Episode 7
The AI-Native CMO: Rewiring Marketing For Warp Speed
In this episode of The Get, host Erica Seidel explores how AI-native marketing orgs are shaping up with guest Kady Srinivasan. Kady is CMO of You.com, the enterprise AI productivity platform that powers agentic workflows that deliver measurable business results. She previously held top marketing leadership roles at Lightspeed Commerce, Klaviyo, and Dropbox. She has been part of three IPOs. From her vantage point, running marketing in an AI-native environment, Kady shares her experiences, observations, and hypotheses for how the marketing org is changing – and will change – to enable using AI at warp speed.
You'll hear about:
- How GTM leadership in an AI-native company is different from GTM leadership in a typical SaaS company
- The org structures that enable using AI at warp speed
- How the new marketing org has both humans and agents on the marketing team
- The rise of new roles on the marketing team, like prompt marketers and influence engineers, and AI agent builders
- Navigating the delicate CMO balance of "feeling you need to know it all" versus respecting your CEO's intuition
- Sussing out, when talking to candidates, whether a company was successful BECAUSE of a candidate's contributions versus DESPITE the candidate's contributions
- How to hire for "common sense"
Memorable Quotes:
- "In an AI-native company, at least the one that I'm at, we have a lot to do to educate the market about the potential solutions that they can unlock with a technology or a platform like ours. So I came up with this idea… of a forward-deployed marketer, which is similar to a forward-deployed engineer, where you're basically coming up with use cases, coming up with solutions, coming up with things that you can tell people, look, this is the art of the possible…I think that's very different from SaaS, in that SaaS is a defined set of features and platform things that you can take to market."
- "It used to be that we used to have these silos - product, marketing, demand, gen, and brand. Those were the big pillars in marketing. What I've found is that with AI, you don't actually need those silos anymore. What you need instead is people who are very outcome-focused. So I have a team that's only focused on inbound. I have a team that's focused on outbound. I have a team that's focused on storytelling, brand comms, that kind of stuff. The reason I've turned it that way is in this new world, every marketer needs to become like a T-shaped marketer, which is they have a spike, but they scaffold themselves with all the other functions, and that's easy to do because of agents, because you have AI."
00:00 Introduction to The Get Podcast
00:20 Meet Kady Srinivasan: CMO of You.com
00:43 The Unique Role of a CMO in an AI Native Company
02:36 Kady's Career Insights and Advice
04:22 Organizational Structure and AI Impact
12:03 Hiring the Right Marketers for the Future
25:57 Challenges and Strategies in Modern Marketing
34:56 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season’s theme is how SaaS marketing organizations are changing — in both seismic and subtle ways.
The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.
If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to The Get, the podcast that's all about recruiting
Speaker:and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:This season we're looking at how SaaS marketing organizations are changing
Speaker:in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:My guest today is someone who is so accomplished and so insightful.
Speaker:I'm thrilled to have her on the show.
Speaker:Kady Srinivasan joins us today.
Speaker:She's currently CMO of the AI darling You.com, and previously
Speaker:has led marketing for Lightspeed Commerce, Klaviyo, and Dropbox.
Speaker:She has three IPOs under her belt and she still finds the time to
Speaker:share great insights on LinkedIn that I pay a lot of attention to.
Speaker:I think many of our listeners should as well.
Speaker:I'm excited to hear her take on many things.
Speaker:How the CMO role in an AI native company is distinct?
Speaker:What roles will be critical in AI forward organizations?
Speaker:What kinds of marketers will thrive in the coming months and years?
Speaker:And, of course, we'll talk about how she hires and what advice
Speaker:she has for her former self.
Speaker:Kady, welcome to the show.
Speaker:Thank you so much.
Speaker:I've been such a big follower of your podcast and your newsletters
Speaker:for a long time, Erica, I'm glad we could make this happen,
Speaker:Me too.
Speaker:I am thrilled that we can chat because I think we are
Speaker:mutual fan girls of each other.
Speaker:[ laughing]
Speaker:So I know you do post a lot on LinkedIn, but I'm wondering if you could amplify
Speaker:your introduction and share a fun fact that would never appear on LinkedIn?
Speaker:[Kady chuckles]
Speaker:Yeah, and that's such a meta question, right?
Speaker:Once I say this, it's gonna appear on LinkedIn.
Speaker:[Laughter] There are quite a few hidden secrets, but one of the things that I
Speaker:don't think people know about me, I think people know that I'm a former engineer,
Speaker:so I'm actually approach a lot of things very logically, and that kind of stuff,
Speaker:very analytically, yada, yada, yada.
Speaker:My secret weakness is for British regency romances that were written in the 1920s.
Speaker:They're just absolutely all emotion and weepy damsels in distress, and these
Speaker:strong men who come and save the day.
Speaker:[Laughter]
Speaker:That's so funny.
Speaker:Oh my goodness.
