5 Reasons Why I Joined A Series A Company During a Downturn

Well, today makes it official: I’m the new VP of Marketing at Arena.im, a no-code solution for increasing audience engagement anywhere. But why would I leave my cushy job in VC to take a risk at a Series A startup, especially during a downturn? Well, read on to find out!

#1 A Once in a Generation Marketing Shift Is Happening

Why enter the MarTech space when it’s already so crowded? Well around 2018 I began to track two broad trends that made me think new marketing opportunities were on the horizon:

1. There’s a big shift happening in digital marketing towards first party data and away from cookies and programmatic advertising (an $85B market in the US alone…)?
2. There’s a big demographic shift as millennials reach peak-purchase-power and Gen Z (“Zoomers”) enter the workforce - both of these demographics behave and engage differently online than previous generations

There’s a lot to unpack in both of these points (and I look forward to presenting my research soon!) but when I looked at Arena’s current offering it seemed to sit right in the center of these trends. It allows anyone to add today’s most popular live engagement features - and collect first party data - to any property or product they manage, and it’s insanely popular with “the kids”.?

#2 Live Chat is the Engagement of Choice for Zoomers

Do a search for “What Channels Does Generation Z Use” and you’ll see a bunch of different research highlighting that Gen Z likes visual channels: streaming, youtube, instagram, TikTok, etc. I’m not here to say that any of this is wrong, just that they all miss the biggest point: while they all might use different forms of visuals to get the audience to consume, everyone - EV-ER-Y-ONE (read that in Gary Oldman’s voice please) -? uses live chat to engage.?

Live Chat is insanely popular and every major social platform offers its own flavor. Outside of social media, dozens of other companies have tried to recreate the experience on dedicated, but separate platforms. Both of these approaches possess the same fatal flaw: they move your audience (and their data) from your platform, to theirs.

When our founder showed me Arena embedded into our customers’ native websites, products, apps & events, offering a seamless experience: that got me excited. And when I learned that we have tens-of-millions of end users on the product today, and that 65% are under 35, and 40% under 24 years old: that got me committed.

#3 Making First Party Data Feel Like a Party

While the cookiepocolypse or cookiegeddon might have been pushed back to 2024, the fact remains that 3rd party cookies are going to die. When that happens marketing departments are going to have to adjust their tactics, and their roughly $85B+ in programmatic advertising budgets, in a big way.?

Here’s why I think that’s a good thing:

• 3rd party cookies enable some pretty creepy behavior and incentivize even creepier business models, which everyone hates
• 1st party data forces marketing best-practice: providing meaningful experiences in exchange for some transaction, which everyone, but especially Zoomers, love

In Arena’s case, the experience is live, it’s social, it’s fun.? To be fair, if you haven’t participated in a live stream chat, it can be a bit hard to grasp “why”. But, when you see thousands of people chatting live around election night, a sports (or eSports!) game, educational presentation or even B2B SKO, it’s hard to deny the vibe. And, in this case, it just so happens the vibe is capturing key the marketing metrics, and supporting it all with persona enrichment and user level data to get to know your audience better. And this is all happening at a time when a massive $85B marketplace that’s been the industry standard for the last 10 years is about to reach end-of-life…

#4 Live Engagement Today, “Anti-Facebook” Tomorrow

Anyone who’s spent time in demand-gen (or sales) can tell you, product vision is great, but you gotta sell what’s on the shelf today to hit your number this quarter. When I first looked at Arena’s Live Chat & Live Blog products my first question was: can we scale this company to $5M in the next 12 months based on these products alone? Yes... Hell yes! Cool :)

So the next question became: what’s after that? And this is where things got even more interesting. While the future isn’t defined, and I can’t spoil product roadmaps, let’s just say both the founder and I have a shared vision of identity at the center of the customer experience for both brands and audience members, with trust and transparency built into engagement from the beginning. A theoretical key that can unlock any walled-garden (or “verse”…), but also controls what comes through it, both ways. An “Anti-Facebook”, if you will, and I can’t wait to help bring it to market.

#5 Building a Dream Team of Marketers Who Market to Marketers

I started as an entrepreneur in my 20s, and from there I’ve had a fairly circuitous career through product marketing, content marketing, field, demand gen, evangelism, brand and PR. You know what I’ve discovered my favorite part of marketing is? None of it. It’s actually building teams of people who are each better than me at what they do. Now that I’ve worn almost every marketing hat, and have felt the pain of each discipline, I’m looking forward to building the best team of “marketers who market to marketers” that you’ve ever seen. And if you’d like to be a part of it, well, let me know, cuz I’m hiring :)