Recent
About
I build marketing teams, and the systems they run on. Part growth engineer, part RevOps, part software engineer. I founded one of the first enterprise-software blogging communities, became a first-time CMO, and built a global company's entire digital marketing experience from scratch. Today I run marketing where much of the workforce is software, and I publish every build. (Early on, I spent eight years in venture capital at SAP Ventures.)
Leadership
The team is the system that matters most
The largest team I've led was 60 people, and I still think the team is the system that matters most. I hire for curiosity and ownership, organize around outcomes rather than channels, and give each person a clear lane, a clear number and room to run. My job is to develop people: coaching, stretch assignments, and getting out of the way when they're ready.
Agents change the work, not the point of the team. They take the repetitive work (briefs, adaptations, build checklists, reporting) so people spend their time on strategy, judgment, customers and creative.
The arc
Titles and dates
Built from scratch
Director, Global Marketing · Coherent Corp.
–Turnaround
CMO · Kahuna
–First CMO
CMO · SecureAuth Corporation
–Security and identity
VP Marketing · NowSecure
–Security and identity
VP Marketing · Knurld
–Security and identity
Sr. Director Marketing · Ping Identity
–Security and identity
Sr. Director, On Demand · Ping Identity
–Freemium and business development
VP Business Development · Get Satisfaction
–Freemium and business development
GM Freemium · Get Satisfaction
–Freemium and business development
VP Product Marketing · Get Satisfaction
–Media
VP Media & Consumer Group · NewsGator Technologies
–Earlier career
CEO · Teqlo
–Earlier career
Director, strategy group, SAP global marketing · SAP
–Earlier career
Venture partner, later general partner · SAP Ventures
–Writing since 2002
Early calls
- Sep 2004
Then the best tech writers are practitioners
Now AI answer engines favor first-hand experts.
For example, a first-hand review provides a unique perspective based on personal experience, whereas a summary of existing content simply restates information already available elsewhere.
Google Search Central - Mar 2005
Then Non-human identities
Now agent identity is a core AI security problem.
Amid the excitement of embracing the next wave of generative AI, companies are moving quickly to deploy agentic use cases, often overlooking the critical need to secure these systems and control the sprawl of non-human identities.
Arnab Bose, Chief Product Officer, Okta Platform - Mar 2005
Then BPEL is Hot
Now APIs plus agents orchestrating workflows.
- Mar 2005
Then business development is like having a sales organization without a quota
Now pipeline is the only scorecard that counts.
- Sep 2008
Then SaaS economics, 5 years of innovation, 3 years of digestion
Now pipeline per program dollar.
Since 2001 I've also run Altamont Farms, a regenerative farm in Alva, Florida, raising beef, poultry, eggs, honey and produce for local markets and restaurants. It is where I learned that compounding systems beat heroic effort. Even the farm's newsletter runs on automated jobs.
If you're building something similar, let's talk.