Audio Files

How to Scale Startups and Master Growth by Kat Wendelstadt

Kazuki Nakayashiki

Kazuki Nakayashiki

Nov 1, 2024 10:38 PM

Summary

  • Kat Wendelstadt's Background (00:08 - 00:27): The episode features Kat Wendelstadt, the CMO at Flores, an innovative company in the Gen AI film industry. She has co-founded two startups with one successful exit and has invested in over 30 startups across various sectors.

  • Daily Focus and Role (01:38 - 02:41): Kat dedicates most of her time to her role at Flores, which is in a growth phase. She also coaches early-stage companies in the UK and manages her time through focused work periods, emphasizing the importance of planning and protecting her deep work time.

  • Investment Philosophy (03:46 - 07:07): As an angel investor, Kat emphasizes the importance of understanding the investment opportunity and focusing on teams that solve meaningful problems. She prefers market scalability and believes in supporting projects with potential for high returns.

  • Marketing Strategy and Execution (10:07 - 12:23): In her marketing role, Kat formulates strategies aligned with overall business goals and is very hands-on, from writing content to building systems. She prefers joining companies where her skill set is most valuable.

  • Adapting to Market Demands (28:12 - 29:15): Kat discusses the necessity for startups to pivot based on market demands for survival. She shares an example of navigating a company’s direction based on what customers want, even if that means stepping away from the original vision.

  • The Impact of AI on Marketing (31:26 - 36:04): Kat illustrates how AI tools have transformed marketing tasks, streamlining processes like content creation and data analysis, while stressing the irreplaceable need for human creativity in content.

  • Advice for Aspiring Marketers (51:22 - 53:27): Kat encourages continuous learning through reading and building a strong professional network to stay inspired and informed. She values genuine content that provides practical solutions and frameworks for real-world applications.