Speaker:Yeah, you and me both.
Speaker:It's funny because I've always worked in tech, and so there's more men than
Speaker:women, I would say, and I have a weakness for call it "chick lit", like books that
Speaker:you read on the beach, and they're pink and purple and stuff, so [laughing] you
Speaker:have a more historical bent with yours.
Speaker:I bet any psychologist listening to this will have a field day with the both of us.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:[laughter]
Speaker:So that's, that's great.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So you heard it here.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:Well, let's dive in.
Speaker:I have so many questions for you.
Speaker:There's so much to cover.
Speaker:Let's just start with if you could go back and erase one instinct or
Speaker:one blind spot that you had before becoming a CMO, what would it be?
Speaker:I gave this advice recently to a CMO that I'm advising, and I suddenly
Speaker:realized shit, like that's what I should have done long back, and that
Speaker:is when I came into a CMO job, I automatically assumed that I knew best
Speaker:in terms of what needed to be done.
Speaker:And I would just go in and say, this is how we should do it.
Speaker:This is what you hired me for as CEO, and I'm gonna go do it this way.
Speaker:I just never had the balance of listening to the CEO.
Speaker:You should actually be eighty-twenty.
Speaker:You shouldn't be a hundred-zero, you should be eighty-twenty.
Speaker:You should be like, yeah, you should have your own opinions.
Speaker:You should be going in there saying, this is how I see the world and
Speaker:I've done this before, X, Y, and Z.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, the CEO has an intuition about the business and they
Speaker:have built this business and you haven't.
Speaker:And so for me, it was like I had dismissed that part of it almost,
Speaker:and that was a big mistake that I don't think I'll ever repeat again.
Speaker:I really like that.
Speaker:I have a framework that I put together once, you might've seen it.
Speaker:And it's kinda like VP Marketing versus CMO and what's the difference.
Speaker:And one of the dimensions is VP level, the risk is I think I need to know
Speaker:it all, and then the CMO level is, I know I don't know it all, and that's
Speaker:okay and I could ask good questions.
Speaker:I put it in some pithy way, but that's exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:I think it's also taking that one step further and saying, even if
Speaker:I know it, I've done it, it still behooves me to listen to what my CEO
Speaker:has to say, or my board has to say because they probably have something
Speaker:that I don't fully understand and figure out, disagree and commit to
Speaker:in some situations type of a thing.
Speaker:So finding that balance.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:Thank you for sharing.
Speaker:For context, because we're talking about orgs and SaaS marketing
Speaker:orgs and how they're changing.
Speaker:Can you paint a picture of your organization today?
Speaker:Like how many people, major functions, structure.
Speaker:I'm very curious to see how it's different now than maybe
Speaker:how you've done it in the past.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So we're just talking about humans.
Speaker:Not agents, like forty-plus agents.
Speaker:I don't use forty-plus agents.
Speaker:Right now, my marketing org is pretty small.
Speaker:I went from, in Lightspeed, I had 180 people.
Speaker:We can talk about that now.
Speaker:It's about fifteen people call it, and I've organized it very differently.
Speaker:It used to be that we used to have these silos - product,
Speaker:marketing, demand, gen, and brand.
Speaker:Those were the big pillars in marketing.
Speaker:What I've found is with AI you don't actually need those silos anymore.
Speaker:What you need instead is people who are very outcome focused.
Speaker:So I have a team that's only focused on inbound.
Speaker:I have a team that's focused on outbound.
Speaker:I have a team that's focused on storytelling, brand
Speaker:comms, that kind of stuff.
Speaker:The reason I've turned it that way is in this new world, every marketer needs
Speaker:to become like a T-shaped marketer, which is they have a spike, but they
Speaker:scaffold themselves with all the other functions, and that's easy to do
Speaker:because of agents, because you have AI.
Speaker:And by doing that, what happens is I'm creating these almost like
Speaker:little mini CMOs across the map who own very specific outcomes.
Speaker:Then it makes the business run faster.
Speaker:There's more velocity because it's all contained in one unit.
Speaker:So the inbound team, for instance, they have control over what happens
Speaker:on the website, what happens in the funnel when we bring leads
Speaker:in and how that gets routed.
Speaker:They have control over parts of the content.
Speaker:They have control over parts of the storytelling.
Speaker:So it's a very contained set of activities that can drive that inbound outcome.
Speaker:The big difference is, in the past, in my previous, in Lightspeed and Klaviyo,
Speaker:I would be the one orchestrating across all the different silos, like the three
Speaker:different silos and stitching it all together to drive certain outcomes.
Speaker:Here, these mini teams are driving the outcomes, and my orchestration
Speaker:then becomes storytelling, narrative, keeping things consistent from a
Speaker:brand perspective, ensuring that they're not cannibalizing each other.
Speaker:So it's a different flavor of orchestration.
Speaker:Yeah, it's a different flavor.
