Senior enterprise sales leader with 10+ years selling complex, high-stakes
financial technology and platform solutions across North America, Europe,
and Asia. I operate at the intersection of tech and finance, managing executive-
level relationships with some of the world’s largest regulated institutions.

At Coinbase, I've built a multi-billion-dollar book of business, working directly with the
firm’s highest-value, strategically critical institutional clients. I drive
adoption of a multi-product technology platform (custody, trading,
execution algorithms, staking, data, and infrastructure/CaaS).

With deep roots in financial services and emerging tech, I translate
complex technical capabilities into enterprise-ready solutions for financial
institutions. I maintain a 95%+ retention rate, a global network of senior
relationships, and a proven ability to lead multi-stakeholder, C-suite-level
sales cycles that deliver long-term platform adoption.

Andrew Axelrod

JK & Associates is a marketing strategy consulting firm for consumer / B2C / D2C / C2C brands and platforms. We help businesses to sustainably grow revenue and profitability by aligning the 4Ps with consumer demand and the largest profit pools in the market.

Over the past few years, we have helped dozens of clients achieve profitable growth.
Our approach is built around three clear steps:

(1) Diagnosing growth barriers

(2) Validating hypotheses through data and market analysis

(3) Providing strategic recommendations based on customer value and market opportunities

Our consulting philosophy is consumer-centric, market-driven, and pragmatic.

You can find more information on our website:
👉 www.juliakinnerassociates.com


If this sounds interesting to you, feel free to reach out here or send an email to:
📩 julia@juliakinnerassociates.com

I look forward to hearing from you!
Julia
---

#growthmarketing
#strategicmarketing
#strategy
#growth
#fractionalcmo
#consulting
#marketingconsultant

Julia Kinner

Companies spend 100K on segmentation studies that tell them their customer is "35-54, urban, mid-to-high income."

So is everyone else's.

The question isn't who your customer is. It's what they'll pay for that you aren't delivering.

1. Stop segmenting by demographics. Segment by value.
Two people with identical profiles can have opposite purchase drivers. One wants efficacy, one wants status. Run the same campaign at both and you'll convert neither. Your CAC stays high because you're averaging across people who want fundamentally different things.

2. Reconcile what people say with what they actually buy.
Survey data lies. Sell-out data doesn't. I've seen 40-point gaps between stated intent and actual purchase behavior. That's not a rounding error, it's your entire product roadmap built on what people think they should say, not what they actually do with their money.

3. Find the unmet need your category has normalized.
Every market has friction that customers have stopped complaining about because they assume no one will fix it. They're not switching to competitors they're just quietly dissatisfied. That latent demand doesn't show up in NPS scores or brand trackers. But the company that solves it doesn't need to fight on price or outspend on media. They just take the customers everyone else thought were locked up.

The brands gaining share right now aren't winning on awareness. They're capturing demand that was always there just invisible to everyone running the same playbook.

How Small Brands Grow – A Replicable Approach to Start & Scale Brands | Growth Strategy & Execution for Consumer Brands | Value Based Segmentation | Follow & Hit the BELL for Daily Strategy Advice

Your marketing team lacks commercial rigor and strategic thinking?
Most likely. Here's why...

Let me ask you a simple question:
Do they even know where value is?

Too often the answer is no, and that's a problem.

Most marketing teams operate without clarity on segment economics.
They don't know:
- which customers drive disproportionate value
- how those customers behave in the category
- how they decide
- how they buy

Most importantly, they don't know what's realistic, how high is high, what the addressable opportunity looks like and what the gaps are in the current operating model that prevent them from capturing value. 

So they act "value blind" and optimise tactics. 
Campaigns. Channels. Creative.

Meanwhile the CEO is asking where growth will come from and how we capture it. The CFO is questioning whether marketing spend is justified. And NOBODY can answer with commercial precision because the foundation isn't there.

The cost of this misalignment is real: marketing investment without payback, because priorities aren't aligned with profit pools, budget battles with vague assumptions instead of clear choices, growth targets reverse-engineered from investor expectations, not customer economics.
The result:
Wasted spend. Margin erosion. Missed growth.

BUT, this isn't a marketing capability problem. 
You cannot expect commercial rigour from a team that was never given commercial clarity.

The solution
Align the organisation around segment value.
Not demographics. Not personas. 
VALUE.

Which segments are most valuable, what's our share and why?
Which are growing? 
Which are addressable given your brand's right to win?
What does it mean for our strategy?

Then map their category behaviour. Purchase frequency. Basket size. Channel preference. Decision drivers. Path to purchase.
When this foundation exists, the CEO question "where does growth come from" has a precise answer. The CFO sees value at stake, justified spend, and payback logic. The CMO builds strategy against segments that factually exist and move the needle vs. fantasies. 

Not because marketing got better at presenting.
Because everyone is finally thinking value.