Transcript

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Glass Talk. Today, we are excited to have Kat Wendelstadt with us. So, Kat, we have so many hats from CMO, investor to advisor and a mentor to many startups. And Kat is currently serving as CMO at Flores, a company leading the Gen AI revolution in film. And Kat has been CMO roles at multiple successful startups with collective valuation of over $1 billion. And she's also a 2X co-founder
and with one successful exit. And as an investor, she has invested in over 30 startups in healthcare, AI, and B2B SaaS, including notable companies such as Anthropic, Pica, Cray, and Neuralink. It's pretty impressive. And with deep expertise in content development, B2B marketing, and early-stage startups, Kat has driven significant growth across diverse markets. And today, we will dive into her journey in marketing, her approach to scaling startups, and her
insights on connecting strategy to redundant execution. Thank you for joining today. Thank you so much. Really excited to be here. Thank you. So, first of all, you wear so many hats. You are CMO at Flores and also coach at System, and also angel investor, and also content contributor at Eforge. And I really wonder, how do you spend your day? And how do you allocate your time? And what's your current focus now, these days?
My current focus is my day job as CMO at Flores. And that's what I dedicate the bulk of my time to. So, it's a normal job. So, that is what I'm focused on. And the company is going through a really exciting growth phase. So, that requires quite a lot of my time. And in terms of coaching, that is a... I work for a... I'm a coach at a growth program called System in the UK, where they take early stage, but not super early stage companies between seed and series B,
and help them essentially figure out their path to growth. And that is an activity that takes place several times a year, but it's not continuous. So, you essentially check in with your companies several times a week. It's not too intense. In terms of how I spend my days, I try and plan my week ahead. And that normally... There's always something that gets thrown out of the window, but I plan the most important things that I have to get allocated. And I'm quite
focused about my focus time. So, there's between 9 and 12 every day, essentially, is my time for deep work. When I don't take meetings and you can't... Since you can't talk to me, can't reach me. And so, that way, I make sure that my time is protected. And I also chunk out the larger activities during my day. I put them in as meetings in order to protect my time and give me the ability to focus. I see. Thank you.
Does that answer your question? Yes, that answers the question. How about the investor side? Do you... Investor side. Yes. So, there's several things that... Essentially, when you're an angel investor, you have less ability to do due diligence than a large VC fund because you have less resources, less time. So, the way I tend to do it is I have some inbound from my network and people know what I like to invest in. But I also invest with several groups and syndicates. So, essentially,
they do part of the heavy lifting for you. So, they only invest with top-tier startups. And for that, they take a fee, essentially. So, I invest through those syndicates. There's one in the Bay area that I... That's how I do some investments. And one in the UK called Ventures Together. That's how I do another part of the investment. So, they essentially come with deals and then you decide based on your preferences, where you allocate your money. I've done more than half
of my deals by myself, i.e. sourcing and betting, but that's not a scalable model, at least not. When you're investing, what part or what elements do you see? So, like the team, what scalability, so market, so technology. So, there are many elements you can see, right? But what is the most important? Sure. I think I only invest in what I can understand. So, if I can't understand it, I don't invest in it. That's number one. So, if it's extremely technical
and requires a high degree of understanding in an area that's maybe not familiar to me, I probably wouldn't invest in it. What's most exciting to me is a team that solves meaningful problems. And specifically, the earlier the company, the more important the team is. There's a very, very high correlation between the two. Because if you have an inspiring founder who's great at communicating, if you're great at communicating, to me, that's the number
one skill because it means you can articulate the problem you're solving effectively. You can hire people effectively because they want to come on the journey and you can raise funding effectively and you can communicate to your customers effectively. It's a core skill, almost at least as important as a technical skill, as a specific technical skill. And so, I look for founding teams and for founders that bring that to the table. And then I look for
go-to-market advantages because at the end of the day, you can have a great idea, but if you can't execute, you might just be stuck with a great idea. And so, it is how they think about the go-to-market and what do they have in place in order to be able to execute it. So, that is the second element that I look at and test. And then it has to be big market, but it doesn't have to be the biggest market because each market is different, right? Right
now, everybody's investing in AI. It doesn't mean that every AI company is going to be successful just because a lot of capital is going to get ploughed into that. So, differently to a VC investor that is looking for, you know, probably portfolio, the entire fund returns on one, two or three deals, I can be a little bit more flexible. So, for me, on some deals, if I find it an interesting project, an interesting founder, I'm also
happy to invest in companies that maybe don't, where I don't think they will do 100x, but maybe I'm relatively sure they're going to do a 10 or 20x. But overall, I'm looking for deals where I think, okay, this has got the potential to go really big with this. That's the idea. Interesting. Yeah, communication. So, point. So, it reminds me like Warren Buffett was like, you know, great investors are great writers. So, yeah, because they can articulate what
