Philippe Gamache  0:07  
What's up guys, welcome to the humans of martec podcast. His name is John Taylor. My name is Phil ganache. Our mission is to future proof the humans behind the tech so you can have a successful and happy career in marketing

Philippe Gamache  0:26  
What's up everyone today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Emily Kramer, co founder at market one. Emily started her career in media planning and ad agencies in San Francisco and also had a stint growing a programmatic ad platform. She went back to school and completed her MBA at Harvard and joined Salesforce as a product marketing MBA intern before it later joining a startup called Ticket fly as an early marketing team member. Emily then made the mega move to Asana as head of marketing as the 35th employee where she built and scaled a marketing team from only one to 25. In less than four years. She moved on to an email startup called Astrotech as VP of Marketing, where she led the company to a series a funding and won the Esteem product on Golden kitty award no big deal for Mobile App of the Year in 2017. The startup look a lot like aI productivity apps popping up today, just a few years too early. Emily then joined carta as VP of Marketing, where she grew the team from two to 30 and sat on the exec team and reported directly to the CEO. While there she co authored a gender gap and equity study which was featured in over 50 publications. Emily then kick started her entrepreneurial path and started dabbling in Angel investing. She took first rounds Angel track, which helped turn her investing hobby into a new career where she's now invested in over 50 companies as an angel investor. She joined Empower work as a board member and NPO providing tech support for vulnerable workers facing challenging work situations. And in October 2020, Emily made the plunge and launched market one with her co founder Kathleen, initially as an advisory business then as a newsletter and community aimed at helping founders and marketers scale their teams in later as a capital fund also helping early stage b2b startups. Emily, what a wild and awesome journey so honored to have you on the show. Really appreciate your time.

Emily Kramer  2:18  
Yeah, thanks for having me. And no problem. It's weird to hear your life like ran out like that. Like, did I did that happen? I guess it did. But are you like do you took it all the way back? You know?

Philippe Gamache  2:30  
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Emily Kramer  4:11  
People don't have to ask me about my ad agency days, it's a good way to start in tech experiences are a good way to start in marketing. Rather you get a lot of experience with a lot of different brands, which is always fun. But yeah, excited to chat.

Philippe Gamache  4:22  
I read that it was like a programmatic ad platform in one of the early clients was like Microsoft, right? Because like it was a product that yeah,

Emily Kramer  4:30  
this was a long time ago. I'm getting up there. So this was like early days of Yeah, programmatic or like data driven ad buying, essentially. And at the agency I was at which is called universal McCann, our main client was Microsoft. And within the agency we started like our own ad platform, because we were like kicking out budgets to big ad platforms. They were all kind of the same. And so we We like built our own in house essentially. And so I got to work on that. So it was kind of like a intrapreneurship situation, which is a hard word to say. And so we were starting this new thing and inside the agency and took the clients that we had on the agency side and use that to kickstart. So kind of like a really fast path to, to getting customers when you're building something within an agency, and it still exists today. So that's, that's cool. So that platform is called cadre on just, I didn't name it. I didn't name market one, and I named it poorly. So I guess I shouldn't make one. Nobody knows if it's MK two, one or market one, not even myself, as I always say so. Anyway, yeah, that's that's my early journey. And then I went to business school and then started this whole startup marketing path and was accidentally the first marketer four times.

Jon Taylor  5:53  
Yeah, let's, let's talk about that a little bit. Because for sure you, you've got some like pretty crazy startups that you joined very early, and like a history of doing this early. Like Asana, Carta, Astro, like, what do you attribute to your ability to spot these up and coming companies? And what advice do you have for marketers in picking potential unicorns being a solo marketer, or like a one person or a small team of marketers out these types of companies? Like, what do you ask people in interviews? What do you do for for spotting these,

Emily Kramer  6:27  
like 17 questions in one, but I'll do my best. So look, like I'm gonna caveat by saying that there's a lot of luck and great timing involved. And so anybody that tells you otherwise, as an investor, or as someone who's worked in a number of great startups is lying, like, there's a ton of luck and timing involved. So like, I conveniently went to business school, like right after the 2008 kind of downturn, which like, that was a great time to hang out a business school. Like that wasn't my plan. It's just the way it worked out. But it worked out. Well. By the time I came back and started working at startups. In 2011, things were back on the upswing, and I stopped working at startups right before COVID. And started like my own thing, which I missed a lot of the marketing, mass and turnover that's been going on over the last few years are downsizing. So there's a lot of again, luck and timing. But I think for me, it's like the same things that I use to pick companies and and, you know, select where I wanted to give tons of my time is actually like we've evolved it a little bit about a similar framework, I didn't know is a framework at the time, but a similar framework to how me and my partner, Kathleen, invest in companies now, which is that we think there needs to be a great product, there needs to be a product that if you were in the target audience, you would want to use it and recommend it doesn't need to be something use yourself. But it has to be something you would recommend, you need to have, you need to be in a great market that you think and grow like there needs to be a great team, but they also need to be able to win on the go to market side. So a lot of a lot of non marketers overlook that. But even as a marketer, like you need to make sure that the company is going to care about marketing, that there's an easy way to Accelerate Marketing. And we call these marketing advantages. Now, I didn't call them that then but whether there's like a network effect, or a really interesting story to tell, or just like, like a lot of like, you know, room to just like really crush it on SEO or partnerships or channel or whatever it is, I promise. That's the only time I'll say crush it on this podcast, I apologize. So, you know, we're always like looking for well, like, can they win on marketing too? And can I help them win like is, you know, it's not like, do they have a leg up here. And so and also like my first startup, like, I just liked music. So I worked at ticket fly, I wanted to go to a lot of concerts, I went to a lot of concerts. And I that's what I wanted to do. And I ended up getting acquired by Pandora and then later spun out of Pandora and acquired by Eventbrite. So they did pretty well, too. And so that was just kind of like, Oh, I thought this was fun. And I wanted to work on something that was close to my heart. And then I think I quickly learned after that, that like maybe some of the things that you love doing as hobbies. It doesn't need to be like your job too. And so that's when I went like total b2b and went to Asana. But Asana, I saw early traction, I saw that it was a great product. And I saw it was a team who knew how to win across the board. And I had a really great mentor there, who was the CEO, we didn't have titles, but in theory was the CFO, and had led marketing before so he wasn't in the role of marketing, but he was managing me and had like, tons of advice and mentorship. So I just felt like I was set up for success. And the company was set up for success in the go to market side as well. So and then joining Carta, they have a network effect. That's pretty incredible. So I knew if you throw fuel on that fire, you could grow even faster. And so those are some of the things I look for but I think for marketers like joining companies, I think, you know, again, like a lot of you Seems like I look back in hindsight and say, but people are like, I just want to love the product. And I'm like you personally like, again, if you're in, you're not necessarily going to be in the target audience, but talk to people or relate to people who are in that target audience. And like, if you wouldn't use it, then don't do it. But it doesn't necessarily need to be something that you love. Because the thing that's even more important than that is like, are you going to work? Well, with this team? Are you going to work well, with this founder? Do you want these founders to win? Do you feel like they're going to value marketing? Because so often, companies don't value marketing, and you're just set up to fail? And then additionally, like, can they win. And so like, you gotta be thinking like an investor when you're picking startups. Because you're giving this all of your time. Time is money. I won't say that again, either. But you know, you're investing all of your time, which if you wouldn't invest in the company with your money, you shouldn't invest all your time there. And I know that that's easier said than done, especially an hour. It's like hard to find marketing roles. And so maybe you can't do that every time. But as you accelerate in your career and have more optionality, and when time is a little bit better, it's important to say, you know, like, Is this is this something that can win? Because that's what propels your career?

