How to build a powerful marketing machine | Emily Kramer (Asana, Carta, MKT1)

[00:00] Forget the product marketing, content marketing. [00:02] partner, demand gen, growth, like forget all of it. [00:05] And just think of marketing as you need fuel, [00:07] And you need an engine. [00:09] And, [00:10] Yeah. [00:10] Goal is like all the things that you're creating. I mean, this should be obvious, but it's the content, it's the words, it's the, [00:15] design in some regard. All the things you're making, all the things that are going to add value, [00:20] An engine is how you get it out to the right people. [00:22] And all of the tracking of that and sort of the ops work I put under engines. [00:26] It's going to be a little needed than I do. [00:27] And the question is, where do you have the biggest challenge right now? Or where do you think if you did more, you would grow faster? [00:32] Is it on the tool side or it's on the engine side? [00:37] Welcome to Lenny's podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experience building and scaling today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Emily Kramer. Emily led and built the marketing teams at Asana, Carta, Ticketfly, and Astra, which was a startup acquired by Slack. She was one of the first [01:02] marketers to be hired at all four companies and has been instrumental in helping these companies build their marketing function, grow their products, and build their brands. She also writes my favorite newsletter on marketing, MKT1, and the best compliment that I can give her is that she's a marketer that thinks like a product manager. In our chat, Emily shares a ton of concrete advice on what to look for in your first marketing hire, what the different archetypes of marketers are, and who you should look for based on your business model, how to work with marketing effectively as a

[01:32] team, and also what red flags to look for that tell you that your marketing team is not doing a great job. Emily is super specific and incredibly concrete with her advice, including sharing a ton of templates that you can immediately use that we link to in the show notes. I always learn a ton talking to Emily, and I can't wait for you to hear this episode. And so with that, I bring you Emily Kramer. [01:57] I'm excited to chat with my friend John Cutler from podcast sponsor Amplitude. Hey, John. Hey, Lenny. [02:02] Jon, give us a behind-the-scenes at Amplitude. When most people think of Amplitude, they think of product analytics. But now you're getting into experimentation and even just launched a CDP. What's the thought process there? Well, we've always thought of Amplitude as being about supporting the full product loop. Think collect data, inform bets, ship experiments, and learn. That's the heart of growth to us. [02:32] out of listening to and observing our customers. And supporting growth and learning has always been Amplitude's core focus, right? Yeah, so Amplitude tries to meet customers where they are. We just launch starter templates and have a great scholarship program for startups. There's never been a more important time for growth. Absolutely agreed. Thanks for joining us, John, and head to Amplitude.com to get started. Are you hiring? Or on the flip side, are you looking for a new opportunity?

[03:02] If you're a hiring manager, you can sign up and get access to hundreds of hand-curated people who are open to new opportunities. Thousands of people apply to join this collective, and I personally review and accept just about 10% of them. You won't find a better place to hire product managers and growth leaders. Join almost 100 other companies who are actively hiring through this collective. [03:32] even hide yourself from specific companies. You can also leave anytime and you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from. Check out Lenny'sjobs.com slash talent. [03:46] Emily, welcome to this podcast. I'm really excited to be chatting with you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Looking forward to chatting with you in depth here. [03:53] So if I remember correctly, we first met in the first round AngelTrack program maybe two years ago. And then since then, we've invested in a bunch of different companies together. [04:03] I'm also just a big fan of your newsletter that we're going to chat about. So just to set a little context for folks, can you just give us like a quick high level overview of your illustrious career? And then also just plug your newsletter so folks can find it. For sure. [04:17] So the theme of my career has been building out marketing teams. [04:20] at B2B startups. So, [04:22] Early in my career as in advertising, went to business school. But after that, I started doing the startup thing and I was at Ticketfly as the second marketer. And then I went to Asana where I was the first marketer when they were about 30, 35 people and built up that team and led the team for...

[04:35] Just under four years. [04:36] And then I went to a small seed funding company, helped them raise their A and [04:40] Eventually went to Carta, which was [04:43] about 300 people when I joined-ish, give or take, but didn't have a marketing function at the time. So built that function up from scratch, much like Asana, but at a very different stage in the company's life cycle. [04:54] And then since then, I've been advising and investing full time and now have a [04:59] small fund where we invest in early stage B2B and [05:02] help them build out marketing. So, [05:05] Yeah. [05:05] Building marketing. That's what I do. I love it. Okay, so plug your fund in your newsletter real quick, just so we cover that. [05:12] Sorry about that. My newsletter is [05:14] and the letters MKT1, [05:17] dot sub stack. [05:18] dot com and my fund is market one capital [05:22] You can pretty much find most of these things on mkt1.co. [05:26] links to all the different various things that I'm doing so I can remember. [05:30] because there's lots of iron in the fire. So got to keep the website up to date so I don't lose track of all the things we have going on. There's also a job board and a bunch of other things. You have more things going on, but I have a number of the same sort of set of things. Awesome. And we'll link to that in the show notes and everything. I don't think I've told you this, but many founders have mentioned you as one of their most helpful angel investors that they've had on their cap table. It just comes up often when we co-invest. [05:56] help them most with as far as I understand is marketing advice, go-to-market advice, hiring marketing people. And so I'd love to spend most of our time chatting through basically the advice that you give founders around marketing.

[06:09] And the first area I wanted to dig into is hiring marketing people. To non-marketing people, it's such a mystery of just like, what is a marketing person? What do I expect from them? How do I hire them? How do I find them? How do I interview them? What should I avoid? So my first question is just like, what mistakes have you seen founders and teams make when they're thinking about marketing and hiring marketing people? [06:33] Yeah, and just to add to that, it's even hard for marketers to hire other marketers. It's even confusing for marketers to know where they fit in and... [06:41] you know, if they haven't been hired yet, exactly what world they should be looking at or exactly who else they should be hired on the team. So while it's very confusing for founders and people who [06:49] haven't kind of been in a larger marketing team to understand all the different functions, like also confusing for for marketers. [06:56] And I think that's just because there's so many different sub functions of marketing and there's so many different things that marketers could do. And there's such a range of being. [07:03] I [07:03] deep specialists. Like you have people that are just, [07:06] deep SEO specialists or deep paid search specialists or [07:10] you know, or, or writers and like they love to write and they write long form content and that's, [07:15] Definitely a part of what marketing does, but it's a specialty for sure. [07:18] Then you have people that are just very much generalists and can handle all areas of marketing. [07:23] A couple of mistakes that I see is just like, [07:26] hiring people that don't cover the area that you need most as a startup. And that kind of comes for two reasons. One is like, [07:34] you don't know as a founder or someone else doing the marketing hiring for the first person,

[07:40] you don't know what you're going to be doing in marketing. You don't know what your big levers are going to be. You don't know what's going to work. [07:45] And so you hire a marketer thinking, you know, they're like smart, they've done this before, but really they haven't done the things that you need to do before. So. [07:53] I see that especially with business model where [07:56] I think having the same business model experience is [08:00] almost more important than having like industry experience or experience with that audience. And I think [08:05] Often people are like, I need someone who's, [08:08] you know, marketed to HR or marketed to, you know, construction or like that specific. [08:14] And... [08:15] My response is you're going to really narrow your set of people with that. [08:19] And also it doesn't matter as much because great marketers [08:23] learn the audience and learn the product quickly. And sometimes that fresh set of eyes is helpful and you have other experts in house on the audience. [08:30] But the business model really dictates [08:32] what marketing does in a big way. And by business model, I mean more like [08:36] Are you doing top-down sales? Are you selling the enterprise? Are you doing bottom-up? [08:40] product-led growth or have a free version or whatever it is, those types of things. [08:44] manner a lot because the set of marketing activities is just wildly [08:49] wildly different, which I'm sure [08:50] we'll go into so [08:52] To kind of summarize here, [08:54] What I tell founders is I usually start [08:56] when I talk to founders about who you need to hire in marketing, because usually the question is, [09:00] I think I need a marketer. [09:02] Who do I hire? [09:03] I'm like, great question. Let's try to nail this down because there isn't [09:07] one answer it very much depends. [09:10] There's usually some common archetypes, but the first thing I say is that like, forget all the sub functions that you've heard about in marketing, forget the product marketing, content marketing.