Speaker:Now, you talk about these people being mini CMOs, so it seems like you're a
Speaker:mini CMO for a go-to-market function.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:So somebody might be really strong and inbound, but less strong and outbound.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:And that segues into how we find the people.
Speaker:But before we go there, that's exactly it.
Speaker:You are essentially taking the company, looking at where does the growth come
Speaker:from, what kind of go-to-market motions are driving this growth, and then
Speaker:constructing the team around those go-to-market motions to amplify that.
Speaker:So it could be inbound, outbound, partner, self-serve, whatever that is.
Speaker:The work of the CMO then becomes this idea of connecting all those different
Speaker:go-to-market motions together so that you have this mosaic of things that
Speaker:you are doing to tackle the market.
Speaker:And the reason why I think that's important now is the customer journey
Speaker:has become way more unpredictable.
Speaker:It's become more fragmented, more scattered, more unpredictable.
Speaker:In the past, you used to be able to say, I'm going to just drive 60% of my revenue
Speaker:from inbound because I know people just come to my website and or request a demo.
Speaker:Now, you can't really do that.
Speaker:You can't depend on people coming to your website at all, first of all.
Speaker:Then secondly, you have no idea if I host an event, is that, are people
Speaker:going to show up to the event and then I nurture them and that becomes an inbound?
Speaker:Or is it actually a prospecting kind of an event?
Speaker:I bring people so it just because it's so messy, I think this is the right
Speaker:way to think about going forward, is construct your go-to-market motions,
Speaker:construct the teams that go figure out the success metrics in each of those.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Let me just devil's advocate here, though.
Speaker:So that's one way of doing it.
Speaker:I mean it, but it seems like if you are a mini CMO of one of these
Speaker:go-to-market motions, then you might say, oh, I really wanna go across
Speaker:the, I've done a lot of inbound.
Speaker:I wanna do outbound next, or I wanna done a lot of PLG self-serve stuff.
Speaker:I wanna do this instead.
Speaker:So are you thinking of rotating people throughout the other areas as well?
Speaker:Because there's all these different ways to organize.
Speaker:It used to be my marketing channel.
Speaker:And, of course, now this is like an advancement and then it
Speaker:could be by product and stuff.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Any thoughts on that?
Speaker:Yeah, it's a very good question.
Speaker:I'd honestly admit I haven't thought that far ahead in terms of what
Speaker:does a career evolution look like?
Speaker:And it's a very, very good question.
Speaker:What does a marketer, like, how do you actually become
Speaker:a CMO over a period of time?
Speaker:Previously in the past you used to take the demand gen route,
Speaker:whatever, and then you ladder up.
Speaker:Here in this case, it's a different.
Speaker:I do think from what I'm seeing, there are certain common characteristics of people
Speaker:who are successful in driving the outcomes for each of those go-to-market motions,
Speaker:and those are actually translatable.
Speaker:So maybe there is a world in which you rotate people, like you said.
Speaker:Or maybe some of these things start to come together, like outbound and
Speaker:partner, they start to merge together.
Speaker:You really have to be able to understand how a partner
Speaker:amplifies your outbound efforts.
Speaker:So maybe there's a world in which you start to blend this and the
Speaker:mini CMO becomes a macro CMO in some respects, and then they step into it.
Speaker:That could be one possibility.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:This is great.
Speaker:Looking back, how would you have organized your team differently at,
Speaker:say, Klaviyo or Lightspeed, knowing what you know now, given AI, given
Speaker:other macroeconomic forces in play with now, would you have applied this
Speaker:kind of go-to-market specific clumping?
Speaker:I think I might have been able to do some of it, but not all
Speaker:of it because back then, I mean, AI has advanced so much, right?
Speaker:I don't think we had this level of power at our hands to be
Speaker:able to do a lot of things.
Speaker:Let me give an example.
Speaker:Today, me, single-handedly, I can just create different
Speaker:variations of my homepage.
Speaker:ChatGPT, or we prefer You.com, using one of the LLMs plus a tool like Gamma.
Speaker:I can literally take those tools, create the right prompts around all of it,
Speaker:come up with five different variations of my homepage in under thirty minutes.
Speaker:That means that my entire conversion rate optimization team that I
Speaker:had, which was like twenty people, that just got collapsed into one.
Speaker:Could that have been possible two years ago?
Speaker:I don't think so.
Speaker:Could we have become much more efficient?
Speaker:I think I would've.
Speaker:So if I had gone back in time, I probably would've tried to
Speaker:understand why do we need humans to do many of these things that you
Speaker:can do with technology and with AI?
Speaker:And then how do we start collapsing the roles so that one person can
Speaker:do multiple different things?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I was gonna ask you about an organizational bet that has paid
Speaker:off or one that didn't pay off.