Philippe Gamache  11:09  
Yeah, I think that's great advice, especially in startups, like you're getting a bit of equity. Yeah, no, are picking it like you are an investor. And yeah, like picking companies and where to invest your time and even like some of your your money and fun capital. I want to ask you about that, like your, your work at. Some of the companies has been super influential, but specifically, I want to talk about like the crucial work that you did in exposing significant gaps in gender compensation and equity at Carta, and co authored a study that garnered attention from a bunch of media outlets like Wall Street Journal, fortune, Forbes, the investigation uncovered that Carta, alongside numerous other companies was significantly allocating less equity to women. And a few years ago, by taking a stand and filing a lawsuit against carta for gender discrimination and wrongful termination, you demonstrated remarkable bravery. I remember reading your posts on medium in the midst of that, what must have been a crazy challenging time. But you were faced with all of this stuff. And you showed a bunch of resilience and determination and it really shone through and your efforts not only brought these substantial inequities to light, but they also inspired within Carta, a bunch of employees and other companies as well to demand change and break that bro culture. The only time we're gonna say, bro, when

Emily Kramer  12:27  
I know, right, we're like, oh, we just said that didn't way it works. In this context. It's better than me saying crushing it quite honestly. I'm still having regrets about that. What else? I said something else that was terrible on time is money. That was that

Philippe Gamache  12:39  
was? Yeah, I used the script. So I can remove the Oh, you

Emily Kramer  12:43  
don't need to remove it. It's funny for me to say it. And they'd be like, Oh, no, I don't mind. I'm a pretty candidate, this person and just laughing all the time.

Philippe Gamache  12:51  
I would love to ask you like how? How are you advancing your commitment to gender equity and inclusion in your current role at market one, and maybe through some of your investment choices? would love for you to unpack?

Emily Kramer  13:03  
Yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, let me speak to the go forward aspect more than the lookback aspect, which I could say less about. So we, we very actively tried to make sure that we're getting with our fun, we're getting deals, from multiple places that we're thinking about the composition of our fund, we want to pick the best companies that can be successful. But we think that women and people of color and underrepresented minorities in general can often do a better job of that than your than your average, your average co founder. And so I think we are just actively trying to make sure there's balance in our portfolio, we've done a pretty good job of that I don't actually have the the latest numbers, but for a long time, we were 5050 across gender roles, which is just Yeah, it's that's great. And also with the people that invested in our fund. So if you're not familiar with VC investing, great. It's a weird world. I'm not recommending that everybody know all the details about it. But venture capitalists VCs have limited partners who invest in their fund, and then you're basically investing their money. And so you don't often know about these, like limited partners, but our limited partners are a mix of people, but we have a ton of marketers who are investors in our funds. And we also really tried to make sure that we had the balance there. And so among our investors, we are we have, you know, majority women non binary. So, you know, it's it's hard to measure all of these things. It's hard to be perfect, but we just make a conscious effort to do it without being that having like a stated sort of, you know, mission of diversity. We're just a fund trying to have the people that invest in our fund and the companies that we invest in look more like you know, the people using those products and so that's just kind of in our DNA and It's also like, why do you work with Empower work, which is just a text line for people facing trouble in the workplace. And it mostly targets people that are lower income, although anyone can use it. So it's just me trying to like, make sure I'm helping people in the workplace. I recognize that in my situation of filing a lawsuit, I was definitely in a place of privilege to even have the ability to file a lawsuit. I know that's a weird thing to say, like I had the privilege of filing a lawsuit. And I don't necessarily think of it like I had a. I know like, wow, so lucky. But like a lot of people are in terrible situations, and they don't have that ability. And they don't have the opportunity because it does take time and money. And so, you know, just trying to be as helpful, like as I can to people that are in challenging situations at work. And I've talked to many people over the years that are in tough situations at work, and just try to be available for that. Yeah, I think that's, that's if everyone took that approach, we'd be in a, in a better place rather than necessarily having like, very strict stated minimums and things like that, like which we which are harder to adhere to. So that's a topic for a really long podcast, but I'll leave it.

