CMO Stories

It’s difficult enough to grow a startup from zero to $10 million in revenue. But, being a CMO or CRO charged with scaling from there to the $100 million milestone is exponentially more difficult. Bruce Cleveland literally wrote the book on how startups can bridge this “traction gap.” It was based on his experience as a senior executive in engineering, product, and marketing across Apple, AT&T, Oracle, and Siebel Systems, and he then put that knowledge to work helping startups scale as a general partner at both Wildcat Venture Partners and InterWest Partners. Now, he’s back putting it into practice as CMO of C3.ai, and he joined us to shed some light on what companies need to do to achieve predictable growth.

Episode 5 of the CMO Stories podcast dives into Guerilla marketing, a concept rarely used in the staid world of B2B marketing. David Applebaum, a marketer who has proven his ability to deftly straddle the line between impactful guerilla marketing and abject marketing failure shares his insights. David shares his tried and tested tactics designed for maximum impact with a minimum outlay of budget and personnel.

Building a new brand is difficult enough, but creating an entire category is the stuff of marketing legend. Priya Rajan brings an outsider's perspective to the topic, having started in Engineering and transitioned into a marketing leader for innovative, category defining technology company. In this episode, she explains how she searches for the breadcrumbs those early believers leave behind, and how you turn them into your best brand evangelists.

Marketing complex products in a crowded space isn't easy. But in cybersecurity, which has reached visibility up to the board level, marketing success takes more than buzzwords and discounts. In this episode, we hear from both sides of this marketing equation, with Naomi Buckwalter, Director of Information Security & Privacy at Energage, who is a typical customer of both Rich Campagna, CMO at Balbix, and Nathan Burke, CMO at Axonius.

Growth CMOs have the uncanny ability to create both value and growth. Tom Butta is one of the best. He's been the marketing mastermind behind some of the biggest B2B tech firms, propelling them into the rarified air of huge exits and massive IPOs. Now, he's CMO at Kyriba, a treasury and risk management software firm. In this episode, Tom shares his secrets to growth marketing success.

In this episode, we dig into Venkat's approach to marketing and demand generation, how he measures Marketing's impact, and how 8x8 is using Fortella to orchestrate segment- and region-specific pipeline plans.