Most demand models miss the point.
Demand is not just about awareness or distribution.
It’s a function of three things:

1) Desire / Need
2) Willingness to pay
3) Occasions to buy or use
If one is missing, demand collapses.

You can have:
Customers with no real desire → no demand
Customers with desire but no willingness to pay → no demand
Customers with desire and willingness, but no occasion → still no demand

AND then there’s the segment where all three meet.
That’s where real value can be created.
Those are your high-value consumers (HVC and SHVC).

What’s interesting:
You find these segments in any category.
But most companies don’t design for them. They design for averages.

Which leads to three questions every CEO should be asking:

1) Is our current product built for high-value segments?
2) Is our value proposition strong enough to meet their willingness to pay?
3) Do we have the right go-to-market model to reach them?

BOTTOMLINE:
Growth doesn’t come from selling more to everyone.
It comes from a desirable product that meets williness to pay and occasions of the right segment.

The Five Critical Failures of Traditional Growth Frameworks
After working with dozens of emerging brands, one pattern keeps repeating:

Most strategy frameworks were built for companies that already won.
Startups haven’t.
Here’s where the classic playbooks break down.

Failure 1: They assume you have a right to win
Most frameworks quietly assume demand exists and your job is to capture it.
For early-stage brands, that’s not true.
Lack of demand (or demand that’s too niche for a mass GTM) is the second biggest reason startups fail. Either the market doesn’t care enough
OR demand exists but requires a highly specific GTM model built around the product and its audience. 

Failure 2: They ignore the product-strategy connection
Frameworks treat strategy as a menu: pick a target, choose a positioning, select channels. But emerging brands don’t have unlimited options.
Your product constrains your strategy.
- A product that needs education (fresh pet food, electrolyte optimization, collagen supplementation, medical-grade skincare etc. ) can’t run a mass playbook that assumes instant understanding.
- A product that needs infrastructure (refrigeration, professional application, installation, onboarding) has different channel economics.
- A product with 30% gross margin cannot run the same growth model as one with 60%.
The product narrows the strategic aperture most frameworks pretend it doesn’t.

Failure 3: They assume resources you don’t have
“Build mental availability through consistent reach.”
At today’s CPMs, that’s a multi-million-dollar strategy.
“Maximize physical availability.”
Retailers don’t list unproven brands on ambition.
What’s optimal with a $20M budget is not optimal with $500K.

Failure 4: They treat all GTM archetypes the same
Creating a category is not the same as disrupting one.
Democratizing premium is not the same as inventing a new occasion.
Freshpet ≠ Chobani ≠ e.l.f.
Yet most frameworks prescribe the same playbook.
- Category creators compete with behavior.
- Disruptors compete with incumbents.
- Value liberators compete on economics.

Completely different game.

Failure 5: They don’t tell you when to quit
Frameworks teach persistence, not judgment.
They don’t tell you when:
- repeat rates stay below threshold
- velocity falls despite wider distribution
- margins compress with no path to recovery
- CAC rises while LTV stagnates
- demand never materializes beyond early adopters

Not every brand should exist.
Not every product can scale.
Knowing when to pivot or walk away is as important as knowing how to grow.
But no framework teaches that.

TLDR:
Most growth models assume success is inevitable with the right execution.
It isn’t.
Early-stage strategy is not about choosing from infinite options.
It’s about navigating brutal constraints like product, capital, category, timing.
And building a model that fits reality, not theory.

Are you targeting high income?
Then you should read this.

It is counterintuitive; like so many things in marketing.

But if you target high income individuals and think that they all spend a bomb then you're probably making a mistake.

Why?
Because purchasing power ≠ effective spend.
The ability only translates to spend if it meets need/desire + occasion.
If those are absent there's just a big zero, nada, niente.

What we see in our research?
Roughly 50% of high income individuals spend as little as low or mid value consumers i.e. not much because they're just not interested.
In contrast, there are lower income groups that spend disproportionately to their buying power, because they have more need, desire, occasions.

It also means that if you're targeting "income only" 50% might behave like the average "low incomer".

BOTTOMLINE
The power zone is where buying power meets desire and occasions; value based segmentation is an approach that helps to identify the segments where all three meet.

I got a tattoo this week.
It says:

THE AVERAGE ALWAYS LIES.
In big, fat letters on my left arm.
Because there’s nothing more deceiving than the average.

The “average customer” with “average spend” is just a grey slurry;
a mix of high effort and low value.

When I walked out of the studio, I felt incomplete.
Something was missing.
So I went back.

And got this on the other arm:
DE-AVERAGING DRIVES GROWTH.
Now it finally makes sense.

BOTTOMLINE
If you want to drive growth, don't look at the average.
De-average by consumer segment, channel, online/offline etc and recalibrate accordingly.