Philippe Gamache  16:07  
Yeah, no, really appreciate you unpacking that. We had Chrissy Saunders on the show a couple of weeks

Emily Kramer  16:11  
ago and Bester. And I found Yeah, yes, yeah, she

Philippe Gamache  16:15  
spoke very highly about the work that you're doing there. So yeah, thanks for unpacking, then, thanks for doing what you're doing. Yeah, for sure.

Jon Taylor  16:22  
switch gears a little bit. I was listening to your episode on anchored intelligence, and you're talking about different GTM motions. And one point that really stood out to me from that, if you remember, not is just like talking with his company about, you know, the low hanging fruits of investing in Mar tech. And using booking tools like chili, Piper, and so on. What we've noticed is Mar tech is, is hard. There's so many tools out there. And we often get caught up in this like shiny object syndrome like to imagine what we could do. There's so many cool things and that we can deploy. What advice do you have for boat for marketers understanding like the delta between their GTM motion, so understanding what motion they have? And then understanding what tech to put in place, like not just putting everything in place, but like being very strategic about what they put in place?

Emily Kramer  17:06  
Yeah, for sure. So you know, as an investor, as well, as a marketer, I guess my job is to like, figure out what's shiny object syndrome? And like, what's the next big thing? So that's like a daily challenge for me, right, like, as an investor, but I think you can obviously have that way you're choosing tools as well. And I think like, you need to like the there's two goals, I think in choosing tools, well, there's many, but the two most important things are that you want to make your experience for prospects, especially as it relates to like, go to market motions, you want to make that as frictionless and amazing as you can. And so if you're going to use a tool that's maybe going to make the experience worse for prospects and customers, it probably doesn't make sense. Like, even for instance, like, if it's going to make you write shittier, can I say, shittier? On this podcast? I don't know. It's gonna, if it's gonna make your content shittier. Like, maybe don't, because you want to add value and create quality things. So there's like this balance of like, what's it going to do for the actual like, you know, end user experience? And I think that's always really important. And then, on your side, it's like, is it going to make me more efficient? And is it going to fit into a workflow that I either already have or No, I really need to add. So I'm not just using it to use it, or like using it and then change, like if you don't have a personalization strategy, and you don't know how personalization is going to help. Or like, even if you really only have like a really narrow ACP, like maybe personalization, even though it's a hot thing right now to personalize every content are personalized our homepage, and I'm a big fan of like mutiny and tools like that, and an investor and mutiny. So I'm like a big proponent of that. But if that doesn't naturally fit into your strategy, like you don't need to use that tool. So I think it's like, what's my mark, all things should start with what's the marketing strategy that fits best with my go to market motion with my audience, with our products of our business overall. And then what tools are going to make it more efficient for the marketing team, or help you be more effective as a marketing team without, with hopefully enhancing the experience for our prospects and customers? So that is hard to always adhere by and know if you're doing the right thing? But that's kind of how I think about it.

Philippe Gamache  19:14  
Yeah, there's definitely a bit of an art and a science to that. Well, we'll link out in the show notes. You have a badass like tool suggestion thread on LinkedIn, where there's like these like newish skills and concepts that you you said marketers need to master and one of them was like leverage modern martech. And yeah, asked a bunch of people on LinkedIn like what are cool new, like AI tools that you're playing? Yeah. And some of that led to like you doing like an AI showcase, which I was an attendee on

Emily Kramer  19:42  
another one. So that's fun. Yeah, I mean, look like we as an investor and market are like the center of my Venn diagram. It's martech tools, right? Like, I see tons of them. We invest across all b2b But like we see a ton of go to market tools and so and any investor right now, most of them Searching everything i. So I see a ton of this. And so, you know, I've, I've realized that one of the areas that can add the most value to marketers and founders is like what go to market tools can you be using? So I've been doing a lot more over the last whatever, like six months on LinkedIn and even in my newsletter, maybe longer than that, but just about what tools can you use and trying to like, bring exposure to some of these things. And trying to recommend things I would actually use. And so we like have sponsors on certain things that we do and stuff like that. But we're always holding this bar of like, we need to know someone that's use it, we need to have an actual recommendation, and we need to recommend it. So we're trying to do this in a very, like, authentic way, which maybe sounds like I'm like blowing smoke in your face. But it's true, like I won't ever recommend something that I wouldn't use. And so trying to try to do that from this like unique, unique perspective of where we were, you know, we sit at the center of this Venn diagram. So hopefully, it's useful. And it is fun. I mean, at certain point, when on LinkedIn, it is fun now, like just the other day, I was like, need a b2b Tiktok contractor and got like ADC rejections. So it's helpful to me, because like, I really did have a company, I work with it that wanted to experiment there, but also like, helpful to everyone that's following these things, to just see all of the suggestions. So it's fun to be able to do that at this point with with, with LinkedIn, and even my newsletter to get all of these suggestions and hope it's helpful for other people, it's helpful for me, so

Jon Taylor  21:26  
I've heard you say on another podcast, that marketing isn't actually that hard, it can be pretty easy. Because I mean, as marketers, I think a lot of us really enjoy what we do. I don't mean that marketing isn't hard, it takes skill set. Like there's a lot of expertise that goes into it. But I think once you get good at marketing, and you get into a flow of it, it's a really enjoyable thing to do. I think that there's a lot of folks who look at the marketing team as like the arts and crafts department a little bit, the flip side of what you said that I thought was really interesting. And I felt this totally in my soul was that the hard part of being a marketer is explaining marketing to folks within your organization. Yeah, explaining the value of it. How can marketers be better advocates for themselves within an organization?