[09:18] partner, demand gen, growth, like forget all of it. [09:21] And just think of marketing as you need fuel, [09:24] And you need an engine. [09:25] And, [09:26] Yeah. [09:27] Goal is like all the things that you're creating. I mean, this should be obvious, but it's the content, it's the words, it's the design in some regard. It's like all the things that you're making, all the things that are going to add value to you. [09:36] And engine is how you get it out to the right people. And all of the tracking of that is sort of the ops work I put under engines. [09:42] It's still only needed an end. [09:44] And the question is, where do you have the biggest challenge right now? Or where do you think if you did more, you would grow faster? Is it on fuel side or on the engine side? Typically, like if you just think about it logically, like you kind of need, you need the fuel first. And sometimes what I see is people just build an engine first and they're like, why isn't this working? We're sending so many outbound emails. [10:02] And it's like, well, you don't have anything valuable to put in those. You have no fuel. So this isn't working. [10:07] Or you see the flip side where [10:08] They're making a whole bunch of things. They're writing a bunch of blog posts. They're making a bunch of content. And they're like, this content doesn't work. [10:14] It's like, well, have you tried distributing it? Because if you're not distributing that and getting mileage out of it, it's a waste of time. [10:20] This is a big problem in marketing overall, getting the balance of fuel and engine right. But I like to start from like, what do you think is going to help most? [10:26] And what skill set does your team not have? [10:29] And typically if a team is like sales driven top down, [10:32] They might have an SDR or at least an A or two at this time, [10:37] Usually that comes first and top down. And so the SDRs are kind of an engine. [10:41] They're an imperfect engine. Outbound shouldn't be the only thing you're doing. And if they're just [10:45] reaching out and asking people to schedule meetings, it might not be that effective, but you have a little engine going on. So maybe now you need some fuel first.

[10:52] on the [10:54] Other side of it, if you're a product like Growth or Bottom-Up, you might [10:58] have a situation where [11:00] just nothing's optimized. Like your website's conversion rates are terrible. People are dropping out of the funnel all over the place. [11:06] And you really need someone who can build up these lifecycle email touches, work in products, instead of work with a product growth person as well. [11:13] And you really just need more engine because people are already finding out about your product or it has some innate virality and you're just not capturing enough of that. So I kind of like to code, you know, what's going to help the most right now? [11:24] And then ideally, you get someone. So, back to fuel an engine first. Can I actually jump in real quick? Because that's a really cool framework that I haven't heard before, this idea of fuel an engine from a marketing perspective. To make it a little more concrete, what are examples of [11:38] It doesn't have to be exhaustive, but when you think about all the things that could be fuel and all the things, all the types of engines, what are those lists? For sure. Yeah. I have a diagram of this stuff in my newsletter. Awesome. We'll link to that. Yeah. So when I think about fuel and engine and what goes on either side, it's important to recognize that some things are fuel and engine, some things are fuel or engine, and some things are both fuel and engine. Let me start with an example of something that's fuel and engine. [12:04] If done well, [12:05] your community, [12:07] Let's just take, for instance, let's keep it simple because community needs 75 things. [12:11] If you have a Slack community, that should be tool and engine. [12:14] You have people creating content in there that maybe you can then use in other areas. Like you do this well. Like you take, you know, what's going on in your community and you do like your community wisdom parts of your game. So you're using that as fuel, but it's also an engine because you have people, you know,

[12:27] in your audience that you can distribute out content to. So there's some examples like that, but it's a [12:33] So go back to the question of what's fuel and which engine. [12:36] Cool is like the copy on your website. It's the blog post that you have. It's the, [12:41] templates that you've created. It's the video recordings of the [12:45] webinars or the podcast. It's basically content, but also like to include some of the copy. And I think people have this limited view of contents. [12:53] where they think blog posts and, [12:55] Cluck. [12:56] blog posts are one part of content. Content should be tools, resources, templates, calculators, those kinds of things do [13:03] better in all the cases. And like positioning, I imagine is a... Positioning, yeah. Like, yeah, that's some of the product marketing stuff. So product marketing is this weird thing, and we'll [13:13] It's kind of in the middle, but yes, product marketing, doing any positioning again, like the web copy, which is sort of the first manifestation of your positioning and messaging. [13:22] or it should be. It should be sort of the source of truth for all of that. But yeah, you're positioning your messaging, the words, the words and things that you're creating. That's the fuel. Things that add value in that way. [13:30] The engine side is what people tend to call marketing growth or demand jam or things of that nature. [13:37] That's really the distribution channels. The email copy itself is fuel, but how you've set up the email and the segmentation you've used and the rules for that drip email, that's the engine. [13:48] you know, the SEO content's fuel, but like your SEO sort of like keyword list and a technical SEO and that kind of stuff is sort of [13:54] Engine. [13:55] Social media, you got to have good fuel, but you also have to like,

[13:59] nail it right, like exactly what channels you're using and all that stuff. So a lot of things have both sides of it. So most projects or activities or initiatives have some fuel and some engine. [14:08] I also consider marketing ops work, like the setup of HubSpot or whatever you might be using. That's Engine. [14:14] It's like, you know, really like instructing the engine, but I kind of put it in that bucket because people who are usually good at, [14:20] Executing. [14:22] on email or executing on ads or things like that you have some working knowledge of [14:27] the ops work and the reporting work because you have to to be optimizing. [14:31] I guess ads and pages also engine. Awesome. Okay. And so kind of coming back to your original piece of advice here is you want to, before hiring a marketing person, you want to figure out which of [14:41] is the biggest constraint to your growth, right? Exactly. You talked about this briefly, but is there any simple heuristics to give you a sense of like, it's probably [14:50] fuel, I need more great content. [14:52] maybe some website updates versus like, I need to figure out how to get this out. Is there like, how do you think about that high level? Yeah. I mean, it's kind of simple. Like, [15:00] You can just ask, you know, what are your top performing pieces of content or what's the top performing page on your website or things of that nature or. [15:08] Who is your product for? Why is it better? What are the benefits? How does it compare to competitors? If you don't have an answer for those questions, [15:14] You don't have top performing content and you don't know sort of your positioning and all that stuff. You got a fuel problem here. [15:20] "Oh, you wrote this really great piece of content and I saw it on your website. How are you distributing that? What are you doing?" And they're like, "Oh, I shared it on social, but it didn't really go anywhere. You got an engine problem." [15:28] Or if I say, do you know what your final stages are? You have two salespeople now. How does the marketing to sales handoff go? They're like, oh, they like.

[15:36] share a list in black of everyone they should reach out to. I'm like, well, we know the venture problem isn't going to scale. So it's just these basic things like, are you doing these things or not? [15:45] And... [15:47] Sometimes founders are really great at making the original content and writing the early positioning, and they're the best suited to that. And they just need someone to help them get that stuff out. And that's when they need an engine person. [15:57] So, [15:57] Yeah, that's basically how you figure it out. And normally when you ask senders that question, they get it pretty quickly. They're like, okay, I think [16:03] this is my problem. Like I can kind of identify it. [16:06] And then it's like, okay, from here, well, what exactly do you need and what exact type of marketer do you need? [16:12] And that's where... [16:13] Everyone's answer is always like, I think I heard from investors or I've been hearing from other founders that I really need a product marketer. [16:20] And the question is, well, what do you think a product marketer is? [16:23] And you got a different answer every time. [16:25] In fact, when I was at Asana, our COO, [16:29] any his question that he liked to ask all the marketers or all the product marketers that we were interviewing was just [16:35] What's product marketing? [16:36] And that's the scariest question you can ask a product marketer. [16:39] Like, it's like no scarier question for a product marketer than, hey, what's a product marketer? They're like, oh, shit, I have no idea. It's my job. It's me. I'm a product marketer. But really, a product marketer [16:50] They understand the product, they understand the audience, and they understand the market in which you're operating. [16:55] And from there, they can figure out how to communicate with your audience about the right things at the right time. So they're kind of like laying groundwork. [17:03] and then they're also doing some work too they're also doing a lot of like the copywriting and the actual messaging and

[17:09] handling sort of launches and sometimes writing [17:11] writing copy for things like emails and helping set the content strategy and things like that. [17:15] And people think they need product marketers. [17:18] one because it's like a fake people say but two because product marketers tend to shallow the line between fuel and engine they're more on the fuel side but [17:25] Particularly, they've done a lot of launches in the past. They have a general understanding of sort of channel strategy and what channels to use at what time and that sort of end and stuff. [17:34] But, [17:35] Product marketers aren't really specialists in marketing. [17:39] writing and producing content. They're not specialists in building out marketing ops or doing FBO. They're [17:44] They're definitely more of the generalist function. And so, [17:47] Sometimes that's a great answer. You need a product marketer, but sometimes you need someone that's scrappier in different areas. Another one of my frameworks is we start with, do I need to seal an engine? What are the biggest problems? What are the biggest things that if you did? [17:59] You would drive growth. [18:00] And then we talk about sort of the three typical sub functions that you would hire, which would be [18:05] content. [18:06] community type person. [18:09] a growth demand genotype person [18:12] and a product marketer and we kind of talk about what those three things mean [18:16] and kind of align based on what you're saying. [18:19] Based on the fuel and action thing, probably this type of person. [18:23] And then from there, [18:25] what i tell people is when you're hiring your first marketer and probably even your first [18:29] Several marketers. [18:30] you're more want to hire a generalist and specialist. [18:33] This is probably true for anywhere at early stage startup, but. [18:36] Specialists are great to hire. It's great to hire contractors that are specialists.

