Garrett O'Brien

🚨 GTM, RevOps, and Automation/No-Code Agencies: Read this if you’re looking for your secret weapon. I know a Chief of Staff and ex-investor who’s looking to work with agencies part-time—and she’s a force multiplier. Here’s the breakdown: • 4+ years investing across multiple funds, working with countless startups. • Deep GTM, planning, enablement, and RevOps expertise from the trenches of venture-backed companies. • A next-level understanding of what your clients need to scale and succeed. If you’re ready to level up with someone who knows how to align strategy, execution, and client success, DM me, and I’ll connect you. Let’s get you the strategic muscle to scale smarter.

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Guess what - it's Thursday! Only 1 more power play to go! Next Topic: How to Make Messaging Stick "I’ve seen messaging make or break a launch. One of my first big PMM projects taught me this: if your audience doesn’t feel the value, they won’t care about your product. Here’s a messaging Power Play: 1️⃣ Use your audience’s exact words—dig them out of reviews, surveys, or sales calls. 2️⃣ Focus on emotional drivers first. Logic supports the decision, but emotion drives it. 3️⃣ Test, test, and test again. Messaging is never ‘done.’ I once turned around a project just by rewording the headline —it tripled the click-through rate. What’s one messaging tweak that’s worked wonders for you? Let's hear some insights from the experts: Elizabeth Brigham Maggie Bean Yi Lin Pei Katie Gerard

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Many startups use misspelled names. Examples: ⊙ Lyft (not Lift) ⊙ Breakr (not Breaker) ⊙ Flyp (not Flip) Why? Misspelled names are easier to trademark. They also make finding domains simpler. But do they hurt your brand image? And will people still buy from you? People prefer brands with correct names. In 8 experiments, researchers found: ⊙ 13.6% more chose “Clear” over “Klear.” ⊙ 19.5% fewer downloaded “Daily Gainz” vs. “Daily Gains.” ⊙ 33.6% more bought “Fresh” vs. “Phresh.” This effect disappeared when: The name had a genuine purpose. Why it works? ◆ Misspelled names feel like a trick. ◆ People think the brand is trying to seem cool. ◆ It feels fake, not honest. ◆ Result: Customers trust less and avoid buying. The takeaway: ◆ Choose a grammatically correct name. ◆ If misspelled, explain why in marketing. ◆ Keep it short and easy to say. ◆ Feminine names feel warm and trustworthy. ...................................................................................................... Source: Scientific research by Costello, J., Walker, J. and Reczek, R. W. (February 2023). "Choozing" the Best Spelling: Consumer Responde to Unconventionally Spelled Brand Names. Journal of Marketing.

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Note I sent to our users this morning, but maybe interesting for some of you to read: We are at a turning point in our sector - the digital advertising frenzy is losing steam. I say this as someone who has been there since pretty much the beginning, including working to build ad products in house at FANG. There's a growing realization that our industry's obsession with all things digital has been at the very least overhyped. Maybe it’s time we rethink how we connect with consumers in more meaningful ways once again.   Advertising veteran and luminary I look up to Rory Sutherland once pointed out that brands are sacrificing creativity in favor of digital metrics. His message was simple: marketing should focus on storytelling and building relationships, not just churning out content for the sake of engagement, reaching audiences of varying quality - if real humans at all.   The rise of ad-blocking software speaks volumes here. Nearly 30% of consumers now actively avoid digital ads, frustrated by their intrusive nature. The takeaway is clear: people don’t really want ads online. This is where out-of-home (OOH) advertising shines— it’s both unskippable and non-intrusive, meeting audiences in the real world where their attention is undivided. Screens at a desirable distance, not interrupting your group chat or daily news.   Anyway, how many digital campaigns can you actually remember that stand out in the last decade? It’s a tough question, I struggle to think of many - but when you think of out-of-home campaigns, it’s clear they have the power to create memorable moments. I just flew into Seattle and can shut my eyes and recall the Dell AI campaign I saw at the Austin airport yesterday. But I couldn't tell you the social media ads I scrolled past 5 minutes ago before writing this note. All attention is not created equal.   At AdQuick, we believe in the power of combining the precision of technology with the impact of OOH. Our platform makes it easy to plan, buy, and measure OOH campaigns while delivering results that can’t be blocked or ignored. OOH provides brands with a lasting presence, one that resonates and is memorable.   It’s time to build campaigns in places that matter.

