How is GTM leadership in an AI-native company different from GTM leadership in a ‘typical SaaS’ company?
And how can we expect CMOs in the most AI-steeped companies to structure their teams?
It was great to talk with the most impressive Kady Srinivasan, CMO of You.com, about these topics and more for The Get podcast.
One of my favorite takeaways:
“In an AI-native company, at least the one that I’m at, is 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.”
You’ll learn about:
- The org structures that enable using AI at warp speed
- How the new marketing org has both humans and agents on the marketing team
- How CMOs and their teams in AI-native companies are like solution architects, helping come up with use cases and showing prospects and customers “the art of the possible”
- 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”