[18:40] like the FNEO contractor, even the, [18:43] a contractor who can write, like the [18:46] you know, the marketing ops contractor, but you want someone who's pretty much a generalist. And the way I described that within marketing, usually you hear, oh, like hire a T-shaped person that bites in one area and has like working knowledge and brought the crop all of them. But I use this [18:59] thing that I made up, which is you want to hire pie shaped marketers, not pie like dessert, but pie like 3.14, where the pie symbol has has two vertical lines. So like a T, but it has an extra line. [19:12] And it's because you want the first marketer to be an expert in one of those three areas that I mentioned, product marketing, content marketing, growth. [19:20] marketing and you want them to be proficient in another one. [19:23] The second T. [19:24] But you want them to be able to set strategy and know how to hire contractors or all of them. [19:28] And so the promised land of Pyrengor First Marketer, they're a pie-shaped marketer. [19:32] And so then you could hire [19:34] a content and product marketing pie shaped marketer or product marketing growth pie shaped marketer [19:40] But it's like, what are those two spikes and what's the one that you're going to worry less about that they need to work knowledge of? The last thing I'll say on the pie piece is that. [19:48] really hard to find someone that's a content marketer that's also really good at growth, like that pie-shaped marketer. [19:55] exists a lot less frequently. [19:57] Maybe it's someone who's really amazing at content distribution. [20:00] or like really amazing at FDO, but they don't really exist because the content side is like very... [20:05] It was like one side of the brain and the growth data stuff is like a whole other side of the brain. You don't find those people very often.

[20:12] So yeah, you're usually looking for that. [20:15] product marketing, growth marketing, pie-shaped person, or the [20:18] product marketing, content marketing, pie-shaped person. Wow. Okay. This is great. I was going to ask you about- This is dense. This is a lot of marketing, Linda. Hopefully, we're breaking it down. Yeah. We're getting there. Let me try to summarize and see where we go. I was going to ask you about the archetypes of marketing people. It sounds like there's these three, is the way you think about it. There's basically a content community. [20:41] person, there's a growth [20:43] person and then there's product marketing, which is kind of like in the middle. And I guess one question I wanted to ask is there's also just like the growth function, product growth, growth, things like that. Do you see that as the same thing as this growth? [20:57] marketing person or is that a different type of person in a different role? [21:01] In top-down sales businesses, it is 100% different. [21:04] A growth person is typically probably called a demand gen person. [21:08] There's a whole other rabbit hole we can go down on what's the difference between growth marketing and demand chat and [21:13] demand is probably more top of funnel and growth marketing is probably more full funnel at its simplest form. But [21:18] It's definitely different there in a, [21:21] Product-led growth business, [21:23] The growth marketer and the product growth sort of role or the hybrid growth role, sometimes it can be the same person depending on the skill set. But typically the difference would be that the... [21:33] Growth marketer is doing more of the top of funnel in-down side, and the product growth person is doing more like wants to actually get into the product. [21:41] but can be collaborated with that growth marketer. So

[21:45] It can't be the same person, an extremely data-driven sort of person that kind of has a working knowledge of both marketing and products. That can be one person in this. [21:53] at early stage PLG. [21:55] companies but i think typically and i'm sure you've seen that like [21:58] you know, at larger companies, as growth can get bigger, you're going to have some people that come from more of that marketing perspective, and you're going to come from more of that product perspective. But the question is like, [22:07] Is there ever one person that does that? Okay, so to make this a little more concrete, even for startups, thinking from a startup perspective when you're just thinking about hiring your first, say, marketing person, [22:19] When you think about this set of buckets that you talked about, there's content marketing, growth marketing, product marketing, plus to your point, there's at larger companies or maybe later stages like separate from a growth PM type person. What do you generally... [22:35] think is the right role to hire slash archetype to focus on? Or is it really dependent, like you said, on fuel versus engine versus something else? I mean, it's highly dependent on, again, like the business model, what you need more of, what you already have in place, what's going on. But the most common archetype [22:53] that I say you want to hire is a product marketer, even though I joke that everyone's like setting a product marketer, but it's actually understanding what that is first, that understands growth marketing as well. So they probably work somewhere early on where they've had to have some exposure to that. So they understand all the channels they're working with, they understand what they can [23:10] deal with those channels and maybe they need to work with contractors on some of those things. [23:14] And it's just because product marketers usually

[23:17] Also that product marketer needs to know how to write like, [23:20] all marketers should have some working knowledge and writing, but they need to know how to write. They are the copywriter for a long time, like test that they can write, make sure they can write. [23:28] Both short form and long form, they're not going to be necessarily as good at writing as a content person, but they need to be able to write. [23:35] Yeah, product marketers just tend to have that ability to write and that ability to understand what channels they can use to reach their audience. So they're in the middle. So often that's the case. But... [23:44] I mean, sometimes I find that I'm recommending hiring that growth person. [23:48] first because they maybe already have a couple of really great contractors and they have a couple of really great pieces of content that can just be like gifts that keep on giving if they keep distributing them and repurposing them. What do you look for in this product marketing person? You mentioned ability to write is really important. What else when someone's like scanning LinkedIn or just like, [24:05] later talking to them, what do you find is important to focus on and look for? [24:09] this is gonna be hard to find but i think i want to see that they worked [24:13] on a team that's early enough where they are not siloed into their specific role because what happens at later stage companies or at public companies is when you're a product marketer like you don't see what's going on in the rest of marketing at all like you have a very siloed view of it maybe you're like only working on product launches as a product marketer which is not [24:31] you know, the positioning's already set, the audience research already done, like they haven't done any of those things, or like the channels are all built out, like, it's just different, right? I think that's the case in a lot of, in a lot of roles at startups, but like, [24:43] you know, building it from scratch is different. So it doesn't mean that if you're a series A company hiring your first marketer that you need to hire someone that's worked at a series A company, but it usually means you're hiring someone that's worked at least at like a growth stage company where they have exposure to a bunch of areas of marketing. Also,

[25:01] looking for [25:03] Have they seen what gray it looks like? [25:05] So... [25:07] Whether that's they joined us there in a brilliant and did really well, or whether that's they had a stint at a later stage company and then, you know, early earliest in their career, they're a big company, then they went to some big smaller. [25:16] Like, do they know what high quality sort of great looks like? It doesn't always have to be like, you don't always have to have been at a startup that everyone thinks of as like, oh, they're really great at marketing, but it is helpful. And there are some people that just, [25:29] have a really high quality bar and really understand what great marketing looks like, even if they haven't worked at those companies. But I like to say, has worked somewhere early enough that they can set strategy across all of marketing, [25:38] And do they know what gray looks like? That's something I'm scanning for. [25:42] I'm also scanning for like, [25:43] For your first marketer, you don't want to go out. I see this mistake all the time. You don't want to go out and hire someone super senior who's only worked at a public company. That's the wrong person. And often... [25:53] VCs or lead investors that aren't in a certain niche. When they refer candidates to startups, usually the fail ICs are like, here's someone great from Google. And I'm like, [26:04] I'm sure they're great, but they're not great for this role. And that's the mistake I see all the time. Oh, we just fired our first marketer. They... [26:10] I'm like, where did they work? They're like, oh, they only worked at Salesforce. I'm like, [26:13] Well, yeah. Why is that not a good fit? Just because they can't they don't understand how all marketing works together and they don't understand how they build a foundation. It's much different marketing something that already everybody knows what it is. [26:24] or everybody knows the brand, even if they don't know the product and they have a built in customer base. [26:28] than building something up from scratch. It's just a very different marketing motion.

