Mark Kilens

TACK

TACK ⛵️ is a media and go-to-market firm helping startups and scaleups match how they go-to-market to how people buy. Modernizing how businesses go-to-market to create, capture, and convert demand into revenue. 

Companies like Commsor, ZoomInfo, Swoogo, Coursera, Aiven, CloudBees, Audette, Terminus, and more partner with TACK to evolve how they go-to-market using a People-first GTM approach. 

Its mission is to match how companies go-to-market to how people buy by making every experience and interaction with a business more human.

TACK Network is a GTM media network of content and resources all about B2B go-to-market. We produce original shows and authentic stories giving some of the brightest people in B2B go-to-market the support they need to share stories and ideas.

TACK Insider is for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to learn how to go-to-market to match how people buy today. Members learn how to use seven different growth strategies that are all part of the People-first GTM Model.  The membership and community comes with hundreds of resources, weekly masterclasses, and personalized coaching.

TACK GTM is Uber for GTM Leaders. An on demand go-to-market services firm specializing in People-first GTM strategies and services that grow pipeline and revenue. We partner with CEOs, Founders, and Marketing Leaders to design and deploy People-first GTM strategies.

Chart your go-to-market with TACK.

CEO and Co-Founder

Stage 2 Capital

The Stage 2 Capital Catalyst supports early stage B2B software companies in scaling their businesses by combining Venture Capital and Go-To-Market, empowering founders with hands-on coaching from an unrivaled network of go-to-market leaders.

Limited Partner and Advisor

Airmeet

Airmeet helps marketers book more meetings and create pipeline faster using premium webinars and online events. 

Airmeet's Event Experience Cloud is an all-in-one premium webinar and event platform helping B2B businesses generate more pipeline and revenue.

I lead Airmeet’s global marketing team and are working to advance the event-led growth movement.

Chief Marketing Officer

Drift

Content and community are key ingredients to accelerating a business's revenue, delivering more customer value, and building an enduring brand.

My team's partner with Drift's marketing, sales, and customers success teams to develop the right content, programs, and experiences to accelerate revenue, deliver more value to our customers, and grow Drift’s brand.

Get your 100% free Drift Insider account. https://www.drift.com/insider/

Check out a couple of Drift's newest digital books. https://www.drift.com/books/

The Conversational Marketing Blueprint: https://www.drift.com/books/conversational-marketing-blueprint/

The Guide to Conversational ABM: https://www.drift.com/books/conversational-abm/

Learn something new on Drift's blog: https://www.drift.com/blog/

Vice President of Content and Community

HubSpot

I was the VP of Marketing and founder of HubSpot Academy.

HubSpot Academy is a global learning community and platform with millions of people in more than 200 countries.

It’s a tremendous growth driver of demand and interest - signing up and certifying tens of thousands of new HubSot users and community members every month.

We focused on converting free users into software revenue and helped retain and grow that revenue by building onboarding, expansion, and community programs.

I had the honor and privilege to lead a team of extremely passionate, motivated, and intelligent people. 

HubSpot Academy's purpose is to educate and inspire people so that we, together, transform the way the world does business.

We created content and education to teach people the inbound methodology and how to use the HubSpot platform to grow their business.

Vice President of HubSpot Academy

HubSpot Academy was launched in May 2012 after running it as an experiment for 18 months. 

I was responsible for creating the Inbound Methodology with Brain Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. 

I updated the original methodology in early 2018 to HubSpot's new Inbound flywheel model. 

We created content and education to teach people the inbound methodology and how to use the HubSpot platform to grow their business.

HubSpot Academy's purpose is to educate and inspire people so that we, together, transform the way the world does business.

Director of HubSpot Academy

I was a Senior Inbound Marketing Consultant at HubSpot. I worked with B2B and B2C businesses helping them create, execute, and measure their inbound marketing goals and strategies.

Senior Inbound Marketing Consultant

I joined HubSpot as an Inbound Marketing Consultant. I trained businesses how to use HubSpot to get found, convert leads, close leads into customers, and analyze their results.

Inbound Marketing Consultant

SalesQuest

I was responsible for email marketing campaigns, building prospect and customer databases, social media, inbound marketing, lead generation, the website, and helped create new products and services.

