Finding Market Fit: Marketing Leaders in Tech – Details, episodes & analysis

Manu Orssaud is the Chief Marketing Officer of Duolingo, where he is responsible for building the brand and driving user growth globally. Prior to Duolingo, Manu led Global Marketing Strategy at Spotify and one of the things he was was responsible for was leading the award-winning Wrapped annual campaign. Manu was also at Sony PlayStation and developed the digital marketing function across EMEA for the global entertainment brand.

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We cover: 

• How Duolingo moved from a paid advertising to a social first approach 
• This approach which has led to a much more significant impact to acquisition, retention, and driving the brand globally 
• Focusing on developing locally relevant content 
• Building a team that is nimble, resourceful, and understands the brand extremely well

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Where to find Manu: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/eorssaud/

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Where to find Patrick: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pcmoran/

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(02:16) An intro to Duolingo and its business model 

(02:57) Duolingo's mission and the problem it's trying to solve

(05:58) Science backed language proficiency framework that Duolingo uses 

(07:44) Main audiences around the world 

(09:19) The alternatives to Duolingo and what is specific to the experience 

(13:12) Building a global brand and Duolingo's approach to this 

(16:52) Learning from the community and the magic that came out of those interactions 

(22:08) Driving new user growth and retention rates through social media 

(24:05) The marketing mix 

(26:57) Expanding the brand globally and being locally relevant 

(29:39) Doing social media locally really well 

(31:00) Developing specific story lines and how fast content travels 

(32:59) Approach to team structure, a focus on being nimble, resourceful and understands the brand extremely well

(35:32) Where to find Manu!  

Alex Birkett is a co-founder of Omniscient Digital, an organic growth agency that builds content & SEO programs for ambitious B2B brands. Previously, he worked on growth and experimentation at Workato, HubSpot, and CXL. 

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We Talk About:

• Figuring out the right opportunity areas for content marketing 
• Effectively using Generative AI to develop a unique POV 
• Applying the barbell strategy to make bets on approaches 
• Finding the next horizons of growth for content 

--- We cover: 

https://beomniscient.com/blog/barbell-content-strategy/

https://beomniscient.com/blog/first-steps-to-incorporate-ai-into-content-marketing/

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Where to Find Alex Birkett: 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamalexbirkett/

Personal Site: https://www.alexbirkett.com/

Website: https://beomniscient.com/

The Long Game podcast: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/

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Where to Find Patrick Moran:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pcmoran/ 

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(02:14) Key drivers the definitions of organic growth 

(04:04) Figuring out opportunity areas and goal definitions

(06:30) Common mistakes companies mistake when figuring out their content strategy

(11:16)  Finding channel-product fit and leaning in on strengths 

(14:15) Generate AI in content and the current use cases 

(16:28) Tactical usage of Generative AI and when to use it for competitive advantages   

(18:21)  Maintaining authority and a unique POV with content 

(19:38) Creatively molding concepts and developing foundational use cases  

(20:31) How to think about measurement and effectiveness for content marketing 

(22:13) Applying attribution based methods to the growth model 

(26:24) Using a barbell strategy to developing a portfolio of content bets 

(30:47) Evolving the portfolio over time 

(34:27) Finding the next horizons of growth through the barbell strategy 

(37:42) Affiliates and partnerships within the content strategy 

(40:20) The differences between B2B and B2C and borrowing models from both 

(42:06) Where to find Alex Birkett!

Yik Yak is a psuedoanonymous social media platform primarily focused on on-campus college students. Yik yak first launched in 2013 and at it’s peak hit about 7M Monthly Active Users and about 2.5M daily active users, spending roughly 30 minutes per day on the app. They consequently raised north of $60M. But the app hit a ceiling with growth and in 2017, unfortunately, was sold to Square. The name and logo have since been purchased from Square in 2021.   

Justin led product marketing at YikYak and was one of the first employees. Brooks is one of the co-founders, and has since gone on to build another startup, Switchyards, which is a neighborhood work club. Justin has gone on to lead Product Marketing at Discord.

