The Here and Now of Marketing a Global Tech Startup

Rachel Cossar: Welcome to another episode on conversations in the future of work. I am your host, Rachel Kosser, and I’m delighted to be focusing on some marketing revenue questions today in the perspective of a global tech startup. So today on the show, we are very pleased to have Jake Brawley. So over to you, please. Yeah. Thanks, Rachel. And good to see you again.

Jake Braly: Thank you for having me here. Yeah, happy to be here. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: You wanna share just a little bit about your your background bio, like, where it is that you’re coming from today? Absolutely. Yeah. Where is it that I am?

Jake Braly: So I am in a company called Chris. Chris is, basically pioneered software based noise cancellation using AI models and have extended that beyond to new technologies we’re excited about, including meeting assistant technology, for call centers, we have an accent localization. So I’ve been here for about a year and a half, and I currently head up all of our customer facing and revenue functions. So that’s marketing sales success. Before Crisp, I’ve spent most of my career, in various stage startups from big to small, I I definitely prefer earlier stage where there’s a lot of opportunity to to create and build. That’s kind of my forte and my passion and interest, in a variety of different marketing and go to market roles but I would say, the common theme across all of them is it’s revenue focused. So it’s marketing for revenue. It’s, go to market for revenue. That’s the objective at the end of the day. So that’s really where I’m focused. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: And I gotta say, yeah, crisp was one of the first AI tools that I ever used. Oh, wow. Yeah. And this was before AI was cool. Right? And there was all sorts of us.

Jake Braly: Totally. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: I mean, because we founded virtual Sapiens, like, 4 years ago and and pretty early on in that journey. I discovered Chris and you know, we we use it and it’s it’s a really amazing technology. It’s been fascinating to see how the company’s evolved. Yes. And so I’m excited to to get into some questions. So first first step and, again, focusing on that marketing aspect of your of your career. Like, how have you found that marketing itself as a function has evolved over the past few years. Yeah. That’s a really good question.

Jake Braly: I mean, it’s evolved in a lot of different ways. I think the for me, the most tangible change that I’ve seen over the last many years is what I think of as, like, the collapsing of the traditional funnel you know, you you think about the traditional linear buyer’s journey, and we all know that that’s not a linear journey and especially now, with all of the different avenues that prospects and customers have to evaluate new technology and new vendors. So that’s definitely been change just in terms of the channels and the noise and how you kind of reach your core buyers. But I think this idea too in marketing of your target audience is also changing, the term that is often used now, you’ll hear ICP, your ideal customer profile, which I make a distinction between that at the account level and a persona profile, but an ICP exercise used to be not too many years ago, like, okay. What are the attributes that make an attractive account? And that was an exercise you do maybe annually if you if you did it well. Really, that’s not enough anymore. If things are changing so rapidly, if you have new products that you’re introducing in a market, that ICP is almost like dynamic ICP. It’s always evolving and always changing, and I think that for me has been one of the core changes. As well. But the collapsing of the funnel and, and, when in a group called winning by design has pioneered some thinking around the new funnel that they call a bow tie. I don’t know if you’ve seen the bow tie, but it’s kind of. On the left side of the bow tie is top of funnel. Traditional, you think about lead gen, demand gen, into an opportunity. Closed 1 is in the middle of the bow tie. And then on the right side of the bow tie is all of the things that you have to do with subscription business to drive adoption success, expansion, advocacy, all of those things. And so that’s what I mean when I say like the collapsing of the bow tie. I definitely think it’s a real thing. Right.

Rachel Cossar: Because in that sense, the journey as a subscription based business is so ongoing and continuous. Right? Like, the the the traditional funnel almost illustrates that, like, once you have them, you’ve got them, which is the case. It’s, yeah, in goes the top of funnel and out, and that’s it.

Jake Braly: Yeah. This is subscription businesses aren’t like that. And especially with product led growth businesses and and all of the different options that consumers and buyers have today, that’s really a fundamental change. And what that’s meant for marketing And I’ve I’ve certainly felt this and part of my, transition at Crisp was from CMO to CRO. I actually came in to head up marketing Right. And then a year later expanded that into picking up the revenue functions. But for me, in some ways, there’s not a lot of difference there because marketing based on all the, the factors we just talked about is really now being asked to do much more, revenue, direct revenue impact and revenue generation. Versus what used to be lead gen awareness, brand equity, all of those things. Still real, very important, but today, especially with B2B Enterprise Technology, a marketer has to be focused on revenue. Right.