Speaker:I think you've talked a little bit about this, but any other insight you wanna
Speaker:share about like, oh, wow, I was really thinking hard about this organizational
Speaker:choice and kind of how it went 'cause I know you think about this a lot.
Speaker:One that has definitely paid off is bringing all of the storytelling
Speaker:components into one piece of it.
Speaker:That helps drive a lot more clarity to what is a narrative, what is the
Speaker:category we wanna build, what is the value proposition, how that flows
Speaker:into customer stories, et cetera.
Speaker:So there's a lot of that stuff happening.
Speaker:The other organizational bet that has paid off I'll say is I have
Speaker:been very intentional about hiring the right kind of marketers.
Speaker:That's future proofing my AI startup and that has definitely paid off big time.
Speaker:And we can go into what that means and what for what kind of roles
Speaker:and all that stuff, if you want.
Speaker:Yeah, let's jump to that.
Speaker:I would love to hear.
Speaker:What does somebody need to know when they're interviewing
Speaker:for a role in their team?
Speaker:How do you think about hiring?
Speaker:This is my happy place.
Speaker:[They laugh] Yeah.
Speaker:And you do such a good job.
Speaker:So the general idea I came up with was this thing called multi-threaded marketer.
Speaker:To me what that means is a person who can thread multiple types of marketing
Speaker:into one role and be conversant enough to bring it all together in
Speaker:a systems thinking approach to be able to go do some specific things.
Speaker:It's not very different from you would call that a P&G executive round?
Speaker:Brand manager?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, you're right.
Speaker:It is somewhat of a brand manager.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:So I look for people who can have that range of being able to think
Speaker:across a lot of different things, have clarity of thought, be able to
Speaker:weave all of those things together.
Speaker:Plus, maybe the difference between a PNG brand manager and this is
Speaker:that you have to be extremely conversant with technology and AI
Speaker:and be able to use it at warp speed.
Speaker:That's the big thing.
Speaker:So when I hire those people, I look for range.
Speaker:I look for curiosity and learning, and I look for people who are
Speaker:just taking an insane level of ownership of what they have to do.
Speaker:I think that learning agility is very important because the number of
Speaker:tools that you have to think about and manage is insane, off the charts.
Speaker:So that's the general kind of people that I'm looking for.
Speaker:Now, then what I've done is I've hired a specific role called Prompt
Speaker:Marketer who my hypothesis is for the future, you are going to obviously need
Speaker:to run not only humans, but agents.
Speaker:When you ask the question, what does my org look like, what I didn't
Speaker:talk about is the agents that we are using to do a bunch of things.
Speaker:What my hypothesis is there are a set of people who will be completely
Speaker:dedicated to just building agents that automate a bunch of workflows or
Speaker:jobs to be done in the organization, in the marketing organization.
Speaker:So that has paid off.
Speaker:Basically, we've created a couple of different things that in
Speaker:the past would've been humans doing things with SaaS products.
Speaker:Now it's like an agent that does everything.
Speaker:The third one, which I'm in the process of let's call it hiring or looking at,
Speaker:is this idea of an influence engineer.
Speaker:And why that's important is if you look at GEO - Generative Engine Optimization,
Speaker:it's the AI SEO - what's important in from a GEO perspective is it's not just the
Speaker:content you create and the kind of content you create, but it's also how you show
Speaker:up in social media, particularly things like LinkedIn, and Reddit, of all things.
Speaker:A lot of LLMs give you more visibility if you show up in LinkedIn.
Speaker:So there's a strong case to be made to go there, to be present as a company
Speaker:on those channels and to be able to figure out scalable ways of responding,
Speaker:commenting tagging people, putting in the right kind of posts, seeding
Speaker:the right kind of conversations.
Speaker:Is that something that can be done with technology over a period of time?
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:I'm sure there'll be, there are agents already that address that,
Speaker:but for now, I want to be able to hire a human that can do that because
Speaker:there's a judgment component to it.
Speaker:That brings me back to another point, which is I do look for people
Speaker:with some kind of common sense.
Speaker:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker:In this world of AI slop, it's so important to find people who have a
Speaker:little bit of that street smartness or common sense or practical knowledge
Speaker:about how things work and not this weird, theoretical sort of ChatGPT
Speaker:led answer type of world we live in.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So much to follow up on here.
Speaker:This is awesome.
Speaker:I'm taking notes.
Speaker:So I love how you think about this is like hypothesis for the future.
Speaker:And you talk about a prompt marketer.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Do you think these would be people who used to be MarTech, marketing ops people?
Speaker:Obviously, we're talking about the go-to-market engineer that's coming
Speaker:up, but if you look forward, how many of these people, percentage-wise,
Speaker:do you think will be people who came from marketing ops, rev ops, MarTech?
Speaker:I don't think it's necessarily constrained to that, to be honest.
Speaker:If I look at, basically, the two people that I've hired, one's
Speaker:a data science engineer who's very interested in marketing.
