The Ultra-Ride: Inside the Minds of CMOs Who Drove Sustained Hypergrowth

How is it that some CMOs lead their companies ALL THE WAY? Who are these magical creatures that start at an early stage of growth, build out the team, scale through IPO, drive more growth as a public company, and keep going and going?

How do they make it farther and farther? Let's look at the examples!

A few years ago, I became obsessed with these marketers. I started a list of the few who made the ultra-ride in B2B tech:

- Denise Persson - CMO of Snowflake - $20M rode to over $2B - 8.5 years

- Janine Pelosi - CMO of Zoom - 8 years

- Rick Schultz - CMO of Databricks - 7.5 years

- Ryan Carlson - CMO of Okta - 10 years

- Christine Cefalo - CMO of Workday - 8 years

- Judy Sim - CMO of Oracle - 28 years

- Kipp Bodnar - CMO of Hubspot - 9 years

- Alex Rosemblat - CMO of Datadog - 10 years

- Zach Kitschke - CMO of Canva - 11.5 years

Who else have I missed?

Many of these leaders make very few public appearances because they are heads-down in the work, or its not their jam. (The exception is Kip with his great podcast, Marketing Against the Grain, but he’s also selling to marketers.)

This is why I drop everything to hear these people speak. Often, I'm the one who recruits them out of their focused CMO diligence using Jason M. Lemkin's SaaStr as my canvas. This year, I've convinced Denise Persson to join us for a SaaStr session. Sign up here to join SaaStr and the CMO Brunch.

Denise's SaaStr Recording, "Building Your Marketing Strategy to The First $100,000,000 in ARR," is one of the all-time most popular sessions in SaaStr's history. (also viewable online here). So many of her core principles are still relevant to startups and scaleups today.

But now we get to hear what she's thinking next.

I'm excited that joining her will be Nicole Baer, CMO of Carta - whose infographic-driven marketing campaigns by Peter Walker I adore.

And Gail Moody-Byrd, VP of Marketing, LinkedIn Sales. LinkedIn's influence keeps growing in a world of targeted ICP, social selling and more.

Last year I brought Rick, Janine and Ryan together for 7 Biggest CMO Mistakes (viewable online).

And I was sure not to miss Alex Rosenblat’s session about how he drove way more deals with less budget (for real). His rabid diligence is impressive. Watch it online here

I volunteered to help SaaStr organize their CMO brunch because I am still so voracious about learning from the top CMOs in the world - and if I organize it, I get to ask them all of my questions. Join the CMO brunch Sept 12th. Unfortunately these sessions will not be recorded.

?? Finishing my thoughts on the legendary CMO sustainers...

As I tracked all these ULTRA CMOs down and learned their stories, there weren't as many similarities as I expected. Denise had already started small and taken companies public before. Janine came from a big company with very relevant domain experience, as did Rick. But Christine, Kip, Judy, Alex, and Zach all 'grew up' in-house, starting with more junior responsibilities and then growing into legendary leadership. Some execs had existing relationships with the CEOs, some didn't. Some companies had supportive cultures, some more aggressive. What they all had common was working for a company with sustained significant growth. And they were all clearly strong enough to maintain trust through many different phases of growth and change.

Come hear more about the stories behind the stories at SaaStr, or in the recordings above.

?? I appreciate all that the SaaStr folks do to document some of the best tech thinkers of our time.

Carilu Dietrich is a former CMO, most notably the head of marketing who took Atlassian public. She currently advises CEOs and CMOs of high-growth tech companies. Carilu helps leaders operationalize the chaos of scale, see around corners, and improve marketing and company performance.