Rachel Cossar: And is that partly because so much more of the buyer’s journey is happening before they have a conversation with like, a business development rep for you. Part of it is. Yeah. Part of it is.

Jake Braly: I think, like, 70% of research is now done, right, before you even talk to a rep, but it’s also that bow tie effect as well. Right? It’s not marketing’s job is not and should never have been for a subscription business ending once the lead is passed to sales, and then Right? What will happen? What will hap will happen? Marketing has to happen continuously throughout that journey and life cycle after certainly after opportunity phase, but, importantly, in the opportunity phase, and then if you’re successful in closing a a prospector customer, the majority of a SaaS business revenue starts to quickly come from your existing customers. And so your marketing resource absolutely has to be thinking about that. Right. Absolutely. That’s that’s fascinating.

Rachel Cossar: And in terms of, like, messaging in particular, like, across the the across the a journey. Like, what are the most powerful ways humans can, like, and I say human specifically because I saw that. Yeah. You know, we we have a question later that’s relevant to the AI piece. But, like, what are some ways that people can make sure that their messages are cutting a cutting across the database?

Jake Braly: In some ways, I don’t know if this question was designed for Chris as well, but, of course, we in digital voice communication, voice matters, And as you know very well, it’s not just voice, it’s presence and communication. That’s the foundation of business, and more communication is happening through this format and not through written format, email, and and text, and other methods. So, I think part of that is using new modalities beyond traditional modalities of communication. But with generative AI and and, what’s happening now within the industry, I think authenticity and really making sure that you have a unique and distinct voice is the way that you’ll stand out. You know, it’s it’s not terribly hard to identify when it when you have a packaged or canned message. And actually before generative AI, this was marketing would often get, would get, pointed at as, look, your your messaging doesn’t resonate. It’s it there’s jargon. There’s fluff all of those things. And so it actually pushes marketing further. Gender AA pushes marketing further. Where they were already being pushed to cut the fluff, cut the jargon, be authentic, and have a unique and distinct voice in this world of generative AI. It’s just become more important. Right.

Rachel Cossar: And in that sense, it’s, like, really developing that brand identity or that brand voice. Over time, over consistent content creation. Right? Yeah.

Jake Braly: I love the, I love the, the term used brand identity because I would have thought all of this ultimately ladders up to brand equity, and it’s also a big point of differentiation. Your voice, your brand’s voice, your identity, the way you show up the authentic can be a massive differentiator versus a direct competitor that doesn’t really have that. Right. Yeah. No. It’s just so good to keep in mind.

Rachel Cossar: And it was speaking, like, specifically about that AI content piece and distinguishing it from like, real human content.

Jake Braly: We touched on it a little bit in the last question, but anything else that you’d kind of say in terms of distinguishing that human to AI Like, I’m not a big believer today in generative AI creating marketing content, marketing communications. I am a big believer in leveraging generative AI. For to refine, to evolve, to generate new concepts but ultimately, I, I don’t think the human marketer, just like humans and other areas of important functions, are gonna go away because of generative AI. I just think, it’s an important, assistant to do some of the things that you can’t do by yourself as well, which is diff getting different perspectives, getting different approaches, different ideas. And so I loop use generative AI, probably the most for that and and across marketing functions today. Right.

Rachel Cossar: Yeah, I found it’s, one of the funny things that I noticed is, like, the overuse of, like, very, like, specific words that are, like, like, a little bit too, like, almost like high brow sounding. And, it’s funny because I I saw that early on when I was experimenting with the tool and, like, now I’ll notice it sometimes in other people’s content. And I think it speaks to your point of authenticity, like, you know, no one’s really gonna be using those words. In something that they’re trying to, like, again, cut across the noise and connect with the people on the other end. Right? Totally. And I, there’s tool called Jasper you’re probably familiar with, and they were one of the earlier prompt engineers behind some of this.

Jake Braly: And they’ve got some good templates, one of which is like, you know, explain this to a 3rd grader or a second grader. And that’s helpful also, but at, at the same time, it still loses that aspect of uniqueness and not the because it is a pretty canned approach. And and that might evolve over time, but that’s the way the state of generative AI today. Yep. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: And then, like, looking ahead, whether it’s for crisps specifically or just, you know, in your own body of work and and what your keeping tabs on, like, what are you most excited about when it comes to AI and meeting intelligence specifically?