they are thinking. So, if you're a techist, so yeah, it reminds me. But so, how do you evaluate? So, like, you know, founders are, you know, management is a communication skill. So, PCs are, you know, great communicator or like, so this person has a great communication skill. Do you see any, like, things? So, when you are, like, communicating while meeting founders? The first, the first hurdle is the pitch. When you hear a great pitch, you just know it,
because they are able to take complex information and distill it in a way that is incredibly exciting. You get the sort of FOMO feeling. And the simpler they can make it, but not any simpler, is a sign of a great founder. The tendency very often is to try and pack everything in and show everything off, but really have to distill it down to the basics. And for an investor, you have to anticipate what they're going to say next. So, each slide has to
be sort of hitting every point that you as an investor are already thinking about. So, that you stay with them throughout that story. So, I think you can get quite a lot from that, from the pitch and then when you have the chance to interview them afterwards, when you see their founder interviews. Excuse me. Sometimes it's a case of, for example, in Anthropic, I invested, because there was a secondary share sale at a very good rate. I didn't interview the founders.
I just knew Anthropic is a very, very powerful company, building a very, very powerful technology and I had a good opportunity to get in on the deal. So, I did. Nice. And at the same time, you are really well experienced CMO, right? Marketing, growth person. And do you help startups for their marketing or strategy, like thinking about strategy sometimes, or is it hands-on usually? No, I'm very hands-on. So, I do the doing, basically. So, I come up with a strategy
that feeds off the overall business strategy and then figure out what is the role of marketing to help achieve the overall business goals, be it get new customers, more brand awareness, revenue. And so, I devise plans that align to the business strategy and then Execute them. I build the systems. I hire the people. Recently, I've been writing all of our content. I'm very hands-on where it needs to be. It's a bit like being in founder mode sometimes
when you're at an early-stage company because you have to do bits of everything. I'm very hands-on. Wow. And at the same time, I'm curious because you are currently serving as CMO at Flores, so meaning you invest in some company, but you help some companies. Do you have criteria? Oh, I want to join this company. Oh, I am okay with investing in this company. Do you? I mean, of course, I have criteria. What I find the most interesting when I think about joining
a company, I have to be excited about the problem. So in Flores' case, what they do is they take content, films in foreign languages, so let's say a Japanese film, and they translate that through the software, and out comes the same film with the same actors in English or Croatian or Swedish. So we can translate to over 40 languages. To me, that is incredibly exciting, and the mouse movements are absolutely perfect, can't tell the difference.
And so suddenly, it unlocks content at a global scale, and it's interesting to me to be part of how a company like that is being built. That's the first thing. And secondly, the company's at a very, very exciting stage, so there was some marketing in place, but it hadn't been built for scale yet. So I was able to come in and help set the strategy and help build the systems in order to then execute faster in a more focused way. And so that to me
is a very, very exciting time. And so when I join companies, I try and come at a time where I know that my skill set will be most valuable. So if I'm the first person, let's say there's a founder team, and they're looking to hire the first marketeer, that's a little bit less exciting to me because you're still going through so much iteration on who's your customer, what's your positioning, you have to design everything from scratch. I prefer, I've done
that, but I prefer to come in a little bit later when you can sort of bring that knowledge and scale it. I see. And I still remember the first time I saw the Flores video and changing from English to, I remember, Japanese or explanation and then speak like the mouse moved, changed, and that was really impressive and so surprising. And then in that sense, as a marketer or marketing person, if the technology is really great, is it easier for you to spread the product or do
your marketing job? It doesn't matter. Very good question. It's definitely easier to spread it to a generalist audience. I don't know when you saw that video, right, but maybe you saw it a long time before you discovered me because it went viral, right, that language change video. So to me, it was exciting because everybody can understand that problem of how to translate films in a better way. And the technology
is really great. But it doesn't mean that more niche problems are less interesting, but there are different ways to get your message across to different audiences. So I just spoke to somebody who has a medical device that helps detect skin care and they need to, their audience is less the general public, it's more key opinion leaders, medics, and practitioners in specific hospitals. So it's a different challenge. How do you get to them?
What message resonates with them? So you just, I think you just have to, the product has to work and has to be good and has to be solving a valuable problem. But then you just have to figure out the way to get to your target audience in the best way. So in a nutshell, I can get excited about many things, but when the product is as great as Flawless is, it's easier. I see. Thanks. Yeah. So you mentioned that, so you want to join a company as a CEO later phase,
but so yeah, what do you know more about like, you know, startup like marketing? So like, as a founder or like, you know, as a first marketer, so what kind of skills or experience do you need for like, you know, first marketer in a startup company? I think you have to be what they call sort of T-shaped. I think the first, it depends on what the first problem to solve is, but most of the time when you are the first, the brand and positioning
in the market often isn't clear. So that's often where it starts. And in order to get that clear, you have to start with a customer. So you have to know how to understand the customer and the market. That's number one, because otherwise you can't market to them. So you have to find, be able to find customers to interview them, understand where they are, understand their jobs to be done. Like what are the outcomes that these, that the prospective customers are