Emily Kramer  22:08  
Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah. So in a lot of ways, the internal marketing is harder than the external marketing, as you said. And it's funny, like I talked to tons of marketing leaders at all stages. And also a bunch of friends that are no marketing leaders that I used to work with. And well, let me just give like a quick anecdote here, I was actually out last night with some people that used to be on my team in Asana, and they've all gone on to be, you know, leading marketing teams themselves, or leading huge parts of marketing at big companies. And I promise we don't like go out and talk about my newsletters on the regular, but they were like that internal marketing newsletter really hit hard. And I was like, of all the newsletters, like, that's the one that like, the artists like, or like, was the most valuable? And they're like, yeah, it's just like, I never realized how hard it was. And so it's funny like that, that I would, you know, I think I would have thought when I stepped out of in house roles and into roles of just working with so many companies that like the harder things would be more tactical, like, how do I do positioning and messaging? Or how do I, you know, how do I set up full funnel analytics, and those things are hard, and you need to explain those. But like some of these sort of almost softer skill topics, are the topics that just constantly come up? How do I get buy in on this, or even like, one that comes up a lot is like, my company doesn't want our website on a CMS and I really need it as a marketer, how do I deal with that like that comes up all the time, or like, my founder doesn't understand, or I'm getting so many requests from sales. So like, these things are things that come up just just all all the time. And so I think when you're in those roles, you don't realize that like everyone is facing that problem, but everyone is facing that problem. And so again, like it's something that I've just started writing more about and putting more out about, because it's just something that's universally faced, but not universally talked about, I think, How can you better advocate for marketing, like, you have to realize that most people in their company, like really don't understand marketing, like they pretend they do, but they have like an idea of what marketing is, or they pigeonhole marketing into one area, when, in fact, marketing is much broader. And so everyone might act like a marketer, but they actually don't understand all the things you're talking about. And I know this, because I talk to founders all the time. And they're like, I don't really understand how this works. I'm gonna tell you as a marketer that, but they tell me that, and, or I hear them and I understand that they don't know how it works when they're talking about hiring, and I don't blame them. I don't know how, you know, I'm not a full stack engineer here. And so they need to be educated on a more basic level than you think they need to like, you can't just go into like I need a product marketer because they're gonna they think they know what a product marketer is, they probably don't. And so like going up a level in your communication, I think is really helpful and like figuring out like, what altitude is going to be best or what level to speak at for other leaders on your team is like really valuable. So it's the same process that you use for it. external marketing used internally, like know your audience speak to your audience specifically for different audiences, you might have to say different things like know where in the funnel they are, like, where in the funnel of marketing understanding, are they? So figuring all these things out, and it's just so funny, like, marketers should be the best at this of any team in the company, but they're, they're not. And so take the same things that you do externally and do them internally. And, you know, cut the jargon. And like, jargon includes job titles, just to be clear, like, you're gonna use this, but like, nobody has the same definition. And so stop just assuming that everybody agrees. And so, yeah, got the jargon and job titles or jargon. So yeah, there's

Philippe Gamache  25:40  
so many great takeaways in that answer, Emily, I'm definitely resonated with that newsletter. Also, I'm very familiar with the founder or executive who's maybe watched a few madman episodes and thinks that they're an expert on on advertising now. This episode is brought to you by our friends at customer IO, oversold the note legacy marketing automation platform that is still struggling to update its user interface. I've done a tour of duty with all the major marketing automation platforms and many are definitely similar customer I O is the most intuitive and beautiful platform. I'm talking about the industry's top visual workflow builder to design and implement your unique messaging strategy. Powerful would be testing features inside your workflows, not just on subject line sense. Hold out testing functionality to see the incremental impact to your messages, huge draft mode, so you can QA messages and conditions in production with real users before anything is sent. Copy workflow items, so you don't have to repeat the building process again and monitor campaigns, tests and key list membership growth from your personalized dashboard. The icing on the cake marketers using customer EO have seen a 20% increase in conversion rates from strategic messaging. So stop using clunky old tools and adopt a multi channel approach that creates joyful interactions with your customers. Start a free trial without a credit card customer.eo And tell them we sent you. This episode is also brought to you by our friends at census the number one data activation and reverse ETL platform left by Activision Canva Sonos notion and more. As you might know, I'm pretty opinionated. The future of martec is composable. And that the single source of truth for your marketing data should be your data warehouse. Since this helps marketers solve an age old marketing problem getting real time complete access to your customer data without needing to write a line of code. Also, if you want your own face as a humans of martec style image, we're doing a fun monthly raffle with census for a personalized t shirt, enter to win at get census.com/humans. I love that your newsletter has tips for marketers that are subscribers, but there's also a bunch of insights for businesses and founders that are building startups. Right. And you mentioned that one of the most common questions that you get on like interviews and chats with clients and companies you're investing in is who should be the first marketer that I hire. But you say that like the one you recommend the most is a marketer that has both growth marketing chops and Product Marketing chops. And growth marketing has a very bad rap as a term in our industry, too many still refer to it as only paid acquisitions, or worse, this idea of growth hacking, and we've kind of put that rest that term to rest with notions head of growth marketing, Josh Kim In a previous episode, but I'm a huge fan of how you've broken that down in another one of your newsletters, growth marketing is four sub teams, you have demand gen inbound lifecycle and marketing operations, does that mean so if you say that like the pie shaped marketer is a product marketer and a growth marketer, and you say that the growth marketer is demand gen inbound lifecycle and ops, does this pie shaped marketer have experienced in all four sub teams and growth? Were just one of them? Like just curious, your take there?