Speaker:One's a person who spent a lot of time just doing data analytics kind of stuff.
Speaker:Maybe that just happened to be the case that I surround myself with data
Speaker:nerds, but I think anybody can do this.
Speaker:That's the thing is with AI - Okay, let me just pontificate for
Speaker:a second if you don't mind.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I think AI is the great equalizer.
Speaker:If you have the hustle and the thirst for knowledge and the thirst for learning,
Speaker:and you're mentally agile, you're able to push yourself, anybody can do anything.
Speaker:There is so much access to tools and information.
Speaker:Even if you are a, let's call it, communications major that
Speaker:just graduated from college.
Speaker:You can be the person that I would hire as a prompt marketer.
Speaker:All you need is you need to be able to think critically about a business problem.
Speaker:You need to have some level of common sense, business judgment.
Speaker:You need to be able to work freaking hard to learn from these loops and
Speaker:show the hustle and all that stuff.
Speaker:And then everything else you can pick up along the way.
Speaker:So to some extent, I don't think that it matters.
Speaker:I do think if you have the data part of it, a computer science part of
Speaker:it, or the little bit of familiarity with machine learning and LLMs, you
Speaker:have a bit of an edge in terms of the how to reduce hallucinations, how
Speaker:to create the right kind of context engineering, how to build the right
Speaker:kind of pipelines, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:But I've seen people who have come out of, like, economics majors who
Speaker:are now killing it building agents.
Speaker:So I don't think it matters.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:I would imagine it's the same answer when you think about the influence engineer.
Speaker:'Cause when you're talking about that, I'm thinking like, oh, okay,
Speaker:a more modern PR kind of person.
Speaker:Is your take the same that somebody you know could come to that role, whether
Speaker:they have a PR background or not?
Speaker:Is it even better if they don't have the legacy PR background?
Speaker:I think a PR background definitely helps.
Speaker:A great PR person, and I have one at my company, Julia, she automatically thinks
Speaker:about how a message can just scale and become a big, resonant message across
Speaker:a lot of different kind of people.
Speaker:I think that skill is very useful.
Speaker:That meta skill of thinking about how a story can land and resonate
Speaker:with a lot of people is very useful.
Speaker:I'd say the second thing is probably this idea that you really want to be
Speaker:able to thrive in managing communities or understanding communities and be energized
Speaker:by hearing what people have to say.
Speaker:I have a guy on my team who loves it.
Speaker:That's his job.
Speaker:He's on communities all day long, just gathering feedback, talking to people.
Speaker:I am the biggest introvert on the planet, and I would hate that job.
Speaker:[laughter] Man, [laughing] after two seconds I'd be like, keep
Speaker:me away from people, please.
Speaker:Tell me more about how you hire.
Speaker:'Cause obviously you're looking at things that are a little bit more
Speaker:soft, soft, but strategic, common sense, hyper curious, hyper learn-y,
Speaker:hyper ownership, and how do you tell?
Speaker:And also how do you even decide who to interview if the first screen is not
Speaker:necessarily like a background in this?
Speaker:Yeah, great question.
Speaker:How do you tell who to interview?
Speaker:That's a bit of a interesting question.
Speaker:I have not fully figured that out, but I can add address the second
Speaker:part of it, which is once I get a chance to talk to people I'll tell
Speaker:you the biggest characteristic is how interested they are in the business
Speaker:and how many questions they ask.
Speaker:To me, that is just such a big indicator of someone who really understands or who
Speaker:is showing ownership, who can understand what we are trying to do and translate it.
Speaker:What I've seen, the people that I have seen are the ones that are like
Speaker:really good, are the ones who not only ask the right kind of questions, but
Speaker:also then say, what if you did this?
Speaker:And what if you did this?
Speaker:Have you tried this thing?
Speaker:To some extent it doesn't, they don't think about the idea of hierarchy.
Speaker:They challenge anything and everything.
Speaker:It's all about ideas.
Speaker:It's all about thought.
Speaker:So it's like, why does your website have this and why doesn't this copy say this?
Speaker:Have you tried this particular thing?
Speaker:And this doesn't seem to be appealing to the developer community.
Speaker:Why haven't you tried this?
Speaker:I love that kind of shit.
Speaker:That's exactly the sort of learning agility that shows me that one, they care,
Speaker:and then secondly, they're thinking so broadly that they're thinking outside of
Speaker:that little thing that they came through.
Speaker:I really like that.
Speaker:And how do you structure an interview to get to that?
Speaker:Because I've seen different people do it in different ways sometimes.
Speaker:Like-
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:-I recruited for a role and it was a role reporting to a CMO, and the
Speaker:CMO said, I'm just gonna have, first conversation is people just ask me
Speaker:questions and I respond, and then I have a conversation the next day
Speaker:and/or the two days later, whatever.
Speaker:And then I'll ask some questions, but I learn a lot from the questions they ask.