looking for, and then how you can help build a solution and market a solution that's relevant. So that's, I think the first skill is, it's almost being like being a journalist. And then the second skill, you have to be able to think like a business person. You have to find the shortest way, the most efficient way to get to that customer, to tell them what they want to hear. Not what you want to tell them, but what they want to hear. Because if you tell them what you want,
it has to be relevant to them. They don't really care about you, right? And you have to make it relevant. So the second skill is that you have to have, you have to understand business metrics and you have to understand the role of marketing in delivering customers and revenue to a business. So you have to be business minded. And then depending on what your market is and what you're selling to the prospective customers, you have to understand, you have to be able to think
in systems and how to build systems. So you can make it repeatable so that not every process you have to start from the beginning, but you can make it scalable and repeatable and automated. And then lastly, you have to know tools. So it can, and tools can range from frameworks on how to think about problems right through to marketing automation tools. Nice. And so, so maybe this is a dumb question, but you know, I have seen many startups,
like, you know, like especially early stage startup that, you know, the marketers try to create a like brand marketing, like based on what they have now, what they want, as we mentioned, what their customers want to hear, right? But sometimes founders is visionary. So they say, oh, we are kind of, how to say, if they are bookstore, they should say bookstore, right? But there's a founder sometimes too visionary. So, oh, we are collective knowledge.
Everything store, whatever, doesn't make sense for them. It's like, oh, it's a future we want to go. So that's the branding we want to send to people, send out to people that bought it, but you know, from customer wise or what's this company doing? They don't understand. So have you seen this miscommunication mismatch? And I, I sometimes see this and then, you know, how would you? It's a very good point. Actually pick up. There's, there's a lady that I follow. You should get her
on the podcast. She's amazing. She's called April Dunford and she is the world's expert in positioning. And she actually talks about this, this problem. So founders, they have a vision and the vision is the everything store 10 years in advance. I watched a video today about the shake of Dubai. We drove through Dubai in the sixties. There was nothing. And he was talking about what Dubai was going to be. And you think like it's completely crazy when you just have
desert, right? And so it's the same, it's the same thing. So you have to know what you say to whom. So to investors, you want to sell a big vision. We're going to build the everything store and it's going to change, um, um, um, how people buy everything. And we're going to focus it on one thing, which never changes, which is people want better products, faster and cheaper. That's the principle that I'm going to build my company on. And then you work backwards and you go, okay,
what's the easiest thing I can start with? Okay. I'm going to start with a bookstore and then I'm going to add an, I don't know what a second product was that he added, but gardening tools or pet food, or I don't know. And then you build it up from there. That's what you tell investors and maybe employees, but your first customers, you have to tell what you're able to do today. Maybe a little bit ahead of that. Um, we're, we are the world's best bookstore. We have all the
books, um, in the world and you can get, get them tomorrow because that's, what's going to sell. They're not going to care about the everything store because that's doesn't mean anything. So, so there's, there's two different messages for different audiences. And what you have to figure out is from the vision, what is the strategy to get there? You work. Q. I remember I watched a video where you show each executive�s roles, and the CEO has a KPI,
and each CXO has a KPI, and in each year, what kind of goals each executive should hit. Do you recommend that way to track the goals backwards to achieve, to get to everything? A. In terms of getting to the vision, I think you have to be flexible on how to get there because in each year, you need to achieve different things, but I do really believe in sort of, and you know, you need to be specific, you need to be extremely specific about the next six months,
possibly a year. At the moment, things change so fast, so for example, in companies I've worked in recently, we don't plan for a whole year because it's too far out. We plan loosely for six months, and then very tightly for three months, and that's kind of more work, but you get higher accuracy. In my view, you should have your vision, and then you work backwards. It should be sort of, in 10 years, where everything is still. In five years, we cover most major categories. In three
years, we dominate books and second category. Therefore, this year, we do this in December, this in November, this in October, etc., etc., so it does make sense to have that clarity in your mind. That you then need to translate into KPIs that mean that you are on the way to achieving that, so that might mean number of partnership deals in place, that might mean VC funding secured, that might mean higher ahead of logistics, and so you have to translate the vision into
meaningful things that happen every year, and what each CXO does, in my opinion, absolutely has to ladder up to what the CEO delivers. I can give you a specific example. In a previous company I worked in, the CEO had to deliver revenue, he had to deliver EBITDA, he had to deliver patient NP, a net promoter score, and I think cash flow. Marketing's role in delivering revenue was very clear, because we were the only revenue driving channel, but operations had a clear role,