[26:34] And you need to do a lot of things like you need to do a lot of things yourself. You need to be a doer. So you're really looking for, you know, like most roles or most, you know, [26:41] lead of function roles at startups, like they need to be [26:45] both strategic and sort of scrappy enough to get the work done. Like you're going to be doing it all. And in marketing, like you're going to be, [26:50] You're often going to be the first marketer for a little while. [26:53] and you're going to be doing everything. And so there has to be some sign that you're going to be comfortable with that. [26:58] Awesome. When do you find that it's [27:01] usually best to hire your first marketing person? I mean, stage-wise, you know, you're looking at like, [27:08] So I'm nice to believe you're going to see at seed depending on their business, but usually it's series A or you hire one sort of more junior person at seed or when you're coming into raising your series A and then. [27:18] you know, you have two people right after your Series A, but really it's like, [27:22] I think it's helpful to have [27:24] some sort of semblance of product market fit. Like maybe it's not, you're not 100% sure, but maybe you have definitely some successful customers. It's not like, you know, we're working with a design partner to build this out and we have, you know, we have a couple pilots. It's like, [27:38] Marketing is really good at [27:40] accelerating growth. [27:42] and sort of doing that scale sort of like one to many so if you're still in the very like [27:47] bespoke like founder led sales founder led marketing like i'm doing discovery with each of these [27:52] potential customers and like, [27:54] you know, [27:55] have to modify my product for them like that kind of thing like you don't need one yet like [28:00] you can do founders can do a fair amount of stuff and they can use some contractors

[28:04] I think you need them earlier. [28:06] in [28:07] product growth models because you're not going to hire a salesperson then. [28:11] So it's more like thinking about go to market holistically and saying, [28:16] Like, [28:16] do I need one or two people here and what is that? And so if you're a top-down model, sort of enterprise sale, you're probably going to have a couple salespeople before you hire marketing, but that might not be the case. And sort of these more self-serve product-led growth models, you just don't need the salesperson. So having the marketer is helpful. So again, like the business model affects this a lot, but [28:34] Usually, like, the general rule of thumb is, like, [28:37] If you had a marketer, what would they do? [28:40] And like, you know, I often help people try to figure that out. What would they do? And would they [28:44] you know if they stepped on the gas and did all this stuff really well would you be able to handle all those people that came in isn't even a good time to bring all those people in to your product so if they like [28:53] you know, are they going to be held back by where your product is or where some of the discovery on exact business model is or things like that? And like, [29:01] That's the case. It's just like not a good use of money when they're kind of just like, [29:05] sitting on their hands like I can't spend any money on paid and I like don't have you know we don't even have any idea what to say on the website because we're selling four different things like it's just kind of hard to hire someone in that case. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I've been hearing about AG1 on basically every podcast that I listen to like Tim Ferriss and Lex Friedman and so I finally gave it a shot earlier this year and it has quickly become a core part of my morning routine. [29:34] especially on days that I need to go deep on writing or record a podcast like this. Here's three things that I love about AG1. One, with a small scoop that dissolves in water, you're absorbing 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and adaptogens. I kind of like to think of it as a little safety net for my nutrition in case I've missed something in my diet. Two, they treat AG1 like a software product. Apparently, they're on their 52nd iteration, and they're constantly

[30:04] related science, research studies, and internal testing that they do. And three, it's just one easy thing that I can do every single day to take care of myself. Right now, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day, and that's it. There's no need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give [30:34] first purchase all you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/lenny again that's athleticgreens.com/lenny to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance just to set context most of your experience is b2b so i guess we should just let people know this is probably mostly b2b yes sorry yes mostly b2b advice i think a lot of this holds like i think the fuel engine stuff holds for b2c i think the roles [31:01] pretty much whole, but you might hear the word brand marketing thrown out a lot more in B2C, and that's more going to be talking about like the fuel stuff and. [31:08] and maybe that's going to be what they hire before they hire say like a product marketer but it's kind of the same set of functions. [31:14] But yeah, most of my experience at B2B and most of the startups I work with are B2B, but some of it holds. Yeah, I was going to ask about brand marketing. That's like another bucket, right? We haven't talked about that as a type of skill. Or does that fall into one of these that you've talked about? [31:27] To me. [31:29] Brand marketing is a combination or has some of the work that happens in

[31:35] by a product marketer and by a content and community marketer. But maybe they also are more influential on the design side of things. [31:44] And so, [31:45] Brand marketing is another one that means like 75 different things. Sometimes it means like you literally manage designers or you're like a creative producer. And sometimes it means you're more doing work on like what are the stories that we're trying to tell and you're doing more of the content stuff. And so [32:00] Sometimes it means I'm doing the positioning work. Sometimes it means I'm like working on sort of like, you know, [32:06] the website or like branded paid stuff and like consumer so it means a lot of things too but usually the person that in b2b the person that kind of [32:16] owns the brand is the positioning story side of brand is owned by product marketing. And the design side of brand is either just sort of like owned by [32:25] the product designer at first or like working with a brand designer or if the marketer has skillset there could be owned by them as well so [32:33] It's a little murky at first, but eventually like on B2B teams, when I've run teams class, you know, like, [32:41] 10 to 15 minutes. [32:42] people, I'll have a brand person that is working really closely with the designers and kind of like making sure sure that everything that we're producing on sort of like the content side of things. [32:53] is up to the the they're acting as sort of an editor there they're making sure everything like ladders up to the overall story so they're helping tell the story they're helping make sure that design is right and like [33:04] In some instances, I'll have a brand person that's kind of working on these larger brand initiatives like,

[33:08] We did a huge data study when I was at Carta and... [33:12] the person that kind of ran that whole initiative and the events, and it was sort of like a separate initiative that had a lot of different parts was my brand marketer. They were kind of working on these larger sort of, [33:21] Big that. [33:22] project that's made across all of marketing. Awesome. We talked about the growth PM role kind of adjacent to all this. For the typical, say, PLG startup, in your experience, do you find folks should hire more of a marketing person than a growth person that focuses on, say, conversion or optimizing the funnel or SEO or paid or anything like that? What's your experience there? [33:46] For PLG, I think you want to have a marketer that is responsible for getting people into the product. That's a marketing profile. [33:54] that's using all these channels that's driving inbound that's focused on web conversion uh making sure your website converts like that's a marketing skill set because [34:01] It's really likely you have to work with to get this done. [34:04] is really how I think about it. And like, [34:06] You have to work with the people that own the website, which is marketing. [34:08] for all of these sort of inbound stuff you're in work with other people on the marketing team so [34:13] That piece is really a marketing piece. The product experiments and the product tests, that's a person with a product skill set because they know how to work with other PMs. They know how to work with engineers and marketers don't. [34:24] And then there's these gray areas like the onboarding experience, or like when you first get into the product. And that is like an area where there needs to be like a ton of collaboration. So my view is that like, [34:35] If you're going to have [34:36] growth. Yeah.