We talk about: 

• How Yik Yak got started 
• Building engaged communities on and off platform 
• Dealing with challenges like bullying and negative content 
• Difficulties of expanding markets 
• Building a great culture

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Where to find Brooks and Justin: 

Brooks' LinkedIn Profile 

Justin's LinkedIn Profile

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Where to find Patrick: 

Patrick's LinkedIn Profile

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(3:12) How Yik Yak got started 

(6:37) Driver of immediate growth and access to an immediate audience 

(7:40) How the app quickly scaled 

(9:28) Initial engagement metrics and awareness compared to Twitter, Instagram, and Snap 

(13:31) Why copycat apps never hit it as big

(16:30) Initial tools and guidance in building the right community

(19:35) Honing in on authentic content

(25:00) Sparking growth through onsite events through identifying campus influencers 

(29:48) Why everyone loved the Yak on campus, developing new experiences, and hitting the tipping point before engagement starts to run on its own 

(40:42) Addressing bullying, high school campuses, and the negativity of certain campuses 

(44:23) Limited upside and not much incentive for allowing negative content to persist 

(46:11) Marketing's role in driving growth and its limitations

(48:37) The challenges of natural churn and turn over due to graduating seniors 

(50:00) The shared feed across thousands of students loses its novelty over time 

(51:19) How the college experience is a shared experience and the difficulties of expanding use cases beyond that 

(55:41) Catching lightning in a bottle at that time 

(56:55) Trying psuedoanonymity and micro communities

(59:12) Looking back at the company culture  

Piotr is the co-founder of Nafas, Indonesia's largest integrated air quality platform. Before Nafas, Piotr was the CMO of Gojek, Indonesia's first super-app which combines payment, transportation, logistics, food delivery and multiple other services under one roof. At Gojek, Piotr was responsible for building the brand into one of the most loved & well-known in Indonesia through marketing, performance and brand campaigns.

We discuss: 

• The development of super apps in Southeast Asia 
• Gojek vs Grab and the David and Goliath story 
• Leaning into the Indonesian culture to drive brand affinity 
• The elements that worked in competing with an incumbent or a larger competitor  

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Where to find Piotr

Piotr's LinkedIn Profile

Piotr's Twitter Profile

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Fast Company Article on Gojek and Grab

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Where to find Patrick

Patrick's LinkedIn Profile

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(2:22) Understanding the context of Jakarta and the genesis of Gojek  

(13:02) The offerings of Gojek and Grab in the market 

(15:55) Grab's larger initial valuation (10X of Gojek) and what drove it  

(17:23) Gojek leaning into Indonesia culture to compete

(19:44) Competition heating up and figuring out how to scale faster  

(22:41) Amplifying the Gojek community and the capabilities it allows 

(27:47) Impacting product-market fit and amplifying the brand  

(30:12) Focusing on the Indonesian market and building habitual behavior   

(34:20) Understanding the metrics and measuring effectiveness 

(36:39) How to approach market expansion and appreciating cultural nuance

(40:45) Where to find Piotr! 

Ido is the co-founder & CEO of Voyantis, an LTV prediction platform powered by AI. Ido is  an entrepreneur with over 15 years of expertise in building growth and marketing teams. Before Voyantis, Ido co-founded Tvinci,  a platform that allows media companies to create personalized, social TV experiences, which was later acquired by Kaltura.

We talk about: 

• Defining LTV for specific companies and the right ways to use payback periods 
• Bidding for audiences relative to their LTV 
• Using predictive LTV models 
• How to operationalize these models in-house or with a partner

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We reference: 

Predictive LTV

Value Based Bidding In-House

Balancing Growth and Profitability

Facebook Predictive LTV White Paper

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Where to find Ido

Ido@voyantis.ai

Ido's LinkedIn Profile

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Where to find Patrick 

Patrick's LinkedIn Profile

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(3:12) Defining LTV and what you want to achieve 

(7:11) Using the right payback periods 

(10:52) The right balance between payback period and profitability 

(14:28) Focusing on high value customers

(16:42) Value based bidding capabilities and being more discriminate with various LTV cohorts 

(19:10) What is predictive LTV and how to use it to optimize for campaigns 

(25:24) How the model works within new privacy structures

(26:47) In-house or using a vendor for these capabilities 

(32:24) Expanding value based bidding to other ad platforms

(35:50) Operational costs of maintaining the model 

(39:37) Measuring marketing profitability

(44:21) Where to find Ido!   

Kiki spent her career in various marketing and product roles spanning both B2B and B2C companies. She currently leads growth marketing, new business, and content marketing at Plaid. Prior to Plaid, Kiki led growth marketing at Credit Karma, which was subsequently acquired by Intuit.  Prior to her roles on the brand side, Kiki led product management for Adobe’s data platform products. 