Happy Friday :)

Harsh Truth:
Your research is for the bin


Around the €50-100M mark, consumer brands often start investing in research. Leadership realizes they don't know enough about their customers and wants to change that.

So they hire an agency. 
Run some surveys. 
Get some reports.

And after all that, they're usually not much smarter OR more actionable than before.

You've seen this: 
Marketing presents the research findings. Lots of slides.
Customer personas. 
Satisfaction scores. 
Purchase drivers. 

The CEO asks: "So where exactly should we invest to grow?" 
The CFO asks: "What's the ROI if we shift budget to this segment?" 

Silence. Or speculation dressed up as insight.
The reason: The data isn't linked to value.
You still don't know which segments generate profit, and where you're over- or under-investing relative to what they're worth.
Consequently, strategy stays vague and is something like 
"Grow premium." "Win in digital." 
Directionally right. Precisely wrong.
This could mean a zillion things.

How to fix this:
(1) Segment by value, not demographics. Group customers by what they're worth not who they are. 

(2) Understand consumer drivers that are linked to their value and what needs to be true to serve them. 

(3) Calculate the true cost to serve. Include acquisition spend, promotional depth, and channel costs. That "loyal" segment might be unprofitable once you factor in the discounts keeping them around.

(4) Define segment budget against value. Compare what you invest in each segment versus what they generate. You'll likely find you're over-spending on low-value segments and under-investing where the real upside sits. You'll most likely see that some segments aren't worth investing.

(5) Make reallocation decisions. The answer is rarely "do more." It's shifting budget from where you're over-indexed to where unit economics actually work.

The real fix: whenever you hire an agency ask them how exactly this is going to translate into value. If you don't get a clear answer -> Run Forrest Run

e.l.f. and Liquid Death 
A case study in business model resilience & dependence vs leverage 

e.l.f. and Liquid Death just dropped their second collaboration (lip balms in mini Liquid Death cans). 
The marketing press calls it genius.

But this partnership shows something more interesting than viral marketing. It's a case study in business model resilience.

Two Brands, Two Different Foundations

👉 Liquid Death sells water
That's it. The skull logo, the "Murder Your Thirst" tagline, all of it exists to justify charging premium prices for a commodity. Remove the brand, and you're competing with Dasani on price.


👉 e.l.f. sells cosmetics that perform at accessible prices. The brand marketing is excellent, but it sits on top of a functional value proposition: quality products at $6-14 that compete with $30+ alternatives.


---

👉 The Resilience Test

Ask the brutal question: 
What happens if the hype cools down?

Liquid Death has no fallback. The product is water. If the brand stops being cool, there's no functional reason to pay the premium.

e.l.f. has a fallback. Even if they lose cultural cachet the product-price equation still works. A $6 primer that performs doesn't need to be cool to sell.

One company's brand is the entire business. The other's brand is an accelerant on top of a working model.

---

This is where the e.l.f. x Liquid Death partnership gets interesting.

The first collaboration (Corpse Paint) launched March 2024. Sold out in 45 minutes. 68% of buyers were new to e.l.f.
Great success.

The second dropped January 2026.

What did e.l.f. do in between? Super Bowl campaign. First beauty brand to sponsor the NWSL. Expanded into the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). Closed an $800M acquisition. 
The Liquid Death collab was one play among others.

What did Liquid Death do? Prepared for a reported early-2026 IPO and launched this collaboration right alongside a new energy drink line, precisely when they need to demonstrate brand extensibility to investors.

One company used the partnership as "just another" customer acquisition channel. The other needs it as proof of concept for their valuation story.

---

Every brand eventually cools off. The question is: what's underneath when it does?

If your business model depends entirely on staying culturally relevant, you're one trend cycle away from a valuation reset.

If your brand amplifies a product that already works, you have room to evolve.

Partnerships reveal this. Watch whether a company treats collaborations as one channel among many or as evidence for a story they haven't proven yet.

The former has leverage. 
The latter has dependency.

Most founders think strategy is a choice.
It isn't.

Your product already made half your strategic decisions for you and ignoring that reality is the fastest way to waste time and money.

After working with dozens of emerging brands, one pattern is consistent: winners choose strategies that fit their product DNA. 
This is what we call product-first strategy.

It rests on three principles most frameworks ignore:

1. Product DNA constrains strategy
Your product's characteristics quietly determine what you can and can't do:

→ If your product requires education, mass-market speed isn't an option
→ If your advantage is demonstrable, you can lead with proof
→ If you need special infrastructure, your channel options narrow
→ If your gross margin is below 45%, premium positioning is off the table

These aren't limitations to overcome. 
They're realities to embrace. 
Your product tells you where to play.


2. Value concentration dictates who you should target
Not all consumers are equal. 
In most categories, they cluster into engagement tiers:

The top 17% of consumers (High and Super-High Value) represent 35-40% of category value. They buy frequently, pay premium, actively seek better products, and advocate for brands they love.

