competence:

Calendar symbiosis

A corollary of response time is understanding when executives are online and active. Execs have full schedules. But they have patterns, like replying to slacks and emails late at night. For some execs, their review time is 8-10am on Saturday mornings. While others are Sunday evening-ers between 8-11pm. Know the pattern for each executive you work with. This will help you be more effective when your message is delivered and a tighter feedback loop for their comments. There have been multiple instances where the CEO/COO/CPO is in my memo or Google Slides asking questions at 9:30pm on a Sunday night. I was in there <5 mins later with a thoughtful response which solicited a 👏 or 👍 response minutes later. It built rapport. And it helps build a line between you and that executive. The confidence that the exec had in me was slightly higher after each interaction. And the Monday review meeting was a breeze compared to those folks who left the CEOs questioning hanging for 24 hours.

Written Communication

Be Direct

You should be direct and succinct — executives are busy. The pyramid principle from Barbara Pinto at McKinsey, does a fairly good job outlining how you should structure your written comms to have the most important information at the top. Be explicit and do not bury your ask. They have no time to search for the TLDR. Make it clear what you need from them, when you need it by, why you need it and the implications of not getting it Your proposal or ask should be substantiated and backed up by analysis, data and evidence whenever possible

Source

Sweat the details

If you include an attachment, does the executive and their chief of staff have access? Do all your links work correctly and link to the appropriate slide or page? Did you spell check everything? If you need a response from them to unblock the team – did you make that explicit and include a specific date and time of when a response is needed? These may seem like common sense but I assure you I have had failure points across the board here, on multiple occasions and so have my reports and my peers. We’re human, we make mistakes. Spend a few extra minutes to mitigate these errors and you’ll be glad you did.

Peer to peer

Communicating with executives, especially when you have established rapport and are more senior in your career (Director+), should be more peer than subordinate to executives. In the book The Courage to be Disliked, which profiles Adlerian psychology, authors Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga share a similar perspective:

“Horizontal relationships are egalitarian and treat everyone as equals. Adler believed that all relationships should be horizontal. We should have confidence in others and not try to manage or manipulate (or be manipulated)”

I have noticed colleagues that continue to interact and communicate with execs in a hierarchical manner, putting them on a pedestal. Oftentimes the email to them is too long and convoluted. Instead, match their formality. If they are texting you in all lower case text and using emojis, do the same. I often match the tonality and formality of the exec I’m communicating with. From my CPO texting on weekends to the COO using emojis in Google comments, match their tone and treat them like competent peers.

The exception here is If you are much more junior than your executive audience and don’t have a rapport or an existing relationship with them, generally you should be more formal and to the point in your communications until you’ve established credibility & rapport.

Executive Presentations

Executive meetings are not a one time event, I like to think of them in three phases: pre meeting, meeting, and post meeting.

Pre Meeting: Do your homework & be crystal clear on the purpose

Do the Meetings Before The Meeting

This simply means prep, prep and more prep. This goes without saying but not only must you be intimately familiar with the contents of whatever you’re presenting, you must ensure those in the meeting are pre-aligned or at least ‘warmed’ going into the meeting. This means you should know and understand every attendee’s role, their POV and anticipate their questions and/or pushback. In my experience, presenting to the CEO, COO, CPO and CMO of Instacart – this means you need to meet with the other stakeholders (formally or informally) and prep them on what you are going to present and address their concerns before the meeting so you are not surprised or caught off guard with in the moment opposition. Here are things you can do to achieve this:

• Know the players and ensure they are read in prior to the meeting. Most should be aligned to your POV but it’s perfectly okay if not everyone is as long as you understand their perspective and will be ready to address in the room

• Anticipate objections and be prepared to handle them gracefully and thoughtfully in the moment – this will be abundantly evident if you have not done the work here and will reflect poorly on you

• If you include a complex chart, data set or information in your appendix or support documentation, be fully prepared for an executive to ask you the most minute question about it so you better understand it inside our or ensure you have someone in the room who can speak to it in detail

• Send a Pre-Read Do this 24-48 hours prior to the meeting and ask the attendees to read it so you can move into discussion to ensure an efficient use of time. This can be in a memo or slide format and companies usually have a style or preference so know what that is.

• Designate a note taker if there is not one officially assigned. In critical executive meetings, someone will be taking the notes and managing the AIs post meeting. Find out who that is and if there is not someone, find someone to do while you present and facilitate the meeting. You want to ensure your post meeting hygiene is on point and trying to balance the presentation and note taking will make you less efficient at both.

Be clear on the purpose of your meeting

What is the goal of this meeting and what do you want to get out of it? Make sure you are clear on what this is and ensure everyone else in the room (pre & during) the meeting is on the same page. Every org has their own flavor of how executive meetings are run – many require pre-reads, some involve silent reading in the room for the first 15 minutes, many limit the number of attendees etc. Understand the nuance for your executive team and organization. There are also different types of meetings:

• Decision meetings where you are seeking a gating decision from a CMO, CPO or CEO

• Inform meetings where you are seeking to bring an executive along on the progress of a project initiative

• Pivot meetings where the strategy in place requires a significant change and your CEO must weigh in

• New venture meetings where you are presenting a plan or proposal which needs executive alignment and approval.

• Is it a decision making meeting in which you’re trying to achieve a decision in the meeting? If this is the case, who is the decider? Who is accountable? They should have been briefed ahead of time and likely already have a POV going into the meeting. If it is a decision-making meeting, make sure you facilitate a discussion with dissenting viewpoints.

• Is it a resource ask meeting where you’re trying to move forward with a new plan? This could be annual or half planning, or a product launch or campaign that needs more resources.

• Is it an approval meeting, such as a go/no-go meeting or final review of marketing assets before the campaign is set to go live? Sometimes these approval meetings can be done async via slack/email.

Meeting: Establish context, facilitate seamlessly and master executive presence

Set the context

In the same vein as executives are short on time, you should have a succinct intro for your meetings. Set the context, remind them of past decisions, and highlight the key decisions and topics meeting will focus on. Clarify the constraints to guide the conversation, and make it clear what success will look like at the end of the next 30/60 minutes. You and the working team may know the subject like the back of your hand. The CEO or CPO doesn’t. They are constantly context switching as they have upwards of 15 meetings and hundreds of slacks a day. While the meeting may be the most important meeting of your day, or your week, it’s just another meeting for the CEO.

Facilitate with elegance

Executive meetings can go down rabbit holes. Executives like to double click into esoteric nuances, assumptions and love to ideate. The pro is they’re engaged. The con is that the meeting can go sideways if not managed properly. While it’s important to engage and hear ideas which have nothing to do with your objective, it’s also critical to steer and correct course quickly and appropriately. The nuance here is to make that CEO feel heard but gently point their attention back to the matter at hand. . Remember your goal is to get to X within Y timeframe and it entirely your job to ensure this goal is met. One tactic that can work well in facilitation, when used appropriately, is humor. It can help lighten the mood and allow folks to let their guards down a bit which removes unnecessary and rigid formality. IIt’s also a way to demonstrate confidence and control over the facilitation.

Executive presence

A corollary of being excellent at facilitation is having a strong executive presence. It’s one of those elusive terms that no one can articulate yet everyone in the room knows it when they see it. It’s that magical combination of competence, likability and engagement. You know your stuff and present it confidently yet you’re open to disagreement and welcome objection. You can read the room well and know when to pause, when to engage in discussion and how to bring the group back together. It’s a bit like conducting an orchestra when not all eyes are on you so in this sense it’s even harder. If you are presenting to a CEO, CPO, CMO etc, you are probably a high potential leader at the company and make no mistake that your executive presence will be assessed – how you speak, how you address questions, how to move the meeting forward– all of that will be noticed and can help build your credibility with this audience or diminish it.

Make it real

In meetings with executives, marketers oftentimes get stuck in strategy theater. Slides and frameworks dominate the conversation. The consternation on the faces of CEOs and executives is apparent. Instead, you should make it as real as possible as quickly as possible — execs want to see the final product — the GTM plan, campaign, press release, the homepage, the words of the keynote. The framework and supporting rationale should be in your back pocket, but don’t make it the focal point of your meeting.

Expect interruption

Many marketers come to executive meetings with an expectation of sequentially presenting a 20 slide deck. I have never seen this happen once in 15 years. At every single meeting I led with a VP, CEO, CMO, CPO etc – we are never going through a slide deck or memo neatly and chronologically. You will be interrupted and oftentimes immediately. At both Instacart and Google, I’ve presented to SVP (Google) and CEO (Instacart), where in both instances they wanted to start with a topic that wasn’t even on the agenda. You have to be prepared to accommodate this and again, steer the conversation appropriately. Assuming you’ve sent a pre-read, your role will be to ensure folks have read it and then focus on discussing open questions or concerns the team has.

• Sometimes meetings can do off track because of unexpected opposition to your proposal. Of course, you’ve aligned with the key stakeholders prior to the meeting to ensure you’re on the same page and perhaps you’ve even had a stakeholder ‘warm the executive’ or presell the takeaways to them. At Instacart, this was common. Our CMO would ‘pre sell’ ideas to our CEO or COO prior to a major presentation so nothing is surprising in the moment. However, I’ve been in meetings when a previously aligned on idea or proposal with a key stakeholder comes into question in the room because that stakeholder changes their position in the room. This is a tough situation and will 100% catch you off guard. There are many ways to handle this but generally, you should always remain calm, receptive and engage in a discussion even when you’re caught off guard.

Post Meeting: Proactively follow-up & Manage AIs

Written Follow-up

Within 24 hours of the meeting, send a detailed follow-up outlining key decisions, outcomes, next steps and clarity on what the executive should expect and when. If there are AIs for others who were not in the meeting, include them in the follow-up (send context prior to the email of course!) and be crystal clear on AIs other stakeholders in the meeting will need to do.

Informal Follow-up

Sometimes in between a critical gating meeting and the next meeting with that executive team, the executive or key stakeholders will want an informal check in on how things are progressing. You can do this via a Slack channel or a less formal email with progress. This can be done weekly or monthly. It’s not required but I highly recommend it especially for high visibility and timely initiatives.

Is product marketing the new path to the c-suite? 

Different times call for different types of leaders with relevant skill sets. And while product marketing isn’t the only path to c-suite, it’s becoming a proven path. 

For years product marketing has been the strategic underpinning of tech companies but without the spotlight. This is changing. And it’s important to understand, especially if you’re considering what a career trajectory looks like for product marketing. 

From Brain Chesky’s remark last summer about product management and product marketing merging into one role, to companies such as Shopify, Figma, Brex and Robinhood launching products through big narrative led events, product marketing is at the center of this evolution. 

As a product marketing leader, a typical discussion with a direct report during a career chat or a peer at a meetup is ‘where can I go with a background in product marketing and ‘how should I think about product marketing in terms of my broader career?’

Those aren’t easy questions with black and white answers. But they are very common questions whether you’re just starting in PMM, at the midpoint of your career, or at the director+ level. You want clarity on how the path you’re currently on can help you achieve your longer term career goals and have meaningful impact. 

We’ve shared why product marketing is the heart of tech marketing and last week we shared the 7 habits of marketers who get promoted.  Today we’re going to showcase Product Marketers who have gone on to become executives in tech. Based on our experience, these are the most common career paths we’ve seen PMMs take to have more impact in their career. 

Many high achievers are realizing the value of a PMM skillset in their career journey. So too are companies hiring senior leaders across marketing and product. Product marketers are strategic thinkers who found multi billion dollar startups, lead public companies, and drive impact across the tech industry. 

The product marketing function varies greatly by company, industry, and customer base so the end destination for career journeys are just as broad. Regardless of the industry or customer base, PMM is a breeding ground for – strategic thinking, customer empathy and insight, quantitative analysis, ability to work cross functionally and with executives, and execute at all levels. These skills are valuable across a range of career paths beyond core product marketing. 

The most common paths we’ve uncovered across consumer and B2B:

• PMM → Head of PMM: start in product marketing, eventually lead Product Marketing for the company or lead product marketing and another marketing function such as PMM + Demand Gen; PMM + Market Research; PMM + Content Marketing 

• PMM → Head of Marketing: lead a marketing pillar such as brand, performance, content, CRM, or lead marketing for a specific business unit  (eg Head of Marketing, EMA)

• PMM → CMO: start in product marketing, eventually lead the entire marketing org for a company 

• PMM → PM: start in product marketing, transition to product management

• PMM → Founder: start in product marketing, then decide to start your own company  

• PMM → CEO: start in product marketing, eventually lead the entire company 

Let’s dive into the 30 examples 

PMM → Head of Product Marketing

Our first path is Product Marketers who moved up to lead the product marketing function at their company or a new company.

Rita Patel Jackson

Rita Patel Jackson

Then: Rita’s first product marketing experience was as a founding PMM, establishing the function at Platinum Technologies in 1995 and supporting 45 products globally. Four years in, that company was acquired by Computer Associates for $3.5B and Rita was tapped to rebuild the product marketing function for the entire company. She then joined IBM for a highly impactful 11 year stint starting as a Portfolio Marketing Manager and departing as the VP of Product Management and Product Marketing of IBM’s Worldwide Cognitive Industry Solutions organization (e.g. Watson). Later she joined GE Healthcare as Vice President of Global Marketing for the Artificial Intelligence division.

Now: Rita is the SVP of Product Marketing at OpenText, the $10B information software company.

Get to know Rita:

• Twitter

• Illinois Computer Science

• Taking the Lead podcast

• Marketing Profs

Brian Hall

Brian Hall

Then: Brian has 25+ years of experience in tech in a variety of product marketing and engineering roles. He started as a PM on Windows and Internet Explorer at Microsoft in 1995 and after 3 years, transitioned to being the speech writer for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. A pretty unique gig. He was then the launch manager of Windows XP, which had some components of product marketing, among other responsibilities. He moved up the ladder to become GM of Outlook, SkyDrive, and Messenger, a $750M product line with 400M+ active users. Brian took another GM role on Surfaces before ending his 22 year run at Microsoft as Corporate Vice President of Microsoft devices. He grew the unit to $5B in revenue and was part of the early success Satya was able to champion. After Microsoft, he spent a year as CEO at a hardware startup called Doppler Labs. Finally, he spent 2 years at Amazon as VP of Product Marketing for AWS, covering all their important products, developer relations, open source relations and more.

Now: Brian is the VP of Product Marketing on Google Cloud, a juggernaut which generated $9.2 billion in revenue in Q4 of 2023. He leads product marketing, industry marketing and analyst relations for Google Cloud.

Get to know Brian:

• Last Week in AWS

• Next Ten Words

Harish Peri

Harish Peri

Then: Harish studied computer science in undergrad and his first few roles were as a developer in finance. He joined Salesforce in 2011 and spent the next 3.5 years in Product Management or Product Marketing roles on Data.com where he was responsible for go to market, packaging, sales enablement, outbound campaigns, and product adoption. Then he had stops as a Product Marketing leader at Nielsen and ADP. Harish returned to Salesforce as second this to lead product marketing for their security developer platform including Heroku, Salesforce Shield, and Hyperforce. Most of his focus was on outbound product marketing to help grow the $700M product line.

Now: Harish has continued to climb the Product Marketing ladder in B2B SaaS as he joined Okta last year. He is currently SVP of Product Marketing for the $18B cloud based identity platform where he is responsible for messaging, positioning, GTM strategy, and adoption of Okta’s core products.