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I loved Hannah Clark and Daniel Danker 's recent podcast episode. The best piece of advice was on scaling product organizations. Daniel mentioned that when scaling, he avoids the trap of more of the same and instead figures out what they should be doing as he scales. To paraphrase, what are the 10X ideas that they should incorporate? Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/guYMfMm3

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📢 Exciting #job alert 📢 Who is the best #product leader you know? (please tag them if they'd be interested) At Savvy Learning we are looking to add the next critical piece of our leadership team. A Head of Product. Psst... scroll to the bottom of this post for a few thoughts on why Savvy Learning's core problem is a BIG ONE. Here are some specifics about this amazing job opportunity: - Head of Product - Own product & #UX - WFH - Competitive salary + equity - 5+ years of experience required - Experience in B2C is preferred - Individual contributor on day one (we're a very early stage startup) but over time you get to grow & manage the UX, product, AND software engineering teams. About our core problem: The stakes in #education could not be higher when it comes to helping children catch up on reading and math. Did you know that children who are not reading proficiently by 3rd grade are 4x more likely to become high school dropouts? Why? Because 3rd grade marks the transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn". Therefore, reading proficiency spills over into almost every aspect of our lives: cognitive, behavioral, motivational, etc. Savvy Learning exists to help children turn learning into their favorite superpower. We accomplish that through effective one-on-one and group tutoring (100% online) in reading and math, powered by custom/research-based curriculum and a delightful tech platform. We have hundreds of coaches, all with real classroom experience. And they are teaching thousands of students across dozens of countries (mostly US). Our learning outcomes for these students are amazing. So if you're a qualified product person or #PM and you've read this far on my post, it's probably a sign that you should send me a DM so I can tell you more about how great of an opportunity this is ;) We can't wait for that perfect-fit person to come and lead us.

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How do you know what's working when you're literally testing everything? A mentee recently asked me this question about working at early-stage startups—and it's a good one. When everything (product, ICP, messaging, etc.) is still a hypothesis, how do you know which piece of the puzzle is right? I don't have a straightforward or simple answer to offer, but I tried to boil it down as much as I could. Here are the two points I came up with: 1️⃣ First, you have to be comfortable with never being 100% confident in anything. You'll never have the time or resources to get to there—and if you do, you're moving too slow. You need to be able to make decisions somewhere around 60-70% confidence (those numbers might change a bit depending on the stage and specifics of your company). That means you're going to get it wrong a lot. But that's okay. The goal isn't to be right all the time. The goal is to throw out as many hypothesis as quickly as you can. If you can throw out an idea in 5 days at 60% confidence, that's far better than holding onto an idea for 15 days until you're 100% sure it's a failure. Otherwise you'll be testing and throwing out failed ideas for months before you actually get to a successful one. And no startup can afford to move at that pace. 2️⃣ You need to run quick, highly constrained experiments—and be really clear about what outcome or signal you're looking for. As an example, let's say you're testing out if your ICP (or the currently hypothesized ICP) responds to content on a particular channel. Maybe you take your strongest piece of content from a different channel and put it on the new one. To try and get as many eyes on it as possible, maybe you put a bit of money behind it for a week. In this case, you're not looking to test if your ICP is the right one, and you're not looking to test the particular piece of content. You're also not testing if you can close deals from this channel. You're just trying to decide if this channel is the right place to be. So you need to decide what level of response, type of response, or lack of response would you need to see to give you the confidence to either: 1 - change something about the experiment (maybe trying a different piece of content) 2 - invest more in the tactic/position you're testing (maybe pushing out more content on the channel) 3 - ditch the tactic/position altogether (maybe this isn't the channel your ICP spends time in) Once the week is up, see where things land, and then start the process all over again with a new experiment. When I follow this approach, I'm able to make steady progress toward defining the key pieces of the puzzle. Once I feel good about one piece, I can rearrange things to test something new. And because I'm acting at 60-70% confidence, I can quickly weed out a number of failed hypothesis before getting too far down the path. All that said, there's certainly more to it than this. But if you had to boil it down, what would you add to the list?