The bottom 53% (Low Value) buy rarely, decide on price, and won't invest time learning about your product.

This creates a fundamental choice:

Volume Play: Target low and medium value consumers. Large market, thin margins, mass distribution, instant comprehension required.

Value Play: Target high and super-high value consumers. Smaller market, higher margins, education-friendly, selective channels.
Your product DNA often makes this choice for you.


3. Category entry mode determines your playbook
How you're entering the category shapes everything. Are you:

→ Creating a new consumption occasion? (Category Pioneer)
→ Offering demonstrable superiority? (Segment Disruptor)  
→ Democratizing premium at accessible prices? (Value Liberator)
→ Adding a benefit layer to an existing category? (Benefit Innovator)

Each entry mode has different timelines, different success factors, different risks. A Category Pioneer needs 8-12 years and patient capital. A Value Liberator can reach $100M in 5-7 years with operational excellence.

Combine your entry mode with your segment choice, and you get your Growth Archetype, the playbook that tells you how to win.

The uncomfortable truth

Founders don't get to choose strategy freely.
Your product already narrowed the field.

The job isn't to invent a strategy. It's to diagnose your business type accurately and execute the right model with discipline.

That doesn't make building a brand easy. But it stops you from following advice that was never meant for your business.

Here's a hard truth about marketing strategy, 
Winning doesn't start with choosing, it starts with...


...knowing what to choose.

1. The problem
Most leadership teams believe they are focused.
They’ve made a choice.
They’ve picked their target groups.
They’ve defined their direction.

On the surface, that looks like strategy.
But in reality, they’re still guessing.
Because they don’t know:
- Which of the segments actually drives most of the profit
- ... will respond strongest to investment
- ... has the highest expandability 
- ... has a multiplier effect

So they treat all as equally important.
Same budget.
Same attention.
Same level of compromise.

That’s not focus.
That’s dilution with a strategy label on it.

The result is predictable:
The most valuable segment doesn't get the disproportionate focus it deserves. Resources are diluted even though strategic decisions have been made.


2. The solution
Value-based segmentation.
It gives leadership a clear economic map of the market:

(1) Which customers create disproportionate value
(2) Which segments are worth building the business around
(3) Which segment you should focus on at which point of your long term growth strategy.

It tells you:
Where to go all in
Where to selectively play
And where to stop investing altogether

This is the thinking behind "How Small Brands Grow - A Replicable Approach to Start & Scale Brands.

JK & Associates AG helps challenger brands to focus on the right segments with the right approach in 10 to 12 weeks.

🤔 CMO: Isn’t everyone going after high-value segments?
Short answer: No.
Here's why

I often see marketers placing this comment on my posts:
“But isn’t everyone going after high-value segments, so it's much harder to win there?"

I'd say no.
Here's why.

Very few know & understand those segments because the lack value-based segmentation.
They segment by age, channel or attitude; call it strategy and wonder why things don’t change for the better.

The reason for this?
Without value you can’t make smart choices.
Not making smart choices often means going after everyone.
 
BOTTOMLINE
The best profit pools stay invisible to most brands because they don’t segment the right way and ultimately you must understand what's the role of each segment at any point in time (start-up, scale-up, maturity).


----
To build your unfair advantage, have a look at “How Small Brands Grow - A Replicable Approach to Start & Scale Brands. Growth is only one value based segmentation away.

Gifted is the business that knows their core.
I've seen this movie too many times.

Innovation that creates no incremental value.
Has nothing to do with consumer needs.
No willingness to pay.
All of this while neglecting the core and not delivering on the basics.

And here’s the paradox:
when businesses should be going bigger on the big thing, they instead go smaller and more niche with their innovation.

- They add features nobody asked for.
- They launch side products nobody needed.
- They chase edge cases while the core is underperforming.

A weak core value proposition paired with mediocre execution doesn’t get saved by “innovation.” It just creates more noise, more complexity, and more distraction.

Real growth doesn’t come from chasing shiny objects.
It comes from fixing what actually matters:
A core consumer problem + WTP.

Seaching for a capable software engineer?
Reach out to Robert Sommeregger directly

Senior Software Engineer at NativeWaves GmbH

Hi folks, I’m exploring my next role and opening up conversations.
I’m looking for senior software engineering roles, open to Salzburg (broader area), Vienna, or international remote/contract work. 
If something comes to mind, or if you’d simply like to reconnect, feel free to comment or drop me a message.
A bit of background: I’ve worked as a software engineer at NativeWaves GmbH, Waters Corporation, and TT Games Ltd., building and operating production systems across cloud, backend, tooling, and complex domain software.
Thanks — always happy to exchange ideas or catch up.
 #OpenToWork

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