because they could roll, and together with product, could roll out new products, so they had a link to revenue. In this case, net promoter score and quality sat under operations, because it was a clinic chain, so they had a very clear direction to that, and so you have to break down what each CXO can do in a meaningful way that ladders up to what the CEO has to deliver, and if that is well done, all the CEO has to do is raise money and hire people.
Is that about the doctor consultant you work with? Exactly. Yes, you got it. But sometimes I see, especially communication between marketing team and product team, kind of conflict sometimes, because product team want to increase conversion rate, but marketing team sometimes want to increase more, how to say, acquisition, user acquisition, but product team, product team, don't bring, you know, only bring right users, otherwise conversion will get low,
and so have you seen this issue, conflict, and do you have advice for this situation? I mean, of course, CEO should have clear goals, but internally, internal conflict. I think it's quite good to have those levels of tension sometimes, because I think it's healthy, because it makes me, if my job is to bring leads, it makes me focus on driving better leads, right, and maybe I should have a conversion goal also, right, maybe I should share that
with a product team, maybe the product team should share traffic, because if the website is bad, you don't get any repeat users, right, so you can share KPIs. I think healthy tension, I would call it, is a good thing. It definitely happens. I've seen it in particular, between, yeah, most often it happens between product and marketing. I have to say I'm very lucky right now, because that's not the case, but I've definitely had the experience before. I see, yeah, and when making
like North Star goal, so I think this is difficult to make it, right, so usually how long does it take to like make a North Star goal, and so if there are any like common mistakes or pitfalls that like start up, so you know, you know, long, doing long way. I think, I think what I would say the mistake is thinking about a North Star goal without mapping out what your customer journey is, because you have to, and your, what your, excuse me, what your growth model is, you have to understand
how your company grows, and you have to draw it on one page, like what are the things that are going to go in at the top SEO events, LinkedIn, whatever, where does it go to, does it go to a trial, does it go to landing page, what happens there if somebody signs up to the trial in a case of a SaaS company, what do we want them to do, do you, you know, do they, is it revenue, or is it a number of, I don't know, engaged minutes, or active users per day, or a number of songs played, if
you're, if you're Spotify, what is the thing, what is the quickest indicator that shows you that you're adding value to someone, that I would think about it like that, so you, you draw it, and then, and then you go backwards from there, and, and perhaps for Spotify, if you think about it, minutes listened per day could be the, the number one indicator to show that their product is adding value, and therefore, if their product is adding value, they can charge for it, and people are not going to,
people are going to pay for the product, because they don't want to have the ads, and they're going to tell others about it, so you get word of mouth, and they're going to convert easier through the website, so, so think about what the number, it's, it's often something more nuanced than revenue, because revenue is just a consequence, yeah, that helpful, I don't know. Yeah, makes sense, yeah, but we need to dig into metrics, analytics, and so, yeah, map out what is
like causing this problem, this, you know, KPI, yeah, like this, but at the same time, you know, things don't go as we expected in startups, right, so let's say you said the ideal customers, and some goals, but let's say you wanted to set a book, you know, because we were talking about bookstore and bookstore, but realize, oh, people are coming to our website for pet, pet food or something, so if in that, then it's global, so this happens sometimes, right,
in that, in that sense, you know, would you recommend people to that idea, or as, you know, I'm curious, I tell you why, I tell you why, because the number one job of a startup is to not die, if you keep on, if you keep on selling books, when people want pet food, and you run out of money, you're dead, so it's better to go and pivot it to that, pivot it to pet food, and you can come back, you can come back around, I've had this experience
where in a startup, it was really focused on selling a clinical product, a clinical diagnostic product, it was an online mental health evaluation tool, and they realized that that's what they wanted, because they wanted this product in doctors' hands, that's the most important way, it's going to make a difference to the patient's lives, however, they realized the tool could work as an indicator of mental health problems before they emerge in large-scale populations, like
truck drivers, flight attendants, doctors, people who are tired often and exhausted, there's a simple test you can perform through the tool, which then says whether you are, it's a sort of almost mini triage, and there was a lot of tension in the company at the time, because they didn't want to go down the wellness route, because they wanted to be a medical product, and I argued for going down where the customers were, because they were willing to pay,
and so if you have money, you can then develop the clinical studies, and that product and yeah, you can't ignore the customer essentially, and you can come back around to the original vision over time, it doesn't really matter how you get to your North Star, or to your long-term vision, but me personally, I would pivot. I see, in that case, you know, the startup should change North Star to adjust to that market
for now. Yes, yes, I think so, because you don't know what you're going to get from the market, and you don't know what essentially is going to resonate. I can't remember the name of the startup now, but they were selling um different uh um tools for designers and it turns out that that there was one product feature that kept being used which was sort of to make your own postcards that you could then um um
