Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

1. Understand Your Customer Deeply

Spend significant time and effort to truly understand your customer, as there is no replacement for this deep understanding, even with AI.

2. Achieve Product-Market Fit First

Ensure you have tremendous product-market fit before significantly investing in marketing, as marketing serves to “throw fuel on the fire” of an already successful product.

3. Diagnose the Core Problem (DATE)

Before implementing marketing solutions, diagnose the actual problem by analyzing your funnel to determine if you have product-market fit or a top-of-funnel issue.

4. Integrate Product & Marketing Early

Foster a close collaboration between product management and product marketing from the very beginning of product development, treating it as a “three-legged race” rather than a final handoff.

5. Cultivate Deep Product Understanding

Marketers must have a deep, authentic understanding of the product, as users (especially technical ones) will quickly spot any inauthenticity or lack of knowledge in marketing communications.

6. Use Customer Language for Messaging

Listen to the language customers use to describe their problems and needs, as this provides a “cheat code” for effective product messaging and positioning.

7. Prioritize Brand Consistency

Prioritize consistency in your brand’s appearance and messaging across all touchpoints, as it empowers faster organizational movement and builds trust with the audience.

8. Build Trust Through Strong Brand

Invest in building a strong, trustworthy brand, as it makes all future endeavors easier, from launching new products to gaining customer adoption.

9. Recognize Holistic Brand Impact

Understand that your brand encompasses every customer touchpoint, including product experience, customer support interactions, and even candidate recruitment, not just marketing artifacts.

10. Avoid Copying Competitors’ Playbooks

Do not blindly copy the marketing strategies or tactics of successful companies, as their success is tied to unique context, competitive landscape, and timing that may not apply to your situation.

11. Analyze Competitors’ Approaches (DATE)

Evaluate what competitors are doing to establish a baseline, identify opportunities, and find gaps or niches your company can fill.

12. Take a Different Path (DATE)

Intentionally differentiate your strategy from competitors, looking outside your direct domain for inspiration to create unique approaches that set your company apart.

13. Experiment, Test, Validate (DATE)

Implement a culture of experimentation, testing, and validation, scaling what proves effective and being willing to discard efforts that don’t work.

14. Focus on Revenue-Driving Metrics

Prioritize marketing metrics that directly impact signups, sales leads, pipeline, and revenue, rather than vanity metrics like clicks, views, or impressions.

15. Leverage Customer Storytelling

If you have strong traction with high-value customers, double down on customer marketing and storytelling to differentiate your product and leverage their compelling experiences.

16. Define “Launch” as Customer Awareness

Redefine “launch” to mean not just code completion, but ensuring customers are aware of and engaging with new features, making usage and engagement the North Star.

17. Re-diagnose Marketing Needs Regularly

In hyper-growth companies, re-diagnose your marketing needs and top-level goals every 3-6 months to remain adaptable and flexible to changing priorities.

18. Implement Support Rotations for Empathy

Have all new hires complete a support rotation to build empathy with customers and dedicate significant time (e.g., 20%) to talking with users and non-users to understand their needs.

19. Provide Self-Directed Educational Resources

For technical audiences like developers, build a marketing funnel that prioritizes self-directed educational resources over direct sales interactions.

20. Embrace Sufficient Process for Speed

Implement good, sufficient processes within your organization, as they actually speed up a company by providing clarity and guardrails, rather than slowing it down.

21. Establish a Transparent Marketing Review

Create a transparent “Marketing Review” forum (meeting, Slack channel, or email alias) where marketing content is shared and reviewed, allowing the entire organization to learn and align.

22. Implement 20% & 80% Reviews

Use a two-checkpoint review process: a 20% review for strategy and rough approach alignment, and an 80% review when artifacts are mostly complete but still allow for substantive changes.

23. Founders as First Marketers

Founders should act as the first marketers, especially by deeply understanding their initial target audience (e.g., developers) to authentically reach them.

24. Integrate Marketing with Mission & Craft

Create marketing artifacts that are deeply integrated with the company’s mission and reflect the same level of craftsmanship as the product itself.

25. Distinguish Marketing Team vs. Discipline

Differentiate between the “capital M” marketing team (channels, artifacts, funnel) and “lowercase m” marketing (company values, founder storytelling, overall narrative) to ensure holistic brand building.