Speaker:Do you do something similar?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Usually I start by saying, I'm gonna tell you a little bit more
Speaker:about me and the background and the problems we are trying to solve.
Speaker:And then I ask them to share their perspective.
Speaker:But that first setup is my way of giving them a chance to ask
Speaker:me questions and to get curious.
Speaker:If I get to the end of what I'm explaining, the context, and there's
Speaker:nothing, no questions, no nothing, it's a bit of a red flag for me.
Speaker:It's like, okay, I don't know if this is interesting enough.
Speaker:'Cause I want people to be able to engage in a dialogue with me
Speaker:as we walk through the business.
Speaker:The most successful ones are always the ones who interrupt me like the first
Speaker:sentence in, or the second sentence in is like, oh, wait, explain this.
Speaker:Or why is this thing and are you talking about this kind of a thing?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Interestingly enough, this is a methodology that has worked
Speaker:for me for twenty years now.
Speaker:And I've hired VPs, SVPs, whatever, but every single one of them that has
Speaker:been successful with me and that has followed me in multiple roles, are
Speaker:always the ones who have started off by being so curious about the job and
Speaker:the scope that the interview itself or the title or the hierarchy or the
Speaker:context doesn't phase them at all.
Speaker:They just dive right into curiosity about what's happening here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, I like that.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:You mentioned before common sense.
Speaker:So same thing, how can you tell if somebody has common sense?
Speaker:Because even in the interview, the way you're describing that where it's
Speaker:very energetic and you're talking about the business, I could imagine
Speaker:somebody demonstrating common sense.
Speaker:I could also imagine them being very successful, but it's more focused
Speaker:on the business, so you don't necessarily know if they're gonna
Speaker:have common sense outside of that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I have made that mistake of hiring people that have an amazing
Speaker:pedigree, but the business sort of made them successful to some extent.
Speaker:And actually I was talking to Wade at Zapier recently, and
Speaker:he made the exact same point.
Speaker:He's like, hiring CMOs is so difficult because I don't know if they are
Speaker:successful because of the company and the context they're in, or if
Speaker:they're really because of who they are.
Speaker:And it's the same thing if you trickle it down all levels of the organization.
Speaker:I gotta imagine it's the same for product and et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:The way to think, for me, the way to test for common sense is as I go through
Speaker:this explaining what this company is, and let's say we get to the second part
Speaker:of the conversation where then I say, look, I'm dealing with a specific problem
Speaker:here, I'd love for you to just be my thought partner as we think through this.
Speaker:What do you think we need to do?
Speaker:Knowing the context of this business problem we have, knowing the problem
Speaker:that, let's say, we have to drive pipeline of to build this category, positioning,
Speaker:what are the three things that occur to you as the things that we have to do?
Speaker:If they start off by saying big, hairy, different things like, oh, I'm going to
Speaker:figure out how to build these communities.
Speaker:I wanna build these things and go do X, Y, and Z. It just gives you a little bit
Speaker:of this pause of, okay, but are those the most important things, and aren't
Speaker:there more specific, low hanging fruit that you can address right off the bat?
Speaker:And what's the highest leverage things that you can do right now
Speaker:to get to where you need to get to?
Speaker:That's a common trait I've seen.
Speaker:I would say there's probably a strong correlation between people
Speaker:who come from big companies to this sort of idea of pragmatism.
Speaker:Oh, sorry.
Speaker:I would say inversely correlated.
Speaker:So when I talk about these specific problems, especially as a startup right
Speaker:now, in my role right now, I'm looking for what can we do today, this week, next
Speaker:month to drive this business forward?
Speaker:That, to me, is the common sense part.
Speaker:When in my previous persona as a CMO, if I asked the same question,
Speaker:I would still want somebody to bring in a very practical idea of what they
Speaker:can do, not think five years out.
Speaker:I would want them to say, I can do this in the next six months and get this done,
Speaker:and that's the first order of business.
Speaker:So it's a little bit of that sense of maybe pragmatism, what you
Speaker:can do, what is needed right now.
Speaker:Don't overthink it.
Speaker:Just focus on what needs to happen.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Now, we've been talking about how you hire, do you use AI to hire?
Speaker:Because you were just saying like at the top of the funnel, who do you
Speaker:interview at, who's at the top of the funnel, that's harder for you.
Speaker:Middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, I think you've
Speaker:got a system and you're fine.
Speaker:So, are you using AI or other ways to facilitate the hiring?
Speaker:Honestly, Erica, that's a big problem for all of us.
Speaker:And I was talking to a couple of CIOs yesterday, exactly the same problem.
Speaker:They're like, we don't get to even see good candidates because this AI thing
Speaker:that we are using screens them out.
Speaker:And everybody is using AI to create resumes so they all sound the same.
Speaker:So we don't know who to pick.
Speaker:Right now, I am so old school, I'm relying on networks.