Emily Kramer  28:59  
Yeah, this is something that like, like, I need my diagrams, it's hard to talk about this stuff out loud. I'm like, Yeah, drawing it in my mind. Um, so to back up a little bit, the pie shaped and you mentioned that it's like, instead of a T shaped marketer, I'm talking like 3.14 pie, and I'm talking like the symbol. So there's two vertical lines, and there's a line up to up that kind of pie. And so what I think is that I think that marketers need to spike if you divide marketing up into like three main sub functions, growth marketing, as you just defined it, product marketing, and like branded content. And all the other stuff that you don't really know work with branded content. We don't have a good name for that one yet. But I'm actually we don't have good names for any of these things. But that's, that's, again, that's an hour long discussion. But I want someone that is really strong in one area, pretty strong in another and has working knowledge across all of the things to be your first marketer or to be your marketing leader at any stage. So it's kind of like a generalist with a specialist who's a have specialists in one area and like pretty good at the other. As like time has gone by I've used, I've started using this metaphor called fuel and engine, which is just in marketing, you need fuel, which is content for your audience. And you need an engine, which is things you're doing on the growth side, the channels, all that stuff. And they need to fit together and they need to match with your audience. And so I could adapt the pie shaped thing to saying like, you need to understand how fuel and engine work together and then be great at one side, that's another way of thinking about it just add more frameworks to your mind and more like shapes for you to think about. But the point here is that you need to understand how to set strategy across all of marketing. And so whether it be on the growth side, if you have that skill set, it's very hard to find someone who's equally proficient in outbound related things, or demand gen related things. So that's how I defined event dimension. As driving demand, specifically in sort of more of a sales lead motion. Again, this is my definition, everybody's definition is different. And that's sort of the inbound focus, which includes SEO and web and lifecycle and marketing ops, analytics, tech, it's really hard to find someone who's great at all of those things in an equal amount. But the thing here is, depending on your go to market motion, like if you have a hybrid motion, it's great to be good at both, like sort of the more demand gen sales, you know, handoff to sales type things versus the the inbound stuff. But like if you if you get what I'm saying, if you have a hybrid motion you that but if you don't have a hybrid motion, and you're just one or the other, you know, you want someone that understands that motion really well. But the point here is that like you need to be able to set the strategy, but you don't need to be able to do everything yourself. So you need to know who are the contractors you need to hire, you need to know what's a great contractor or full time hire look like in that role. But like you don't need that person to be able to do it all themselves, do you need them to be scrappy enough that if they had to, they could probably figure it out. But like trying to find someone who's great at all these things is impossible. So it's really about being able to have that layer of like I can hire and set some strategy and know what great looks like. And maybe I can jump in and do it myself. But it's not my core skill set.

Jon Taylor  32:00  
Something I've heard you talk about that you've written about as well as like marketing as a product and having marketing. Yeah, manage like a product team. Like, this really resonates with me, like you're talking about, like, marketers wanting to have their website on a CMS, like, you need engineers and designers, writers, operations, project managers, like a whole multidisciplinary function to bring. Yeah, what is on the surface looks like a really simple message, right? A homepage or whatever. Why do you think this is so beneficial for marketing in this context? And like, what is the Nirvana point for marketers in this scenario?

Emily Kramer  32:35  
Nirvana point like that phrasing. Um, so there's two, when I say like, marketing is more like product, or marketing should be thought of like a product team. There's two points here that are kind of like, wrapped up in this. The first point is that people including marketers, often think that marketing is like building a marketing team, or running a marketing team is like running a sales team, or that marketing is a service organization to sales. I think that's the wrong approach. I think. Sales is more singularly focused on like, a specific area of the funnel and like hitting their, you know, hitting their quotas. And like, all that stuff. And like, it's just a different thing. And I think that tension between what marketing does, which is more full funnel and like more holistic, and one to many communication and multidisciplinary, like that's a good tension between the two teams that helps drive, you know, revenue. But to think that you're just building a marketing team, like a sales team really sets up recruiters, marketers, founders, everyone for failure, because it's not just like that. It's not an easy and finances well, it's not like an easy math formula to figure out how many people you need in marketing, like it is for sales. In sales. There's usually like a few role archetypes like SDR BDR, a e sales manager, you know, out of sales, marketing is way more complicated. There's like a million roles. And so it's much closer actually, to a product team. And by product. I mean, like engineering product design, like, you could call that the EPD. Org or whatever it is. And so, you know, marketing is multidisciplinary, they're thinking about both short term long term revenue, they're thinking about their goals need to be set that are kind of like your the big projects or the big bets I'm taking much like you'd have big feature launches on the product side. But also, there's things I'm doing to drive revenue right now, which on the product team, the equivalent, there's like, I'm trying to get this number of active users with this amount of engagement all the time. And so the goal setting structure, the number of roles, even the skill sets of sort of that, you know, like creative design brand aspect alongside the sort of more technical components that fuel an engine mix, it's just more similar. And so once you start thinking like that, I think it just makes it way more easy to understand how this org is going to shape up and how headcount planning should work and all of this stuff, so it's sort of an unlock when you explained it this way to or I found like just explaining this way to founders, recruiters, finance, etc, that it's just like, it's actually a lot more like building a product or so stop trying to think of it like building a sales organ. You'll save yourself a lot of time headaches. And then the other point of this marketing is more like products is that marketing is actually building another product. The marketing is a is a product like and you can break that down and be like your website's a product, and your contents a product and every individual piece of content is like, like a feature. But if you think about it that way of like, what am I going to put my bets on? Like? What are the things that we're going to keep going like the features, we're going to keep doubling down on? What are the new features that we need to build? Like, you're going to think about marketing in a better way, which is like, what's the core work I need to do to kind of keep the lights on? What are the big spikes and the big inflection points that we're planning for? Rather than just like throwing everything into this product? And just having a mess of features? Like, what's the strategy here? So I think it like just, I wish I had thought to frame it like that when I was at companies, because I think it would have helped me think about what I was doing better and how to explain it better. And so yeah, that's one like fuel and engine marketing is more like product. These are things that when I explained them to people are just like lightbulb moments, and understanding how to, you know, build marketing, the Nirvana point really quickly, is getting everyone to understand that and then being able to do your thing, right?