Get to know Harish:

• Leading the Way: The Sales Enablement Podcast

• CMO Conversations with Tricia Gellman

• Cybercrime Magazine

• Product Marketing Insider

PMM → Head of Marketing

Our second path is Product Marketers who moved up to lead a functional area of marketing such as Growth, Content, Brand or an individual business line such as head of marketing for SMB or EMEA. Additionally they could be responsible for marketing for multiple business units.

Krithika Muthukumar

Krithika Muthukumar

Then: Krithika joined Google as a product marketing manager in 2010. Over her two years there she supported Android and Nexus product lines. She then had a stint at Dropbox before spending 9 years at Stripe as a Marketing Lead and Business Lead.

Now: In August of last year, Krithika secured one of the most exciting roles in marketing, becoming the VP of Marketing at OpenAI where she is leading platform, B2B, and brand marketing.

Get to know Krithika:

• Twitter

• Basis Set Ventures

• Intercom

Jim Squires

Jim Squires

Then: Jim has oscillated between product management and product marketing. He joined broadcast.com in 1999 as a product manager and continued in PM roles at Yahoo and Ning. He then joined the startup Mixercast as VP of Marketing to lead product strategy and marketing for the company which built Facebook apps for companies such as Nike, Levis, and CBS. He then decide to join the empire, becoming a Director of Product Marketing on the Monetization team at Facebook. While there, he was responsible for the development, introduction and growth of advertising in the Facebook News Feed on desktop and mobile. Once Facebook bought Instagram, Jim jumped over to lead product marketing and general management of Instagram’s business products. He was a critical figure at Instagram during his 8+ year run, becoming VP of Business and Media, effectively a GM role, responsible for leading marketing, analytics, creative, finance, communications.

Now: In 2021 Jim became VP or Product Marketing across Instagram & Facebook leading a 200+ person org launching and growing products for businesses and creators on Instagram & Facebook. This includes products such as Feed, Stories and Reels advertising, distribution and monetization solutions for creators, IG Shopping and FB Marketplace.Last year Jim joined Reddit as EVP of Business Marketing & Growth. At Reddit Jim is responsible for growing their ads business with a particular focus on international acceleration.

Get to know Jim:

• DMEXCO 2018

• DMEXCO18 Presentation

• Business Insider

• Ad Exchanger

Tom Oliveri

Tom Oliveri

Then: Tom keeps a relatively low profile but is highly influential at Google. He joined the company 19 years ago, in 2005 as a Senior Product Marketing Manager on the Commerce team. He was responsible for Google’s first payment service and associated commerce initiatives which led to a multi-billion dollar commerce platform. He then moved to consumer apps – Gmail, Blogger, Picasa, Google Voice, Google Docs, and orkut – as a Group PMM where he focused on launches and outbound campaigns.

Now: Tom is currently the VP of Marketing for Android, Chrome, and Enterprise in which he leads product marketing for Chrome and Android, including operating system releases, flagship apps, and related hardware offerings for consumers and businesses. Further, he’s one of 17 leads that are part of Sundar’s inner circle, and the only marketing person in the circle besides Lorraine Twohill, the CMO. He’s been known to facilitate the meetings of this inner circle.

Get to know Tom:

• Not much we can find on Tom online

_{Presented by the American Marketing Association}

Level Up Your Social Media Strategy This April

Master the art of crafting a social strategy and turning challenges into opportunities. This small group training from the American Marketing Association connects you with peers facing similar questions around defining your social media purpose and measuring impact. Move beyond theories and build practical strategies that achieve your goals.

Boost Your Engagement, Register Now.

PMM → CMO

Our third path is Product Marketers who moved through the ranks to become a marketing leader – such as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or VP of Marketing leading the function for the entire company.

Taj Alavi

Taj Alavi

Then: Taj was Director of Product Marketing at RingCentral in 2010-2011 prior to their IPO managing their flagship product and establishing growth marketing and research capabilities.

Now: Taj is currently the VP and Global Head of Marketing at Spotify – the $52B market cap music and entertainment behemoth – leading the marketing org in 180+ countries.

Get to know Taj:

• Twitter

• CMO Moves

• Cannes Speakers’ Lounge

Phil Schiller

Phil Schiller

Then: Phil joined Apple as a product marketing manager in 1987. Most readers of this newsletter weren’t even born. He had stints at FirePower Systems as the director of product marketing and in 1995 he joined Macromedia as the VP of product marketing. In 1997, with Jobs returning to Apple, he did as well. As a PMM he was instrumental in the launch and growth of the iMac and iPad.

Now: According to Apple’s website, “Phil Schiller is an Apple Fellow, responsible for leading the App Store and Apple Events”. Most recently he was the SVP of Worldwide Marketing for Apple, a role he took over from Mitch Mandich in December 2000. He’s done pretty well for himself with an estimated net worth close to $500 million. Not bad, eh?

Get to know Phil:

• TWiT Tech Podcast Network

• 9to5Mac

• WSJ

Laura Jones

Laura Jones

Then: Laura was four months pregnant and comfortable at Google, but received a call to build the product marketing function from the ground up at Uber. It was too big of an opportunity to pass up. She joined as a Sr PMM in 2016 and went on to lead a global team of 67.

Now: Laura joined Instacart as the VP of Brand & Marketing in 2021, eventually becoming the CMO of the $10B publicly traded leader in grocery delivery and grocery technology. She leads a team of 150 across all their product lines, including a sizable ad business, which reached $722M ad revenue in 2022. Laura also recently joined the Board of Match Group to provide more marketing muscle.

Get to know Laura:

• Twitter

• Building Better CMOs

• Bloomberg

• The CMO Podcast

Rick Schultz

Rick Schultz

Then: Rick joined Sun Microsystems as a Group Product Marketing Manager in 1998. He led the PMM team for the Java Platform – the fifth most used programming language and used by 50% of enterprise developers. From there he joined Oracle to lead product marketing Fusion Middleware and Oracle Databases. Over his 7+ years he would go on to lead a 60+ person product marketing team for a $6.5B revenue business. Rick joined Alteryx in 2012 as VP of Marketing and helped scale the company from 100 to 2,100 enterprise customers in his 4.5 years.

Now: Rick is the CMO of Databricks, a leading IPO candidate company last reported to have an estimated valuation of $43B.

Get to know Rick:

• Twitter

• CMO Diaries

• SaaStr Podcast

Jessica Gilmartin

Jessica Gilmartin

Then: Jessica joined the startup Wildfire in 2011 to lead product marketing. Google would acquire the company the next year for $350M. From there, she had stops at startups in roles ranging from COO to CMO. In 2020 she joined Asana to lead revenue marketing responsible for global demand generation, regional marketing and marketing operations across our Americas, EMEA, Japan and APAC businesses.

Now: In 2023 Jessica joined Calendly, the $3 billion unicorn, as CMO. In January of this year she expanded her scope to Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for all of marketing and sales.

Get to know Jessica:

• Thats What I Call Marketing

• TOP CMO

• Revenue.io

• The Marketer’s Journey

Jarod Greene

Jarod Greene

Then: Jarod spent over a decade at Gartner on the analyst side covering IT service desk processes, organizational structures, applications and adjacent technologies. His first role in product marketing was as VP of PMM at Cherwell Software where he was responsible for PMM broadly including messaging and positioning, product launch, sales enablement, competitive analysis and content marketing.He then became VP of PMM for Apptio, the spend management platform owned by IBM. His role expanded when he joined Highspot as Vice President Product and Customer Marketing and helped 3x the company revenue during his 2.5 year stint.

Now: Jarod is currently the CMO of Vivun, the AI-powered pre-sales SaaS platform.

Get to know Jarod:

• Adventures in Messaging

• Highspot podcast

• Scale Your Sales Podcast

• Highspot podcast

Chandar Pattabhiram

Chandar Pattabhiram

Then: Chandar joined Jamcracker, a cloud management platform, as a product marketing manager in 2000. From there, he spent 10 years in product marketing at IBM Cast Iron responsible for product, corporate and channel marketing. His next big move was to a fast growing startup called Marketo. He joined them in 2014 as a Group Vice President of Marketing and went onto become CMO.

Now: In 2017, he was riding high as he was named one of the top 5 CMOs to follow on LinkedIn. Later that year, Chandar joined Coupa as CMO of the $6 billion business spend management platform. He was in this role until October of last year in which he was responsible for all respects of revenue marketing such as go-to-market strategy, product marketing, growth marketing and corporate marketing.

Get to know Chandar:

• Twitter

• Pipeline Visionaries podcast

• Marketing Trends

• The Peerbound Podcast

Dave King

Dave King

Then: Dave joined Salesforce as a product marketing manager in 2008 responsible for the salesforce.com product release at Dreamforce. After cutting his teeth on Dreamforce, he did tours of duty in solutions marketing where he launched and led a focus on the health & life sciences sector and then led the product marketing team for Chatter, their communication and collaboration platform. After Salesfroce Dave had stints as VP of Marketing at two B2B SaaS startups, Highfive and Percolate.

Now: most recently Dave was the CMO of Asana, where he spent 5 years leading the entire marketing function of the $3.5B unicorn.

Get to know Dave:

• Dave’s blog

• Twitter

• Demand Gen Visionaries

• The Marketing Millennials

Meagen Eisenber

Meagen Eisenber

Then: Meagen joined IBM as a product marketing manager in 2004. She has an eye for picking startups that get acquired as she had stints in marketing roles at three consecutive companies that got acquired by Google, IBM, and HP. She would go on to become the VP of Customer Acquisition for DocuSign and later CMO of MongoDB and TripActions.

Now: Meagen is the CMO of Lacework, the private $8.3B cloud security startup. She is also on the board of G2 and advises a number of B2B startups such as Loom. Productboard, and Sendoso.

Get to know Meagen:

• Twitter

• Grit podcast

• SaaStr

Alex Risemblat

Alex Risemblat

Then: Alex joined VKernel (later acquired by Quest Software) as a product marketing manager in 2010. Therehe learned the B2B PMM playbook interviewing customers, doing trade show demonstrations, collaborating with product on the roadmap, developing website content and supporting the sales team.

Now: Alex was most recently the CMO of DataDog, the $41B publicly traded data analytics platform. The impact of his almost 11 year run as VP of Marketing and eventual CMO is felt throughout the company.

Get to know Alex

• Twitter

• Pipeline Visionaries

• Tofu AMA

• SaaSr

• Remarkable podcast

Chris Koehler

Chris Koehler

Then: Chris joined Visual Sciences as a product marketing manager in 2005. He eventually became VP or Product Management and the company was eventually acquired by Omniture. He then spent 10 years at Adobe in a variety of roles ranging from Solution Consulting to Customer Success and eventually leading GTM and Product Marketing for Creative Cloud for enterprises.

Now: Chris is the CMO at Box, the $4B cloud based content management SaaS company. He joined as VP of Customer Success and became CMO in 2019. He is an advisor to a number of B2B SaaS companies and is on the board of CareerVillage.org, an organization which democratizes access to career information and advice for underrepresented youth.

Get to know Chris:

• TOP CMO

• Zight

• Data-Driven CMO Podcast

Michael Park

Michael Park

Then: Michael joined Siebel Systems as a Director of Product Marketing in 1996 responsible for mobile handheld solutions. In 2001 he joined SAP as a VP of Product Marketing leading the team to become the #2 CRM in the commercial Enterprise segment. Then he spent 8 years at Microsoft in P&L responsible roles such as leading the 1,200 person field personnel for US Small Businesses and Midsize Solutions Group and Corporate VP of the Servers and Tools Division, a $17B business line. He then had a 5 year stint at HP with P&L responsibility.

Now: Michael is the CMO of ServiceNow, the $156B enterprise cloud computing platform. He recently joined the board of directors of Digimarc Corporation.

Get to know Michael:

• B2Believe

• Business Insider

• Mirror Review

• WSJ

Peder Ulander

Peder Ulander

Then: Peder joined Cobalt Networks as Director of Product Marketing in 1999. He was responsible for all outbound messaging, field training, and press and analyst relations from the company’s IPO through their acquisition by Sun Microsystems. Peder later had stints at Citrix Systems and Cisco. He started to gain more visibility in the B2B marketing space when he became VP of Marketing at VMWare and was responsible for the Network and Security Business Unit. Later he would join AWS and be responsible for Enterprise and Developer Marketing.

Now: Peder is the CMO of MongoDB, a role he has held since September 2021. A developer at his core, Peder is an angel investor, advisor to startups such as Stacklet and a board member of the Continuous Delivery Foundation.

Get to know Peder:

• Twitter

• The Stack

• SiliconANGLE theCUBE

Monika Saha

Monika Saha

Then: Monica has applied her engineering background to marketing and business. She spent the first 8 years of her career as a sales engineer at Onyx Software, which had shades of product marketing as she would be conducting inbound research with customers at risk of not renewing and would develop solutions to increase renewal rate. Then, in 2012 she got her first official role in product marketing as Senior PMM at Zuora, the subscription management platform. She would have an incredible 9 year run at the company moving up to Director of Product Marketing, VP of Marketing, and eventually landing as GM and VP of Finance and RevPro product lines. She led the 70-person product marketing and product management teams across 3 countries and played a pivotal role in crafting the IPO story and preparing for IPO.

Now: In 2024 Monika became the Chief Commercial Officer of Articulate, the online training platform that bootstrapped for ~20 years and raised a $1.5B ‘series A’ in 2021. Prior to this role, Monika was CMO of Gainsight, leading a marketing team of 60+ across North America, Europe, India, and Japan. She is also on the board of Customer.io.

Get to know Monika:

• Twitter

• Medium

• Gainsight

• Slideshare

David Mogensen

David Mogensen

Then: David joined Google in 2010 as a product marketing manager responsible for the marketing strategy and communications for Google TV Ads. He later joined the YouTube division leading product marketing for the ads product area. His final stint at Google was Director of Marketing of Northern Europe overseeing a team of 50 marketers across 6 countries including Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, and Belgium.

Now: David is the Vice President of Marketing at Uber, leading the entire marketing function for Uber and Uber Eats brands in more than 70 countries around the world. Prior to this role he led Marketing for Uber in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has more than 20 years of marketing experience in the tech and auto industries and was named to the Forbes Entrepreneurial CMO 50.

Get to know David:

• The Soul & Science podcast

• Building Better CMOs

• The Drum

_{Presented by American Marketing Association}

Level Up Your Social Media Strategy This April

Master the art of crafting a social strategy and turning challenges into opportunities. This small group training from the American Marketing Association connects you with peers facing similar questions around defining your social media purpose and measuring impact. Move beyond theories and build practical strategies that achieve your goals.

Boost Your Engagement, Register Now.

PMM → PM

This covers Product Marketers who have pursued Product Management in earnest.

Asha Sharma

Asha Sharma

Then: Asha Sharma’s career trajectory showcases that she is a force of nature with exceptional leadership and strategic prowess. In 2011 she joined Microsoft and performed a number of duties including product marketing and PR supporting the Xbox product. She would later go on to become an early employee, CMO, and eventual COO of Porch, a marketplace for home improvement professionals. At its peak, Porch was worth $1B on public markets. Asha would then focus on product management, joining Facebook to lead the Social Impact Product. Over her 4 years should would work her way up to Head of Product of the Menlo-based juggernaut.

Now: Asha’s impact became even more pronounced during her tenure at Instacart, where she served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) from 2021 to 2024. In this role she oversaw product, design, research, partnerships, analytics, marketing, operations and customer experience. She was responsible for $30B+ P&L and helped lead the company to a successful IPO. In early 2024, Asha announced she was returning to Microsoft, this time as corporate vice president to lead product for their AI division.