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new episode alert: Magnite $MGNI CEO Michael Barrett breaks down the future of independent ad tech. we talk competing with Google, why The Trade Desk won, and what actually works in M&A. Plus some great insights on leading turnarounds: https://lnkd.in/eAKc84Qi

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CMOs: what is keeping you up at night right now? I asked a group of the CMOs and marketing leaders in our CMO Club this question last week. Here were some of the responses: 1. Going up market. We see MQLs drop off a cliff from search once companies are around the 200+ employee size bracket 2. Managing change. We've had a ton of change over the last two years at our company. We were acquired by a new, very hands on PE Firm. How do I manage the team’s morale and mental health through all this change and ambiguity? 3. Balancing short term and long term. How do we balance short-term gains right now with long-term impact for 2025. 4. Positioning. We have a new brand and identity. How do we position the company’s new identity to both our existing customers and the market? While not disrupting everything else in the "always on" side of the business. 5. Sales restructuring. We just pivoted to a new GTM approach. We're sprinting to ensure we have the right support in place and holding the tough conversations over what tradeoffs are necessary to pull it all together. 6. Team morale. We just had a massive RIF... How can we maintain team morale and still get things done heading into Q4? 7. AI. My CEO is pushing us to AI everything. What does that actually mean? How do we measure impact and effectiveness vs efficiency? I've been fortunate to interview hundreds of CMOs over my ~10 years in B2B marketing and what's interesting is that although time changes and new technology comes in, the majority of these questions could have been asked 2-5-10 years ago. That's why there is so much value in community, and being able to tap into your peers who have been there, done that before (and you've probably done a thing that they are trying to do and can share your POV). Over the last few weeks at Exit Five we secretly launched our CMO Club - a private space for B2B CMOs and Marketing Leaders to spend time sharing ideas, asking for feedback, and getting recommendations. We're also going to be doing smaller events, matchmaking, and bringing in top tier CMOs for group therapy sessions. If you want to join a peer group of B2B marketing leaders, our CMO Club could something to add to your toolkit for 2025. If you're reading this and want to learn more and be involved in Exit Five's CMO Club, drop us a note at hi @ exitfive . com More to come soon.. PS. We're doing a meetup TONIGHT in Austin with ~100 B2B marketers and I'm hosting a panel discussion with three of Austin's Top B2B CMOs. Writing this from my hotel room. But first we're spending half of the day planning and doing an Exit Five team offsite.

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📊 Melinda Tellez is a data scientist, strategist and leader with a proven track record of unlocking organizational growth through data-driven insights 📊 It's W12 / Q4 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Melinda, who collaborates with informatics teams, engineers, and business leaders to deliver impactful solutions that align with strategic goals as the Director of Data Science at Clarify Health Solutions , an enterprise analytics and value-based payments platform company. With comprehensive experience across the data and MLOps lifecycle, Melinda specializes in designing, developing, deploying, and maintaining analytics and machine learning models. She has delivered predictive analytics, retrospective modeling, and cutting-edge solutions tailored to various payer and provider use cases. At Clarify, she started by building and maintaining ML and predictive analytics pipeline architectures at the company. But the role evolved into also ensuring high post-processing observability and creating robust reporting capabilities for customers to interpret the data. 📝 Architecting Solutions: A Problem-Solving Approach 📝 In both her professional and non-profit roles, Melinda approaches data architecture much like a doctor diagnosing patients—she begins by asking her "patients" to share their pain points. After all, everyone faces data challenges, and Melinda excels at guiding stakeholders to uncover and articulate solutions. Before diving into design, it’s crucial to ask: -What are the specific pain points your organization faces? -Where are you aiming to create impact? -What datasets, tools, teams, or infrastructure do you already have to support these concerns? The answers to these questions establish a foundation of understanding and provide critical insights for mapping an architectural path—from conception to production. Addressing the common bottlenecks: Most challenges arise in the middle of the process. Often, people struggle to clearly define their problem or articulate their desired outcome. Conversely, individuals may rush to a solution without evaluating their options. She encourages teams to frame challenges thoughtfully, ensuring workflows and solutions advance their ultimate goals to where they want to be. 2 Career Insights for Data Professionals 🔎 Attention to Detail is Key – Especially in Healthcare Healthcare data is among the most complex to work with due to changing and complex regulations and the dynamics between payers and providers. If you're considering a career as a data scientist or analyst in this space, a deep passion for understanding the industry will go a long way. 🙇‍♀️ Commit to Constant Evolution The data science field—along with its tools and technologies—is evolving at lightning speed. To thrive, you must embrace lifelong learning and adapt to industry changes as well as focus on building expertise in areas that align with your strengths and career goals.