Jon Taylor  36:09  
I love I love the point. I hadn't thought of it this way. But the flow point or the point that you made around hiring for marketing, like it's not a math formula. I know, in my past life, I've been asked like, what would you do if you had this many more headcount? And you're like, Yeah, but I need an engineer on my team, I need analytics, like, these people are not going to just add revenue, like adding a salesperson, like I know that sometimes there's like, this formula, like salesperson will add this much, you know, revenue per year. So explaining that internally, I think, is, is quite the use a cliche nut to crack and I guess I just dived a little deeper into that point, like, how do we as as marketers, and when we're building out our teams, like a product focus? How do we kind of evaluate the team members that we need? Like, how do you take a look at the current landscape and think like, Hey, I'm gonna need this long term, I'm going into product marketing, I need an engineer or something like that. Two

Emily Kramer  37:08  
things. One thing and I'll dive deeper on this is you've got to do planning and goal setting before you do headcount planning, like the marketing, work planning, and goal planning. And then the second being back to the fuel and engine metaphor. So let me talk about the like goal planning goal setting. A lot of companies are like, we're not at the stage where we need to set goals yet or the rest of my company doesn't do OKR. So why should marketing I don't care if it's an okay, our system or something else, or just like goals are big rocks or whatever, it is just a system. In marketing, there's infinite things to do. Much like a product team would have a hard time operating without a product strategy and a vision for what the product is going to be and a roadmap and in some do, but it's like usually in people's minds, like you have to have that stuff for marketing. So it's back to that same analogy. And you have to have a plan not only for like, what are my KPIs like your only goal in marketing can be like a pipeline KPI or an MQL KPI or whatever it is signup KPI it has to be, you need to also have goals for the big projects and the big initiatives and the big bets that you're making and the tests that you're doing. And when you plan that out, I think it's helpful to also say here are the things we would love to prioritize and loves to do kind of our non goals or goals on hold. And like, what would it take to be able to do that in terms of hiring, so I like to make my hiring plan that way. It's like what's possible with the team that I have? What are my non goals, or my future goals that I can't get through right now. And this works for a lot of reasons. One, it works for headcount planning, and two, it helps say to other teams, we really want to do the stuff that you're requesting. But we can't do that, unless we have another marketing ops person to set the foundation and all of that, or another writer or another designer, to support everyone. And then the other thing I think about is back to the fuel and engine analogy, if you add another layer to that, it's like there's really like fuel engine and foundation. So foundations like and there's overlap, and all these things isn't perfect, but there are the fuel is like all the things you're creating all the content you're creating, as I mentioned, and so there's roles related to fuel. And there's roles related to engine like dimension manager or growth marketing manager or, you know, lifecycle marketer. And then there's foundational stuff that's more around like some of the product marketing research and you could put marketing ops in there, you could also put marketing ops in engine, but you're really trying to balance all these things. And so I I usually actually, like kind of not really go back and forth between fuel and engine people, but kind of like it's like I'm an IRA fuel person, I'm probably going to need another engine person and like, you know, part of at some point, I gotta like, check on my foundation and is there a higher I need there that will enable me to do things and maybe you could think about it as there's like a fuel foundation and an engine foundation and those, you know, I think people think like sales like you just keep adding a demand gen. person or you keep adding like an SEO person or a paid person or you keep adding a product marketer or a content marketer and like output is going to be good You know, kind of easy to formulate. But again, you got to go back and think about that foundational stuff. So I think balancing fuel and engine is a good way to think about it, it just like naturally kind of works for that too. The other thing I'll say about hiring, or headcount planning in general is like, your plans and marketing headcount, much like in product, the products are made to be broken. It's not like sales, again, people that you hire, like, they're different. There's a lot of talk about shapes today. But as you can tell, I'm a pretty visual thinker. So like, people's, you know, shape their skill set, like I like to say it's pie shape, but it's actually very amorphous. And so you might hire someone that like spikes in different areas, like it fulfills the role, but they look different. And so it's a, it's a puzzle that's changing with every piece you put into it on the marketing side. And so you need to allow for that flexibility. So it's not as simple again, it's like, I'm gonna hire attendees, and get what I need. And so you need to set that expectation from the start, whether you're leading all of marketing, or you're leading growth marketing, or you're leading marketing ops that like this is going to change, like the number might say the same, but like, maybe it maybe it doesn't, because maybe you hire someone who just like, makes everything so much better, and you don't need the other person. So I think like, you need to make it as flexible enough for it to change. Some of my best advice as you scale is to not put very specific roles for those things. Like if you can get away with it just be like fuel marketer, engine marketer, because it's gonna change and quite honestly, other people in the company don't care what all those different roles mean. It's easier to do it that way. I love

Philippe Gamache  41:31  
the love the analogies you're you're coming through I yeah, I just

Emily Kramer  41:36  
Well, first of all, I have a newsletter. And every newsletter kind of has like a framework. So this is I'm not coming up with these on the fly here. But I also like, I think and diagram. So something that's interesting is like I make my diet, people find interesting, I don't know if it's interesting. It's just the way my brain works. But I make diagrams before I write newsletters. So there's a draft of like, almost every diagram before I do the writing. Very cool. Yeah, cuz I'm not a writer. Like at all I am now I guess. But I don't think of myself as a writer. And I have to start with something. So I like make frameworks and visuals and then I like put the words around it. Ya