Get to know Asha:

• WSJ

• AI in Business podcast

• Star Tribune

Yulie Kwon Kim

Yulie Kwon Kim

Then: Yulie has balanced a career in product marketing and product management over the past 20+ years. The path of PMM to PM is well established for individuals who are able to develop the requisite skill sets. She joined eBay in 2000 as an Associate PM and spent 5 years on the product side before transitioning to an International Product Marketing role where she was responsible for managing quarterly product planning, product budgeting and pricing initiatives for eBay Europe and Asia-Pacific. She ended her 9+ year run at eBay as Director of Product Management for Buyer Applications. She then did a tour of duty at two coveted startups at the time – One Kings Lane and StyleSeat. At One Kings Lane, the ecommerce site for specialty home items, she joined to lead the product function. She then transitioned to a similar role, VP of Product at StyleSeat, building tools for beauty and wellness professionals. That commerce experience helped her transition to Meta, where she became the VP of Product Management for Commerce across the Facebook app, including Facebook Marketplace, which served over 1 billion monthly active users.

Now: Yulie is currently the VP of Product Management at Google, responsible for Google Workspace, which serves 10 million customers and over 3 billion users. The product portfolio includes Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Chat, and Meet.

Get to know Yulie:

• Google Cloud Tech

• Google Workspace Developers

• ADWEEK

• Wired

PMM → CEO

The next category is PMMs who have gone on to become CEOs.

Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella

Then: Last year a video of Satya doing excel demos went viral. The video, from 1993, shows Satya, who was a Technical Marketing Manager at the time, deeply focused on the product; it wasn’t a flashy presentation. The Technical Marketing Manager role was more common in the 90s and was a mix of Developer Advocate and Product Marketing Manager.

Now: hello. This is Satya-frickin-Nadella we’re talking about. He’s CEO of the $3 trillion Microsoft. He’s amassed a personal net worth near $1 billion. He’s the orchestrator turning around Microsoft’s culture, making the company more innovative, and has delivered nearly a 1,000%+ increase in stock price since he took over.

Get to know Satya (as if you didn’t already know him 🙂)

• TED

• On podcast

• Finding Mastery

• In Good Company podcast

Fidji Simo

Fidji Simo

Then: In 2011 Fidji joined pre-IPO Facebook as a product marketing manager to help launch the advertising on the News Feed. From there, she jumped to product management and became a Director of Product Management for Facebook Video, VP of Games and Monetization, and eventually was head of the Facebook app (big blue).

Now: She’s continued to be a force of nature. As CEO of Instacart, she’s refounded the company – making it profitable, scaling the ad business, and expanding their technology platform for grocers. She is at the helm of the $10B company which, along with Klayvio, were the first to test the IPO waters falling the tech downturn of 2022 and 2023. Fidjo is cofounder of Metrodora, an organization addressing neuroimmune disorders. If that wasn’t enough, she’s also on the board of directors for Shopify and recently joined OpenAi’s board.

Get to know Fiji:

• Sequoia Capital

• Stanford Medicine

• Invest Like the Best

• Fortune

Dave McJannet

Dave McJannet

Then: In 2010, Dave joined VMWare as a Senior Director of Product Marketing where he spearheaded product marketing initiatives that contributed to the company’s growth and prominence in the virtualization market. He was responsible for overall product marketing and go to market for VMware’s Cloud Application Platform portfolio. He scaled minimal revenues to north of $150M. He then joined Hortonworks, a company specializing in open-source data platforms, as Vice President of Marketing , a company specializing in open-source data platforms. There he played a key role in driving strategic partnerships and expanding market reach.

Now: David McJannet serves as the CEO of HashiCorp, the $5.3B leading provider of infrastructure automation software. With a strong background in technology and business leadership, McJannet has steered HashiCorp towards significant growth and innovation since assuming the role of CEO in 2016.

Get to know Dave:

• Twitter

• Grit podcast

• Saastr

• Supermanagers podcast

Sarah Franklin

Sarah Franklin

Then: Early in Sarah’s career she was a sales engineer at a number of companies. Sarah demonstrated remarkable career progression once she joined Salesforce, climbing from a Director of Platform Product Marketing in 2008 to President, CMO, and Chairwoman Advisory when she left 16 years later. She played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s platform strategy and driving its growth as a leading cloud computing powerhouse. Franklin’s impact at Salesforce was profound, as she spearheaded initiatives to democratize technology through platform solutions, empowering businesses of all sizes to leverage the power of cloud computing.

Now: in January of this year, Sarah Franklin assumed the position of CEO at Lattice, a $3B fast-growing unicorn providing a people management platform. As CEO, Franklin brings her wealth of experience and leadership skills to drive Lattice’s mission of helping companies build high-performing, engaged teams. She’s been named to Forbes top 50 most influential CMOs.

Get to know Sarah:

• Seed Stage Stories

• Salesforce Developers

• Renegade podcast

PMM → Founder

This includes PMMs who went onto start startups as the CEO or co-founder.

Kevin Systrom

Kevin Systrom

Then: Kevin’s career progression showcases his entrepreneurial spirit. Beginning as an Associate Product Marketing Manager at Google in 2006, supporting Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Spreadsheets. After not being able to get into the Associate Product Manager program, Kevin left Google out of frustration.

Now: Following his stint at Google, Systrom co-founded Instagram in 2010 (originally called Burbn), a photo-sharing platform that quickly gained widespread popularity. Serving as CEO, Systrom led Instagram through unprecedented growth, transforming it into one of the most influential social media platforms globally. In 2012, the 13-person Instagram was bought by Facebook for $1B. Kevin stayed on for another six years in which time Instagram introduced numerous features and innovations, including filters, stories, and IGTV, revolutionizing the way people interacted and shared content online. In January of this year Kevin announced Artifact, a news app he cofounded in 2023, was shutting down.

Get to know Kevin:

• SXSW

• Invest Like the Best

• Lex Fridman

• How I Built This

Grant LaFontaine

Grant LaFontaine

Then: Grant’s career progression exemplifies his dedication to driving innovation and strategic growth in tech. Beginning as an Associate Product Marketing Manager at Google in 2011, LaFontaine honed his skills in understanding of product development, launches, messaging, ad creative, consumer research, and media buying while on the YouTube product line. He would spend a total of four and a half years honing his PMM craft. Later he started his first company, Kit, a merchandise platform, and sold it to Patreon in 2018. He would have a stint at Facebook before striking out again on his own.

Now: In 2019 Grant founded Whatnot, a $3.7B livestream shopping platform that employs 400 people. The company is one of the fastest growing marketplaces and has been recognized by a16z multiple years in a row on their Marketplace 100 list.

Get to know Grant:

• Twitter

• Everything Marketplaces

• Inc

• Matt Mochary

Jaleh Rezaei

Jaleh Rezaei

Then: after obtaining her Masters from Stanford, Jaleh joined VMWare on the product marketing team responsible for developing the go-to-market plan for several VMware products. She optimized VMware’s go-to-market approach to acquire small businesses and was recognized as top 2% of 6,000 VMware employees for her efforts. After business school she returned to VMWare as Director of Product Marketing to launch their employee productivity suite. Jaleh then joined Gusto in 2013, which at the time was a 2 year old fledgling startup. She joined as employee #10, and grew to lead their marketing and BD team, hiring 20+ people over her time there and serving 60,000+ small businesses.

Now: Jaleh is the CEO and Founder of YC-backed Mutiny, which helps SaaS companies personalize their website. The company has a reported 81 employees and was last valued at $600M.

Get to know Jaleh:

• Twitter

• SaaStr

• Medium

• The Growth Hub Podcast

• Acquired

This is Part 1 of a 3 Part Series on Career with a focus on promotion. Part 2 will focus on how to handle being passed over for a promotion. Part 3 will deep dive into three examples from my experience and how I handled them. The guidance in this article largely applies to performance in medium sized startups to big tech. If you are at a startup <50 people, you know that these processes are largely informal.

Over my nearly 15 year career I’ve been fortunate to move from IC to Manager to Director and beyond. I have experienced the high highs of moving to the next level and the low lows of being stuck for years without ‘title’ progress. Even while receiving a string of exceeds and greatly exceeds expectations. I’ve sat through many calibration sessions – each with their own politics, figure heads, and shifting cultural norms. Along the way, I’ve learned a few lessons I think can be helpful for those who are navigating the promotion spectrum.

As we exit performance review season, some are feeling full of gratitude, but likely many more are feeling contempt. Feeling like they were passed over. Or that their contributions aren’t being recognized. And especially in this environment, where near-double digit percentage increases to base have been reduced below inflation.

Many type A folks will hit this wall. Where our career acceleration plateaus and the expected promotion doesn’t happen.

How do you avoid this?

How do you increase your odds of getting promoted?

What follows are 7 actionable steps for helping you navigate the notoriously ambiguous promotion process and get promoted.

1/ The average marketer understands their next play. Marketers who get promoted understand the entire game, every position and anticipate the next play.

It’s been surprising to me over the course of my career how many people have never asked for the job expectations or career ladder of their role yet are intent on getting promoted. I’ve known more colleagues that I’d like to admit who didn’t even know what their level was. These are table stakes. In order to get to the next level, you must not only understand your role and what’s required of you, but you must fully understand the context in which you are operating. At the most fundamental level, you must know your job, know your level, know the expectation of what it means to perform at your level, and exceed at your level. This is generally outlined in a career development ladder and it’s an official artifact that is available to you. It’s standard and will outline performance expectations by level and job type.

But this is just the start. You need to understand how to play the game. Who are key decision making players, what are the broader strategic goals of the, org and company, how does your role fit in, how are you advancing key company OKRs for this year, who are the key stakeholders with an input or influence on your performance review? What visibility do they have of your work? Do you have a relationship with them? How are you managing visibility and expectations of cross functional peers who will contribute to your reviews?

Here’s an unwritten rule. Yes, there is a career ladder and ‘objective’ measures of what it means to exceed at your level but there are also many subjective components which are not captured in a career ladder. These include things like – how well do you play with others? What are you known for in the team or organization? Are you someone who does excellent work but steamrolls your team and throws partners under the bus? These behaviors are critical and will almost always surface during promotion discussions.

2/ The average marketer is a passenger in their career journey. Marketers who get promoted are in the driver’s seat.

Sorry to break it to you but your job is not your career. It’s one step in your longer journey. You should have a sense of where you are in your journey and where you want to get to. Marketers who rise to the top are the DRIs – the Directly Responsible Individuals – of their own careers. They take ownership, they hustle, and they make sure everyone knows it. With a bit of polish.

In my early 20s, my manager who was fairly blunt said:

“We are each responsible for the success of our career. You care the most about your career and I care most about my career. No one at this company cares as much as you. You are the DRI of your career”

This line has continued to live rent free in my mind. You must be proactive and take charge here. Have a vision, a plan and strategy for your career. In your current role, do not expect your manager to take the lead. Schedule and drive career chats on a quarterly or monthly basis with your manager to align on expectations for what it means to exceed in your current role. What must you do to receive an X rating. And if you receive that rating, how long will it take you to get promoted? Be explicit about what needs to be done for you to get promoted, align with your manager and hold them accountable. Remember your manager is likely overworked and over capacity, they have multiple direct reports and will be unlikely to remember your goals and your progress so you must keep it front and center.

3/ The average marketer is a box ticker. Marketers who get promoted are malcontents.

Box-ticking gets you a participation trophy, not a corner office. The best ones? They’re not afraid to take risks, to experiment, and to deliver far beyond their job responsibilities. There is your day job and your ‘role’. Then there is your impact at the company. You will need to work your butt off. Not only should you be performing at your level, you should be performing at the next level. And not just for a week or two. You should be performing at the next level consistently for 6+ months.

Delivering against OKRs is a given. But you need to go beyond your role. You need to have a sense of pride in the company – the product, the marketing campaigns, the culture. And when you see something that is below the standard, you bring attention to it. It’s what Boz, the CTO of Meta calls the ‘Malcontents’:

There is an important, under-appreciated group at every company who are never content no matter how much success they or the company has had. There is a set of people who care so deeply about the company and its products that they take any shortcomings personally. They are offended by bad products and angered by cultural deficiencies. They write passionate notes that nobody asked for and rally people on comment threads in groups they aren’t required to be a part of. They speak truth to power because they are righteous and speak for those who might otherwise have no voice.

Boz AKA Andrew Bosworth

In calibrations there often is discussion of the impact that the candidate has made on the culture. Proactively taking on and leading extracurriculars is essential in increasing your odds. Volunteer to take on other projects your manager doesn’t have the bandwidth for, mentor a younger teammate, join a culture committee, host a team offsite, participate in industry events on behalf of your employer – there are a number of ways to demonstrate you’re not simply doing a great job at your job but you’re going above and beyond.

4/ The average marketer judges their individual performance. Marketers who get promoted understand their performance relative to their peer set

This matters because in any given performance cycle, promotion counts are capped. There is a curve being managed to. It’s unfortunate and has been a problem for me on multiple occasions but at the end of the day, they are going to give out a set number of promotions and if you’re going up for promotion, understand who you are going up against so your expectations are calibrated and you have an understanding of what great looks like at your level relative to your peer set.

On the flip side, as a manager, and as a collection of leaders on the marketing team, you should be assessing your entire team and sequencing promotions accordingly. It’s poor form if you’re trying to promote >50% of your team in one cycle (unless they all kicked ass which lets be honest is rare). Managers should be looking multiple cycles out to understand if they should try and pull a promo forward by giving that person more responsibility, impact, and opportunity to shine or if they need to rebalance timelines and candidates to ensure a cycle that is as fair as possible.

5/ The average marketer puts promotion ahead of impact. Marketers who get promoted understand it’s a lagging indicator of performance.

Your promotion will always come after you’ve consistently exceeded expectations in your role, oftentimes for multiple cycles. If you are obsessively focused on getting promoted each cycle without nailing performance in your role (for some time) it’s not only poor form, it will reflect poorly on your personal brand.

Too many times I’ve seen people focus exclusively on getting promoted. They bring it up in nearly every 1:1. It’s always top of mind. While that clarity of focus is commendable, it can hurt you. Your focus should be on your performance and driving impact in your current role Yes, you should have a goal of getting promoted but bringing it up at each career conversation without evidence (objectively) of why you’re ready will not only annoy your overworked manager, it will deplete your energy and make your manager question your credibility.

6/ The average marketer is happy to have their manager in their corner. Marketers who get promoted understand their manager must be their staunch advocate

Your manager will be the main advocate in securing a promotion. They will be the one advocating for you in calibrations and ultimately without their support, you cannot be promoted. So get on the same page, ensure they have your back and will go to bat for you. It is quite literally the ONLY way to secure a promotion. If your manager does not agree that you are ready, you will NOT be promoted under any circumstances.

A corollary is you should make your manager look damn good by consistently delivering high quality work and impactful work for the team. It’s a two way street. As you rise in the ranks and drive more impact, they will as well.

7/ The average marketer defers to their manager. Marketers who get promoted do the heavy lifting for them.

Assuming you have earned your promotion by exceeding the expectations of your current role and met the promotion criteria (time in role, business need at next level etc), don’t expect your manager to do all the work. Help them put together your promotion packet with examples of your work, impact, recommendations from XFN partners etc. Once that work is done, there is little left to do except let your manager go to bat for you in the performance calibration discussions.

Have you penned your hype doc?

One more for Directors and Above…

8/ The average marketing director coasts (Fat RSUs and unlimited PTO anyone? :). Marketing directors that get promoted are forces of nature.