[34:39] Probably helpful for them to have. [34:41] PM experience or product experience. [34:45] But, [34:45] they should be paired as soon as they can be with someone that also understands or that top of model piece or [34:50] maybe that person isn't in a full-time growth role, but know who on the marketing team is going to work with them on these areas of crossover. Like, [34:57] you know, like onboarding or that first use experience and making sure that like the sign up flow from like filling out something on the website to getting in the product is really consistent because that area of like, [35:08] I'll call it like a handoff. We talk about like the marketing to sales handoff all the time. [35:12] on the go-to-market side, but there's a marketing to product handoff, and that's the handoff that's really important. [35:17] NPLG. [35:19] And if that feels weird to a user, [35:22] Like it's two different teams inside of a company, but if that feels weird to a user, like you're going to notice that that all of a sudden feels extremely disjoint. Or if I'm getting a bunch of product transactional emails while I'm getting a bunch of marketing drip emails. [35:34] So that handoff, [35:36] or that experience needs to be ironed out or consistent, or there needs to be tons of collaboration. So however that is done, [35:44] I don't really care what the teams look like. Lots of different companies have different versions of how they do this. [35:50] But the idea is, is that experience needs to feel consistent and you need to have [35:55] collaboration across people that have those skill sets and you have like a clear process for how that looks. [36:00] And so it's just like getting that marketing to sales handoff right, in my opinion. It's like, how do you get the marketing to product handoff right? And if it means you have someone that owns onboarding, it's in a hybrid role, then great. If it means there's like a committee sort of situation with one person that's the DRI, that's great too. So I think my answer is,

[36:16] I don't think there's one way to structure it. It's highly dependent on the company overall. And I think you need both skill sets. [36:21] You touched on an area of tension that often comes up between marketing and product. I imagine many listeners hear you saying, oh, marketing should own the website and conversion and that flow. [36:35] And thinking about the idea of product-led growth, like the idea there is product will grow our business. And oftentimes PMs do that work. And oftentimes they're really good at it. [36:48] And so I guess the question is, in your experience, do you find [36:52] that it should be marketing more than product or product people? Is it like, depending on the person, like maybe they're called the product person, but they actually are really good at marketing? [37:04] Any insights there? And then we're going to talk about just the collaboration between the two functions. Yeah. So I think the product-led growth is a misnomer. I think people will do anything they can possibly do and not call marketing, marketing. [37:14] I think we always see this. [37:15] And so I think that product led growth really means [37:18] not as much sales. [37:20] which means [37:21] Product plus marketing. [37:22] And so. [37:24] That's probably a hot take. [37:26] But product-led growth is just another name for what we like. I mean, so the product-led growth is a little different than like premium or self-serve or these things, but it's not, you're being handheld by the product. You aren't being handheld by the sales team. So really to me, [37:38] It's. [37:39] And you can have a sales assist with product-led growth as well. [37:43] But typically what's more at odds in my mind is like product-led growth means you are going to have a huge sales team early on. It doesn't mean you're not going to have a huge marketing team early on. In fact, to me, it means you're going to have a bigger marketing team early on because you're not going to have those sales. Sales is not communicating with customers.

[37:57] So I think it comes back to like, what are these teams typically good at? [38:01] and marketing is typically good at the communication piece, [38:04] of one to many that's what they're good at and so they are usually good they should be good at figuring out all the channels type of funnel to communicate with people and product is really using product as a channel by which to communicate with [38:17] customers, prospects, etc. So [38:20] That's like one way of sort of thinking about the difference. [38:23] Thank you. [38:24] On conversion, [38:26] conversion also means lots of different things. There's like [38:28] top of mental curve version, getting on the website and like filling out some other form. There's like [38:32] you know conversion once you're in the product becoming an active user or inviting people so it's like [38:38] Well, which part of conversion? Web conversion, I typically think of something that's owned by marketing because usually product doesn't want to own the website. Like I rarely, I [38:45] Early on, products will sometimes own the website because marketing wasn't there. [38:49] But the website is something that's going to need to be updated like 5,000 times. And it needs to be on like Webflow, preferably at this point, or CMS that's easy to update. And if it's like built into the code base, that's like a [39:00] or it's on a headless CMS or it's not touchable by marketing. That's a huge problem. When it comes to once they click the sign up button, who should be mostly involved in that process? [39:11] I think, again, there needs to be, I think there's lots of ways to handle that. [39:15] And I think if it's product that kind of has that skill set and the testing skill set, and there's enough volume that you can be doing a bunch of tests, like maybe that's the person that owns that. But I think there's still going to be a lot of collaboration on the exact words that are used and things like that. So I think it's just like whatever it is.

[39:29] make it clear where the handoff is. And so maybe it's not like marketing on the entire website, because maybe they don't own those flows. But like, there's, there's, [39:38] this gray area. And I think the other big thing is sometimes the forms, [39:41] like the literal forms that are used. [39:43] are built in your website and sometimes they're built in the product. [39:47] And I think that also... [39:48] drives a lot of it because it's who do you need to help you build these things and if they're built into the product then like the product team needs to own that. But I don't think it should be it shouldn't be to me like this. [39:59] Like, let's not argue about it. Let's just like, we're trying to move this. And here's the thing that marketing is going to do. And here's the thing that product's going to do. And here are the areas of overlap. [40:07] But like, I don't think products should be in the business of like, [40:11] owning the whole website and all the top of my own messaging and all of that stuff like that's just [40:15] It's not the best use of anyone's time, really. I know you had a lot of success with marketing and product working together at Asana and kind of double-clicking on the same thread. What have you seen to be an important part of this collaboration and kind of making the best, making one plus one equal three, one product and marketing working together at a B2B company? Yeah, and look, like there were definitely ups and downs working, marketing, working with product at Asana as well. [40:42] Overall, we did a good job because of some of the systems that Afana had in place, which means [40:48] And we've talked about this before, but [40:50] Something that Asana did well is they had this list in Asana, of course, [40:54] everything at Asana was in Asana, through Asana, by Asana. But we had a list of areas of responsibility, which is just who owns what. It's not your job title.

[41:03] It's what are the things that you are the DRI for? It doesn't mean they're not going to collaborate with people on those things. But what are you the directly responsible individual for? And this made it really easy to know who to go to. [41:14] Like the directly responsible, I'm just going to use DRI because I can't keep saying directly responsible individuals. So the DRI on tests on the onboarding experience is... [41:25] Jennifer, the PM. But the copywriter for that is, I don't know, I'm sure to think of exactly who the person was, is Devin on marketing, right? Like, [41:34] So we broke it down that simply so you knew who to go to, because often what happens with products is they're like, I'm doing a launch. I don't know. There's especially when there's like 15 markers. I don't know if I'm supposed to go to this for this product launch. [41:45] or to figure out if this is a launchable feature. So I'm just going to skip it. [41:49] So it's really helpful to say like the product marketer owner for the, [41:54] you know this part of the product is this and to just have this list so just having clear ownership is what this comes down to but it's one thing to have clear ownership [42:02] But it's like quite another tip for other teams to know like who that clear owner is. So I think having [42:07] a clear list beyond titles and just like who owns what is really helpful and then as you hire new people you can [42:13] break down those, you know, the list kind of gets longer because you're going to break [42:16] thing down more you know it goes from emily owning all of marketing to me like breaking that down and not owning all of it so I found that really helpful. [42:24] I also found at Asana we did something called Roadmap Week. [42:28] which was before every quarter. [42:31] where we had sort of open meetings.

[42:34] Sometimes they were open and sometimes they weren't, but we had cross-functional meetings. [42:38] to help plan for what you were going to do that quarter on your team. So like I could sit in on the product roadmapping for [42:45] X. [42:45] as the head of marketing. And that was really helpful to just like get a sense for what was going on. And sometimes there'd be people in those that were like silent participators. And then like a document would be made so you could see this. And this maybe doesn't scale forever, but it worked really well early on for people being able to be looked at on things to be sort of out loud. [43:03] planning meetings where you were talking through like here are our biggest decisions here's what we're like wrestling between and getting input [43:09] kind of knowing what was going on. [43:11] I think another thing that we did well was also like kind of having clear, [43:18] review processes. And all of this sounds like a lot of process, but like once you actually make an AORs list, it kind of like runs itself. Like someone new gets hired, they're excited to put in their AORs or someone gets a new responsibility and they're like stoked. [43:29] to take it over from the head of marketing or whatever it is. Like, I finally have handed you the master managing editor AOR, and it becomes a big deal. [43:39] The other thing that I think we did well from a marketing perspective is [43:43] is another newsletter that I have is this framework that I use called the GACS or the GACCS. [43:49] which Gax sounds more fun to say than the GACCS, but this is just a... [43:54] This is just a marketing brief. [43:57] that [43:58] that I recommend you do before you make anything big in marketing or do any big projects. And it's just