Philippe Gamache  42:09  
know, the analogies are definitely helping us like we turn every audio episode into a GPT power blog posts with like takeaways and summaries, and we got mid journey header images there. So the fuel, and the engine is just going to be so easy for me. But I love like, it's easy to grasp, in a sense, like, I am picturing the way you just said, like demand gen and bound paid content. On the fuel side, like as part of the product of what is marketing? Yeah, but just like a product team building features and like the UI that's very front facing for people that are backend engineers and people that are working on the engine part. And that's like, the frameworks and product marketing and go to market and the marketing operations team and analytics. So yeah, I love that. I also loved the point where you said your headcount plans are made to be broken, because hell, like we're in a startup and shit changes fast, like, it's good work to do it and like roadmap it and see kind of a vision in the sand, but it's made to be broken. It's

Emily Kramer  43:11  
meant to be broken, but also that yeah, again, it doesn't mean you shouldn't make it because it does help you. Your headcount planning needs to be aligned with the activities. And I see too many people do this in isolation. So it's like, oh, we want to do this, like huge web project, or like, finally get our website on our CMS to pick the thing I always like to talk about drive home. It's like, well, we can't do that if we don't have someone that like, owns and manages the website, like who's going to project manage that. And so we got to make a hire before we can do that. And so you need to do those things in tandem.

Jon Taylor  43:38  
Something you've mentioned a few times, and I want to pull it out, because I've heard you talk about it on another podcast. And I want to ask my own version of this question is around big bets. So like, as a marketer, like I live and dream about placing these big bets, you know, starting newsletters, starting a podcast building micro apps, but there's an element of gutsiness. I think that comes with this of sticking it out to see how long it can work. So what's your advice for marketers who want to place these big bets want to sell it internally? And then how long do you stay attached to your idea before? You know you call it a winner? Call it a loss?

Emily Kramer  44:13  
Yeah, so I'm just I guess I'm really into this product or analogy today. So I'm just gonna keep it going. Yeah. Which is that I think figuring out the next big thing to do is partially based on like, overall vision, it's partially based on what people are sort of demanding are where your audience is. It's partially based on you know, requests from other people it's like it's an it's like a combination of all of these things. So I think it it's definitely a hard thing to figure out what are those bets and how do I do it but the great way what what products do you often do is they like test features, they make Mbps they make, you know, little versions of them and so before you know like, especially maybe like a couple of years ago now or even a year ago up But we're like, I need to have a community. And I'm like, before you launch the community that's always on, do some events. Do people come? Do people care? Do they want to talk to each other? Do they want to be in a community, like, do some events, and then like, from your events, you know, then see if you can take that same audience and like, get them talking to each other, and like a round robin one on one thing, like what, baby step your way into these things. So the big bet is only usually made after some little bits. And so that's why I advocate for thinking in terms of like, tests and experiments. So I like to say that you should have like four types of goals in marketing, which is another framework, tests and experiments, project goals. KPI balls, are the ones usually people have, people usually have the numbers, and then also some obstacles around hiring, the things you need to put in place. And so they usually start as tests, like I have this thing I want to try. And if that's successful, you go from there. And if the big bet doesn't work, but the test worked, it's like there was something here, why isn't this scaling? Is it that I didn't do it? Right, I didn't go in the right direction, or I didn't put enough effort into it. And some of that's art and some of its science. And I don't know that there's a good rule of thumb other than saying like, well, the test works. So let's go back to that point. And say, like, what, what happened here? The other thing I want to say on this topic, is that one of my least favorite things that said at startups is oh, we tried that before, and it didn't work. So why would we try to get classic, um, your audience is constantly changing, or I tried that on my other startup, and that didn't work. That's the worst, your audience is always changing, or it's not the same from company to company. The channels that work and how channels work are always changing, like, algorithms are always changing, like, you know, and it's more obvious to understand why I'm like search or LinkedIn, but like, everywhere, things are always changing how channels work changing, what have I said, so far? Audience So exchanging channels are exchanging your ability to put the same amount of effort into it's changing, like the time and what competitors are doing is changing and your team composition is changing. So just because you did it before and it does didn't work. Like there's obviously learnings and take the learnings and like, see what, as anything changed from when we did this before, what would be different. And if it's like nothing, then maybe don't do it. But to just think that it didn't work before. So it's not going to work now, or it did work before. So it's going to work now is false. And it's especially false when you weren't even at the same damn company.

Philippe Gamache  47:20  
So the MAR tech version of that is I use that tool at my other companies. So it's the best tool, we need to use that tool at this company.

Emily Kramer  47:27  
I mean, it's been like five years, like, yeah, like it like, it's like, it's been five years since I was there. But it worked really well. And it's like, well, yeah, so things are ever changing, especially now. And marketing, things are changing, like faster than ever because of the like, you know, explosion of tools, and because of AI's impact on recruiting. So, yeah, things are changing all the time. So don't let that be a decision. But do know, like everyone around you is like really just don't think this is going to work, like take it to heart. But like I sometimes think if you have conviction, and you know that there's things you didn't do differently, like, you got to take those big bets. So unless you have another big bet, that's better, like keep on keepin on, right. So I think it also comes down to that. So again, like some of the stuff I can like framework it all out. But at the end of the day, like there's just a lot of going with your gut and your experience and what feels like it could be a hit. And so yeah, some of it, I can't there's some things I can't like put a framework on.

Philippe Gamache  48:27  
That's such a great answer. Emily, we're getting close on time, we got two last questions for you. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask this question. Selfishly, and I'm sure a lot of listeners are curious about this tool. You've talked about first rounds Angel track is this catalyst for helping you navigate the transformation from marketer to angel investor, to now fund manager for listeners and myself who want to dabble in Angel investing and are thinking of that first step. What advice do you have? And I've heard you share that, like you don't need as much money to like invest in some companies as like, maybe some folks are thinking so curious for you to unpack that.