You’re on the periphery of becoming a VP or CMO. You’re advising startups and you receive inbound offers weekly. Marketing Directors+, like you, who are exceeding in their role are forces of nature. Your impact is company wide and you are a trusted partner to all corners of the business. You don’t just look after the marketing team, or your function (say Growth, Product, Brand, Lifecycle), you have an impact on the entire company strategy. The engineering team wants your input on how they’re resourcing their teams. The legal team wants you to present at their monthly all team meeting. The board knows your impact. Hell, depending on the company size you should be on a first name basis with a handful of board members. You have a relationship with the CEO and they are supportive of your next stage in your career and even if it means leaving the company (which would be devastating given your performance).

This article focused on getting a promotion. If you’re like me and have been qualified for a promotion you were passed up for, what do you do? Stay tuned for Part 2 on this.

This is the final post in the four-part series on product launches. The feedback from you was clear following the Airbnb deep-dive: let’s see an example of a company in the trenches figuring out their GTM and launch strategy. Who is doing hand to hand combat that we can learn from? We heard you.

What more relevant company than OpenAI to dive into.

Part 1 | PLAN: Start with the end in mind 🧠

• Foundational go to market frameworks underpinning product launches

Part 2 | EVOLVE: How launch strategies evolve as companies grow 🌳

• We’ll cover how launches differ by company stage including investment level 

Part 3 | DEEP DIVE: A behind the scenes look at how Airbnb launches products  🚀

• A case study on how Apple inspired Airbnb’s twice-a-year releases 

Part 4 | DEEP DIVE: OpenAIs Ascension: From Serving Scientists to 180 Million Consumers (☝️ this post)

• Decoding OpenAI’s product strategy & GTM motions to reach mainstream

OpenAI has skyrocketed to 200 million + users in largely in the last two years

A Meteoric Rise

OpenAI is one of the most consequential companies in recent history. Its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, scaled to 100 million users in 2 months. They’re threatening the greatest business model of all time. And there are at least two Hollywood movies to be made – one from the failed governance which led to a coup last November to one about the founding saga between Elon, Sam, Sergey, and IIlya. 

How are they so successful in spite of all the noise? Putting aside perspectives on politics, the FUD that has been unleashed on AI, and the for-profit vs non-profit fiasco, we want to focus on why they have been so successful and how marketing and GTM fueled this success. 

In this article we’ll cover the following:

• 🚀 What products have OpenAI launched and how did they launch them?

  • How they evolved from largely a technical research institution to a commercially-focused modern enterprise

  • How their business model has evolved as product and target audience evolved

• 🏆 Why have they been so successful? What are the conditions, frameworks, and tactics used by OpenAI?

  • How their team and culture played an important role in setting the right conditions for success

  • How their strategy evolved from serving a highly technical niche audience to a broader market across consumers and enterprises

  • The role that marketing and public relations played in driving growth

Crossing the Chasm from Researchers to Consumers

Since its founding in 2015, OpenAI has built two types of products: research & development and commercial. The foundational research and development products support its core mission of developing artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity which underpin the commercial and consumer products we know today.

OpenAI has evolved from research lab to AI frontrunner amongst the tech giants. Initially focused on academic breakthroughs with no intent on making a profit, they’ve exploded in popularity with consumer products, becoming the fastest product to reach 100 million users in just 2 months. With this growth, their target market has expanded from research scientists to enterprises and consumers.

Source: @economyapp

Fueling Enterprise Growth

While its consumer growth is impressive, OpenAI’s enterprise adoption has exploded. In just four months of launching ChatGPT for enterprise, they reported 260 customers totalling 150,000 enterprise users. Altman announced they have 92% of fortune 500 companies using OpenAI products. To capture value they’ve rolled out their business model, which by December 2023 crossed $2 billion.

Source: Sacra

That is a ~900% increase YoY in revenue. Where is this revenue coming from? Revenue streams include:

• API Access: OpenAI licenses their AI technology, like GPT-3, to companies for various applications. Examples include Asana, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Klarna, Lowe’s, PWC, JetBlue, and Amgen.

• B2B Subscriptions: they have two segments: Team for smaller companies and Enterprise for larger companies. For ChatGPT Team they charge $25/user/month billed annually and for ChatGPT Enterprise the price is not listed on their website, but quotes shared online range from $20 to $60/user/month with some claiming on Reddit a minimum of 150 seats per company.

• Consumer Subscriptions: such as ChatGPT Plus for $20/month.

• Grants: from government agencies, philanthropic organizations, and other institutions that support their mission of developing safe and beneficial AGI.

• Strategic Partnerships: similar to API Access, but more hands-on and custom co-development with a partner such as integrating OpenAI’s technology into Microsoft’s Bing product.

Key Ingredients of the GTM Rhythm

So how has a non-profit with no interest in commercial success evolved into one of the fastest growing startups catapulting AI to the masses and an impressive valuation of 80 billion? In addition to getting the right governance model in place and developing consumer and enterprise grade products, it’s been a combination of factors including team, culture, and building their GTM muscle.

1. Talent Density

The culture and talent density of OpenAI is unique, even by Silicon Valley standards Back in 2009 Paul Graham penned an essay about 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years which included the usual suspects like Steve Jobs and Larry and Sergey, but it also included a 24-year Sam Altman who was the founder of Loopt.

The team also features heavy hitters such as Ilya Sutskever who has worked in the labs of Geoffrey Hinton and Andrew Ng while a student and was previously a researcher at Google Brain. Sutskever was so important to Google, that when Musk poached him to join OpenAI, it led to Musk and Page no longer talking or being friends as reported by biographer Walter Isaacson. For marketing, this talent density has led to the hiring of Krithika Muthukumar last August, who comes by way of Stripe and Retool. They are continuing to hire and develop their go to market capabilities, as highlighted by the 24 open roles on their Go To Market team.

2. Grand Ambitions

The team has stated they want to “Solve Impossible Problems”. It’s a modern day Manhattan Project with Altman orchestrating the grand strategy:

3. Researchers that build

Researchers aren’t just publishing papers and models into the abyss, they are building core products. The sprint team consists of Researchers, Engineers, Designers, and Product Managers (aka DERP). This has enabled them to ship products incredibly fast.

4. Small Teams

They have small, focused teams with clear constraints. Altman believes large teams suffer from dilution of focus, internal politics and slow decision-making. Altman recently remarked:

“Innovation is easier with small teams making decisive, concentrated bets, who don’t tolerate mediocre performers”

Sam Altman

Compare the roughly 1,000 employees at OpenAI to Google, which had nearly 200,000 employees in 2022.

5. Low Ego

The team prioritizes output vs personal agendas. As Peter Yang noted, almost everyone at OpenAI has the title: “Member of the technical staff.”

OpenAI GTM Ingredients

Just 4 years ago OpenAI’s GTM cadence was largely absent. In 2019 they announced a robot that could solve a Rubik’s cube by hand, which is an incredible engineering feat, but it garnered a meager 10,000 likes on Twitter with engagement mostly limited to the science and research communities.

Fast forward to today, they’ve built a GTM machine. OpenAI’s Sora announcement in February received 142,000 likes and 100 million impressions on Twitter and tens of billions of earned impressions. The market is loving it. Their newly established tenets of GTM include:

1. Show Don’t Tell

OpenAI embodies this principle to their core. Instead of overly polished launch videos that don’t show the actual product, they put the actual product front and center in their launches. One moment captures this principle flawlessly. Let’s rewind to February 15, 2024. Love was still in the air. More so for OpenAI than Google. Around 9am, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google announced Gemini 1.5 Pro with the following tweet:

128K-token context window? Next-gen model? Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) approach? Efficient training & higher-quality responses?

Yawn. That might be the tastiest feature soup ever made. But it didn’t land in the market. The CEO of a nearly $2 trillion market cap company could only generate a paltry 825K views.

Four hours later Sam and OpenAI announced their text-to-video product, Sora. No specs. Just seeing the actual product. The first prompt was “Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling..” which produced:

Beautiful. But what happened next was Jobsian.

Mr Beast and other influencers replied to Sam encouraging new prompts. Within an hour, Sam would reply with incredible clips generated from Sora.

Such as…

…which led to:

and this…

…which led to:

You get the point.

In total, they published 48 clips which generated nearly 150M impressions in 24 hours. These demos captured the imagination of early adopters and press. Seeing Sam reply real time to showcase the product was phenomenal.It generated significantly more interest, and by extension credibility in OpenAI.

Further, they haven’t over-extended in their demos. They’ve avoided huge PR nightmares, unlike Gemini from Google, because they have the right guardrails in place. The initial ChatGPT model launched in November 2022 was text-only and its training data was only up to September 2021. They made these constraints known to users. Even with this disclaimer and warnings about hallucinations, over 1 million people used it in the first 5 days.

2. Make it human

They have taken a product highly technical and often marred with skepticism and fear, AI, and made it hyper accessible to everyday consumers. With the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, they made AI approachable. It’s so easy your grandmother could use it. You didn’t need special access. You didn’t have to join a Discord server. Or need an API key. Or join an extended waitlist or enterprise account. The ChatGPT launch demonstrated the make it human principle.

Most notably:

• Ease to onboard: it was free to use, you only needed an email address and password.

• Ease of use: With the initial ChatGPT launch in November 2022, anyone with access to a browser could try the product. The UI was clean and used a form factor people were familiar with – search. They also kept the interaction simple – it was strictly textual interaction, so they reduced edge cases and avoided local maximums.

Source: UX Planet

• A dose of magic: ChatGPT wasn’t just a one-cycle interaction like search which provides results. Unlike search, ChatGPT held conversations, remembering past prompts for a truly magical experience. In the months that followed there were countless examples of folks sharing their prompts on Twitter/X and LinkedIn and posting their videos on TikTok and YouTube. Such as:

There were many more. The term ‘prompt’ and ‘ChatGPT prompt’ spawned hundreds of TikTok videos, thousands of articles and newsletters, and many engaging posts such as this one on Reddit. The fact that this interaction was so shareable and replicable fueled consumer adoption. They were able to bring AI mainstream because moms, kids, and grandparents could participate in this new thing they had only heard about. They took something that was cloaked in mystery and made it accessible and useful.

In the early months, ChatGPT was often at or over capacity, which restricted access. This scarcity increased interest from consumers and press even further.

3. Sam as Chief Spokesperson

Sam is the face of OpenAI and it’s a big advantage for them. He’s young, ambitious, charismatic and consistently generates press for the company. His appearances at high-profile venues such as major media interviews, Dev Day, podcasts like the Lex Fridman Podcast (twice) and his Congressional testimony have helped solidify OpenAI’s reputation at the forefront of AI development. Sure, he’s not perfect, but he’s been a huge brand lever for the company.

4. Developers

I mean, obviously. We’re talking about a new computing paradigm. Developers are a P0. From early on OpenAI has been catering to researchers, scientists, and developers. More recently they’ve leaned into Developers in a big way. Which makes sense. OpenAI is building the foundational LLM layer and they want to have an open ecosystem for developers to build custom experiences on top of. It’s what Jaryd Hermann of How They Grow notes as the Layer 2 and Layer 3 companies:

Source: How They Grow

OpenAI is following the developer conference playbook used by companies such as Google (I/O), Amazon (re:Invent), and Square (Unboxed) with their own version – Dev Day. Their inaugural conference was held on November 6, 2023, in San Francisco and featured announcements and demonstrations of feature improvements and new models. They announced GPTs, the ability for developers to create their own custom versions of ChatGPT, and followed that up with a launch of their app store, the GPT Store in early 2024. Their intent is to build a thriving ecosystem on top of their platform to increase value and lock in. And it’s working. In January they announced over 3 million custom versions of ChatGPT.

5. Microsoft Partnership

Microsoft is entitled to up to 49 percent of the for-profit arm of OpenAI’s profits and ChatGPT is a threat to Google’s search dominance, so there are clear incentives for the Redmond-based behemoth to support the upstart. While Microsoft has supported through multiple rounds of investment and research resources, they also have significant relationships with most large enterprises which provide warm introductions for OpenAI. Further, OpenAI can utilize the Azure platform to enable faster distribution.

Leaps Made, Gaps to Close

While they have made massive strides in their GTM rhythm, they have a number of improvements that they need to make to be world class. These include:

• Brand: Intentionally build a brand architecture with a clear narrative of where the brand is positioned relative to competitors and importantly, where the brand is going. They can make it even more human by showcasing how ChatGPT or Sora are being used to benefit humanity. Show how it’s being used in schools. By small businesses. By creators and artists. By scientists and healthcare workers.

• Positioning: their positioning is underdeveloped and inconsistent– from their videos, to their website and emails. This is related to brand and brand architecture but ultimately, they will need to create clear, compelling and consistent positioning.

• Pricing: they are likely leaving money on the table while also preventing adoption with their current price per seat per month and token usage. An emerging trend with AI is pricing per performance. Such as Microsoft’s Copilot for Security which will charge at $4/hour, a pay-as-you-go model which makes it easier to get started. Closer to true performance is Intercom charging $0.99 per resolution for their Fin AI Chatbot.

• Monetization for Developers: to build a true platform and attract and retain the best developers, their ChatGPT store must offer monetization to attract developers. Right now most ‘apps’ are simple reskins on top of ChatGPT.

• Conferences & Events: the inaugural Dev Day was a step forward, but needs to be more impactful. Additionally, OpenAI should have a larger presence at industry events. A precursor for the latter will be investing in security & compliance solutions so they can increase adoption in healthcare, finance, and insurance.

What can you take away to be a top 1% marketer?

A special thank you to Airbnb alum Hannah Hughes, Kim Wohlleb, and Maansi Dommeti for their collaboration, input, and feedback! 🙏

This is the third post in our series how leading tech companies launch products.

Part 1 | PLAN: Start with the end in mind 🧠

• Foundational go to market frameworks underpinning product launches

Part 2 | EVOLVE: How launch strategies evolve as companies grow 🌳

• We’ll cover how launches differ by company stage including investment level 

Part 3 | DEEP DIVE: A behind the scenes look at how Airbnb launches products (☝️ this post)

• This was originally going to be a set of companies but we decided to separate these into individual posts

Part 4 & Beyond | More Deep Dives across Consumer and B2B 🚀

• Launch examples from companies such as Stripe, Shopify, Figma, and Canva

Launch Philosophy

Airbnb has evolved from scrappy launches to twice-a-year launches, known as Winter and Summer releases. Brain Chesky, the founder of Airbnb, advocates that each of these releases are “chapters” to build awareness and support the broader company “story”. The narrative dictates what product builds and this all flows downstream to what teams work on, the timing of alphas and betas, and what is packaged in each launch. Who writes this narrative? It’s primarily authored by Product Marketers and the Communications team with input from Design, Eng, Marketing and Creative (what they refer to internally as their ‘Primary team’). As Chesky has pointed out “Ultimately, it’s the story that will connect with customers and it’s the story that should become the North Star for internal teams.”

These bi-annual releases also serve as an organizing mechanism internally – so folks across all functions are working towards two shared timelines. You don’t have five teams going in different directions or a Creative team that is inundated with requests, sometimes last minute, for a wide breadth of campaigns of varying urgency and potential impact. This creates dependencies and a backlog across other teams. As Brian mentions “we want a company where 1,000 people could work but it looked like 10 people did it”. This is the opposite of shipping the org chart, and keeps the user and narrative front and center. 

The Early Days 

It wasn’t always this methodical. In the early days, Airbnb’s “launches” were nothing more than outbound campaigns around conferences to prove there was some latent demand they could serve with their new product. And it didn’t always work.

Those 3 launches included 3 acts:

• Act 1 | The Air Bed & Breakfast: This was the very first iteration in October 2007, coinciding with a design conference in San Francisco. Co-founders, Brian Chesky, and Joe Gebbia, offered air mattresses in their own apartment to attendees struggling to find hotel rooms. But little media pickup and few bookings.