[44:05] What are the goals? What's the audience? [44:07] What's the... [44:08] creative or unique angle or like [44:11] What's the oomph with this thing, I guess? What's going to make it different and stand out from other companies, I guess? The second C is the channels or how this is going to be distributed. How are you going to get the word out about this? Deep thinking there. And then the last piece are the stakeholders, like who's the DRI and who needs to weigh in and who's going to be the helper and who are the contributors? [44:29] And that's where you can include some product people and you can share this before you start doing any work. [44:34] So for instance, if you're doing a product launch, product manager communicates with the marketing team. Maybe you have a meeting, maybe you share some brief from the product side or you share sort of what's being built and then marketing comes back to you. [44:46] with the gacks. [44:48] and you can kind of weigh in on, "Oh, here are the channels they're going to be using, like the creative C has maybe the highest level messaging. [44:56] And you get buy-in early on and then you can go much faster. [44:59] And then you're not just like sharing with product like here's a blog post that I wrote for the launch. And you're like, what? This is the wrong audience, the wrong thing. Like you just save so much time sharing these types of things. [45:09] upfront. So I find like there's a handful of different practices that need to be in place, but it's like sharing the right information, [45:16] at the right level of information at the right times and having a culture of doing that [45:21] And it needs to go both ways. Like product needs to loop marketing and I'm like, Hey, here, here's what I'm, [45:26] you know, [45:26] here's what we're working on this quarter. Here are going to be some of the things that we're launching or any of these interesting that you want to like, [45:31] you know, [45:32] double down on and sort of do a public launch for or whatever it is or

[45:36] "Hey, we really think onboarding needs to be approved. Let's put together a group that's going to work on this this quarter. Let's have a spring plan that's cross-functional." It's a lot of that. A lot of this happens in a planning process. If you as a company don't have a good planning process, [45:50] you're not going to have good cross-functional collaboration, especially between product and marketing. [45:55] And I think the last thing is just like a respect for the skill set, like recognizing like you're good at this or like you have you have access to engineers, you know how to get them to do things like I don't want to do that as a marketer. [46:05] I'm good at storytelling and I know how to get people in the door and in the funnel and like respect what each person is good at and let them go do their thing. So those are just like some of the tactical practices and things that we did in Asana that I thought. [46:21] worked well but it's hard i mean everyone [46:25] you know, everyone wants the other team to be doing something a little bit differently. And that's always going to be the case. And those tensions in some cases are good, because that's why you have [46:33] the benefit of having different teams and different perspectives. But it gets out of hand when people are just working in silos and aren't communicating with each other and aren't looping people in on things that they're experts on. Awesome. Yeah. All the templates and frameworks that you mentioned, we're going to link to in the show notes. One of the things I love about you is you, you almost, you're like a PM minded marketer where you make everything super concrete and templated

[47:03] I am pretty PF minded like because I [47:06] I'm pretty well-rounded when it comes to the marketing skill set. Like I don't really consider myself a growth marketer or a product marketer or a content marketer. I just [47:13] consider myself a marketer who builds teams and that's like yeah that's a different different mindset and i also love i love goals and planning like not [47:22] no, I don't love like annual planning processes that companies do and like overdone OKR exercise. It's where you're making like this crazy cascade that nobody can follow. But like basic sort of simple planning so that you. [47:35] you know kind of go a little slower up front so you can just like fly I'm getting things out the door like that's [47:40] That's the kind of teams I like to lead. Awesome. It's like upfront buy-in and then like move back, do what you need to do. I love the sound of that. Don't we all? We're also working on a guest post that may come out before this comes out or after around a lot of this template. So I'm excited to get that out the door. [47:58] Coming back to this kind of tension that often happens between PMs and marketing people, tell me if you agree, but I find that product teams are often very skeptical of marketing and find that there's just all this time, energy, resources put into marketing efforts, and it's hard to measure. Who knows what's happening there? While the product continues to evolve, you can tell what it's doing. It's often driving most of the growth.

[48:28] As a product person, what tells you that the marketing person and team is good and awesome and you should trust them and they know what they're doing versus like, okay, maybe they're not amazing and we should kind of try to push back? [48:44] Any advice there? [48:45] I recently did a talk with my friend Jenny, who was the head of content. [48:50] at asana and now is the head of content and comms at clearbit [48:53] And, [48:54] she was sort of joking we were like coming up for the name of the talk and she was like I want to call it call it [49:00] content splatter G verse content strategy. And I was like, [49:03] We'll work that in, but maybe that won't be the title. Flattergy is a really weird word. But it's true. I think it's funny because a lot of what marketing is is flattergy, not strategy. Meaning it's just like you just throw a bunch of stuff out there and you're doing a bunch of work and it's like a lot of busy work and you want to look busy, but it's not impact focused. [49:23] The best marketing teams are like impact focused. [49:26] They can tell you of all the things they're doing, what are the core things that are sort of [49:30] driving that linear growth or just keeping the lights on. They can tell you what their big bets are. What are the things that we are doing right now that we believe can cause step change, topic funnel growth? [49:41] or step change growth on signups or whatever it might be. One of those things. [49:45] What are the big bets that you're taking? [49:48] And then what are the foundational sort of pieces of marketing? [49:51] that aren't done yet, like that might be taking up time. Like, [49:54] we would love to be able to move faster here, but we're like, we don't have a good,

[49:59] lead scoring system or like we're working on this. Like we need to redo our website and here's why. We need to like get it into Webflow and that will be able to move faster. So they should be able to break down like [50:09] you know, here are the core things we have to do. We're measuring, we're measuring that, like the core work is working by these KPIs and it's sort of a full funnel view. [50:17] And we are working on these big bets. And like there's a foundational things that are broken. So if you ask them marketing leave and you're like, what are their big bets? And they're like, I don't know. [50:25] Bye. [50:26] You can't grow at the rate of venture backed startups should grow by just like continuing to do incremental things. Like that's the same product that I would imagine as well. So like they need to have this sort of framework going on and [50:37] The other thing that I think is, [50:38] assign. [50:40] that you're not being impact focused or you're not being effective as a marketing team is you have, this is like my favorite thing to pick on and I see it all the time. [50:47] And I understand why it happens, but don't do it. It's like our goal is to write 10 blog posts this month. [50:53] And I'm like, no, that's not a goal. Like, that's maybe a tactic. [50:57] But the goal should be traffic and the conversion rate from that traffic or the signups that come from that. [51:03] it's not you shouldn't have activity goals you should have [51:07] impact goals. And so the best marketing teams are focused [51:10] on these funnel metrics. They're not just focused on a certain number like signups or qualified leads. They're focused on that number plus [51:20] maintaining or improving the conversion rate that comes after it so they're focused on signups and [51:24] with a conversion rate to activated user, [51:26] of the same or better than it is now because i can get a lot more people to sign up for a product but like they might be really shitty quality so you need to have sort of that other threshold so these are some of the things i look at to say

[51:38] is marketing team impact focus and when i talk to companies [51:42] Thank you. [51:42] or work with marketers. [51:44] and look at what are they doing, what are their projects? These are the things I usually point out. You need to be more impact focused and here's what you need to do. [51:51] um, [51:52] So, [51:54] That's like sort of the... [51:56] the big thing that's like, are they doing a bunch of busy work or are they doing a bunch of things? [52:00] that can actually lead to tangible growth and what metrics are they using to track that. [52:05] The other thing is like if they're not tracking to my point about not just looking at the raw numbers in each stage of the funnel, but looking at the conversion rates. If they're not looking at conversion anywhere at all, there's a huge problem. [52:15] Because again, I can throw a bunch of people into a funnel stage, but if they don't convert to the next one, it might not be. [52:21] helping anything. So, [52:22] their focus on conversion, not just at the stages of the funnel that they own, but throughout the entire funnel. [52:27] I think also is a good indicator on if they're being successful as marketers or not. I feel like everything you're saying is music to every PM's ears. That great marketing people should be impact focused, have clear goals and KPIs. You also talked about how it's important to DRIs, like who's responsible for what and being really clear about that. [52:47] communicating really clearly and often. [52:51] And then there's this piece about just setting the foundations, like a strong foundation. [52:55] that helps make all these other things successful. This is great. I imagine every PM would be like, this is exactly what I want from my marketing team. And your point here is if your marketing team and lead is not doing... [53:06] these things well, maybe there's an issue and maybe it's not the right marketing person. Yeah. Awesome. And look, if it's not the team lead, because sometimes you do have, especially at larger companies, you have a team lead that's either like on the, you could have someone that's extremely sort of creative and sort of on the brand side of things, but they need to have

[53:21] you know, someone that's working with them that is really good at all of this stuff. Like there's a big sort of [53:25] it's almost like we need marketing PMs and those tend to be the product marketers or the lead. Because there's so many different projects going on and lots of different things happening and it's hard to [53:35] Thank you. [53:35] put it all together and say, [53:37] What are we doing as a marketing team? [53:39] That's moving the needle. [53:40] But I think the other thing about like communicating often, it's also like, [53:44] communicating at the right level. I find that marketers, even though they're, [53:48] often good at communicating with the audience. They're not good at communicating internally. And I think I've struggled here too, as I move to like leading larger teams and being on executive teams, it's just like, what level of information do you need to communicate? And [53:59] You need to educate people about what marketing does because one marketing often has a bad reputation. And so you need to be like, here's what we're actually doing and moving. And two, like there's a lot of jargon in marketing and like, [54:09] You got to separate that out and communicate the right level of information at the right time. [54:14] I think that's hard too. And so that's why I like things like the DAX framework and [54:18] And other things like that, like what exactly am I communicating about and at what level? It's hard to get right there, too. Amazing. One last question before we get to our very exciting lightning round. I can't wait. You've been waiting all week. [54:34] So you mentioned that you're a full-time investor basically at this point and the newsletter is a part of that.