Jake Braly: I I mean, look, the reason I joined Chris is because I was very excited, not just about the magical pioneering work that they had done in in AI based noise cancellation, which you’re familiar with, but in the road map, and really the higher order vision and mission around making, work related communication, more productive, more effective, And that to me is really exciting because there’s so much opportunity there. And you know this. Part of the reason I found you is because I thought it was such a compelling piece of communication. As you know, so much happens, not a nonverbal communication, And more and more communication is happening that way that it’s just really important that we’re leveraging all this technology to help us connect better as humans. And if we do that, we get better outcomes and better productivity, better collaboration, and all the things we care about certainly in the work world, for sure. Yeah. Totally.

Rachel Cossar: And I think, you know, one thing that we’ve really been working on at virtual Sapiens to that effect is like the the fine line between using AI and technology to help amplify and enhance that very human connect without it being an added layer of distraction. Yes. Can’t be obtrusive. Right. Anything you’ve learned to that effect since your time at Chris? Cause I feel like Chris does this really well. Chris does this really well.

Jake Braly: And then this is actually the fascinating part about the technology approach in architecture. If I’m on a Zoom call or a Teams call or this call, which is happening right now, crisp is operating without any integration in those platforms, no obtrusive bots that are showing up on the call, and that’s really, an approach here, which integrates at the operating system level. This is a technical discussion, but the net result is I’m not having, like, you know, twenty bots on a call and feeling like all of this obtrusiveness is happening. It’s happening silently and seamlessly. Which is really where magical technology. That’s the magic that people feel when they feel that with technology is that it’s just happening. Yeah. And And so that to me, I think, is what I’m most excited about with with meeting in intelligence and all of the intelligence around workplace productivity and AI. Right. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: Like, it it would it’s like the channel becomes an extension of the human versus something that’s like obstructing connection. Yeah. That’s a good way to think about it. You know, you hear the term assistant, co pilot.

Jake Braly: There’s so many it it implies that there’s this other entity. And I think the way that you’re describing it is we’ll eventually get to where it’s really an extension of of you as a human and not a not an other entity. Right. Right.

Rachel Cossar: And I do think We’ve, like, had virtual say, we we built, our platform similarly to crisp in the sense that it is not a bot that joins the call. It’s just a private coach that sits like on your device, giving you feedback and and encouragement, and the bot game It’ll be really interesting to see where that goes because a lot of these platforms are also just integrating a lot of these features directly within their platform. You know? Well, and that’s it’s that that’s a silent approach as well, right? Because Yeah.

Jake Braly: Look, I I’ll tell you my day, even though we’re a Zoom shop, I’m on Zoom calls. I’m on teams calls. I’m on Webex calls still. I’m on Google Meet call. Slack huddles. This call I don’t wanna have to go to each one of those silos to try to extract intelligence. And so I do think it’s important that even though you’re seeing a lot of native integration of AI And E solutions that we have platform agnostic approaches to it for all of those reasons and benefits. Totally. Yeah. Absolutely. So fascinating.

Rachel Cossar: Anything else you’d like to share on this subject? We’re we’re coming close to our time. No. Just go download crisp.

Jake Braly: It’s free and it Like, look, it, I can’t imagine not having it today. Yeah. I, you know, I used to be scrambling to take my notes as I’m running the meeting and getting my action items. And the other thing I didn’t appreciate, but I’ve come to appreciate is that humans are biased. I I hear what I wanna hear. I take notes on what I think is important and the real advantage beyond just having a full transcription and summarized notes and action items to send out is it takes a human bias, bias element out of it. I’ll often see like, oh, those are 7 additional action items that I didn’t really note, but are super important. And, so that excites me as well. And Yeah. I can, if I can use this platform to evangelize our product, I do think it’s great. And, I always wanna work for a company whose products I love. Myself. So, yeah, I would say go go get the free version. Go use it, and hopefully it’ll be paid. I’ll pay the customer soon. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: Well, thank you, Jake, for for jumping on today and sharing your insights. It’s the the marketing and revenue space and sales and how it’s all evolving and interacting. It’s just fascinating, and your perspective is really valued. So I wanna thank you for that. And, where if if any of our viewers have questions for you or wanna engage with you, where would be the best way to do that? Yeah. Jake@crisp.ai.

Jake Braly: You can DM me on LinkedIn, and I’m usually pretty responsive, but thank you for hap having me again, Rachel. And it’s great to be on this kind of journey together, isn’t it? Yes. Absolutely. I love it. And, yeah, one one more time shout out to crisp.ai.

Rachel Cossar: Go ahead. And, check it out for yourselves for free. But thank you. Thanks again. Thank you, Rachel. Alright.