• Act 2 | Website Launch: After the initial buzz, things go quiet. Airbnb launched a website later that year but failed to gain adoption. At this point they pivoted to selling presidential themed cereal boxes to raise money.

• Act 3 | SXSW Unveil: the third launch, at South by Southwest (SXSW) in March 2008 introduced a new era. An improved website and expanded offerings beyond just air mattresses led to an increase in booking and media coverage. This was the beginning of the Airbnb we know today. 

The Messy Middle 

So how did the company transition to twice-a-year launches? Well it wasn’t a straight line. Two of the biggest challenges the company faced from startup to mature growth stage company was 1) overcoming the stigma of staying in someone else’s house and 2) the regulation and impact of short term rentals in neighborhoods and communities. 

In 2014 Airbnb hired Jonathan Mildenhall, a longtime marketing executive from Coca Cola as CMO to help address these challenges. From 2014-2018 the company would transform from challenger brand to one of the most valuable travel brands. Hosts on the platform would balloon from 400,000 to 3.5 million. 

How did they do it? 

A combination of product improvements, policy changes, and marketing efforts.  

Airbnb didn’t have the marketing budget of its public competitors so it leaned into their community to showcase their values and improve perception. 

They did a number of stand alone Tier 0/1 launches. They released products for a handful of years at Airbnb Open, their annual host conference, before it was discontinued. And they did a number of campaigns to improve trust and reputation that it was safe to stay in a stranger's home. This set the groundwork for their biannual releases. 

The Apple of Brian’s Eye 🍎

Chesky has long been an admirer of Steve Jobs. Not surprisingly, this admiration has shaped how Airbnb builds and introduces products. The underpinnings of this approach is an all encompassing Product Marketer who manages inbound and outbound and narrative of the product. Chesky caused quite a stir in 2023 when he mentioned this at Figma’s Config conference. People misconstrued it as ‘Airbnb eliminated Product Management’. That was more click bait than anything. The role didn’t go away, it evolved. Airbnb moved away from a valley orthodox product management role – think of the PM role at product or engineering-driven cultures at companies such as Google, Meta, Intuit, Adobe, and Microsoft – to a role that is more inclusive of Product Management and Product Marketing. So PM does both inbound of building the product and outbound of shaping the narrative and messaging of the product. They also removed the program management responsibilities away from PM. 

It’s a playbook that is borrowed from Apple, who does not follow the valley orthodox of product management. For most of Apple’s history, they did not have Product Managers, they had Product Marketing Managers who worked in marketing and would collaborate with the Design team and Jobs to align on the features and bring it to market. Because Apple focused on a few blockbuster products, vs a broad portfolio of B2B products, Jobs could be involved in each product decision. For Airbnb, Chesky is widely known as being deeply involved with the details of the product and narrative. Borrowing this structure enables Airbnb to mimic Apple, a hands on, visionary leader and product marketers (AKA product managers) that manage inbound and outbound of the product.

This admiration of Apple from Chesky led down the path of hiring Hiroki Asai, the 16-year Apple veteran who led Head of Marketing Communications to join Airbnb in 2020 to lead the Marketing function. Asai partnered with Chesky to construct these twice-a-year apertures to launch products. Their ability to pull off these Apple-esque unveilings twice a year relied on a few key factors: 

Marketing Foundation Ingredients 🧪 — what enables Airbnb to deliver unique marketing

• Designer CEO: Brian is a designer by heart and training. Having this type of leader at the top gives the marketing team more latitude to lean into brand experiences and metrics, trust in qualitative feedback, and rationalize with intuition vs solely data. 

• Driven by Insights: Airbnb works off a shared set of insights across the company. Many companies or marketing teams say they are insights-driven but in practice this falls apart. Further, Airbnb is a big advocate of qualitative feedback. While many companies prioritize quantitative feedback for business strategy, Airbnb looks at both, and especially the qualitative to understand the contours of the data. As Asai notes on the Design Better podcast: 

“Qualitative feedback helps you understand the feeling of the data. It really helps you understand the sentiment and human experience of where that data is coming from. You can actually feel what the customer is going through”

• Chapters of a Story: the shared insights and launch chapters are formed from an exercise in which Airbnb mapped the core 8 steps across the guest and host experience. They looked at everything – the product experience, policies, social sentiment, mapped every page of the app, millions of customer service calls, expectations at each stage – to identify where the experience can be improved. This blueprint inspired the roadmap and the story to be told. 

• In House: all the creative and marketing work  is done in house – creative, PR & comms, advertising, marketing, brand, product design functions are in house, they don’t work with agencies on strategy or creative development. 

• Summer & Winter Releases: with everyone in house, they are able to create two big apertures for the year, the summer and winter release which all these teams work towards. Instead of dozens of campaigns running at once in different markets, it’s one story supported by an entire team. As Asai notes:

  “Everything [on marketing] is fed off of one insight is pretty unique.”

• Left & Right Brained: they have a balanced approach for marketing, one which speaks to both the left and right brain mind. As Asai puts it:

  “Make decisions on the emotion and rational side ...when it comes to creative and marketing – give them the rational reason to do something and appeal to their emotion to latch on to a bigger idea”.

Writing Two Stories a Year

“We don’t even do an annual roadmap. We have a two year rolling plan and strategy that gets updated every six months with releases.” - Chesky

The twice a year releases are every May and every November. There are some smaller launches or momentum stories between the two big moments.

Let’s jump into how they executed the Winter 2023 release.

Winter Release 2023 Deep Dive

On November 8, 2023 Airbnb unveiled their Winter 2023 released with the focus on 3 main features which were ready at launch: 

• Guest Favorites: An all-new collection of the 2 million most loved homes on Airbnb, according to guests. Included a new badge on the search results, listing page, and a filter for Guest Favorites

• Revamped Ratings and Reviews: included review sorting (by review rating, recency) and additional details (length of stay, traveled with kids or pets, group) 

• New Listings tab: this was a suite of tools for hosts including an improved UI on the listing editor, AI-powered photo tour which organizes the photos in a logical sequence. 

They also had a few other key updates, that while not headliners, are critical to the host and guest experience. Notably, these features we’re not ready at announcement but were designated ‘coming soon’ in marketing materials:  

• Smart lock integration: hosts can share the code guests can obtain directly in the app before they arrive

• Upgraded pricing tools: including New earnings dashboard, Co-host payouts, calendar price compare, and price visibility

Launch Channels & Assets - Airbnb leaned heavily into owned and earned channels for the launch. Brian was leveraged heavily as a charismatic founder, close to product and enamored by the new features and this helped to build trust and credibility with press and users, as you can see in the launch video below.

They also provide a press release in English and Spanish in the US and media assets with screenshots of the new features. Further, they provide release highlights which are essentially reasons-to-believe (RTBs), such as Guest Favorites have a record of reliability, with Host cancellations and quality-related customer service issues of 1% on average.

Owned Channels

1/ The home base for their biannual releases is their Release homepage.

2/ Social posts from Brian and the Airbnb company account across standard channels such as Twitter/X:

3/ Community - they hosted a Q&A with Global Head of Hosting - Catherine Powell on Nov 13.

4/ Email - a series of emails announcing the features a week after the launch

Earned Channels

The two biggest channels were a flurry of posts on social from hosts and press coverage. The release was reposted by a number of influencers on YouTube and TikTok. Likely some that were brought into the mix by Airbnb pre-announcement as part of a ‘beta group’ or ‘most trusted group’ to get early access and promote the launch.

Influencer

Influencer videos across TikTok and YouTube have hundreds to low thousands in views. Most are posted by Airbnb hosts or travel/real estate influencers.

Press

Most Tier 1 outlets – NYT, Fox News, WSJ, BBC – did not cover the release. Instead, it was mostly tech and business press and industry outlets in travel and short term rental spaces. 

Tech & Business Outlets

• TechCrunch: Airbnb leans on reviews to make listings more reliable as it tests review summaries using generative AI

• The Verge: Airbnb is finally adding support for smart locks to its app

• Bloomberg: Airbnb to Debut ‘Guest Favorite’ Listings, AI Tools in Reliability Push

Industry Outlets (travel and short term rentals) 

• Skift: Airbnb Is Back With Updates

• Hosthub: Airbnb 2023 Winter Release: Discover the latest upgrades

• Lodgify: Airbnb 2023 Winter Release: What’s New for Hosts?

• Rental Scale Up: Airbnb 2023 Winter Release: More competition for Hosts, more value for money for Guests

• Vacation Home Help: Airbnb Winter 2023 Update Highlights and Key Details

Paid Channels 

With paid advertising, the important thing is to use the appropriate messaging to get folks interested. Airbnb ran 15 second ad campaigns in the US on Instagram highlighting Guest Favorites: 

Launch Impact 

While there are limited public sources to triangulate the data, overall sentiment trended positive. Airbnb is most likely assessing lagging indicators such as trust and brand perception which are hard to move and require multiple touch points with consumers. In terms of more metrics that we can assess, we’ll cover four areas: sentiment, messaging, reach, and product adoption. 

Sentiment

• Grade: Green ✅

• Why: sentiment was generally positive within the host and rental owner community. The influencers and comments highlighted the key value props. 

“I love that there is a listing tab on the app.” - Kristen & Michael, Airbnb Hosts

Messaging

• Grade: Green ✅

• Why: message pull through of Guest Favorites, the different between Guest Favorite and Superhost status for hosts, new pricing features, and the utilization of AI to improve the process for hosts but also nod to the street’s expectation of AI improving operations. Press generally repeated Airbnb’s messaging across their coverage.

Reach

• Grade: Yellow 🟡

• Why: impressions and views don’t match big product launches from other companies given lack of tier 1 press coverage, no big partnerships or celebrity involvement, and lack of a big uptick in the influencer community. 

• Brian’s tweet generated almost 100x more impressions than the company account (2.5M vs 29.9k impressions) and much higher engagement (5.4K Likes, 811 reposts) vs Airbnb (74 Likes, 40 reposts).

• Web Traffic - organic and paid web traffic is not materially impacted. 20.3M vs 20.8 in Nov vs Oct 2023 respectively (-2.5% MoM).

Product Adoption

• Grade: TBD

• Why: obviously very difficult to ascertain the usage. We can look at Airbnb’s Q4 earnings which a nod to the release, but didn’t provide specific details on product usage:

• Guest Favorites: “Since the launch of Guest Favorites, these listings are getting more views and bookings. Hosts of Guest Favorites have said they love the new badge and guests appreciate the ease of finding high-quality listings.”

• Listings Tab: “Since introducing the Listings tab, we’ve received positive feedback from our Hosts and have seen the AI photo tour driving user engagement, with photo tour adoption increasing by over 70% compared to pre-launch.”

Additional Resources

• Brian Chesky on Lenny’s Podcast

• Hiroki Asai on Design Better

• Hiroki Asai On Canadian Business

• Airbnb Q4 2023 Earnings

• Airbnb 2023 Winter Release

This is the second article in our series on how leading tech companies launch products.

Part 1 | PLAN: Start with the end in mind 🧠

• Foundational go to market frameworks underpinning product launches

Part 2 | EVOLVE: How launch strategies evolve as companies grow (☝️ this post)

• We’ll cover how launches differ by company stage including investment level 

Part 3 | CONSUMER: How leading consumer companies launch products ❤️

• Launch examples from companies such as Airbnb, Apple, Cash App, and Duolingo

Part 4 | B2B: How leading B2B companies launch products 🚀

• Launch examples from companies such as Stripe, Shopify, Figma, and Canva

Q: What makes a great launch great? How is the go to market and launch rhythm different for an emerging start-up vs. a mature player? What are the key elements which are similar and what are the elements that differ? What frameworks and principles guide major launches across size and type of company?

In this post we’ll examine these and related questions.  

How your startup introduces your first product should be meaningfully  different from how a big tech company introduces their major product. 

What works for Apple isn’t going to work for you. And frankly, you don’t have the resources to approach a launch similarly to an Apple. 

Apple has billions of dollars and a $3 trillion market cap. Your startup does not. Apple’s launch objectives are validating a new category  -- e.g. smartphones, wireless headphones, AR headsets -- and protecting a beloved brand. Your startup launch objectives are more likely solidifying PMF and accelerating momentum.

For early stage startups, launches are scrappy, grass roots, and a ‘ship-it-now’ mentality persists as market feedback is critical, processes are less defined, and momentum is paramount. For later stage companies, it’s about shaping a narrative, managing brand perception, and thwarting off would be upstarts. 

“You have to determine your launch constraints. For many companies, early on, this is feature-based and the launch is constrained by eng and product. If they need three more months, the launch will be delayed three months. When I was at Airbnb, for our twice a year releases, the launch date was paramount. Everything else, all product and marketing deliverables, revolved around that date- if features are not ready, the narrative changes, the date does not.”

Maansi Dommeti, previously Hosting Product Comms, Airbnb; Product Marketing Lead, Pinterest

In this post we’ll cover three items: how GTM evolves as your startup grows, the similarities and differences between Consumer and B2B launches, and how to think about launch investment as your startup grows.

Phases of GTM: The Evolution of Product Launches  

The evolution from a scrappy startup to a growth stage to an established player takes time. It's a messy process fraught with mistakes and learnings. And your GTM cadence will go through similar growing pains. It takes years to evolve your go to market strategy from scrappy startup to a methodical production like Shopify Editions or WWDC from Apple. And not just the event, but the end to end operation including pre and post-launch processes, executive alignment, sales enablement, workflows and measurement.

Startup 

In the early days, nobody knows who you are and nobody cares. It’s blood, sweat and tears to get every ounce of interest from users and press. You have a hunch about the market and what features could land. You’re trying to get momentum and establish PMF. Your biggest strengths are agility and speed. You’re able to launch and iterate quickly based on feedback. However, your list of weaknesses is long. Because of this product launches are effectively glorified releases. In most instances it doesn’t make sense to address the weakness at this phase. Brand is often an afterthought. Launch channels are limited, and typically a combination of owned channels such as your blog, discord community, personal contacts and network and PLG (product led growth) such as in app announcements and contextual relevant messaging. Press is often an uphill battle as you’re an unknown quantity.  You don’t have a ton of pull so it’s on you to bend to their availability. Measurement is lacking and focuses on a few metrics. 

As a consumer startup, there are nuances such as you may have celebrity investors that you can utilize for brand halo. If you’re a social product, your launches are less of a big moment and more of a continuous release and learning process with PLG and owned channels being activated to drive awareness and adoption. Some have taken a distinct path, such as Rabbit R1 initial launch. They went big at CES this year and it paid off with 10k+ preorders.

Waitlists are a common tactic for consumer startups as they balance speed to market with the ability to make product updates. The majority of waitlists range from 2 weeks to 2 months. Apple, Cash App, Spotify, Instagram, Uber, Pinterest, and OpenAI are some of the consumer companies that leveraged waitlists for their initial launch or early expansion (Instagram Android app launch). This ‘velvet rope’ strategy is well documented for consumer launches and is what Robinhood employed brilliantly to 1 million waitlist sign ups. 

As a B2B SaaS startup, companies at this phase are rather straightforward — you have one customer segment and one product. Adoption is most likely driven by bottom-up product-led growth. And if you have a sales team, they are a hybrid of sales and customer success helping customers that have already discovered the product and ready to purchase or need support  with integration. Marketing and GTM of any semblance – demand gen, outbound sales, content marketing and brand – is emergent at best but most likely non-existent. The majority of early stage B2B companies utilize either their organic channels or network their products. Which makes sense – you want to get your product in the hands of customers as quickly as possible. Shopify launched through their own personal networks, referrals, review sites, and local community events, eventually gaining traction in Design and Rails circles. Square famously would hand out card readers at street fairs, local markets, and events. They didn’t have a CES keynote, but they had ground troops with backpacks full of readers to hand out to attendees. John and Patrick at Stripe would walk around YC and install it for the early users.