[54:48] getting into great deals and supporting founders. And so I'm curious if you have any advice for folks that are thinking about becoming angel investors in the future, just like how to leverage [54:57] their expertise to become successful in investing. Yeah, I think there is a big need for investors that have functional expertise. [55:06] In traditional VCs, they don't necessarily... Maybe they founded companies, maybe they've always been investors, or sometimes VCs and VE agency come from sales roles or PM roles. But for me and for marketing, and maybe for some of the roles that other people are in, [55:21] There's not a lot of investors or even advisors from that function and they need help there. [55:25] And so I think more and more. [55:27] founders are seeing [55:30] instead of having advisors or even hiring someone at a function early, it's like, let me lean on angel investors for that. And so, [55:38] I make it very clear when I talk to founders, this is how I'm going to help. I'm going to help you build your marketing function. I'm definitely going to help you hire. I'm going to help you shape the job description, the process. [55:48] probably gonna refer you some candidates. I might even refer the candidate that you hire, which has happened a bunch of times. [55:53] And then I'm going to work with that person to make sure that they're setting the right strategy and doing the right things. [55:57] And so being that clear on like, here's my exact value add is incredibly helpful. And I mean, we get into every deal that we want to. We being, I have a business partner named Kathleen, that I do all this, but then we can get into any deal, which I think [56:11] As an early angel investor, I'm like, "Why are people saying it's hard to get into deals? I don't have this problem." And that's not me tapping myself on the shoulder, it's just showing this huge shortage here.

[56:20] your skill set might be really valuable to founders. And even if you feel like, oh, I don't understand how, like, [56:26] everything works at a company or you know things like that like your skill set [56:31] could be really valuable and they might not see it. It's also when you have a unique skill set and a unique way that you help that's well [56:37] well articulated, like we're going to help you build marketing, it's easy to understand. [56:41] it makes it easier for other people to bring you into deals versus here's another generalist investor that's just going to like, [56:46] Help. [56:46] So it's almost like you got to like, [56:49] product market yourself. What's the product that you're offering? And then it's so easy, like, you know, Lenny, to bring me into deals where they might need some marketing help. And there's tons of investors that do that. [56:58] which gets us the deal flow that we need. So yeah, I just think if you have a niche or you have an area where you're particularly skilled, you can really leverage that into being [57:07] a sought after angel now if that makes you a good investor i'm not sure there's lots of other things you need to get up to speed on to actually be a good investor but [57:13] From the standpoint of like helping founders and getting into deals, that can be [57:17] That can be really helpful. Awesome. And the other part is you actually have to deliver because then people share more deals with you. And as I said earlier, I've heard so often how helpful you've been to founders. And so that's an important element. Yeah, you definitely have to deliver. And again, I think that's where it's like really helpful to say where you're going to deliver. So they're not necessarily expecting you to deliver on every little thing. Like they're expecting me to help them hire their marketer, hire contractors in marketing, fill in gaps until they have the marketing team that they need. [57:47] And so they know when to come to you and then you respond.

[57:51] Um, [57:52] Yeah, I think that's also like when people have full time jobs, I think it's hard to be able to do that. [57:56] full-time jobs that aren't this it's hard to be able to just like tap in and do this kind of stuff so it's like [58:02] Don't go overboard because your reputation really, really matters. And that's how we've always seen it. Like we want to be the most helpful angel investors or [58:09] Now we have a small fund, but the helpful sort of most helpful investors that you have in your cap table, regardless. [58:14] Like not just within marketing, but within everything. And we do that because we can go really deep on an area and we're always responsible on those areas. [58:21] End. [58:22] Yeah, it's good to hear it's working because that's what we're trying to do is be really, really helpful. [58:27] And the other thing, too, the last thing I'll say on that is, like, [58:30] You know, each founder probably thinks maybe they don't, that it takes us a lot more time than it actually does to be helpful in that area. [58:38] Like I had the same conversations over and over again about how to hire a marketer, like you can do it in my sleep. [58:42] So like me having that conversation with you and like dropping [58:46] knowledge that you haven't heard like it's it's it's just what i do all day but it feels really new because they don't have a lot of people talking to them about marketing we just have a bunch of candidates that we talk to and our newsletter generates candidates that we talk to and so like [58:58] Anyone can go on our website and, [59:00] get on our list of candidates that we refer. And I talk to one or two candidates a week from that to just meet more marketers. So like I have, you know, a list of marketers I can refer and say it's really easy when [59:11] founders asked me for referrals. So it starts to scale pretty well if you have that niche where you help. Yeah, I was actually gonna add that that it may sound scary to

[59:21] feel like you commit to all these startups. As an investor, you have to help founders all day. I can say I've invested in over 150 companies at this point, which on the surface could feel overwhelming. Like, holy shit, how do you, all these founders are probably asking you for advice all the time. But I find it's not that. That most founders just like, leave me alone, I'm good. Or maybe once a quarter, here's something I could really use help with. But it's not as much time as you think. [59:46] And when it is, it's really powerful, but... [59:49] It's not like an overwhelming amount of [59:52] time commitment. The other thing there too is if you refer [59:57] Someone that a company hires. [59:58] They're going to love you forever. [1:00:00] like you remember that because you sit there and you look at that i mean you're maybe not anymore looking at them in an office but you you know you see her aware of them every day and you remember oh they came from this person so like one of the most valuable things you could do is refer candidates [1:00:13] you know that's where i think you can add a ton of leverage just referring the right people so if you have a network and a bunch of people that you know in a certain area like that's an area [1:00:23] do a lot of good for a startup. Absolutely. Speaking of doing good, we've reached our exciting lightning round. Oh, great. So I'm just going to ask you five questions real quick. Whatever comes to mind, let me know. First question, [1:00:38] What are two or three books that you've recommended most to people? [1:00:41] I kind of like the classic... [1:00:43] marketing box [1:00:45] Maybe because I think if they're not a classic and they're like recency based, like marketing changes so fast. [1:00:50] like most things in startups and technology changes so fast that,

[1:00:55] you know some of the i i like the things that have stood the test of time and those are things like the tipping point and like crossing the chasm and i like seth godin's purple cow which is just like having something that makes you stand out so those are like the classic marketing books i think every marketer [1:01:09] or some of them should have read at some point. I think, [1:01:12] April Dunford's obviously awesome. It's sort of becoming one of those books that every marketer should have read on positioning. It's really helpful. Even if you're not like a product marketer doing positioning, I think it's really helpful. And then the book I read most recently is not related to marketing at all. I read [1:01:25] uh is my partner's favorite book and she was always like i don't think you're gonna like this book i don't think you'll like it but it's her favorite book and it's all the light all the light we cannot see or you cannot see about world world world war ii which is sort of a depressing [1:01:37] topic, given all of the tumultuousness in the world, but I thought it was just a very beautifully [1:01:41] written book and when you read a lot of business writing a lot it's kind of nice to step back and just read like really beautiful prose on like a really heavy topic that [1:01:49] isn't just like startup marketing so it was kind of fun to go back and read sort of a [1:01:54] older book that was really beautifully written. Next one, Lenny. Next question. Okay. What's a favorite podcast? Let's get off books. Yeah. Besides yours, obviously. Obviously. No, I mean, you're doing a great job for someone who's just started off doing podcasts. Thank you. You go deep with people, which I think is good. It's not just the service level stuff. Yeah. [1:02:12] Um, look like the podcasting listen to most is like every night when I go to sleep, I listen to the daily on the New York Times daily, like just gets me, you know, to know what's going on. I also like some true crime podcasts. I won't talk about that because maybe that's a little embarrassing and basic. And I think for like just kind of getting understanding founders and startups, like over the years, I found like how I built this to be really helpful. And like the main thing I learned from like how I built this is that most startups are really messy.

