The New Startup Go-To-Market Playbook
episode
Startup Success: A Podcast for Founders & Investors
25 min
1 speaker
3 chapters
transcribed 17 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why does the traditional startup go‑to‑market playbook no longer work?
Welcome to Startup Success, the podcast for startup founders and investors. Here you'll find stories of success from others in the trenches as they work to scale some of the fastest growing startups in the world. Stories that will help you in your own journey. Startup Success starts now.
Today on the podcast, I am joined by Marlena Saranak. Marlena is the co-founder and a fractional CMO at The Company Advice. The Company Advice offers fractional marketing support for startups. After leading marketing from series A to series B at Particle Health and building go-to-market strategies. Across HealthTech and InsuraTech, Marlena now helps startups clarify their category, sharpen their messaging, and build go-to-market strategies that actually convert. In this episode, we unpack what's changed in go-to-market. why category clarity matters more than ever, and how founders can cut through the noise to build sustainable traction. Please welcome Marlena Saranac from the Company Advice. So Marlena, it's great to have you on the show.
Thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So I think it would be helpful. You have a great background. If you wouldn't mind walking us through your experience, and then that can kind of if you can share what how it led to the founding of the company Advice. Everyone's
founding origin story can be long if you allow it to be. I went to Lehigh University for my undergrad. I thought I was pre-law. And I ended up finding myself in a marketing consulting role at MasterCard. Oh. So I started my career in corporate. And then right after corporate, I jumped into the world of startups. At that time, not to age myself too terribly, but like startups were just like not part of like everyday vernacular, at least now on the East Coast, to my immigrant parents. I think that they were like shocked and horrified that I was leaving like a really nice corporate job to take a leap into the unknown. However, I just love the space so much and I really loved building in it. I've been marketing in some capacity in this space ever since.
I actually went back and I got an engineering degree so that I could better connect the dots between Product and engine to market facing language and market-facing audiences. So I'm fully invested in the space. And so after having a career in various leadership roles at various startups, mostly pretty technical, highly regulated industries from insure tech to health tech, I met my partner at my last job. We worked together really well to bring that brand and that product to life. And so we spun out the company advice and we have been in business now for a few years and we consult lots of startups on their go-to-market, their brand, their narrative, product strategy. So we work with a lot of different types of founders and verticals and just really love what we do.
We love getting in on the ground level and making a real difference and applying a playbook that is very efficient for founders to, you know, start getting market signal so that they can start making really smart choices about their business.
So great because I I interact with a lot of founders and they know a lot about their product. their particular market, but not so much about marketing and some of the other things. And so when they can leverage fractional help in this way, I think it's terrific. And then I'm super impressed that you got an engineering degree because lots of times there's a disconnect between marketing and engineering that happens a lot in startup culture. So you must be able to really help with that. I think you
that connective tissue and someone who can translate engineering speak into market speak and that's definitely my secret sauce. It's definitely my superpower. You know, ever since I was little, my dad is a PhD engineer. I was looking over his slide decks and his presentations and proposals and making sure that they, you know weren't two in the weeds. And so I've always I think I've just always had that kind of ability to be that translation layer.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
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