Director of Marketing

I managed a team of market research analysts that created and maintained a library of more than 850 Fortune 1000 and Global 500 company profiles. 

I was responsible for all inbound marketing activities, SEO, social media, and marketing campaigns.

Manager, Marketing and Operations

I performed research on Fortune 1000 companies which included investigating their technology implementations, org charts, budgets, financials, and operating models.

Research Analyst

CEO and Co-founder of TACK ⛵️ & ClubPF ⚓️ | People-first GTM Champion

Mark Kilens is the CEO and Co-founder of TACK, a media and go-to-market firm helping startups and scaleups match how they go-to-market to how people buy. TACK modernizes how businesses go-to-market to create, capture, and convert demand into revenue.

TACK helps B2B organizations transform how they grow using its proprietary People-first GTM model and approach. TACK'S mission is to make every experience and interaction with a business more human. Companies like Commsor, Swoogo, ZoomInfo, Casted, and UserGems partner with TACK to unite their go-to-market teams to grow more efficiently and effectively.

He previously was CMO of Airmeet, a leading virtual and hybrid event platform. He oversaw Airmeet’s global marketing team responsible for brand, demand, lifecycle, and product marketing.

Before that he was the VP of Content and Community at Drift where he led the brand, content, creative, and events teams. He oversaw Drift’s community, Drift Insider, which has 65,000+ members, and Drift’s FLASH, RevGrowth, and HYPERGROWTH events.

Prior to joining Drift, he served as VP of Marketing and founder of HubSpot Academy. As a former customer, Mark joined HubSpot in 2010 where he spent two years working with thousands of HubSpot customers to scale their inbound strategy. 

From there, he went on to build HubSpot Academy from the ground up, and in doing so, educated and certified millions of people and helped grow HubSpot to more than $600 million in revenue.

When he’s not building TACK, Mark enjoys plenty of steak and lobster, a round of golf or two, and loves being on snow or in the ocean.

Go fast, take chances!

Leading Airmeet’s global marketing team and working to advance the event-led growth movement across B2B.

Airmeet is the most customizable and immersive virtual and hybrid event platform for growing businesses. 

Here's how I almost failed scaling HubSpot Academy.

At the time, HubSpot was becoming a global company serving several different languages outside of just English. 

It was tricky. Do we create native content in each language? Do we translate some of the content but not all? Do we use automated translation solutions?

I can tell you this. The automated translation solutions we tried and used at the time were not very good. 

Globalization and localization. It’s hard. 

There were thousands of hours of video, transcripts, and website content. It was an immense undertaking. 

Here’s how we solved this complex problem. We implemented a tiered system for the localization and translation of all content assets. For some content we localized and translated the piece. For other assets we just translated the content. 

That tiered approach saved us a ton of time and money over the long run. 

Since then I’ve advised many companies on how to think about content localization and translation. In the last few years a lot has changed thanks to generative AI. 

Recently I came across a new solution to help solve this problem. Something I wish I had back in 2015. Weglot.

What’s Weglot? 

It’s a solution that simplifies website and content translation. Some of the things I faced when doing this ten years ago were manual translation, page duplication, complex SEO setup, and technical integrations. Painful and time consuming. 

The number one thing you should be doing today is speaking the language of ALL your customers. Did you know that more than 70% of people prefer to buy in their native language

It’s now easy to expand your international presence in just a few clicks. You can do it quickly thanks to automated translation that’s accurate and crisp. 

Increase your SEO visibility in every market that matters. More markets = more reach = more potential customers. 

And thanks to solutions like Weglot, it's easy to integrate with WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, and more. In just a few minutes. No need to move to a different CMS. 

I recently decided to partner with Weglot to help businesses of any size create a more global footprint and make sure their content is speaking the language of their customers. 

It’s more important than ever to make sure your content is in the right language both for people and the bots. 

#WeglotPartner

p.s. still rocking my favorite HubSpot Academy custom Patagonia.

VP of Marketing at EasyLlama | People-first GTM Evangelist

Don’t fall into the status quo.

Here’s my marketing playbook for 2026.

1) Major investments in brand. Which is combo of content, events, community, and customer programs. 