26. Align Marketing Across All Teams

Marketing is a whole-company motion requiring alignment between product (go-to-market strategy), sales (ideal customer profile), and other organizations for effective execution.

27. Cultivate Adaptability & Flexibility

As a marketing leader, prioritize adaptability and flexibility, going deep into each company’s unique context and concerns rather than applying generic playbooks.

28. Become a “Comb-Shaped” Marketer

Evolve from a T-shaped marketer to a “comb-shaped” marketer, developing deep skills in multiple areas like analytics, creativity, and cross-functional collaboration to meet modern marketing demands.

29. Leverage AI for Skill Augmentation

Use AI tools like ChatGPT to augment your skills, becoming more analytical if you’re creative, or more creative if you’re analytical, pushing your thinking in areas you’re less strong in.

30. Cultivate Taste & Craftsmanship in AI Era

In the age of AI-generated content, cultivate taste and craftsmanship to distinguish your work, demonstrating a true understanding of your product and customer to connect in meaningful ways.

31. Increase Exposure Hours to Build Taste

Actively increase your “exposure hours” to high-quality work and content to develop and refine your taste and discernment.

32. Master Fundamentals, Leverage AI Tools

Understand that marketing disciplines are changing with AI; leverage these new tools to avoid disadvantage, but ensure you master the fundamental concepts (e.g., via STEM education) to apply them effectively.

33. Prioritize a Growth Mindset for Learning

Cultivate a growth mindset focused on genuinely learning concepts and understanding their application, rather than just achieving grades or completing tasks.

34. Experiment to Build Pricing Conviction

For pricing strategies, especially for AI products, rely on experimentation and piloting to build conviction rather than assuming a playbook.

35. Re-evaluate Sales Gating for Value

Question whether gating access to valuable features (e.g., self-hosted versions) behind sales conversations is truly beneficial, especially if users prefer self-serve options.

36. Prioritize Internal AI Operational Efficiency

For enterprises, first invest in AI to improve internal operational efficiency before focusing solely on sprinkling “AI magic dust” onto customer-facing products.

37. Automate Lead Qualification Early

Use tools like ChatGPT to code simple scripts for lead qualification and scoring, even if it’s a temporary solution, to manage high lead volumes.

38. Maintain Marketing Skepticism

Approach marketing channels and strategies with skepticism, constantly questioning their effectiveness and ensuring they genuinely resonate with the target audience.

39. Avoid Price-Based Competition

Do not compete primarily on price, as being cheaper is a “race to the bottom” and not a durable approach for long-term success.

40. Assess Market Timing for Launches

Carefully assess market timing and the readiness of multiple parties to converge before launching new platforms or products, as timing significantly impacts success.

41. Conduct Deep Market & User Research

Before launching, conduct deep market dynamics and user research to understand genuine user needs, alternatives, existing tech stacks, and willingness to adopt new tools versus integrated solutions.

42. Manage Expectations Proactively

Proactively manage expectations internally and externally, as the gap between expectations and reality often leads to unhappiness; it’s easier to adjust expectations than change reality.

43. Prioritize People in Work-Life Blend

When evaluating work, prioritize being surrounded by people who are kind, intellectually stimulating, and genuinely interesting, as you spend a significant amount of time with them.

44. Have Product Conviction in Work

Choose to work on products you genuinely believe in and are excited to get into users’ hands, as this conviction is crucial for effective marketing and personal energy.

45. Seek Impact Potential in Work

Look for roles where your discipline (e.g., marketing) has the potential to significantly impact the company’s trajectory, beyond just the company’s overall success.

46. Create Use Case Epiphanies

Focus marketing efforts on helping customers discover new use cases for your product, leading to “epiphanies” where they realize its potential.

47. Offer Novelty & Value Alignment

Differentiate your product by offering novelty and aligning with users’ values and goals, as customers seek solutions that truly resonate beyond being “yet another tool.”

48. Educate & Offer Easier Alternative

Create educational content that outlines a complex process (e.g., becoming a payment facilitator) and then position your product as the simpler, less onerous alternative.

49. Build T-Shaped Marketing Teams

Structure marketing teams with T-shaped individuals who have deep expertise in one area but can be flexible and adaptable to various company needs.

50. Adopt Long-Term AI Vision

For AI companies, focus on a long-term vision of how AI can be a positive force for humanity, rather than short-term competition over chatbot outputs.