Growth 

This is arguably the most exciting and messy stage. Your startup is in its teenage years trying to figure out who it wants to become, and your GTM process can vary widely — from bigger launches, greater influence and direction from key executives,  desire to maintain speed yet build a brand, expanding customer segments and geos, and shedding of some startup GTM inefficiencies—  it’s the most critical phase for developing your GTM rhythms and capabilities. You go from one message for one audience to multiple messages for different audiences delivered through different channels. Your launches aren’t glorified releases and you don’t have the established launch rhythm of big tech. You get to be more intentional about your products being introduced to the world. 

You have established PMF with a beachhead segment and now are launching products to expand beyond that — typically to meet new customer segments or different use cases within your existing base. Oftentimes companies are growing quickly with new teams being formed and new executive leaders brought on. Further, you’re often expanding from one audience, the end user, to different audiences – more potential user segments, partners, press, suppliers, regulators. All this means the GTM and launch strategy from year to year can look very different.  Your biggest strength is flexibility – you have a beachhead customer and proven business model – and you control the GTM dial. Do you want to go big or choose a more moderate approach? Speed wise, you’re trying to hold onto your startup clock speed as long as possible. 

As a consumer growth company, you have a few validated acquisition channels and your brand is emergent. You may not be a household name but you have established yourself in your industry. In the growth phase you move from releases to actual product launches. 

The three most common launch tactics for consumer growth companies are stand alone Tier 0 launches, flagship company events, and external industry events. Companies start to flex their creative muscle – such as Gmail launching on April Fools' Day with 1GB of storage, which at the time many thought was a hoax because it was 100x the storage from existing products. Celebrity partnerships also become common such as Megan Thee Stallion repping Cash App. Spotify Wrapped, their seminal year-end moment, has been used to introduce new products such as Sound Town and Listening Personality. 

Another common tactic is events – whether hosted or external. Back in 2013, Instagram hosted their own press event to launch Instagram Direct.  

More common are companies investing in starting their own flagship event. Apple (WWDC), Duolingo (Duocon), Spotify (Stream On), and Pinterest (Pinterest Presents).

“When I first joined Pinterest, our initial launch strategy was driven by product availability. It was scrappy. We then transitioned to aligning launches with industry moments and audiences, such as Shoptalk for ecommerce. Today, the company hosts Pinterest Presents, which I think is the ultimate goal for many companies - a company hosted event that establishes more pull with press, partners, and customers.”    

Maansi Dommeti, previously Hosting Product Comms, Airbnb; Product Marketing Lead, Pinterest

While Apple is a large scale production planned 18 months in advance, Duocon is a relatively low-budget production that is less scripted and more authentic. Apple speakers have flashy titles and VPs whereas Duocon will have an IC engineer on stage for (what feels like) the first time.  

While others went the more tried and true stand alone ‘Tier-0’ launch balancing speed with having a ‘moment’ such as Sora from OpenAI, Instacart+ from Instacart, and AI DJ from Spotify. 

As a B2B SaaS growth company, you have flexibility but also big expectations. You’re driving millions in ARR and the stakes are higher. Externally customers and partners are looking for a cohesive narrative. Internally there is mounting pressure as the company has staffed up new senior leads across engineering, sales, marketing, customer success and business development and these investments need to deliver. The exec team is aligned with launch metrics beyond just adoption, looking up funnel towards metrics such as perception, awareness, and consideration. You’re going from SQLs to MQLs. And your target market is broadening. It’s exciting, but also a point when many companies mess up. The good news is that there are a number of common methods employed here to meet the demands. This often includes bundled launches such as Shopify Editions and Squarespace Refresh and company-hosted events such as Figma Config, Canva Create, Stripe Sessions, and Nvidia GTC. 

B2B companies will also start exploring new acquisition channels – both to build awareness and cement themselves as a legitimate player in their industry. One such example is leaning into OOH such as highway and airport billboards. 

A clear narrative is the biggest impact product launches and GTM rhythms can have for B2B SaaS companies at this stage. You’re serving many more customer segments. You’re releasing more products. It’s important that you as the company – not customers, not press, not the markets – direct the narrative.  

As Desiree Motamedi, the former Global VP of Product Marketing at Shopify notes on Sharebird in developing Shopify Editions as their primary product launch vehicle: 

“We needed to find a way to give our stakeholders a reliable and consistent way to have visibility to our growth so that they understand what we’re doing for them and how we can make their lives easier. This is not only an experience for people to look forward to, but also a timeline of product progress, in retrospect. It gives us a bit of accountability knowing that our customers are looking at our product growth alongside us….Tobi had a vision to make product the center of Shopify’s story, and this central place of showcasing our accomplishments was the only way to bring it to life.”

A phenomenon that happens late in the growth phase is you’re serving more audiences. Consumer companies become B2B companies. And vice versa. Some start as deeply focused consumer companies – such as Instacart, Spotify, Pinterest, Amazon, Uber – but their B2B product lines become material. Often these companies will create separate GTM and launch rhythms to develop the narrative for these different audiences. For example Google has Made By Google (consumer hardware), Google Cloud Next (developers), Made on YouTube (creators), Search On (consumers and partners). Pinterest has Pinterest Presents (advertisers) and Creators Festival (creators). 

Another way this emerges is product launches through partner-focused conferences. This often takes the form of developer conferences such as DevDay from OpenAI or Unboxed from Square, and creator-focused conferences such as Twitchcon, Made on YouTube, Pinterest Creators Festival, Spotify Stream On, and Creator Week from Meta. 

Late

At this stage most of your GTM rhythms are proven. You know what works for your company, industry, and customer base. The teams, execs, and external partners know what to expect. And you have pull. Celebrities, not those from the 90s, but the Lizzos and Serena Williams of the world who command 8 figure checks before even showing up will return your calls. You headline the conference circuit. Three-letter sports leagues call you. Your billboard campaigns are global. Press will show up to your events. But you may be facing headwinds depending on your ‘Silicon Valley time’. 

Your greatest strengths are you’re a known quantity and a loved product. You have brand equity. You have leverage. You have resources. You can undercut pricing to get massive distribution and thwart competitors. Your greatest weaknesses are your speed and complexity. The quantity of stakeholders can stifle urgency. Most launches at this phase are highly orchestrated and planned 12 to 18 months in advance. They resemble a movie production. For consumer products, that means big fall hardware events from stalwarts such Apple, Google, Amazon, bundled product release events such as Editions from Shopify and Winter and Summer releases from Airbnb, and standalone Tier-0 launches such as Amazon Go Grocery and YouTube Shorts. 

For B2B companies, the conference and event circuit is well documented and aligned with buying cycles in North America. The playbook of big events in the Fall to generate leads and align with budgeting for the upcoming fiscal year and Spring as a narrative refresh is folk wisdom. See Dreamforce from Salesforce (Fall), Snowflake: Summit (Fall) and Data Cloud Summit (Spring), Amazon AWS re:Invent (fall), Nvidia GTC (Spring), Stripe Sessions (Spring), Atlassian Team 24 (Spring), Adobe MAX (Fall), HubSpot Inbound (Fall), and Oracle CloudWorld (October). 

How launch strategies evolve for leading companies 

As your startup grows, your launch methods will evolve. Your ambitions increase, so too does the complexity and preparation. From our research, we found there was a similar path companies took in evolving their launch strategies. We are going to dive into some examples for each category, before we do, here are some of the most common launch methods startups and large companies use: 

1/ Owned channel: scrappy launch of product using owned channels (blog, website, social channels, discord, etc). 

2/ Waitlist: employing a waitlist, referral, or invite only launch tactic to a select group of individuals, either on a waitlist or hand selected by the founders/early team. A notable example is how UberCab launched to a select group of SF tech professionals. Mostly owned channels, some earned, no paid. 

3/ Tier 0: full Tier 0 single product launch with support across earned, owned, and paid channels. Can include marketing stunts, brand partnerships, and celebrity campaigns. 

4/ Bundled: similar to Tier 0, but features a bundled announcement of products at features at one moment in time. Typically includes a press release, blog post, video assets and sometimes brand campaigns. 

5/ Company virtual event: online-only event organized and run by company. Multiple product announcements during the event. Some press attendance. 

6/ Community event: smaller, in person events hosted with customers, developers, and partners. 

7/ Industry event: externally produced events such as SXSW, CES, Mobile World Congress, etc in which companies utilize a keynote to announce new features or products. Companies typically announce only one product. Can be harder to stand out, but there is plenty of press and industry attention.

8/ Flagship event: large, annual in-person company hosted event such as Stripe Sessions with company presenters, partner/customer presenters, and guests. Multiple product announcements. Dates announced and RSVP in advance. Meaningful press attendance. 

9/ Segment-specific event: in-person events typically organized around a particular segment such as Apple with WWDC (Developers) and Fall event (consumers). Multiple product announcements at each event. Dates announced and RSVP in advance. Meaningful press attendance.

Seeing Double: Why Consumer and B2B Launches are Quite Similar

While the rhythms of GTM for consumer and B2B may feel worlds apart, we believe they are more similar than not. First, let’s address how they are different: 

• Buyer behavior: in consumer you’re marketing to an individual. For B2B, the buyer, the user, the approver, etc are different people. It’s often more complex. But we’ve witnessed the consumerization of B2B – from PLG to seamless onboarding to single-user pricing (Dropbox, Airtable). 

"A meaningful difference in B2B vs. B2C launches is the reason why, or the catalyst driving the purchase. In B2C, buyers lean more on the emotion of the decision. In contrast, B2B launches tend to be more focused on the functional benefit. One thing driving this is that in B2B you are appealing to an entity and in B2C an individual, where purchases are personal” 

Carson Swan, Founder, Strata PMM; previously Director of Product Marketing, Front; Product Marketing Lead, Meta; Sr PMM, Amazon

• Creative latitude: you have more creative and brand paths with consumer GTM and launches than B2B. You have the opportunity to make an emotional appeal to a broad group of consumers which not the case in B2B 

• GTM motions: one of the biggest is the sales enablement required for many B2B companies. While most are leveraging PLG, the natural evolution of B2B SaaS is to move up market, eventually reaching enterprise which requires a sales team and the requisite support from marketing teams. 

• Executive figureheads: for B2B, getting the CEO, GM, or Unit lead in front of and shaking hands with customers is key. This doesn’t matter for consumer products.  

“B2B Marketing benefits from having a strong brand. In terms of customer engagement, an important lever is getting senior executives to engage with high potential customers. At Uber, we would bring Dara to events and have him connect 1:1 with top partners. Similarly at Instacart, we would put Fidji on stage at major industry events to establish credibility and trust”  

Nikhil Balaraman, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Roofstock; previously Director of Product Marketing, Instacart; Head of Marketing at Uber (B2B)

The list of similarities is much more apparent and compelling. 

• Launch objectives: top line goals are similar: drive awareness, activation, and incremental revenue 

• PMM is DRI: Product Marketing is spearheading the process in partnership with PM, Eng, Design, Customer Success, Marketing, and Sales 

• Experiment driven: both Consumer and B2B product launches are very experiment driven in the early days. Resources are tight. It’s about speed and proving PMF. 

• Known purchase patterns: whether cultural events (holidays, sports) for consumer, or fiscal budgeting for B2B, the peak purchase times are known and planned around for both Consumer and B2B product launches. 

Investing in Your Launch 

A good question we often hear: how much do companies spend on launch activities? 

There are a few factors that affect the investment, such as the company stage, target customer (B2B/B2C) and industry. But before you dive into scoping the budget for your launch it’s critical to secure executive alignment. In the early days this could be a simple text or phone call and for later stages it's a much more involved process. Their input will shape your entire go to market strategy and investment level. These expectations are shaped by their experience and drive their perspective in the overall investment level and expected outcomes. As a marketer, your two most important executive stakeholders are the CEO and CFO (and by extension the board). The CEO’s experience with launches and grasp of the marketing funnel will dictate your strategy as a marketer. Are they comfortable with investing in brand for launches and impact top-of-funnel metrics such as awareness, impressions, and sentiment. Or are they exacting that launch outcomes should be revenue or revenue related (MQLs, SQLs, trial). Similarly, how does your launch fit in with the ‘investment portfolio’ of your CFO? What is the return and risk of the launch? From a modern portfolio theory perspective, where does your launch land: high risk yet high reward? Or a more proven lever to move key business metrics? In the early days your launches are more the former and will (hopefully) evolve to the latter.  

A starting point is to understand the startup marketing budget. This is well documented – it’s  ~11% for startups (Hubspot) but can approach up to 20% for earlier startups (Spendesk), and lands around 11.8% for larger companies (Deloitte CMO survey). This is a fully loaded cost including headcount, advertising, and technology. 

From there, we can assess the launch budget as a percent of the overall marketing budget. Combining our personal experience and assessing earnings statements, filings, and other sources, we estimate that companies spend between 5% and 12% of their annual marketing budgets on major product launches.

• Apple spends an estimated 6.9% to 11% of their marketing budget on product launches. They spent an estimated $125 million to $200 million on WWDC and their fall launch event in 2020. Out of their $1.8 billion marketing budget that year, this represents 6.9% to 11%. And is likely underrepresented as it does not include ad spend related to product launches1. 

• Salesforce spends an estimated 8.8% to 13.9% of their marketing budget on product launches. They spend an estimated $140 million to $220 million on Dreamforce and World Tours in 2020. This represents 6% to 9.5% of their estimated $2.3 billion annual marketing budget2.   

From our personal experiences, expenses related to product launches have ranged as low as 5% to almost 20%. The latter being a big product launch with a significant brand budget for a campaign that flighted during the holidays.

Sources and helpful resources to understand marketing and launch budgets include the Deloitte CMO survey, OpenView Partners SaaS Benchmark report, KeyBanc, Meritech Capital, and Gartner. 

Launches are an important milestone and opportunity to land a product narrative. When done well, they can drive meaningful brand and business impact and capture the imagination of press, users, and consumers worldwide.

We’re often asked: How should companies approach product launches? How much should they invest, and how orchestrated should they be?

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, companies from Google, Apple, and Airbnb to Duolingo, Canva, and Ramp follow foundational principles that apply across the board.

_{The majority of companies will employ multiple launch approaches depending on product and objectives.} 

This is part one of a four-part series on how leading tech companies launch products. It’s the result of over 100 hours of research and dozens of interviews studying 24 leading consumer and B2B companies. We’ll share the insights, stories, and frameworks used to bring products to market.

