Title

CMO at Forter. Former VP of marketing at VMWare, Heptio (acquired by VMware), Tintri (TNTRQ), and Merced (acquired by NICE Systems).

Founders Should Call Me When

They want to dig into the metrics that hold marketing accountable and when they need tough love on overly complicated positioning. Marketing is a broad discipline that includes product marketing, demand, growth, communications, events, customer and partner, and more. Let’s talk about where your first head of marketing (or marketing team) needs to be strongest.

Background

I’m a zero-fluff marketing leader who has worked across industries and stages and intentionally led product marketing, demand gen, and brand at different stops on my journey. At Forter (joined at Series E), we up-leveled the story from point solution to platform and built an ultra-efficient enterprise marketing machine. Today, $1 of marketing spend produces $19 of qualified pipeline. At Heptio (joined as first marketer/employee #40, Series A), we built our credibility with a thoughtful approach to the cloud-native community and our pipeline from $0 to $27M in ~6 months. When VMware acquired Heptio, I led marketing for the Cloud Native division with a team of 110 marketers driving a $700M+ business. At Tintri (joined at Series C), we grew revenue 3x in three years, which led to a rollercoaster IPO. At Merced (joined, then immediately acquired by NICE Systems), we defined a category with/through key analysts and established our leadership position.

Superpowers

Stripping messaging back to its core. Building a marketing dashboard that a Board of Directors understands and cares about.

Lessons Learned

It’s important that founders/leaders see Marketing as a strategic function. Early investment in marketing ensures that Sales is well-fed (with qualified pipeline) as they grow. It’s hard for marketing to catch up if Sales has been scaled and marketing has been neglected. Plus, a great marketing team can help you see around corners with competitive insight and market opportunity analysis, and they should be able to forecast your bookings six months ahead.