Speaker:I'm relying on LinkedIn.
Speaker:I'm relying on actually any cold email that comes my way where they
Speaker:show some demonstration of hustle and understanding of our business.
Speaker:I'm like, okay, let's think about this.
Speaker:So it's old school for an AI company.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's really interesting.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah, 'cause it's hard to tell does somebody have those characteristics that
Speaker:are really going to make them shine?
Speaker:I remember a client saying to me, yeah, but is this person good?
Speaker:I want them to be really good.
Speaker:And it's not just like, oh what they've done, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:The sparkle is different.
Speaker:So you get, I imagine you do get a lot of these cold outreaches and what is it, one
Speaker:in a hundred is good, and shows some...?
Speaker:You'd be surprised.
Speaker:A lot of people don't actually cold outreach.
Speaker:They don't.
Speaker:I would encourage people, if you really want a job and you really think
Speaker:you're a good fit for that job, email the hiring manager and tell them why.
Speaker:Just do it.
Speaker:Yeah, of course you may not get an answer at all.
Speaker:You'll get ghosted, whatever.
Speaker:But not a lot of people do it.
Speaker:I think they rely on the algorithms to show off their visibility.
Speaker:I don't think that works very much.
Speaker:Networking, good, old-fashioned networking, going to events, meeting
Speaker:people, having coffee chats, quid pro quo, what can I do for you?
Speaker:Here's what I want.
Speaker:Relationship building.
Speaker:It's still alive and well.
Speaker:I have a friend who got a CMO job by emailing the CEO and saying,
Speaker:it looks like you're having some trouble with your marketing.
Speaker:You know, X, Y, Z, these are the problems you have.
Speaker:And by the way, I could lead this.
Speaker:And she got the job.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:Very, just forward of her.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Can you share what's the most uncomfortable interview
Speaker:question you've been asked?
Speaker:Or that you like to ask?
Speaker:Oh, [chuckles] my most uncomfortable question and putting it all out
Speaker:there is most people say, why only two-year stints at companies?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's the one that's probably the most embarrassing for me because part of
Speaker:it was me wanting to do bigger things.
Speaker:Part of it was situational.
Speaker:So then I have to launch into this whole question of why this
Speaker:happened, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:I'd say the question that I like to ask people is from what you have heard so
Speaker:far, what are all the red flags for you?
Speaker:The people that address it honestly are the ones that, to
Speaker:me, show a lot of integrity.
Speaker:They're not afraid to voice their doubts and their apprehensions.
Speaker:The ones that kind of skate through that, it's a little bit of a I don't
Speaker:know if this kind of thing is gonna work, because you can probably get a sense
Speaker:from me, I just prefer straight talk.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Tell me what I want to hear, and then it's the easiest way to solve problems.
Speaker:And if you don't tell me that you have any red flags after listening
Speaker:to what I have to say, then I don't know if this is gonna go anywhere.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Let me just respond to some of the things you've said 'cause it's in my bailiwick.
Speaker:I agree with you that the biggest challenge CMOs have, and marketing leaders
Speaker:in general, is why was this a short stint?
Speaker:Why were you only here for - two years is usually, some people are okay
Speaker:with two years, some people are not.
Speaker:Then you have the people who are three months here, six months
Speaker:there, or nine months there.
Speaker:So that's more extreme.
Speaker:My advice to people is always put it in your LinkedIn profile or your resume.
Speaker:If it's some kind of obvious thing like, oh, the company was moving to
Speaker:Japan, and I wanted to stay put in the US, or the company got bought.
Speaker:Sometimes people don't know oh, this company bought that company.
Speaker:Or I got recruited by a former boss.
Speaker:Often the reason is totally fine, you just need to know.
Speaker:But the more of those quick stints there are, the more time gets taken in
Speaker:a meeting to defend them when you could be having a more meaty conversation
Speaker:like what you're talking about.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I love how you ask people what are the red flags you have?
Speaker:My advice to candidates is always ask the hiring leader, what red
Speaker:flags do they have about you?
Speaker:So it goes both ways.
Speaker:Sometimes people, candidates, will ask me, oh, Erica, how do I line up to the spec?
Speaker:I know you have a spec, six things or seven things that are important.
Speaker:How do I line up and where are there concerns?
Speaker:'Cause I imagine if you like straight talk, you'll give it to somebody as well.
Speaker:Oh, you have X, Y, Z, but maybe lighter in this area.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:So let's come back up to the CMO role.
Speaker:We've talked about org, we've talked about hiring.
Speaker:Let's think about the CMO role in an AI native company, and how is that
Speaker:different from the CMO role in a SaaS org?
Speaker:You've talked a little bit around this.
Speaker:I wonder if you could hit that, head on.
Speaker:What does that mean?
Speaker:How does that play out for you?
Speaker:I think there are two things.