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I distilled 𝟭𝟯+ 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 of my go-to-market experience as a CMO/VP/Head of Product into this 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲👇 So, if you need help building a go-to-market plan, this resource is for you. I originally built this for myself for my consultation work. → I wanted a template that covered all of the key considerations in an effective and efficient go-to-market engine. → While also still being lightweight enough to be completed quickly (and no more than ~2 pages if printed out). Here's a summary of what the template covers: 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟭 - 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 • 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼 - what you stand for, the change you're championing, why you should be trusted • 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 - the urgent & important problem you're solving and how you're solving it better than alternatives • 𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 - segments, ICP and buying committee 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮 - 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗕𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝗣𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 • 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝘂𝘆 - jobs to be done, buying triggers • 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝘆 - objections, fears, alternatives • 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 they trust - where they learn and make decisions 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟯 - 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗠𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 • 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 and 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 - per customer segment • 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 strategy - how you price vs the market 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟰 - 𝗚𝗼-𝗧𝗼-𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 • GTM 𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 - sales-led, PLG, etc. • 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗪𝗲'𝗹𝗹 𝗪𝗶𝗻 - one sentence statement uniting GTM teams • 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 Gen - how you'll generate demand • 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗚𝗲𝗻 - how you'll collect demand • 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 - how you'll prospect, nurture and close • 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 - how you'll grow revenue 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟱 - 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 • 𝗢𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗧𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 and 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀 - for Product, Marketing, Sales and CS As I said, it is comprehensive. But as you can see below, it's all done in a lean package. ___ Want the FREE template? 👉 The 𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲 using a fictional company to help guide you through it. 1. CONNECT with me    ❗don't miss this step, I can't send you the post without :) ❗ 2. LIKE this post 3. COMMENT "GTM" And I'll share it straight with you :) Plus all my future training videos on it. ___ So why am I doing this? → Help better define what a GTM strategy consists of → Help others get a head start building theirs → Get your feedback to make the template better :) So what are you waiting for? ___ ✍️ Connect with me, like the post and comment "GTM" to get the template. ♻️ Reshare if you found valuable. #B2B #B2BMarketing #B2BMarketingStrategy #GoToMarket #Marketing #SaaS #Enterprise #BrandAwareness #DemandGen #LeadGen  #Sales #Data #ROI

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Every company & every product has a name. Yet, few folks truly know how to name one. I’ve named companies and products for startups and big brands. I wrote a post this week about naming the Uber One subscription, and Paul A. responded with a request to write a post about the process. Challenge accepted! Let's start by saying that there are plenty of successful companies and products with bad names. Facebook (so lame), Spotify (what), and even Instagram (now everyone just calls it IG). But a good name is a tailwind. And building a business is all about generating tailwinds. Scrub Daddy - instantly makes it fun Shark - a vacuum that looks like a shark and a name you won’t forget Airbnb - fun and easy to remember—unlike VRBO Apple - for a computer! Love it Skims - so simple So, how do you name a company or product? Here are steps to a simple & comprehensive naming process. Step 1 - Brainstorm A well-structured brainstorm is key. You need the right people in the room, with the right prompts, in an environment comfortable enough for all ideas. The goal is to generate as many names as possible. This is a good opportunity to include stakeholders so they feel part of the input. Step 2 - Evalutation criteria Be specific about your needs, and exhaustive. Your criteria will generally have things like: Trademarking - can we own the trademark in our category? Domains available - if a company, what domains can we get? Internationalization - does this word have meanings in other languages? I recently heard about a startup named Corva, a very bad word for anyone who speaks a Slavic language. Don’t make this simple mistake! Alternate meanings - does this name have multiple meanings? Connotations test - Positive or negative connotations? Relatedness - does this communicate a key aspect of our product? Differentiated - how different is this from our competitors? Etc. Make sure your stakeholders approve the criteria! Your criteria will likely remove 90% of your ideas to help you filter. I recommend using a spreadsheet with your criteria as columns. This creates a simple tool to filter names by criteria easily. Step 3 - Picking a name The hardest part of the process is buy-in. Naming is more of an art than a science. I've generally used a voting process. Some tips: - Put the final names into a deck with the finalists used on the website, packaging, ads, etc., so your team can see it in situ. - DO NOT include the internal code name. It will always win the top votes as it is the most familiar. Even your smartest, most discerning colleagues will fall for the familiarity trap. I saw it at Uber many times. Step 4 - Sell it Unveil the name with a splash! We often did this by creating fun campaign examples with the new name. We made social media posts, billboards, and even ad campaigns to show the team how the name would bring their work to life. Happy naming!