I was so fortunate to bring on a rock star for all those things Katrine Reddin 🦕. She of course will have support and we’re going to be playing offense next year.

Expect to see the 🦙 everywhere. With some major surprises. 

2) Intent and network signals.

We’re an inbound heavy operation which means we can use signals to prioritize leads, follow up with other leads, and nurture a lot better.

Plus we can use network signals like if someone in our network knows someone that could unlock an introduction for us or give us some intel. 

I’m betting big on network signals next year. Both from our customers and our broader network.

3) Holistic revenue attribution.

We’re going to be tracking three types of revenue attribution.

Software attribution, first and last touch.

Self reported attribution in our demo forms.

Discovery call question attribution asked by each AE.

We have two of the three already in play and the data is fascinating. 

I’m also going to add incremental testing to the mix. Do something and then remove it or isolate the removal of the activity like not doing a billboard in one city but having one in another city, and using lead and pipeline data to determine impact. 

This data will help us understand number one and two a hiwnlot better next year. 

4) Monthly marketable moments. 

We already ship a lot of new products and tools in the reg. But next year we’re going to package them better and create one big wave each month. Beat the drum!

5) New offers.

We are cooking up come very compelling free new offers to launch in the first half of next year. I can’t give you any sneak peeks yet, but you should be thinking and investing in offers that will help you turn brand attention into business revenue.

Offers that are differentiated and compelling are key to your demand strategy today.

Don’t forget that your offers should treated as products built by the marketing team. Positioning, promotion, and distribution all matter.

I got a coupe of other ideas brewing. Going to wait to share them until I have more conviction behind each idea. 

If you think these topics are interesting, then you should join my marketing leadership mastermind group. We meet every week for an hour. 

Today we’re chatting about the homepage redesign process and the dashboards a marketing leader should be using to run their business. 

Drop ‘mastermind’ in the comments for more info.

Data is the lifeblood of a business today. Yet most businesses are missing two things. 

Clean data and actionable data. 

This problem costs businesses thousands, if not millions, of dollars in revenue.

What every leader should have are insights into revenue generation, customer health, competitors, and a whole lot more. 

Trust me, I have felt this pain at all of the businesses I’ve worked at. We're actually working on solving this problem at EasyLlama right now. Through a combination of hiring the right people, tech, and process changes. 

One solution that I’ve been trying out is Rows.com  

I’ve been able to upload CSVs and PDFs, connect GA4, and our paid media accounts.  Then I simply ask it questions in plain English.  Way easier than me trying to fumble around with Google Sheets or Excel. 

It organizes and understands the data without me needing to understand SQL or anything else. 

Things like, ‘tell me how many opportunities find us through paid search and also mention Google as how they heard about us.”

Simple prompts that can give me quick and impactful insights into how different channels, campaigns, offers, or messaging are driving results. 

It extracts, connects, analyzes, and keeps all the data fresh. 

Which means I get automated reporting and get insights and actionable recommendations on the regular. Exactly what a busy marketing leader needs. 


My point of view is every company should have at least one business analyst. But that’s not always possible due to the cost involved or other factors. So why not give that power to your founders, and other executives, heck your individual contributors too!?

It’s now possible for you to create your own business analyst copilot/agent helping you analyze and sift through data to find the golden nuggets. I’ve built my own business analyst at a fraction of the cost.

Rows is helping me flex my critical thinking skills and become an even more data empowered marketing leader. 

Helping me see around the next few corners and better plan and predict for the coming quarters. 

You can try it for free yourself. Rows dot com

Product launches are always exhilarating ... and stressful ... but so rewarding.  

Today, I'm proud to announce the third product pillar in EasyLlama's Compliance and Learning Platform. 

Security Awareness Training 🥳

Lots of small and medium businesses should be protecting their business and brand from cyber threats. 

Most don't becuase of two reasons, time and the cost.

We eliminate both reasons and give you a solution that's less than $2/month per employee. For a 150 person business, you can provide an important layer of protection from bad actors and cyber criminals for only $250/month.

It includes a powerful Phishing Simulator powered by AI.  

Giving you the ability to use pre-built phishing campaigns that can run automatically year-round.