Here is what you can expect:

Part 1 | PLAN: Start with the end in mind (☝️ this post) 

• Foundational go to market frameworks underpinning product launches

Part 2 | EVOLVE: The Evolution of GTM 🌳

• We’ll cover how launches differ by Consumer vs B2B, company stage and investment level 

Part 3 | CONSUMER: How leading consumer companies launch products ❤️

• Launch examples from companies such as Airbnb, Apple, Cash App, and Duolingo

Part 4 | B2B: How leading B2B companies launch products 🚀

• Launch examples from companies such as Stripe, Shopify, Figma, and Canva

This series is the result of over a dozen interviews from folks who work in product marketing, marketing, product management and product design from Apple, Google, Square, Cash App, Uber, Stripe, Meta, Atlassian, Airbnb, Pinterest, Airtable, Affirm, Instacart, Salesforce, Shopify, DoorDash, Canva, Hubspot, Amazon, Affirm and Figma. A special thank you to Salit Kulla (Google), Ed Lin (Square, Affirm), Christina Dam (Square, Lightspeed, Apple), Allison Arcos (Atlassian, DoorDash), Hannah Hughes (Airbnb, Affirm), Elise Bergeron (Snowflake), Carson Swan (Strata PMM, Front, Meta, Amazon), Nikhil Balaraman (Roofstock, Instacart, Uber), Kim Wohlleb (Airbnb, Canva), Maansi Dommeti (Pinterest, Airbnb), Maddy Halyard (Cash App), Jenny Blair (Google), Apurva Luty (Discord, Meta, Microsoft), and Marcus Andrews (Pend.io, Google, Hubspot) for their collaboration, input, and feedback! 🙏

Ok, let’s dive in.

Insanely Great 

On a warm Tuesday in January in 1984, the world’s relationship with computers would forever change. Steve Jobs was on stage at the Flint Center in De Anza College in Cupertino and was unveiling the Macintosh, which introduced a graphic user interface (GUI) to the Apple line of personal computers. While Xerox had developed the technology in the 1970s, the launch event and subsequent Super Bowl commercial, in which Apple invested $1 million, captured the imagination of people around the world. It is considered one of the most successful product launches in modern business history. Job’s blend of storytelling and live product demo would set the gold standard for how to introduce tech products. 

Today, as the number of tech companies has exponentially increased, there is a significant launch on almost any given weekday. How these products are brought to market varies meaningfully between companies. For software products, launches often occur on a rolling basis but are also commonly bundled into announcements either through virtual events or large conferences. For hardware products, launches are generally annual. For most product launches, go to market moments are highly orchestrated, diligently planned sometimes in years in advance and carefully executed to drive broad awareness and adoption.

Start with the End

Launch day is one of the most exciting milestones for the team, company and users. It can have a significant impact on employee morale, brand perception, customer reception and financial performance. It can elevate a product and drive meaningful business impact and alternatively, if poorly executed, it can do the exact opposite. Unfortunately only 38% of executives rank their launches as highly successful1. 

At the highest level, a launch strategy is generally informed by the company strategy and the product strategy. While these strategies can be viewed sequentially, they are usually bidirectional and influence each other. In some companies, the product strategy and roadmap is unidirectional in shaping the launch strategy. While in other companies, the launch and press narrative shapes what is prioritized and built on the product roadmap.

1. Company strategy

Some of the most iconic  companies start with the end in mind. What does a successful launch look like? To users? To press? To the world? What narrative do we want to build in the hearts and minds of potential customers? They begin with a clear picture of what great looks like and work backwards to engineer that outcome. 

Amazon is famous for their working backwards model of starting with a press release before writing a line of code. 

Company Strategy Considerations: 

Here are some considerations and questions companies should ask which shapes their strategy:

To execute this step effectively, requires a senior executive, ideally the CEO, to grasp both the strategic and executional details. As Kim notes below, it was part of the magic of Airbnb in the early days.

2. Product strategy 

The product strategy is largely dictated by the market, the audience, the competitive landscape and ultimately the unique value the company can provide. First, it’s important to distinguish between various rhythms of bringing a product to market: 

• Pre-announce: when a company publicly shares that a new feature or product is coming. It is not yet available for use but the company is informing the public that it is coming on X date. This is generally done to build momentum, excitement and sometimes as a defensive strategy to pre-empt competitive offerings and demonstrate category leadership 

  • Timing: This is a single moment in time

• Launch: when the feature or product is available for use or purchase by customers. It can be initially gated to specific geos or markets and eventually scales to broad or general availability 

  • Timing: This is a single moment in time

• Release: when engineering and product deploy updates to the experience. Release schedules are generally guided by the roadmap and alpha/beta milestones and iterating on user feedback. 

  • Timing: This is an ongoing process, usually measured in months 

• Marketing: when the full go to market plan across paid, owned and earned media goes live to support a product launch. It can be at the same time as a launch or decoupled from a launch. 

  • Timing: This is an ongoing process, usually measured in months 

Getting the right sequencing of pre-announcing, launching, and marketing are important in successfully landing a launch. Some companies bundle launch and marketing whereas others decouple. 

While Apple is known for a highly engineered and secretive launch process culminating in a grand press event that combines many of these components, most companies opt for a more rolling release schedule with a launch moment scheduled later. Why? By decoupling the release schedule and launch and marketing efforts, you can get shorter feedback loops, reduce costs, learn and iterate faster. For example, Shopify, among others, will release features before, during, and after their biannual Editions ‘launch’. The launch serves its purpose as a splashy moment – an opportunity to rewrite or remind customers, partners, and employees of the narrative – and the product teams are unblocked from shipping. 

One common pitfall is launching products too often. It can dilute a product narrative or worse be confusing to the market, customers and employees. The so-called ‘death by a thousand launches’. For example, take an early stage B2B SaaS company. The CEO is determined to demonstrate progress and momentum to customers and aims to do this via frequent releases and announcements of new features. While this approach may initially appear attractive, the novelty will not only wear off quickly, the narrative can become muddled, and the quality of the features or products is compromised and calls into question the strategy and priorities of the company. This can lead down a slippery slope of pre-announcing products that won’t exist for a long time (eg 12+ months).

3. Go to market strategy

The Go To Market Strategy is a comprehensive  end to end plan for how the product will be introduced to customers. It includes foundational business strategy, product launch goals, customer and market insights, brand and performance marketing plans including media and channels and a comprehensive communications and press strategy. In terms of how this plan is formulated and driven forward, it’s a cross functional effort and quarterbacked by product marketing. 

In most mature and growth stage tech companies, product managers are the ‘mini CEO’ of a product area and are responsible for delivering and maintaining a product roadmap. In a 12-18 roadmap, there are generally a small handful of products or features which will require a holistic go to market plan – meaning the XFN leadership team believes these features and products or features are likely to be meaningful drivers of business and marketing impact (revenue, awareness, trial, adoption/usage).

At this stage in the process, a product marketing manager is usually the DRI (directly responsible individual) for bringing together the GTM plan and collaborating closely with their product manager and cross functional stakeholders. They together, along with leadership, will determine which feature or features will require a ‘launch’ or ‘go to market’ support. In many companies including Google, Facebook, Instacart and others – this is a methodical and data driven process. In broad terms – you can think of this as combing through a 6-12 month product roadmap and ranking features which the team (PMM, Comms, Exec) believes are going to be most impactful for users or customers. The way this is done in practice is assigning a Tier to each feature or product.

Once this ranking has been completed, the team will usually decide on the timing of the go to market launch in partnership with product and communications. Considerations on the product side include whether the team is sufficiently resourced on engineering and design and on the marketing side what level of investment and go to market timing is appropriate given totality of company, market and media dynamics. This means, if it’s a Tier 0/1 launch, we expect to invest significantly with no competing launch marketing or press moments in that aperture and of course being sensitive to external market and cultural dynamics. 

Once the team has decided on the product, go to market investment and timing– it begins all of the necessary work to execute against the plan. The product team is scoping, building and testing. The marketing team is spearheading research and insights , building a narrative and going to market plan in partnership with comms, data science, performance and brand marketing and so forth.

Stay tuned for Part 2 – which covers how launch strategies evolve as companies grow, marketing investment and the differences between Consumer and B2B launch strategies – it drops next week!

During my time at Google & Facebook, I worked on four products – Doubleclick, Google Fiber, Google Assistant & Facebook Portal. A common theme, with exception of DoubleClick, was each product was at the 0 to 1 stage when I joined the team and they were all consumer products.  Of the three stages of PMM, this is referred to as the “Entrepreneurial Product Marketer.” On Google Assistant and Facebook Portal, I was the lead consumer product marketer on the software side of the product which is built into hardware (Pixel, Google Home speakers, Facebook Portal devices). 

For each product, we were a newly formed team and I wore many hats as we worked to define product strategy, find product market fit and craft a killer marketing strategy to drive trial and adoption. The learning curve was steep and my impact was significant. Collectively, the marketing teams grew from ~3 to 60+, product adoption grew from 0 to 450 Million users and revenue grew from (sometimes) nothing to north of $100 million. 

In 2016, I was working on a stealth product at Google and my manager, who was amazing, was leaving to go work on a new AI Assistant product no one had heard of. When he shared the news with me, I immediately asked him to take me with him – first because he was an excellent leader and human and I wanted to continue working for him and second this product was the next most important priority for Sundar. Through a fortunate set of events, including a few ad hoc interviews, I joined the Google Assistant team. In my first week on the team at the company all hands, Sundar shared his vision for how this “Assistant” was going to revolutionize the way people got things done and shift Google from being search first to voice. He unveiled an ambitious multi year plan to build a true helpful AI Assistant. Recently the Google Assistant  merged with Bard (or now Gemini) but back then it was truly the buzziest and most interesting new product at the company. 

I was the third product marketer on a brand new marketing Assistant team, along with my manager and his manager. Over the course of the three years, the PMM team grew from 3 to over 40 and from zero users to over 350 million. It was a steep learning curve and an incredibly challenging role where I wore what felt like every marketing hat – I did work that was classic product marketing, brand marketing, partnerships marketing and growth marketing.  

During my time at Google, I also worked on other products. I started out in a product strategy role on Doubleclick where my focus was less classic marketing and more on enabling ad exchange partners to increase spend with Google and more B2B. Then I joined Google Fiber where my role as a product marketer was largely focused on driving user adoption. 

At Facebook, I joined Reality Labs to lead software product marketing for Facebook Portal, a video calling device. This was also a brand new product, a newly formed team with bold ambition and a very healthy marketing budget. In this role, I built the software PMM team, remit and operating cadence from scratch. My team’s focus was driving awareness and adoption of software features across the suite of Portal devices. I was also responsible for product partnerships such as Netflix and Spotify. 

During these 7 years, I learned the importance of marketing and specifically product marketing in helping products breakthrough with consumers and scale. Below are 7 lessons about what I believe make exceptional product marketers.  

1. World class marketing begins with world class insights

To uncover meaningful insights you have to deeply understand your audience. This means a foundational grasp of their needs, desires, pain points and daily routines. This is not as simple as reading a few research reports or conducting a survey and outsourcing this work to an agency to deliver customer personas. Yes, there is value in leveraging surveys and agencies. However, in my experience, in order to uncover groundbreaking insights, you must immerse yourself in the customer experience from beginning to end. This may look like many months in deep primary research – ethnographies, focus groups, surveys and if possible putting yourself in the shoes of these customers – recreating the experience your product solves. This could mean spending the day in the life of a customer. If you're designing an experience for an AI Assistant which provides help with daily routines, engineer your entire day around the use cases and spend it as if you are the target audience. Spend a few weeks with a research team going into the homes of these customers and actually observing firsthand their experiences. This work is not quick and it’s not easy. It is a significant investment of time and money and can feel painstakingly slow. However, when done thoroughly, it becomes the anchor of your marketing strategy and is a critical factor in architecting a breakthrough narrative. 

2. The best product marketers obsess over product.

An excellent product marketer must know and understand their product inside out. This means being a frequent user of the product, having firsthand knowledge of the user experience and a perspective on how to improve it. You should continually be testing and submitting bugs to the engineering teams. You must partner closely with the product team to provide your input on the experience and have a clear perspective on what is working and what is not. You are not waiting for the product manager to share their perspective on how the product is performing and simply taking that as gospel – you must be deeply ingrained as a user yourself. This not only arms you with firsthand knowledge from which to build a better marketing strategy and compelling positioning, it is one of the best ways to quickly build trust and credibility with your product and engineering counterparts. 

3. Powerful storytelling is an essential ingredient for breakthrough with press and users.

In order to breakthrough with an audience and market, you will need to get really good at storytelling. We hear this all the time yet it feels like a missing element in a lot of marketing I encounter today. Great storytelling is the ability to take the magic – the special element of your product, the thing that sets it apart from everything else out there – and translate that value into a compelling narrative which your target audience can easily understand, relate to and desire. It helps build that critical emotional connection with your audience. Think of the greats who have perfected this over many years such as Nike, Apple and Disney. In marketing, this is definitely more art than science but it can be methodical, informed and data driven. This can include things like testing permutations of positioning, value propositions, and creatives to understand what will resonate. Once you find an angle or positioning that is compelling and ownable – this becomes the anchor of your narrative and is the key element of your creative briefs.

4. Having high agency (aka owner mindset) will multiply your impact. 

In my experience, the most effective teammates or colleagues I’ve worked with, whether in marketing, product, engineering or other teams are those who have high agency and an owner mindset. When I’m leading a launch or a project, my mindset is do whatever it takes to move that project forward in a high quality, timely manner and often this means doing work or stepping into roles which are squarely outside of my job responsibility. For example, there have been numerous occasions where I’ve written press releases, mocked up user wireframes and written product strategy when the team either was at capacity, there wasn’t a headcount for the role or the ask was so timely that I stepped in and did what was needed to unblock the team. What I’ve found is this tendency and mindset is what sets apart those who operate with high impact vs. those who are simply keeping things afloat. Frank Slootman calls these people ‘drivers’ and contrasts them to ‘passengers.’ Drivers move things forward and get things done with a high sense of urgency and ownership and without needing to be asked or instructed to take action. 

5. Data drives clarity. Seek it. Understand it. Leverage it. 

Impactful marketing is data informed and driven. This does not mean an obsession with data to inform every decision or plan but it does mean leveraging data strategically and frequently to ensure decisions are grounded in logic, reason and thoughtfully made. As a product marketing leader, you must be able to understand, analyze and extract insights from data. The data can be raw and complex and you may need an analyst or team to query or distill it but you as the DRI must be able to read it and determine how to best leverage it to make an impact. Oftentimes, this can mean wielding it into a narrative to underscore a point you’re aiming to deliver with an audience or alternatively it can be used for internal audiences and executives to advocate for your perspective. In my experience, the best marketers are those that are not only comfortable with data but are actively seeking data to inform their perspectives and their plans.

6. Credibility and trust with product counterparts matter. Prioritize it and build it. 

Your success as a product marketer is highly correlated (and some would argue causally related) to the strength of your relationship with your product counterparts. You are the conduit between marketing and product and your success at your role is highly dependent on your ability to meaningfully engage with your product counterparts. A key responsibility of your role is to influence the product roadmap – leveraging data from the market, the audience, the competition and research to inform product strategy early in the product development lifecycle. This means having a thoughtful perspective on what the team is building and how to improve it and sharing that perspective early and often with your product counterparts and product leadership. Doing so will establish trust and credibility with the team and ultimately will be critical in ensuring your go to market plan is impactful.

7. To be a better product marketer, be a better writer. 

This point goes hand in hand with storytelling but I’ve found that my ability to succinctly and compellingly communicate in writing has been critical to every major launch I’ve led. Writing is crucial because as a product marketer your role is not only highly cross functional but your effectiveness is dependent on your ability to communicate your ideas. You are tasked with writing briefs, writing go to market plans, editing product roadmaps, writing executive emails, writing weekly updates and more. And I don’t mean you have to be a world class writer but you definitely have to have the ability to write clearly, succinctly and in a manner which is compelling to your audience. The good news is that writing is a skill that can be improved drastically with practice and with reading.