[1:02:42] like, "Whisp is a mess, we're doing everything wrong." That's kind of common. So it's helpful in that regard, too. It's not just me. [1:02:48] But I think there's really interesting, you know, founder story and hearing how things are built is always helpful. So those are some that I like. Favorite recent movie or TV show? [1:02:57] My favorite TV show from this year was Yellow Jackets on Showtime, which is kind of like [1:03:02] Lord of the Flies, which is a bunch of women. Like, Lord of the Flies needs lost. It's really good. [1:03:08] So it has like Christina Ritchie in it, like the person who was in like Casper. And now and then if you were like a girl that grew up in the late 80s and 90s, you'll know who the Christina Ritchie is. Absolutely. But yeah. [1:03:19] or a guy, or a guy, any gender. Yeah, I really liked Yellow Jackets. I think it's great. And it was like the first show in a while that I've been watching it, for the first couple of episodes. Like, it wasn't on my phone half the time, so that's like my measure for is it good. And then the best movie I've seen recently was we watched Coda. [1:03:36] which is, [1:03:37] I think it won some Oscars or something. I think it won Best Picture. Oh, okay. So it won the Oscar. Yeah. So, yeah. I'm really original in my picks here. I'm like, oh, I just watched the Oscar Best Picture. I thought it was great. No, but Coda was like, I think I cried. Or at least I almost cried. No, I cried. I don't really ever cry in movies. I actually cried, yes. Yeah. It's about a family who, like a non-hearing, like a family who can't hear and then their daughter can hear. And they become really interested in music. And there's the story of a family. [1:04:07] Uh, [1:04:08] family of fishermen in Massachusetts, which [1:04:10] My brother is a clammer in Massachusetts. That's his job. Well, not his only job, but one of his jobs is that he clams. So he doesn't quite have that like fisherman.

[1:04:19] vibe. [1:04:20] But, you know, somewhat somewhat relevant. [1:04:22] Yeah, really, really good movie. And that last scene. [1:04:26] Powerful. Yeah. Too much. I'm going to start crying. It's a good one. It's a good family story. Lenny's crying right now. He's just in tears remembering the movie Koda. Yeah. Lenny's going to spend the rest of the day weeping. You won't get a newsletter next week. It's just because he's rewatching Koda. It's going to be an emotional newsletter. Yeah. Speaking of that, what's a favorite interview question that you like to ask? [1:04:49] Oh, there's so many interview questions that, [1:04:52] that I like to ask. I mean, like one of the basic interview questions in marketing that I like to ask is just like, [1:04:59] the company that you're working on, what's the product, [1:05:01] Why is it better? Who is it for? It's like the most basic positioning question you can ask, but a lot of people can't answer it. [1:05:06] So, [1:05:08] That's a good one. [1:05:09] And also, if you're writing, positioning at your company, or if you're on marketing your company and you can't tell me what the product is, why it's better, who it's for, [1:05:16] Go figure that out. Like that's what the homepage of your website is. [1:05:20] should cover, in fact, the hero of your website and some of you don't. [1:05:22] A fun question that I like to ask that's more just like, [1:05:25] It's like a mix of like getting to know you, but also seeing how you communicate is like describe something. And I didn't come up with this question, but I really like it. [1:05:33] Describe something complicated that you know well that others don't and describe it as simply as you can. [1:05:41] And it's just interesting to hear what people pick. [1:05:44] Um, [1:05:45] most people pick things related to cooking which is really strange i asked that question like every interview for a long time just like kind of as the final question because you learn something about people and

[1:05:55] Yeah, so many people pick cooking. I'm like, that's a good choice because I find cooking really complicated and I have no idea how to do it. So, you know. [1:06:01] describe describe these various aspects of cooking to me but yeah that's always a fun one [1:06:06] There's other questions that I always ask, like walk me through a project you've done recently from start to finish, and I'm listening for things like, can you tell me the goal, and can you tell me the audience, but those are more boring. [1:06:16] I'll stop there. Awesome. [1:06:18] What's your favorite interview question, Letty? Oh, no, this isn't. I'm asking you questions here. I know. I wanted to flip the lightning round back on you. Have you ever done your own lightning round? I haven't, but I'll answer the question at Metaway. I'm finding the most popular answer to this question is that second one you just gave, which is "Teach me something I don't know." That comes up a lot. [1:06:37] in these answers. Yeah. [1:06:39] Teach me something I don't know. This is a variation on teach me something I don't know. Because it's really about how simply can you communicate it. Like teach me something you don't know comes across as like a little... [1:06:49] I don't want to say like pretentious, but it's like it's overwhelming. Well, let me, I'll add a little flavor to it is they often say give you a minute to like explain this something. I don't know something interesting to you. And so kind of forces you to be simple about it. But I like I like framing. Yeah, I like the comp. It's a complicated framing. And then sometimes what I'll do, especially if they're going to be someone that's going to be writing is I'll be like, OK, make it simpler. [1:07:13] And I'll have them describe it to me again, simpler. And like, I've probably done that in one interview. I've probably done it like four times, which that part isn't super fun, but it's, it's, it's, [1:07:22] It depends on the person if I think they can like handle handle the like, you know, kind of like joking around, make it simpler, make it simpler.

[1:07:28] And if I think the topic's interesting, of course, and I want to hear about some things over and over again. Awesome. But yeah, I mean, it's good to have interview questions that like, [1:07:36] maybe teach you something about how they're going to do at the job, but also learn something about the person. [1:07:42] And in like a way that's not just like, tell me about yourself. So. Final question. Who else in the industry do you most respect as a thought leader? [1:07:50] The word thought leader here is getting me down, but I'll say the first part of your question. As marketers, we love the phrase thought leader. Some of the other marketers that I think are doing interesting things beyond just marketing is Ashley Meyer is someone who is a marketer who also has a fund now. [1:08:09] She was comms at Glossier as well as she used to be at Box and things like that. And is big on Twitter. She's just someone else who's [1:08:17] marketer turned fund manager so it's always nice to have other people like that to kind of compare notes with. [1:08:22] I think that Ariel Jackson from first round is an amazing support system to, you know, [1:08:27] founders and marketers at startups. So if you're [1:08:30] at a first round company. She's a great resource and I think she's just a great resource in general. I also think Kevin Lee, the head of marketing at Oyster, he's an LP in our fund. He puts out a newsletter and has a full-time job growing a rapidly growing marketing team. So I have a lot of respect. He's coming to speak to [1:08:46] the people in a course that I'm running next week. So he's top of mind. But yeah, those are some some people that come to mind. But I mean, I have a lot of marketers that I admire. I'm lucky that in our in our fund, we have over 50 marketers. So I have like a pretty big arsenal.

[1:08:59] of people I can go to just from that as well. So, [1:09:02] I lean on the people there for a lot of different things. Emily, this was everything I was hoping it would be. And more. I feel like we've helped a lot of founders understand the fog of marketing, and I think we're probably going to help a lot of PMs and marketing people work together a lot more effectively. Hopefully. The fog of marketing. Exactly. Marketing is the San Francisco of functions in a company. Carl, the marketing fog. Carl, the marketing fog. Two final questions. [1:09:32] and more and how can listeners be useful to you? Yeah, I'm [1:09:36] on Twitter and LinkedIn, it's just Emily Kramer, my name, pretty simple. You can find links to the courses that I run, to the newsletter, to our job board, [1:09:46] to talking to me about angel investing as a marketer. [1:09:49] on our website, mk21.co, and that should set you off in the right direction. [1:09:56] And yeah, we have lots of things going on to help marketers build out their teams and help founders. [1:10:01] build out their marketing team. So if that's you and you're in a situation where you're mostly at a B2B company trying to build out marketing, [1:10:07] get in touch with me through my website or through Twitter. Amazing. Emily, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. This was really fun. And I'm looking forward to also having [1:10:16] that guest newsletter come out with you and, you know, just getting Lenny, Lenny eyes. It's a weird phrase. I won't use that again. [1:10:24] Let's move on. We're gonna move on. All right. Thanks, Lenny. Okay. Thanks so much.

[1:10:30] Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. [1:10:46] or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast.com. See you in the next episode.