Open Market

This week on the pod, co-hosts Joe Zappa and Eric Franchi dig into the new frontier of taste in Silicon Valley, whether you should hire a head of growth and what they should focus on, the MrBeast memo, viral adtech social posts, and Mark Zuckerberg’s live interview on stage with the Acquired pod.

Links:

Taste is Eating Silicon Valley. by Anu Atluru

Andrew Yeung’s LinkedIn post on “Head of Growth”

MrBeast memo

Co-hosts Joe Zappa and Eric Franchi chat with Eric Seufert about how he's used thought leadership, especially via his blog Mobile Dev Memo, to launch successful tech, media, and investing businesses and become one of the best-known voices in mobile.

Eric Franchi and Joe Zappa chat with Tim and Chris Vanderhook, co-founders of Viant. They discuss the Vanderhooks’ creative approach to the extremely successful launch of ViantAI, their take on “founder mode,” and how their approach to adtech entrepreneurship has evolved over 25 years. (Note: Viant is a client of Joe’s agency, Sharp Pen. This episode was not sponsored.)

Joe Zappa interviews co-host Eric Franchi, a general partner at the venture capital fund Aperiam, to identify the three traits his three most successful investments have in common. They discuss Kevel, Transmit.live, and tvScientific.

Michael Katz, CEO and co-founder of the customer data platform mParticle, joins Joe Zappa and Eric Franchi on the pod to discuss his take on founder mode. Michael argues that founders can most effectively build organizations by focusing on two factors, context and culture, but most leaders optimize for the wrong factors when they make key hires.

Eric Franchi and Joe Zappa interview adtech entrepreneur Brian O’Kelley. The former Right Media and AppNexus executive turned co-founder and CEO of marketing sustainability company Scope3 discusses how his approach to leadership has changed and how to inspire boldness and drive as organizations scale. Brian also touches on whether he’d do the AppNexus acquisition the same way today and responds to common criticisms of Scope3.

This week on the pod, Joe Zappa and Eric Franchi interview the sharpest-tongued CEO in adtech, Lauren Wetzel. Newly minted as the CEO of InfoSum, Lauren talks about her journey to the position, including: 

• How her consulting background launched her into the adtech C-suite
• The Venn diagram between a COO and a CEO
• Why a company should hire a chief of staff (or not)
• Why CEOs shouldn’t be afraid of speaking out about industry issues

Joe Zappa and Eric Franchi mourn the death of PR as we know it. Listen to the episode to learn how PR and other forms of marketing are becoming more entwined — and how CEOs should assume the mantle of PR on social.

Joe Zappa interviews his co-host, Eric Franchi, a general partner at the venture capital fund Aperiam, about how to become an investor. They cover: 

• The difference between being an operator and a VC
• How VCs decide which startups to fund 
• What founders should expect from investors
• How to get into investing
• Whether non-professional investors should do angel investing

This week’s episode is a marketing grab bag! Eric and Joe discuss: 

• Why most companies misunderstand B2B marketing attribution
• How companies should respond to the latest on cookies from a GTM POV
• What founders can be doing early on to market themselves
• What companies should be getting out of a 20-person marketing team