This post is the result of over a dozen interviews from folks who work in product marketing, marketing and product management at Apple, Google, Meta, HubSpot, Square, Pendo.io, Instacart, and Discord. A special thank you to Marcus Andrews, Jenny Blair, Apurva Luty, and Bogomil Balkansky for their collaboration and input! 🙏

The rise of Product Marketing 

Over a decade ago, Marc Andreesen’s famous essay “Why Software is Eating the World'' became one of the most widely read pieces of writing in the tech community and more broadly the professional world. The thesis of this essay is truer today than it has ever been. Technology is the foundation of global economies, markets and industries. The most valuable companies on the S&P 500 – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia – are technology companies. In fact, the largest five companies on the public markets rarely come from the same sector, but tech achieved this in 2023. And as of January 2024, the market cap of tech companies accounts for almost 29% of the value of the S&P 500, up from 6.3% in 19901. The rise of tech, not just in Silicon Valley, but globally has fundamentally altered how we live and do business.

With this rise, the discipline of marketing as practiced in technology companies, has evolved to adapt to the unique needs of technology products across hardware and software. Marketing at technology firms is unique and while foundational elements of the craft are similar, key elements are different from those of other industries such as CPG, healthcare, or energy. Marketers in technology companies are not directly responsible for a P&L for example, a central responsibility of Brand Managers in CPG firms, but rather are responsible for delivering end to end go to market plans which drive broad product adoption. Ultimately, the goal of marketing in any industry or company is similar – build an emotional connection with customers to elicit behavior change and thereby deliver business impact (revenue, profit, usage) but the playbook for execution is unique at technology firms.  

At the heart of technology marketing sits Product Marketing. 

Product Marketing at the center

Product Marketing is arguably the single most critical function for driving product adoption and scale. With origins in B2B technology firms, product marketing in today’s modern technology companies is a key engine for growth and adoption. It is a counterpart to product management and chiefly responsible for bringing products to market. A product manager needs a constant flow of information from the market and potential users to build a great product. A product marketer is a key conduit to this information. And more importantly great product marketers can translate a technical product roadmap into a compelling user narrative which is essential to a product breaking through with press and users. In start-ups, product marketers are often the first marketing hire because they are uniquely positioned to help the founding team navigate foundational product strategy questions. 

Product marketers generally fall into one of two categories: business to consumer (B2C) or business to business (B2B). In simplest terms, consumer product marketers are the quarterbacks of a go to market strategy and key counterparts to product managers whereas business to business or enterprise product marketers also interface with sales and accounts teams to ensure these teams are well equipped to sell the product to customers and represent their feedback to product teams.

What does a Product Marketer do? 

A product marketer’s role can vary substantially depending on stage of company, stage of product, type of customer (business vs. consumer) and how the product marketing function is organized at each company. For example, a product marketer may be the first marketer at an early stage SaaS company and is directly interfacing with an executive team in defining audience and market strategy vs. a product marketer who is leading a new feature launch on a mature product such as Google Search will spend significantly less time on inbound responsibilities such as problem definition and product strategy and more on developing marketing strategies aimed at growth and engagement of that product  

While there are distinctions to product marketing responsibilities based on the company and product stage (more on this later),the foundational responsibilities for the majority of product marketers can be categorized into three buckets: 

• Shaping the product 

• Telling people about it 

• Getting people to use it

Depending on the organization, these three buckets can also be referred to inbound product marketing, launch or go to market product marketing and growth and engagement marketing. In reality, a great product marketer is capable of delivering against all three. And in some organizations, different marketing teams are responsible for each area. 

1. Inbound Product Marketing: Shape the product

A product marketer is a counterpart to a product manager. One of the most important responsibilities of a product marketer is to influence what is built. This means having a seat at the table early in the product development cycle and an influential opinion and thesis on product strategy. This means a product marketer is leveraging data, user insights, market research, sales, customer success, competitive analyses and their own perspective of the market and problem area to directly help define what product or features should be prioritized on the product roadmap. This translates into a spectrum of outputs and includes things like problem definition, audience definition, product positioning, market sizing, competitive analyses, pricing and more. Typically, a product marketer will partner with  market research, UXR, data science and brand or product designers early in the product development process to shape and define what gets built. This responsibility is critical because it ensures an early and mutual understanding of customer or user pain points and how a proposed product will provide a compelling solution  to position, message and market the product, the outbound marketing clearly reflects the product value proposition and mitigates disconnect between what is built and what is sold. 

2. Go To Market: Tell people about it

By telling people about it, we mean a broad set of go to market activities which introduce the product to the consumers and the market. This means executing an end to end go to market plan including positioning and messaging. The product marketer is responsible for crafting and bringing to life this plan in partnership with key cross functional teams including performance and brand marketing, communications and product. The anchor of a robust go to market plan is compelling insights – about the market, the audience and the business. 

A product marketer is responsible for partnering with insights teams and data science to align on foundational insights which underpin the strategy of the go to market plan. In concert, they partner with brand and performance marketing teams to define a paid media plan, with comms teams to define a launch and press strategy and with product and lifecycle teams to define an owned media plan. Collectively, these components are architected to arrive at a single go to market plan which guides the external launch of the product. This process is lengthy, iterative and requires multiple checkpoints with executive and leadership teams. When done well, go to market moments are critical for driving awareness, trial, adoption and market leadership for the products and company. 

3. Growth & Engagement: Get people to use it

Finally and importantly, a Product Marketer is co-responsible for the adoption and usage of the product. This means the set of activities required to acquire, engage and retain users. While a product marketer is a key driver of this plan, the responsibility is shared across product and various marketing teams. This responsibility includes partnering with product to ensure user onboarding and in product promotions are effective, partnering with performance and growth teams to iterate on paid marketing  including media, creative, messaging and audience  and partnering with lifecycle teams to ensure a targeted owned plan is delivering the right message to the right user at the right time in their journey with the product.

Product Marketing scope by company stage

Company stage and product maturity have a significant impact on the PMM responsibilities, resources, and priorities. While PMM is a highly strategic role, its impact is even more acutely visible in early stage companies and early stage products as foundational operating decisions are fluidly being made. If a company is  pre-product market fit, it is iterating rapidly to figure out the right  target customer, what a minimal viable product looks like, how that product solves the customer pain points  in a differentiated and better way, the product positioning,  pricing, and so much more. Alternatively, If a PMM is working on a mature product such as Google Search, foundational questions such as audience, product feature set, positioning etc have been long addressed and their role is more about optimization. Broadly speaking, we can categorize PMMs responsibilities into three groups based on company/product stage:

Phase 1: Entrepreneurial PMM

• Product: this is your classic 0-1 product being built, and there are many hypotheses to test and important strategic questions to be addressed. The product is typically pre-product marketing fit (PMF) but could have an initial beachhead with a small set of customers. 

• Customers & Distribution Channels: there are few to no customers. An initial target may be existing customers using another product from the company. Likely a combination of the founders network, friends, or partners. 

• Team: it’s a “team of pirates” that are excited to build new things and take calculated risks. The PMM is generally the first and only marketer at the table and is actively collaborating with founders, CEO and founding team  

• PMM Responsibilities: you’ll wear many hats – from traditional PMM responsibilities such as defining a target audience, developing initial positioning and messaging, and conducting competitive analysis. However at this stage, a PMM is also stretching  into other operating areas such as design (standing up a landing page), data science (writing  queries, analyzing data sets, building dashboards, customer insights (designing & conducting primary research)  demand generation (standing up campaigns) first hand. Budgets are typically smaller,  undefined and emergent based on performance. 

Phase 2: Classical PMM 

• Product: there is a product in place that has emerging product market fit with the initial target segment of the market. The product is early in the lifecycle and requires significant iteration with input from the market and customers. There are features lacking which prevent scaling to other parts of the market. The value prop is compelling and while there is pricing in place, it’s not optimized for margin, rather for adoption and growth. You’re harvesting the demand and converting interest to customers. 

• Customers & Distribution Channels: there is an initial target audience in place. The ideal demographics and psychographics of customers are being molded. The team likely has not mapped the full spectrum of potential customers but have a good sense of the next priority segments. A few marketing channels are stood up and performant but additional channels need to be explored and tested .

• Team: There established operating roles and clear operating rhythms  As PMM you’re working on a weekly basis with a core sprint team (Eng, PM, Design, DS) daily to monitor a launch, develop new features, address bugs, and define strategies to drive growth and adoption. Interactions with the executive team are less frequent than Phase 1 and likely at some regular cadence (biweekly/monthly reviews). 

• PMM Responsibilities: largely focused on generating demand, engagement and growth  – getting your target audience to consider, try and use the product. It’s focused on getting broader trial and adoption. You are collaborating closely with product, data science and channel market teams to optimize messaging, creative, channel mix and with sales to develop case studies,testimonials, sales collateral. Budget is more defined based on targets and measurement is in place for the initial channels. 

Stage 3: Shepherd PMM 

• Product: the product is working at scale. Oftentimes it is becoming a multi product portfolio – eg a company is moving from one-product to multi-product portfolio or seek to cross sell new products into an existing  base. The value prop and differentiation are clear and there is likely a moat. Pricing is optimized for margin expansion and target payback periods.  

• Customers & Channels: optimizing messaging and channels for specific audience segments. There are established LTVs for audience segments and established CACs for marketing channels. Performance economics are well defined and follow a rigorous  cadence.

• Team: The team is and working operating cadences are mature. PMM has  established XFN counterparts in product, eng, design, data science etc and collaborate as needed on projects. You will likely not have as frequent sprint sessions or urgent milestones as in Phase 2 but will be actively monitoring and steering work in progress. Your exposure to executive teams is limited based on new or upcoming launches.

• PMM Responsibilities: at this phase it’s balancing growth of the product while protecting the brand and your role is largely shepherding a highly performant product and loved brand. Oftentimes you’re seeking  growth through optimizations with your existing channels, target customers and messaging. In addition, you could be focused on partnerships with other teams internally or externally as well as expanding to other geos or audience segments. You’ll likely be partnering with Brand Marketing to run integrated campaigns.

Why is Product Marketing critical? 

1. Technology will continue to be a key driver of growth across industries 

Technology will continue to be a prominent and driving force in how businesses of all sizes and caliber operate. The mechanics of how marketing is executed at technology firms and firms which have technology at the center will continue to drive greater emphasis on the  need for product marketing. Product marketers are uniquely positioned to lead the strategy and launch of technology products and are the connective tissue between the product and the market. 

2. PMM is essential for building better products

Without product marketing, a company risks building a product without incorporating the desires of the most important constituent – the user. With robust and continued user feedback, product and engineering can build a product that not only solves a real user pain point but can also build a product which is highly desirable for users. Product marketers are the voice of the user and help product managers prioritize what to build and how to iterate on it.

3. It is critical for scaling a product 

To help a product grow from a few users to millions of users, product marketing is critical – both to shape the roadmap and scale the product. Product marketers are responsible for core metrics across the marketing and customer funnel including adoption and retention. They deeply understand the market, the user and the needs of the customers. This information is critical for ongoing product iteration, development and adoption. 

In our research, we’ve learned that some of the most widely used and loved technology product such as Gmail or the iPad, had product marketers (or a version of a product marketer) on the founding team. This hire has been a critical factor to product adoption and growth. The table below outlines how leading tech products have scaled 41% annually since hiring their first product marketer – in some cases delivering at this rate of growth for nearly two decades. While it is impossible to attribute this growth specifically to product marketing and it is the result of an entire cross functional team including product, engineering, design, sales and more – this data is instructive in demonstrating the importance of product marketing as a key contributor to growth at early stages of a product. Product Marketing is the strategic cross functional glue across teams and chiefly responsible for architecting a holistic go to market plan for driving product awareness and adoption.

Interested in hearing from other leaders in the Product Marketing space? Here are some recent posts that may be helpful:

• The Art and Science of Product Marketing from Desiree Motamedi, a marketing leader who has spent time at Google, Meta, Shopify, and Salesforce. 

• Five attributes of distinctive product marketers from Tanya Khakbaz, a product marketing leader who built the function at Square and Stripe. 

• What does product marketing do? From Bogomil Balkansky, a Partner at Sequoia Capital and former VP in GTM/Product Marketing at Google and VMWare. Article is B2B PMM focused. 

• Here’s what Separates a Good Marketer from a Bad One from Dave Kaufman, not product marketing specific, but a ton of important points which apply broadly.

Share Demand Newsletter

Thanks for reading 🙏 If you find this content helpful, we’d love it if you would subscribe and share with others who may find it helpful. 

Connect with us on LinkedIn: Naiomi Eliason & Erik Eliason.

Welcome to Demand

Demand is a newsletter for anyone interested in deepening their knowledge of marketing and growth at technology companies. We will cover a gamut of topics related to marketing and derivatives of marketing – including product marketing, brand marketing, growth marketing, how to build, lead and develop a marketing team, how marketing interfaces with other functions including product, design, sales, communications, how to build and grow a marketing team, start a career in marketing and we will also touch on general management topics – rooted in personal experience and delivered as practical advice. The role of marketing is continually evolving and there’s a meaningful difference in how marketing is executed classically in CPG and other industries vs. in today’s modern technology companies. 

In today’s technology companies, marketing is an essential function, highly quantitative and highly cross functional. When done well, it is a significant contributor to business impact and growth. 

Our objective is to help you gain deeper insight into the role and craft of marketing at modern tech companies and empower you to become a world class marketer and operator. It’s brought to you by Naiomi Eliason and Erik Eliason. 

Our backgrounds  

We are business and marketing leaders with a combined 30 years of experience at tech companies such as Google, Meta, Square, Instacart, Shopify and Patreon, have worked in marketing in more traditional companies such as Target and General Mills and a number of smaller startups you’ve probably never heard of. We’ve launched and grown hardware, software, and media products that have reached billions of customers, generated billions in revenue, and added billions in market cap. We’ve also been on the ground, both as founders, ideating and scaling 0 to 1 products spending countless months (and years) searching for product/market fit. And through it all, we’ve hired and managed hundreds – we have over 20 years combined experience at hiring, managing and growing high performing teams. In our careers, there has never been a shortage of challenges or problems to solve and we believe many of you are also facing or will face similar challenges. Our goal is to bring transparency and share our knowledge so others can benefit from what we have learned.    

Why join Demand? 

This isn’t a traditional marketing newsletter with pithy statements, hot takes on buzzy brand campaigns or round ups of the latest AI marketing craze. Demand offers you a unique perspective into how marketing actually works at technology companies and is aimed at helping you learn and grow.

We’ve mentored hundreds of people over our careers. Those conversations have ranged from “how do I grow my product” to “how do I measure incrementality” to “what is product marketing”? We offer you a behind the scenes look at how the most successful marketing teams, leaders, and companies do what they do. These aren’t tired tropes you’ll find in a business book or so-called ‘marketing experts’. Rather, we will share tacit knowledge and key concepts directly from our experience and those at leading companies, so you can apply their hard-earned wisdom to your own work. 

What To Expect

We will aim to publish 1-2 posts per month. Content will be focused on a breadth of marketing and related topics at technology companies. We’ll provide honest takes on the latest product & feature launches with in depth analysis of the insights, positioning, narratives and reasons to believe which are foundational to these launches. We’ll do full stack marketing deep dives on the various areas of marketing including brand, performance, pricing, lifecycle and more.  Here’s what you can expect: 

• Insider Look into How Marketing Operates: content focused on the inner workings of functions such as Product Marketing, Growth Marketing, Brand Marketing and Creative

• Career & Professional Growth: Expert guidance on how to get a marketing job in tech (PMM, Growth, Brand, Creative), get promoted and grow in your career as marketer in Tech

• GTM Teardowns: In depth analysis of timely go to market campaigns and product launches from leading tech companies

• Candid Q&As: Short form Q&A on topics which are upvoted or our readers demonstrate significant interest in 

Subscribe now