print and send to your friends and and they just kept getting so much traction on this particular feature and they actually just pivoted the company to do that because that the money was there and then over time they added on and started focusing on the other features but the number one driver was that one thing they discovered when they looked at the data that that was where um they could gain traction. Steve, thank you. I was curious about it about
that part but also you know I'm curious you know and this is a little bit different topic but you know nowadays you know AI is dominant and people use Chachapiti, adapting Chachapiti, Anthropic Cloud and Gemini, Google Gemini and so on. Has that has and also it's people use it for their work right as AI development advancement change how marketing team work or I'm curious about the impact of AI. Like I was in a marketing function a year and a half ago and I just started using
a bit of Chachapiti. I mean I literally can't do my job now without it, impossible, absolutely impossible. The entire, the workflows, the information summary, content writing, video editing, analytics, it's changed everything, it's changed everything. And how do you use it like I'm curious the specific use case or examples if you can share. Sure, so I use it for everything. I did customer interviews last week so I recorded them like
I would have recorded this interview. I got the transcript. So I only had the video, the transcript didn't work so I used AI to turn it into a script and then give me a summary but not only give me a summary but give me a summary and a jobs to be done framework. I got it, I did that to then put it into an Excel spreadsheet, tease out the main insights and sort of next steps. I then still had to read it of course but it basically summarized
five hours of interviews for me into a useful framework. We have a custom GPTs to write content in the different voices of different people which again all needs to be checked by human but we use it for spell checking. We use tools like OpenAI, not OpenAI, OpusClip, excuse me, to cut down video content and add voiceover, not voiceover, to add subtitles on it. God, what else? So a lot of it is around content creation essentially. Canva, we use the AI
function in Canva. I use the AI function on research. I use any market research, reading of large documents, summarizing, organizing information. That's probably my main use cases. I've used it also for Excel. So I just talk to it and say put this please into rows and columns and write these formulas and explain this formula or like I've used just a voice interface to go like what is this sort of if error function again and what have I done wrong,
why is it not working, make it work. So it's done pivot tables for me. I mean it's quite remarkable. And I'm not a power user. I feel like I'm a complete beginner when it comes to it. I'm sure there's much much better but yeah. But is that a job previously someone's doing, I think. Is that a junior content people or whose job is that AI is replacing with? It's a content person. I mean, I don't think AI is good enough
to replace a content person. It has just changed how a content person works because you can tell when content is made by an AI even if you train it on your own voice. It just always cranks out the same format, right? Hey, interesting news, this here's what I learned. One, two, three, you know. You can just see this tick, tick, tick with it with all the emoticons and then all the hashtag. What do you think? You know,
it's always the same format. So you don't want to sound like that. So somebody who's in charge of content can take that and make it better, make it more human. But where it's invaluable is building like we've built an automation. So it goes and scrapes content from the internet, from Feedly, helps us divide it into topics and into content pillars and then generate content ideas. If you're in a rush, for example, or summarizing large parts.
So it hasn't really replaced the job and I think it's just made the job of the content markets are more important because they have to add the human element. I give you an example. I worked with a copywriter the other day and he had a really great, so he writes great copy, right? And so, and you should think he could be getting replaced, right? Because an AI can just write a blog post. But his task was to write a blog post
but his tagline is, which he had on his LinkedIn and I thought it was brilliant, was wordy words and thoughty thoughts. And so as a copywriter, it's kind of funny, it made me laugh, it showed me his personality and he has to think thoughty thoughts to write wordy words. An AI can't do that. It can't have that sensibility, that sense of humor. So, not yet. I see, but I like your tagline on your website. So it's saying,
working with the world's best companies before they are the world's best companies. Well, yeah, I like it. Thank you. So it's not AI made, right? So, no, it was made by that. Thank you. He's very good. I can give you his name. Yeah, thank you. Just curious, do you have any companies you've been watching in terms of marketing? So, for example, maybe many companies list Nike as a great marketing company, but do you have any companies you've been keeping watching or get inspired?
All the opposite, we shouldn't follow this company. Politics or something. You know, the first thing that just came to my mind just now was Ikea. I think they've got really good marketing. Like they've always got the Swedish, you know, they had a radio ad this morning. I heard it was a Swede talking Swedish and they made something out of the meatballs. You know, people go to Ikea and I'll just have meatballs.
That's kind of a crazy thing, right? They love eating Swedish meatballs. And it's really solid and I kind of always see it. Who else has got good? As long as it's humorous and slightly controversial, I love it. So the other thing that comes to my mind is a really old one, but I think it's brilliant. It was an old Avis ad and they said, it just said, when you're number two, you always try harder because Hertz was the first car rental company, you know?
So yeah, I think Ikea comes to my mind. I mean, Donald Trump, he's a love him or hate him, but he's got a pretty good he is unbelievable, unbelievable how he is able to navigate. He's like Teflon. He's everywhere. Nothing seems to be able to stop him. And that is quite remarkable in terms of the, it's quite shocking also. But somebody is doing something right for him, right? So what I'm interested in is personality branding, like how founders are being used