You also get detailed ongoing reports so you can have a complete view of your organizational risk and how to better prepare employees to not be fooled.

It's time to: finally...

Prepare. Replace passive, one-off cybersecurity courses with interactive, scenario-based training that builds employee confidence and real-world readiness.

Produce. Demonstrate measurable results with dynamic risk reports and benchmarks that connect safer behaviors to stronger business outcomes.

Protect. Reinforce safe habits through continuous phishing simulations, instant feedback, and ongoing awareness campaigns that reduce risk all year long.

We now offer SMBs ONE platform to manage all of their compliance, security training, employee onboarding, and team training needs. 

All-in-one for the win. Finally one tool that employees need to use and one solution you need to manage and pay for. Nirvana, right?

A massive thank you to the team members behind this big launch. ❤️

From the folks on the product and engineering side, Lawrence Valenti, Michaël Devyver, and Merry Chin. To the people on the GTM teams, Alicia Falcon, PMMC®, Tan Tran, Katrine Reddin 🦕, Carmen Choi, Hana N., and Laura B..

A great product launch take an immense amount of coordination, planning, and execution. We use Asana, Google Doc/Sheets, and Slack to make it all happen. Of course Figma, Canva, and our CMS have something to say too.

Here's how to create the best possible webinar. 

I call it the webinar triple threat play. 

Yes, I did steal that from Bobby Flay's Triple Threat show. 🥓

Here's how to cook it up. 

By the way, I shared this playbook in my weekly marketing leadership mastermind group yesterday. Let me know if you are interested in joining. 

Start first by creating a webinar outline and agenda that has THREE distinct segments. 

1) A 20 or so minute conversation with a thought leader or subject matter expert focused around the webinar's topic. 

2) A ten minute product demo that ties what the thought leader spoke about with the use case of the product. Make sure at the end of this segment you ask the audience, using a poll in the webinar, if they would like to get a full demo of the product they just saw. I usually see about 5% to 20% of the attendees asking for a demo. 

3) A customer speaks for about ten minutes and shares their perspective on how they are using the product and the benefits value it's creating for them and their business. 

Make sure you have a DYNAMIC host. Their job is to host the entire webinar and to facilitate each segment. Getting the audience fired up, engaged, and keeping the webinar on track and managing the overall webinar experience. 

Use something like Wistia's webinar platform to make the webinar feel like a well produced show so what people are seeing is changing every couple of minutes. The key is making it not boring. 

Once the webinar is done, you now have three amazing pieces of content to repackage and reuse. 

One that's thought leadership centric, one that's very product focused, and one that is your customer proof and voice of customer segment. Wisita makes it super easy to create clips from each segment and for you to turn those clips into a format that's right for the right channel. 

So there you have it. My tasty Webinar Triple Threat Play™ 

We're run this playbook many times at EasyLlama and it never fails. 

Drop a note if you want me to share an example of one of our latest webinars using this format, or if you want to join the mastermind group. 

Happy Webinaring!

Don’t start your strategy by thinking of a tool first.

It never works. 

Always think about your STRATEGY first. 

For me it's, 'What is the best way to win the game I’m playing?'

For people in marketing and sales the answer is not AI. 

The answer is how can I best match how I’m marketing and selling to how they like to buy what I’m offering. 

For some businesses, it’s more a PLG motion. For others it’s PLG + Sales-assisted. And others use an enterprise-grade consultative GTM motion. 

But no matter what you’re trying to sell, using buying signals is a smart part of your strategy. 

Buyer signals are key to helping you understand what a buyer is doing so that you can match your approach to them. 

You can start really simple by first identifying what are your low, medium, and high intent buying signals. 

Low intent would be downloading a piece of content, going to an event that you hosted, or reading your newsletter. 

Medium intent would be checking out your pricing page, going to a webinar that includes a product demo, or researching competitors. 

High intent would be signing up for a fee trial or account, requesting a demo, or raising their hand for more info during a webinar. 

Signals can be at the contact or account level and include activity data from any first-, second-, or third-party data source.

Once you know your signals and where to find them. Don’t forget that part. :) You can then determine how to act on each signal. 

The easiest way to think about this is what signals are marketing-led, sales-led or a hybrid approach.  