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Fun fact: I was the first customer of Compound Growth Marketing. When I was working at Drift as VP of Marketing I wanted to work with John Short. We tried to get him to come to Drift but he was setting out to start his own agency. One weekend I ran into him + wife + kids at Friendly Toast in Back Bay and John mentioned starting CGM. I told him the next best thing to having him on the team at Drift I guess would be working 1:1 as a consultant. John was just starting CGM at the time but I knew that he was super smart and thought about B2B marketing and driving revenue in ways that I didn't. Today - 5 years later - no surprise John has built a wildly successful agency supporting B2B SaaS companies and today their team that manages over $50M in paid spend. But they don't just manage paid. They become a partner that helps you think about the full funnel. • They helped one company build $1.9M in pipeline in 4 months with ABM • Increased Trials by 60% while maintaining the same spend level • Grew a companies SEO traffic by 40% in just 6 months  • Scaled a companies pipeline by 400% YoY while increasing spend by only 189% If you need help scaling growth and you're in B2B SaaS, John and the team at CGM would be on my short list to reach out to. Every marketing leader needs a few strong agency partners, and John and the team can be that partner to you because he's been there before in your shoes. Speaking of paid spend. The team at CGM built this helpful calculator to help you compare your budget to what the average SaaS company would spend based on your revenue growth goals. You can: • Enter your growth targets for 2025 • Enter in your average deal size • Build out funnel economics by customer segment, funnel, and channel • Understand unit economics to see how much you can spend on upper funnel metrics like MQL/A's Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/e3ij3N4E *** Disclosure: Compound Growth Marketing is currently an Exit Five sponsor, and this is a sponsored post.

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They thought they needed an experienced, full-time CMO. Took 3 months to hire. Left after 4 months. Here's why: Early-stage startups don't need a CMO. They need growth. Traditional CMOs direct traffic. But right now? You need someone to build the roads. First, prove your model. Then build your machine. #startupmarketing #marketingleadership

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When I was a founder, conferences were one of my most impactful GTM channels. I think a lot of early-stage startups today underestimate the value of conferences for brand and lead gen — and overestimate how much you have to pay to stand out. My team tried to approach conferences in really unique ways – and I was often amazed by how much they’d pull off on a tiny budget. Here are just a few of the things we did to help us stand out and get high ROI from attending conferences: First, we always wanted to stand out from all the generic B2B booths, and in the early days we knew we couldn’t afford the biggest or nicest booth, so we got really creative with our booths. One year, we turned our booth into a dorm room, furnished with a cheap ikea bed, a fake keg, and posters (we even bought Animal House-style “COLLEGE” sweatshirts to wear!)... As a reminder, companies used WayUp to hire college students, so this one felt on brand. And when we did just do a plain banner (maybe we didn’t have enough time to get creative), we at least tried to have the messaging on the banner stand out and be memorable. As with everything we did, we tried to make sure it was memorable. - For example, we'd try to avoid wearing boring logo t-shirts – instead, our shirts would strike conversation or at least a smile. - When it came to swag, we tried to give out items that were actually usable. No conference attendee wants another pen, notepad or t-shirt. Trendy, fun socks were a huge favorite (some of my old customers still send me pics when they wear their WayUp socks!).... Chip clips are another great one I’ve seen (everyone needs a chip clip!)... We also got great feedback when we gave out chapsticks that said “Jobs on WayUp are the (lip) bomb.” - Another tactic I enjoyed – which may be a bit petty, but it’s a fun memory of mine... One year, a conference we were attending was in a hotel. So my team called up the bars in that hotel (where we knew people would grab a drink in between or after sessions), and we asked if we could provide them with 2 days’ worth of coasters, and pay them $100 to use our coasters exclusively during those two days. The bar said yes, and for two days, all coasters in that bar were branded with WayUp’s logo. (Fun fact: one of our competitors hosted a happy hour at one of those bars, so every single drink was served on our logo. 😉) Of course, there’s so much other advice I could give on conferences… like ensuring you always schedule meetings/demos at your booth in advance of the conference. Or having competitions for your team for who can collect the highest number of prospect emails. Or planning a fun dinner with top prospects and customers during one of the evenings. And the list goes on. But I hope this post will inspire more founders to consider conferences as a great b2b marketing and lead gen tactic, an awesome way to talk to many customers at once, and a fun opportunity to bring your best creativity (and scrappiness!)