This was a pretty topic dense conversation. We go through: 

• Building a centralized marketing ops function that covers creative production and martech capabilities for Plaid, which has three customer motions 
• The core components of a Martech stack 
• Measuring both brand and growth specific marketing initiatives for business customers, partners, and end consumers
• Establishing the models for retention and lifecycle marketing 

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Where to find Kiki: 

Kiki's LinkedIn Profile

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Where to find Patrick: 

Patrick's LinkedIn Profile

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(2:49) Overview of Plaid's business model, their core audiences, and primary revenue drivers

(5:53) The role of marketing in driving revenue

(6:44) How marketing operations is structured 

(7:40) The efficiencies or unlocks that an actual operations team can provide and a look at how the structure works from the inside

(10:01) Structuring the martech team  

(11:23) A usual case scenario versus a realization for Marteach team being separate

(12:29) The approach on building out the Martech stack for Plaid

(16:53) The specific capabilities through these phases, the types of Martech components as solutions, and consideration of CDP in phase two

(19:44) Value based bidding, optimizing for LTV cohorts, being sophisticated with the amount of data, and frequency of doing that

(22:11) MarTech dynamics of the lifecycle component for B2B and for B2C and the approach used

(26:14) The core solutions that are common across both B2B and B2C companies include a CDP, CRM, and ESP

(27:41) Using the CDP for both engagement/retention side and the acquisition side

(29:15) Measurement from a performance and growth standpoint on the acquisition side and on the brand side

(33:42) The process in identifying the right KPIs or metrics to correlate against

(36:03) Measuring the impact of lifecycle campaigns on the plan business

(38:35) A governance centralized model

(42:34) Where to find Kiki! 

Erica is the founder of The Connective Good, a boutique retained executive recruiting practice that she started 12 years ago. She focuses on placing CMOs and VPs of Marketing in high-growth SAAS companies. She’s spent time at Forrester Research, where she ran peer-to-peer executive education businesses for CMOs and digital marketing executives of Fortune 500 companies. 

We go through: 

• What early to late stage B2B SAAS companies are looking for in CMOs in 2023 
• Finding your product-market fit as a candidate 
• The differences between CMOs who scale and those who don't 
• Advice for candidates looking for their first CMO roles in B2B SAAS

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Where to find Erica: 

Erica's LinkedIn Profile

The Connective Good Blog

The Get Podcast

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We reference: 

The DNA of CMOs who can scale

How the best CMOs scale in B2B SAAS

Building a win-win relationship with your board

How to find your product-market fit in the market

How to inject discomfort in your scale journey

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Where to find Patrick: 

Patrick's LinkedIn Profile

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(2:43) What the current market is looking for with CMOs and VPs

(6:04) Leaders should spike in efficiency and immediate impact 

(7:22) Contrast between founder-led and professionally-led searches 

(9:37) Nuances in partnerships between a CMO and the founder and the CEO 

(11:25) Finding your own job-market fit and defining your differentiation 

(15:25) Using two distinct areas to communicate fit to a role 

(17:34) The two areas that are important in B2B SAAS today

(21:06) Advice for candidates looking for their first CMO role

(24:00) 360 degree management style as a new CMO

(26:56) Differences between CMOs who succeed and those who don't

(30:01) The importance of solving real problems 

(32:43) Consistent alignment. Collaboration is continuous   

(35:00) Dynamic of growth and discomfort   

(37:26) Interview questions to determine adaptability for a role 

(39:43) Where to find Erica! 

Rachel is the CMO at Notion where she leads a team that combines the best of B2B and B2C marketing.  Previously she led a variety of teams at Slack and LinkedIn, including growth marketing, product marketing and platform marketing. She was the founding marketer at Climate Corp., which sold to Monsanto in 2012 for over $1 billion. 

We cover:  

• The dynamic of marketing for a B2C2B model. Reaching consumers while ensuring relevance for B2B companies 
• Fueling word of mouth by understanding the underlying drivers 
• Global approaches and expanding communities with local market relevance
• Conversion and expansion capabilities 
• Using lifecycle marketing to drive engagement and as a feedback loop to the growth product roadmap

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Where to find Rachel

Rachel's LinkedIn Profile

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Notion's Template Gallery

Patrick references: 

Word of Mouth Coefficient

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Where to find Patrick

Patrick's LinkedIn Profile

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(2:43) Defining the B2C2B model at Notion and how Rachel's team approaches it 

(6:27) Prioritizing channels by stage and channel across consumers and businesses 

(8:27) Balancing messaging and relevance to both audiences 

(9:09) The challenges with calculating LTV for the business given the land and expand type nature of the company 