Alright so we now let’s talk about tools. One of my favorite tools I’ve used to run a signal-based GTM strategy is Common Room.  They make it easy with their RoomieAI suite to find, organize, and act on all the buying signals. 

The key, IMO, is to try and keep the signal architecture in one centralized place. Much easier to manage and maintain. Helps streamline the prospecting motion of creating deals and using signals to close deals.

One of the most important things for your signal-based strategy to work is making sure the salespeople know where to see and how to use the signals. Sure, automation can help, but when a salesperson is given a power that they didn’t have before and knows how to use the power responsibility, great things can happen. Take a look at the image to see what a salesperson could get.

Things like faster lead follow up, meeting the buyer where they are, sending the right message at the right time, and reaching out to the right stakeholders to increase the likelihood a deal closes. 

The big takeaway is to please make sure you design your GTM to match how people buy today.

My new community and resource hub is open for business. 

It's called The GTM Library.

A hangout for founders, fractional folks, and marketers who wants to sharpen their go-to-market skills and execution.  

I'm an entrepreneur at heart which means I'm obsessed with all things go-to-market.  I've built a pretty big private collection of my favorite go-to-market resources, including a 100+ masterclasses from people in my network.

When you sign up you'll get access to the community and my regular masterclasses. I'm hosting a new one in a couple of weeks about my latest positioning and messaging framework that I've built. 

For a small one-time payment you can get your library card and access to my private collection of resources and masterclasses, including a private call with me. 

Hope you find it valuable. 

https://lnkd.in/eK27VGsG 

p.s. that's me with one of my favorite books about entrepreneurship and leading a business.

Inside Partnering

Inside Partnering is a Substack video podcast featuring the global leaders driving growth through partnerships, co-sell, and ecosystem strategy.
Hosted by Chip Rodgers, the show features candid conversations with executives from AWS, Microsoft, Google, ZoomInfo, Gong, Cisco, and beyond - diving into what’s working, what’s evolving, and how partner teams are scaling in a rapidly changing market.
🎧 90+ episodes and counting → https://www.InsidePartnering.com
✅ Subscribe here → http://insidepartnering.substack.com

Founder and Host

Partnership Leaders

Partnership Leaders is the premier global community for partnership professionals building partner programs and ecosystem orgs at the top technology and service companies. 

Made up of 1,300+ of the top partnerships, alliance and business development professionals globally - membership in Partnership Leaders is a catalyst for personal and professional success.

Join us! ~ www.partnershipleaders.com

Executive Member

CMO Huddles

Bringing together and empowering highly effective B2B CMOs to share, care, and dare each other to greatness.

Founding and Advisory Board Member

The GTM Circle

Member

WorkSpan

This is a new position for WorkSpan and, as CPO, I focus on building and nurturing partnerships with key companies to grow revenue and deliver value to customers. WorkSpan is uniquely positioned to transform the way B2B partner ecosystems collaborate and I’m thrilled to be leading partnerships that will play a critical role in driving this transformation.

Chief Partner Officer

Promoted after successfully envisioning and creating new Ecosystem Management category and driving pipeline to exceed targets. Maintain category leader position through thought leadership, quality content, and demand generation. Provide strategic direction and guidance to the marketing team, including demand gen, content marketing, product marketing, and community marketing as well as business development representatives (BDRs).

► Created and currently lead the fast-growing category of Ecosystem Management for partner co-selling motions. 
► Initiated and executed Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy with 6sense to identify high-intent accounts, optimize BDR and sales efforts, and focus digital campaigns on high intent targets and personas.
► Defined and executed successful SEO content marketing strategy through pillar and cluster and backlink tactics more than doubling organic website traffic from 3,000 to 6,000 per month in one year.
► Designed and implemented new interactive Salesforce dashboards to measure performance for marketing, BDR, and sales teams and make data-driven decisions to grow pipeline and improve conversion metrics.
► Deployed innovative Paperflite marketing content management system for sales team and website to share content with customers and track content usage, viewership, and engagement.

Propelled startup to become widely recognized by creating a new category of Ecosystem Management. Designed and deployed 10-point strategic plan to create category; cultivated relationships with influential stakeholders and articulated vision to build partnering community support. Developed taxonomy of language to shape and lead the market.