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A big thanks to AI guru Nicole Leffer for taking marketing leaders from Cervin Ventures' portfolio companies through her "Harnessing the Power of Gen AI for Marketing" seminar today. Every time hear Nicole speak I come away with a dozen new AI tips and tricks -- and she delivered again by showing us how to build foundational skills in our marketing orgs. I won't steal her magic but here are a couple of Nicole's context-setting observations: 🤖 AI is a great assistant, not a replacement for marketing. AI can't do ALL of your marketing, especially in these early days. (So don't even think about taking humans out of the loop yet.) 🤖 Marketers using AI think they are further along than what they really are -- mostly because they don't know what they don't know. (Good news, if you're incorporating AI into workflows, you're still ahead.) 🤖 AI and the models are currently the dumbest they will ever be. If you can do great things with them now, think about what they will be able to do in the next 3-5 years. Thanks to all the Cervin companies who participated! cc: Christine Vidal, Daniel Kish, Crystal Mendes, Josh Dreyfuss, Jeanette Belashov, Justin Mota, Marwa Mhtar, Kristi Tutt, Tyler Fridley, MBA, LingRaj Patil, Phoebe Wang, Ashley Daniels #marketing #ai

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I’ve run win-loss programs at previous companies. Valuable? Yes. The most time-consuming project ever? Also, yes. • Figuring out which deals to target • Going back and forth with buyers to schedule interviews • Trying to spot trends of why we’re winning and losing. It seems like I spent more time managing the program itself than taking action on the valuable insights we were getting from our buyers. Myself and Eric wrote about managing win-loss in our past lives. Including some tips for those looking to get the most out of their program. Check it out 👇

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🚨 The former CFO of Dropbox, Sujay Jaswa oversees the investment and operating activities as a founding partner at WndrCo, alongside media vet Jeffrey Katzenberg. He joins us for VC Wednesdays.🚨 🖋️  You recently closed a $460 million VC fund. Where are you looking to deploy that? Everything we do is around the idea of the future of work and helping people optimize how they get work done. That’s why we're investors in companies like Airtable, Figma, Databricks, Deel, 1Password and others. That won’t change, but now, you'll see us really focus on the applications of AI that will meaningfully disrupt how work gets done, like in finance, HR and customer support. 🖋️  Why should founders work with WndrCo? One thing that we do that's different is starting one to two companies a year in areas that we think have the potential to yield big returns. So, when we talk to entrepreneurs, our operating experience stays current, and that angle on venture is fairly unique. The second is that each partner at WndrCo has built something, so we have the empathy that comes from that experience. Third, we do only five to seven deals a year, versus bigger firms that do hundreds. Because we have a smaller portfolio, entrepreneurs can get a hold of literally every partner within a couple of hours, 365 days a year. 🖋️ Which startup pitch sticks out the most in your memory over others and why? My favorite is one that’s not a household name yet, even though the business is absolutely on fire. It’s Aura, an all-in-one product to protect you and your family online. The idea is that unlike the physical world, you have no idea what your kids are doing on their phones and devices. Aura gives parents the tools to navigate raising a kid in our mobile-first and digital-first world. When the founder, Hari Ravichandran, walked me through how he would take it to market, it was love at first sight. He's an extraordinary entrepreneur and the best go-to-market person I've ever met when it comes to consumer products. 🖋️ What’s one investment you regret passing on and why? At the end of the day, this whole business is built on being part of monster companies as early as possible. One of the best enterprise companies of the last decade is Databricks. The founder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi, is a very good friend of mine, and for whatever reason, it never occurred to me in the early years to twist his arm to try and let him take our money. We invested in Databricks later than I’d have liked to. 🖋️  What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned working with Jeffrey Katzenberg? The biggest thing I've learned is that you can't be him, and it’s impossible to keep up with him. He's relentless, and I have never met someone who works harder than him. If he says he's going to do something, no matter how hard, if it's within his capabilities, he'll do it. He's a doer, and he just gets stuff done. I admire that so tremendously. #VCWednesdays #vc #venturecapital #startups #TechonLinkedIn

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The Insights Driven Product Manager hit # 1 New Release in two book categories on Amazon over the last couple weeks! 😍🥹 It's honestly been such a fun project experimenting with a different type of product launch than my usual app releases. Currently testing different ad campaigns on Amazon - I'm not a marketer by trade but always had a keen interest, if anyone has any tips how I can further optimise I'm all ears 😊📈 #ProductManagement #Booklaunch #DataDriven #InsightsDrivenPM

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