(10:45) Signals to use to determine customer value and the limitations of performance marketing for PLG companies 

(12:10) The underlying causes of word of mouth and supercharging it through community, influencers, partners, SEO, paid media, and affiliates 

(18:42) Keeping a close eye on word of mouth and its effects to the business 

(19:51) Most of the customer base is outside of the US. The natural fit to APAC markets and ensuring that local context is communicated through marketing  

(23:53) Pipeline management and optimization through PQAs and PQLs

(26:11) Consumers are one significant way to drive customers, but not the only way. Some of the challenges with the focus on consumers and the tradeoffs with B2B capability needs 

(28:28) Going deeper with the messaging dynamic and other acquisition tactics between consumers and businesses 

(29:55) What most people are surprised by with Notion's success 

(32:00) Land and expand opportunities between understanding usage patterns and shrinking the time between value realization 

(34:11) Investing in lifecycle for onboarding, education, engagement, and expansion 

(37:53) Empowering the community for experts and advocates. Inspiring Notion influencers

(39:50) The structure for the lifecycle marketing team globally 

(40:43) Where to find Rachel!  

Joanna is an Executive in Residence at Reforge, marketing advisor and angel investor. For over 20 years she has helped build and scale companies across a number of categories, business models, and audiences. She was previously the CMO of Skyscanner, one of the largest travel marketplaces in the world, and CMO of ClassPass, a leading health and wellness platform.

We discuss: 

• Establishing the right brand strategy
• Building the foundations of leadership with the right partners 
• A more effective way to find the right CMO for founders and CEOs
• Building accountable and high performing marketing orgs

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Where to find Joanna

Joanna's LinkedIn Profile

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Joanna's refers to

Google's CMO Archetypes

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Where to find Patrick 

Patrick's LinkedIn Profile

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(2:20) Why brand strategy comes before growth 

(3:51) Connecting the brand strategy to the company and product strategies 

(6:24) Breaking down the components of the brand strategy 

(7:10) Companies who have done brand well 

(10:22) If you don't have a 10X product, you should be thinking about your brand 

(11:55) The four pillars of a brand strategy 

(15:25) The relationship between a marketing and product leaders

(17:49) Short term and long term planning across the leadership team to sustain the growth model 

(19:40) What to look for in a CMO or in a new marketing leader beyond the domains they spike on - growth, brand, or product marketing 

(24:30) Why tenure among the C-level for CMOs is the shortest 

(28:10) Lessons in building a great leadership team

(32:06) A lack of diversity in the team is a predetermined conversation 

(34:35) The X factor has more power than experience 

(35:24) Org structures and when and why to restructure 

(38:27) Building high performing marketing organizations the commonalities behind them 

(41:40) Ensuring the right values. Culture usually comes from the founder

(44:15) Where to find Joanna!    

Neal is the CMO of Consensys, a global blockchain company focused on building and scaling tools and enterprise software products powered by Ethereum. At Consensys, Neal leads the the product marketing, community advocacy, brand development, content and communications, creative, and growth teams. Prior to that, Neal was the Global Head of Consumer Marketing at Spotify. 

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Where to find Neal: 

Neal's Twitter Account

Neal's LinkedIn Profile

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Consensys Research Findings: 

Web3 Global Surveys 

Turning users to builders

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Where to find Patrick: 

Patrick's LinkedIn Profile

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(2:35) The foundations of Web3 and the differences between Web3 and Web2 marketing 

(6:39) The quality of the community and the product and how that drives new user acquisition  

(8:21) The toolsets for acquisition, using the blockchain, introducing new projects to the user base  

(11:40) Distribution through communities through live chat rooms, Twitter, Reddit, and Discord

(13:21) Decentralized software services and the usage of that as a whole a a marker for the health of the space 

(15:01)  Determining the effectiveness of new projects and marketing initiatives 

(17:37) Composing the marketing organization at Consensys 

(20:05) Managing and engaging with developer communities 

(22:48) Recruiting partners and micro communities to expand reach and sense where the next beach heads are coming from 

(25:45) How the marketing org at Consensys evolved to where it is today 

(29:19)  Founding the marketing team with Product Marketing skillsets and embedding with product teams 

(30:26) Where Web3 is headed 

(34:12) Global implications and use cases outside the US 

(37:15) New creator specific use cases coming in 

(39:19) What's next for Consensys and looking at emerging markets 

(41:17) Where to find Neal!