► Defined and deployed B2B marketing stack to optimize marketing process for scale and implement Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategies. Filled top of funnel with high-converting opportunities.
► Maintained consistent and compelling company/product messaging by creating full inventory of assets for all sales stages with rapid iteration as marketing and messaging evolved.

Vice President Marketing

EcosystemAces

Conducted over 300 interviews of leading partner ecosystem professionals in the technology industry. 

Ecosystem Aces is dedicated to helping partnership leaders unleash the full potential of their partner network. Whether you’re just getting started with ecosystem partners, or you’re looking for advanced strategies and tactics, this podcast is for you. 

Each episode features topics like: ecosystem partnering, co-selling strategies, co-selling with hyperscalers, building joint solutions with partners, attracting new partners and growing partner programs, go-to-market strategies, optimizing cross-company business processes, improving communication and collaboration with partners, successful career strategies, and more.

Full library of interviews here: 
https://www.workspan.com/blog?categories=Ecosystem+Aces+Podcast#blog-section

Video Podcast Host: EcosystemAces

Marketing Consultant

Strategic advisor for digital/social marketing, online community building, demand generation, customer and partner events, and influencer marketing in software (SaaS) and services companies. Clients include e-commerce, ad-tech, internet domain/security providers, information/content services, financial analyst firms, and others.

Marketing and Customer Engagement Consultant

Ciena

Brought on board by CMO from MicroStrategy to drive key marketing initiatives, including Events, Social, and Community Marketing, in optical networking and emerging markets to build pipeline and accelerate sales opportunities. 

► Defined event strategy and led event execution team for 95 global and regional tradeshows, 40+ hosted events, mobile semi-truck showcase, and executive briefing center.
► Enhanced participants’ experience by developing event strategic plans to coordinate messaging & content release schedules, registration details, speaker engagements.

Vice President, Marketing

MicroStrategy

Hired by CMO from SAP to drive pipeline growth through business development, inside sales, global events, social media marketing, and search marketing.

► Implemented community marketing program after identifying lack of engagement from community stakeholders; incorporated ABM technology to understand and build customized landing pages for various client accounts.
► Created Eloqua digital outbound and nurture programs to improve inside sales metrics.

Promoted to lead and grow major programs for SAP Marketing by providing strategic direction to team of 20 content experts, evangelists, and community managers, 10-member events team and 50+ dotted-line employees.

► Grew SAP TechEd revenue to $25.5M keeping budget to under $22.0M by improving attendance, reducing costs, and turning events into invaluable, connected platforms that encouraged customer passion for SAP solutions.
► Grew SAP Community Network from 300,000 to over 2M highly engaged members. Grew traffic 5X to over 2.4M unique visitors a month, 195mil page views per year.

Led SAP TechEd and SAP TechTour events including a direct team of 10 as well as a large virtual team located in the US, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, India, China, and Japan. 
Revitalized SAP TechEd events from previously losing $2M to profiting over $3.5M annually. 
  - Built relationships with key leaders in US, EMEA, India, and China to construct a global program
  - Shared best practices, grew attendance and partner revenue, and tightened cost controls

Senior Director, TechEd and Ecosystem Events

Drove partner marketing events programs targeting ISVs, a brand new audience for SAP, including highly successful recruitment events attracting 800+ partners.
► Founding member of a new business initiative that drove $63M incremental revenue partnering with Teradata, Citrix, RIM Blackberry, and Symbol.

Director, Global Partner Marketing and Business Development

► Increased sales pipeline 45% while simultaneously reducing marketing spend 50%. Led a team of 15 creating solutions and partner marketing activities for SAP America.

Director, Solutions and Partner Marketing

I’m a growth-minded executive with a unique blend of marketing and ecosystem leadership experience, most recently serving as Chief Partner Officer at WorkSpan, where I built and scaled strategic partnerships with AWS, Microsoft, and Google. Now, as the Founder and Host of Inside Partner, I’m focused on advancing the partnerships industry - spotlighting partner leaders and insights through executive interviews and thought leadership content.