Speaker:One is in an AI native company, at least the one that I'm at, is we have a lot
Speaker:to do to educate the market about the potential solutions that they can unlock
Speaker:with a technology or a platform like ours.
Speaker:So I came up with this idea and I've not done anything with it.
Speaker:This idea of a forward deployed marketer, which is similar to a
Speaker:forward deployed engineer where you're basically coming up with use cases,
Speaker:coming up with solutions, coming up with things that you can tell people,
Speaker:look, this is the art of the possible.
Speaker:This is all the stuff that you can do.
Speaker:I think that's very different from SaaS, in that SaaS is a defined
Speaker:set of features and platform things that you can take to market.
Speaker:There's already a pretty much defined problem, and you've already built a
Speaker:solution that goes and fits to that problem, and it's a matter of convincing
Speaker:the market you are the best fit, or here's the thing that you can do to make
Speaker:it fit better, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:That's number one.
Speaker:The second thing is what I'm finding is the growth opportunities in AI
Speaker:native companies is widely different.
Speaker:It used to be in SaaS, you start as an SMB business, you go into enterprise, and then
Speaker:you land and expand, and then you increase your share of wallet, you introduce
Speaker:more things, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:There's a little bit of a playbook that happens in terms of how you grow.
Speaker:Here, it's so wild.
Speaker:You can start by being a company that's everything around consumption
Speaker:based pricing, and then you can suddenly pivot to making it more
Speaker:like a subscription based model.
Speaker:Sorry, not pivot, add on like an enterprise motion, and then add on a
Speaker:whole different way of billing customers.
Speaker:It's just, it's wild.
Speaker:It's like a little bit of a, whoa, it's bringing together aspects
Speaker:of a FinTech model and a SaaS model, and almost like a consumer
Speaker:freemium to premium type of a model.
Speaker:Then you need to really think about what does growth look
Speaker:like for an AI native startup?
Speaker:What are the bets you have to make?
Speaker:And where that goes?
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:I remember we talked before about maker time, how you're giving
Speaker:yourself maker time, and you're focused on context engineering, and
Speaker:it goes with this that it's less playbook oriented and it's more like-
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:-Kind of green field.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I was at an event last night, just to give you a sense.
Speaker:So I'd done marketing at this company.
Speaker:I was at an event yesterday.
Speaker:I was talking to a couple of CTOs and I was telling them about what You.com does
Speaker:and all that, and they said, where do you see us leveraging someone like You.com?
Speaker:So on the spot, I had to understand their business model, what they were trying
Speaker:to achieve, and then construct some potential solutions of, I think you can
Speaker:integrate it here to show your customers this kind of a catalog with this sort
Speaker:of promotion detail, type of a thing.
Speaker:It was so interesting to me that I've become, I am more of a solution
Speaker:architect in that moment in time.
Speaker:It's a wild world.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I would think that people who have experience with these kind of
Speaker:horizontal platforms, I know I've recruited in the low code development
Speaker:space, and it was the same thing.
Speaker:This is a few years ago, pre-AI and it's like, okay, you could do
Speaker:this, you could do this, you could do that, and it's some of the same
Speaker:things are applying in your role.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:This has been awesome.
Speaker:I have one final question for you.
Speaker:This season, we're looking at how SaaS marketing orgs are changing
Speaker:in both seismic and subtle ways.
Speaker:Let's just end with subtlety.
Speaker:So in one sentence or so, could you describe a subtle change going on, not
Speaker:like AI revolution kind of thing, but something more subtle that maybe insiders
Speaker:would be the only ones to notice?
Speaker:The CMO job is getting harder and harder.
Speaker:We all said this four years ago, but it's even more true now.
Speaker:There is so much more of a disconnect between what head of sales does
Speaker:versus head of marketing does versus head of product does, and CEOs are
Speaker:probably even more confused about the kind of marketers they need or want.
Speaker:It is just - this job, I don't know where this is all going in five years time.
Speaker:You're right.
Speaker:There's a lot of excitement, but there's a lot of traumatic experiences for
Speaker:CMOs out there and a lot of confusion among CEOs, but this helps clarify.
Speaker:So thank you so much for joining the show, Kady.
Speaker:It's been great having you here.
Speaker:Oh, thank you.
Speaker:These are amazing questions.
Speaker:Thank you so much.
Speaker:I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker:That was Kady Srinivasan, CMO of You.com.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:The GET is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership.
Speaker:In B2B SaaS marketing, we explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of
Speaker:today's top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
Speaker:If you liked this episode, please share it or rank it.
Speaker:For more about The Get, visit TheGetPodcast.com.
Speaker:To learn more about my executive search practice, which focuses on recruiting the
Speaker:make-money marketing leaders, rather than the make-it-pretty ones, follow me on
Speaker:LinkedIn or visit TheConnectiveGood.com.
Speaker:The Get is produced by Evo Terra and the team at Simpler Media Productions.