to do marketing. So Mark Zuckerberg, I've seen more about Mark Zuckerberg than about Meta, for example. Sorry, you were saying something. Yeah, my favorite marketing banner is like, I forgot which company, but you know, like they paint using windows paint and then, oh, we need design. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's a great. It's usually stuff that's really simple, right? Like I quite like the HSBC. When you fly away, they always have the jet in London, they have the jetways that lead to the
airplane. And they always used to have � and now it�s a bit less funny � but they always used to ask you interesting questions as you were walking to the plane. You always reflect on something. There was always a message about connecting the world. I always saw that. I still see that. And I love it when companies make fun of other companies, basically. I saw EasyJet making fun of Ryanair, which had two airlines here. I think that�s always quite funny.
Yes. And so, in the early-stage startup, what channel? Of course, it depends on the company�s product service, but what channels do you recommend to use as a marketing channel? For example, SEO, Twitter, social media, YouTube, or offline marketing. There are many marketing mixlines. There�s a lot. You can�t really generalize. I think you have to figure out where you can get the most distribution in the quickest way. We did something in Dr. Consulta, a Brazilian
healthcare company, very counterintuitive. We had clinics. And you would think, okay, basically, posting on social media and getting PR would be the best way to grow. But you know that you can only improve your channels, and you can only spend so much money. Even if I bid for all the keywords, I�m still not going to get that much more traffic. There�s a limit. So, we actually went to outdoor media. We just plastered the entire town in relevant locations
with all the media, bus shelters, buses, the underground, televisions in the underground, the seats in the underground. I mean, you couldn�t get away from it. And that was quite cheap, actually, because it was really impactful. And the advertising in this was in Brazil. Yeah, we got a good deal on those channels and massive awareness. But for example, for Flawless, it wouldn�t really make sense. For this company I work for
now, a digital company, out of home, it makes no sense for them. Here, it�s much more about showing the output of what you�re doing and showing how your runway is doing or mid-journey, they�re showing the output of their technology. So, you have to be on digital channels in this case. I think PR is the number one. If you need one, if I have to reduce it to one, PR is the most effective. Sorry, this is a little bit off topic, but I was always wondering,
from your LinkedIn and your profile career, and I always wonder, have you thought about becoming a CEO? Because it seems like you are a co-founder, you have done a marketing job and also chief gross officer and co-founder, CEO, but have you thought about becoming a CEO in your career? I�ve thought about it, but I don�t want to. I don�t want to do that job. Because I think it�s very lonely. I think it�s very lonely because you have nowhere to hide
and everything hangs on your performance. The buck always stops with you. I�m a mother, I have three young children, and being a CMO is quite difficult, but a CEO is another level of difficult and another level of responsibility. Because at the end, you�re responsible for all the people, all their jobs, their livelihoods. It�s you. Maybe later. Yeah, maybe later in the future. At the same time, nowadays, the new concept, the fractional
CXO, the new concept came up and some company adapted, but I�ve never had a fractional CEO. What�s your thoughts on fractional position or role? I think especially for marketing, it�s a really great thing because CMOs have the lowest average tenure of any CX role. CMOs last usually 18 months, whereas a chief operations officer or CFO or chief people officer, they last longer. Do you know why? I know why, or I have my theory why this is. Because as a marketeer, you interpret,
part of your job is interpreting the founder�s vision to the audience. That is difficult for a founder who has a vision, because it�s their baby. It�s their idea, their everything. You have to take that idea very carefully, deliver it to somewhere. Plus, you can�t measure everything in marketing. You can measure a lot of things, but you can�t always get to a clear why. Sometimes, things take longer and the patient runs out, or sometimes you have tried a wrong channel
because you have to try things to see whether they work. It�s very easy for marketing to be the first on the chopping block because it seems like the function that most people have an opinion about. Whereas, if you�re the CTO, it�s harder to know the code and how good is the code. Whereas, I didn�t like the advertising campaign. It�s easier. Everybody can have an opinion. I think that�s part of the reason. What do I think about fractional? I think
having the right person in place is a really good thing, because they come in, they have done this before. They�re just repeating a set of, they have a particular approach. They come in, they solve a particular problem, and then leave again ready for the next person. Very often, companies go through stages. It�s highly unusual that Mark Zuckerberg is still, for example, the CEO of Meta. Very often, there�s a certain life cycle to a CXO,
because different skills are required at different stages. For all this where I work now, and that�s a multi-billion company, maybe there�s a different profile needed for different roles. In the companies, it�s quite normal. The concept of fractional reduces the risk on both sides. They come in, do the job, and then leave, which is still 18 months, 12 months. It�s a relatively long time, but you get expert help without having a downside risk on needing to
get rid of an employee when it doesn�t work out, and the associated costs with that. I see. I was curious, having fractional CXO versus freelancers or contractors, but do the CXO job. Is that the same or different? I�m curious about it. I think it�s just a mindset question. It�s probably contractually the same thing. They�re freelancers or consultants. It�s the same. I think if you say you�re a fractional,