Emily Kramer  49:01  
I mean, again, a lot has changed since I did Angel track and got into angel investing primarily just that it's harder to raise money. And the bar is different, like I started angel investing in, like, actively not, you know, just occasionally in like 20 in 2019 2020. So we were still in like really high valuation land. And so it was easier to raise and people were raising bigger round. So they were raising more from Angel. So it might have been easier to find to. It's weird. It's like, in some ways, it's harder to raise money now. But it's also harder for angels, I think now to get in on companies. It's like some weird, weird thing where I feel like there's just tighter rounds with fewer people involved. And it's maybe harder to get exposure to a lot of these opportunities. I don't know that that's all that's to say. I am probably saying too much about that times have changed. And so maybe my journey isn't exactly the journey that you would have but I understood things here there are many opportunities is to invest smaller amounts. It used to be this was the point I was trying to make, you can maybe edit some of this out. But the syndicate world of being able to like go on AngelList and find a bunch of deals to invest in that are great deals alongside others at really small check sizes that has gone down over the past couple of years, it kind of spiked, maybe in like, you know, 2019 ish, and then 2020 ish, and then it's got its pulled way back. And so there's maybe fewer of those opportunities, but there's still opportunities to invest in startups, at small amounts, if you are basically going to function like an advisor on a certain area that doesn't need me and you need to be an advisor on all things marketing, it could be like, I'm a subject matter expert on this space. And I'm also a marketer, I really spike in you know, I really spike on SEO, but like, I'm gonna be your go to person on SEO until you hire an agency or a person. So I think like your value add can maybe be bigger than you think, even if you're a specialist, more so than a generalist. Because early stage companies or even growth stage companies aren't necessarily hiring specialists in every area. So your value can be a lot. And if you're gonna bring a lot of value, like smaller check sizes are usually acceptable. So you know, if you're investing a small amount, you basically can be like, well, I'm going to help you a lot and get exposure and experience here and do it that way. And so, I think to wrap this up, it's like, there are still some syndicate opportunities to invest that way. But those are becoming, those are kind of on the decline a little bit, maybe they'll come back up, or they'd been on the decline. But if you're really excited about a space, or really like love an audience, or you have a lot of experience to give, you can often get exceptions made for smaller check sizes. And by that I mean like five to 10k 10k, typically being like the minimum that companies will take, but there's always exceptions. Cool.

Jon Taylor  51:48  
So last question we asked of all of our guests, and just, you know, tons of gratitude for you spending an hour with us to chatting about all these topics has been like a masterclass for us. But you're a founder, a newsletter, writer, angel investor, you offer a home to rescue dogs, a live music aficionado, who has been to over 1000 concerts, which blows my mind. One question we ask all our guests is, how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you're working on while staying happy?

Emily Kramer  52:20  
Yeah, I'm, I'm one of those annoying people who gets a lot of happiness from doing work, because I actually really liked what I do. And I think that shines through and like the passion that I have for it. And so I'm really, really lucky in the sense that I think I found a career that suits me really well. Like, I am both pretty analytical and data driven and Massie. But I also love the creative side of things, and like love design, and like love, like sitting in figma myself, so I just found something that like, really fits my skill set. So that's just like, I found my path. And so I get a lot of happiness from that. I've had periods of time where for a number of reasons, including like health reasons where I haven't really been able to work, and I get so bored. And I'm just like, not happy, like so. I mean, I hope that everyone can find some semblance of that. I know, that's, like, kind of an impossible for people. But for everyone, right. But like, that's, that's a big thing. So find the thing you love to do, you know, and if it's if you're a marketer, and you don't love it, like, you know, figure out a path out of that, and at some point, right. But I think also, I think I think people think I work all the time, because I do a bunch of things. And maybe I do work a lot. But I'm also like, pretty efficient at getting things done. And try to focus on like, you know, the, again, like, I tried to have my own big bets and focus on those things, and not every little thing. And like, I'm the first to say that I'm like, terrible at email and responding to people and things like that, because like, something's gotta give, right. And so I'm not going to be great at all the things but I tried to be great at the things that matter. And I tried to make time for the things I like doing. So like, I love like being on the water and like being on boats. And so I have like, figured out a way for that to happen in the summers of my life. And like I love going to concerts. And that's the thing like I like to do with my friends. And so I've always prioritize that. So I think the this is a long winded answer. It's weird to talk about, like, what keeps you happy? And you asked us of everyone and like, you know, I'm happy sometimes I'm not happy all the time, let me tell you, but I think the thing here is that, like, I found something that I really liked doing. And I've continued, as I've gained success in my career to try to optimize my life more and more, so that I can do the things I like doing and don't do the things I don't like doing and I think that's like, to me that's what success looks like as your career gets better is that you can choose the things you do. And so that's the path that I'm constantly on and optimizing for is what do I want to be doing and so I think everyone no matter where they are in their career can think about well what is that ideal and how can I get closer and closer to that with everything that I do?

Philippe Gamache  54:42  
Such a great answer. Emily, thank you so much for for sharing that and thank you for making the time for us today and chatting about marketing. I know you love it. It definitely shines through in your passion and yeah, well we'll share links to market one newsletter and everything you guys are cooking up there continue to be amazing at what you're doing, I'm a huge fan. And again, yeah, really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you so much for your time.

Emily Kramer  55:05  
Thanks for having me

Philippe Gamache  55:15  
folks, thank you so much for listening this far, we really appreciate you being here. Just wanted to call out two things before we go. Number one, the best way to support the show is by signing up for our newsletter on humans at Mark tech.com. We send you a quick email every Tuesday morning letting you know what episode just dropped. We include our favorite takeaways, so if you don't have time to listen to that one, no pressure we have you covered with some learnings anyway. And number two proceeds from sponsors this year to have allowed us to venture into video. We recently launched a YouTube channel where we publish full length episodes. So if you want to see our radio faces, check that out. That's it for now. Really appreciate you listening again. Thank you so much.