B2B marketing has historically relied on a predictable playbook of cold emails and phone calls. But today, buyers are exhausted by the endless spam and automated sequences flooding their inboxes. The brands winning in this new era are realizing that they are not selling to faceless corporations, but to real people who want to be entertained and engaged.

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David Walsh sits down with Selin Kocalar to explore why the most effective B2B marketing strategies look exactly like consumer marketing. They discuss how to build brand awareness in traditionally boring industries and why doing unscalable things often drives the highest revenue. Selin brings a unique perspective as an MIT researcher-turned-Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur who has completely rewritten the SaaS marketing rulebook.

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Selin shares how her team embraces radical experimentation to stand out in the crowded compliance software space. She breaks down the mechanics of viral growth hacks, from delivering custom doormats to renting massive billboards. Along the way, she reveals her philosophy as the self-appointed Chief Bad Ideas Officer and explains why every marketing team needs an intentional budget for failure.

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Guest Bio

Selin Kocalar is the Co-Founder and COO of Delve, an AI-native compliance platform trusted by over 1,500 fast-growing companies. Before building compliance automation, Selin was an AI researcher at Stanford and MIT who helped design CRISPR-based gene-editing technologies. She dropped out of MIT to scale her current company and was recently named to the 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. As a founder who proudly claims the internal title of Chief Bad Ideas Officer, Selin leads a lean growth team that consistently outperforms much larger competitors through creative, unconventional campaigns.

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What We Cover

1. The shift to B2C tactics: B2B marketing used to run perfectly fine on cold outreach alone. Selin explains why the industry is shifting and why B2B marketing is essentially just consumer marketing with a six-month lag.
2. Marketing a boring product: Compliance is historically a headache that nobody wants to think about. Selin shares how posting tangentially related, entertaining content captures attention much better than pitching product features.
3. The Highway 101 billboard hack: The growth team assembled a massive physical wall of love from customers' Post-it notes. This offline stunt was amplified across social media to prioritize brand memorability over immediate conversions.
4. Viral donuts and doormats: Selin details two highly successful physical marketing campaigns that targeted startup founders. Delivering custom doormats referencing SOC 2 compliance cost around $5,000 but influenced millions in the sales pipeline.
5. Budgeting for marketing failure: If a marketing team is not failing, it means they are relying too heavily on outdated playbooks. Selin discusses why she intentionally sets aside experimental budget to test completely new channels and ideas.
6. Optimizing for brand memorability: The team specifically optimizes campaigns to ensure people remember the brand rather than pushing for an immediate demo. This top-of-funnel awareness pays off massively when buyers eventually need compliance tools.
7. Authentic founder-led content: Agencies and ghostwriters cannot truly replicate a founder's unique perspective. Selin explains her process for quickly generating high-quality social posts that build deep trust with their audience.
8. Creating an influencer echo chamber: Partnering with creators was initially an uncertain bet for a compliance company. Now, coordinating multiple influencer posts on launch days creates a viral effect that drives significant brand awareness.
9. Mastering generative AI visibility: Generative AI search engines are becoming a crucial discovery channel for software buyers. Selin and David discuss the importance of producing high-quality content to control the narrative when prospects search on ChatGPT or Claude.

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Resources Mentioned

1. Delve - Selin's AI-native compliance platform that helps companies achieve SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO certifications.
2. Limelight - David's B2B influencer marketplace that the guest uses to sponsor creator content.
3. ChatGPT - Mentioned as a key platform where brands must optimize their content for generative engine visibility.
4. Claude - Noted alongside other AI models as a vital search surface for potential software buyers.

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Safe Doesn't Scale is hosted by David Walsh, founder of Limelight. New episodes drop weekly.