you�re committed to a phase, and you�re committed to a project. If you�re a freelancer, I think it�s a bit more noncommittal. You could also say, you�re an employee that leaves every 18 months. It�s the same as a fractional person, if you will, but it�s different because your mindset is different about it. I think that�s how I would answer it. It�s the same, but people think about it in a different way. I see. Thank you. Also, this is a stupid question,
but when you are hiring marketers, what kind of skills, what things do you see in the candidate? For example, there�s a marketing interview. For example, there�s a scenario. This company, X, wants to increase the conversion rate. If you were a marketer at this company, how would you do it? Or you just want to interview a marketing candidate and see their background, experience, skills. What is a typical marketing interview flow, and what elements do
you see in candidates? This is a tough question. I think the first thing, you have to get a sense of the culture fit. Are they nice people? You want to know whether someone is a high performer, but you also want to know, are they nice? You don�t want any backstabbers or assholes. An asshole can destroy the whole team. You�ve got to filter for that, for the no assholes. I�m interested in people�s experience, but I�m more interested in their ability to learn
and think through problems. Especially, I did a post this week about hustle. You got to hustle when you work for it. How to Scale Startups and Master Growth � Kat Wendelstadt Since you tapped on advice, our audiences are aspiring product managers, marketers, and content researchers. Do you have any advice to them to do their job better, to become a better marketer, or to do their job better? Sorry, is there any question?
Oh, it can be a life advice as well. Yeah, I think my mind is going sort of more life advice. Like, what's the best thing to do? It's like, you have to read. Like, I incessantly read and I'm really sad because I don't read any. I don't read fiction. I only read like marketing blogs. It's all I read. I love it. I can't stop myself. I just read. I don't know, read four or five a day, and it just seems to be constantly,
like I'm just obsessed with it. So you have to read and dominate your field of knowledge, number one. And number two is, I think my second advice is network. You have to network with people. You have to get out of the building and meet people and say yes, and go to an event and go up to people and get over your shadow and ring people up and send them a message and nurture your network, because that is something technology can't replace.
It is a source of knowledge. It's a source of work. It's a source of inspiration. You have to work on your network. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And by the way, do you have any favorite books? You said, you know, you read a lot of marketing books. What's your best or best top five or, you know, books? I really like Traction. It's a little bit older now. I forget the name. That was a really good book. But I follow more people. So not necessarily. The second book, probably the best book on
management ever. It's called High Output Management by Andy Grove, who was the CEO of Intel. Amazing. And then I follow three people who I think have the best content on marketing and the internet. One is Emily Kramer, who is from Marketing One. The second one is Elena Werner, and the third is Carl Poglia. And those three are just, just absolutely brilliant. Yeah, I will. Yeah. I will look into the recording again so that I can capture the name.
Oh, you can send me an email. I'll write it down for you. But I'm curious. Sorry to dig in, but, you know, what aspect do you think or makes you think, oh, they are legend or they are genius? Because they constantly add value. Like their content is easy to read. It's not, it's just genuine value add. I pay for those three. I pay them money every month because it's, every time, every month, I pay them money. And I'm like, oh, I'm so lucky.
Because it's, every time it seems to solve a problem that I have, there's frameworks in it, I can reuse. I don't have to start everything from scratch. It talks relevantly. And it, like, I feel that content keeps me really at the forefront of where the conversation is. So it's an inspiration for me. I share it with the team. I use it to educate my management or other people in the company. So it's, it's relevant and useful.
It's practical. Practical in the natural practical. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for sharing. And so, and this is the last question. So we came through. And so since Grasp is a platform where people share what they are reading and learning as a digital legacy, we want to ask you what legacy or impact do you want to leave behind for future generations? Sure. I love that question. So the way I think about it, I think about what is the most, on the Maslow's pyramid of needs,
what are the things that are right at the bottom that, you know, if we build them up, if we look after them, the rest can sort of flourish. And so number one is health. So I've, the second is environment, education, and then in particular, looking after women. And so what I hope to do in particular with the investment work is that if that's successful, that's anything I don't need at the end of my life goes towards causes that support those
organizations that look after the environment, women or healthcare companies, healthcare organizations. So I've started with one company that I'm one organization I'm extremely passionate about. They've just won the, they've won the golden prize for the environment and the sort of Nobel prize equivalent for the environment for protecting indigenous lands in the Ecuadorian rainforest. And with them, I've built a couple of schools where the old, let's say like the
traditional knowledge gets preserved and provides education support for local women and children. So that's something that sort of combines quite a lot of those things I feel passionate about. Yeah, it's really beautiful. And thank you for sharing all the, you know, insight and sharing your learning and knowledge with us today. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed the conversations. Really, really pleased to be on here. Great questions. Thank you. Thank you.

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How to Scale Startups and Master Growth by Kat Wendelstadt

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