Over the past 20+ years, I’ve led teams across marketing, ecosystem strategy, and community engagement at category-leading SaaS companies. At WorkSpan, I created the Ecosystem Management category and launched Ecosystem Aces, a video podcast series featuring over 220 executive interviews and 110+ show-floor conversations from major partner events. These experiences cemented my belief in the power of storytelling and relationships to drive strategic growth.

Whether building demand gen engines from scratch, positioning companies for Series A to C growth, or shaping industry conversations through analyst briefings and event presence, I bring energy, strategy, and executive credibility to every engagement. I thrive in fast-paced environments, and I’m passionate about coaching teams, developing ecosystems, and helping B2B SaaS companies grow through partnerships and marketing alignment.

Key Strengths:
🔹 Ecosystem & Partner Strategy
🔹 Pipeline Generation & Driving Revenue
🔹 Category Creation & Messaging
🔹 Video Content & Thought Leadership
🔹 ABM & Demand Gen Engines
🔹 Community Growth & Influencer Marketing

Let’s build something impactful - whether it’s a brand, a category, or an ecosystem.

Chip Rodgers

🚨 AWS Marketplace Announcements 🚨 for the OPENING DAY of AWS re:Invent! 

Hear from the amazing Matt Yanchyshyn, VP of AWS Marketplace & Partner Services.

This conversation is perfectly timed - Today, AWS Marketplace announces a major wave of innovation that reshapes how customers discover, evaluate, purchase, and deploy cloud solutions.

Matt breaks down several of the big launches landing today:

✅ 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲 - an AI-powered discovery experience where customers can ask natural language questions, upload requirement documents, generate dynamic comparison tables, and evaluate solutions faster
✅ 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶-𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 - curated combinations of SaaS, services, and third-party tools packaged around real customer use cases
✅ 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝘀 - automated, personalized pricing based on partner-defined criteria
✅ 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗣𝗹𝘂𝘀 - dramatically simplified deployment workflows that reduce setup steps from dozens of clicks to just a few
✅ 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝟭𝟱+ 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀
✅ 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 across India, Japan, and South Korea

Matt put it best: “𝘞𝘦’𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘈𝘐.”

This is a huge moment for ISVs, services partners, and customers alike. Marketplace continues to evolve into a unified platform that eliminates friction, accelerates time-to-value, and opens new revenue opportunities globally.

🎥 Opening clip here -- full episode in comments.

If you’re at re:Invent this week, you’re going to see these capabilities everywhere - and they’re just the start of what’s coming next.

Allison Bishop Chris Grusz Ruba Borno Christopher Sullivan Allison Johnson Jessica Rudy Louise Strandoo Karthik Balakrishnan Mona Chadha Rohan Karmarkar Asher Mathew Jay McBain R "Ray" Wang Robert DeMarzo

🎙 Inside Partnering | Chief Partner Officer | CMO | Ecosystem Strategy | B2B SaaS Growth & GTM Leader

I’m thrilled to be recognized among the Top B2B Marketing Influencers by CMO Huddles! 💜🐧

Being a member of this leadership community has been an amazing experience. The conversations, the candor, and everyone's willingness to share what’s 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 working (and not working) in B2B marketing have shaped so much of how I think about marketing and stay connected to new ideas and experiments.

Huge kudos to Drew Neisser and the entire CMO Huddles team for building a place where marketing leaders can learn from each other, challenge each other, and grow together.  (Share, Care, and Dare!)

Congrats also to everyone on the list - I am honored to be included such an amazing group of top  marketing leaders like Paige O'Neill Jamie Gier Jakki Glivicky Geiger Heidi Bullock Grant Johnson James (JD) Dillon Caroline Tien-Spalding (she, her, hers) 🔬 S. Marshall Poindexter 💊 Isabelle Papoulias Armen Najarian Chandar Pattabhiram Udi Ledergor Carilu Dietrich Dan Lowden Denise Vu Broady Narine Galstian Julie Kaplan Janet Jaiswal Rashmi Vittal 

See the full list: https://lnkd.in/g_CNYajQ

Of course you’re going to run into tech partner icons at a big tech conference like Microsoft Ignite.  👀👀👀

Jay McBain | Nirav Desai | Joseph Fu

No alternative text description for this image

It wouldn’t be a Partnership Leaders #AWSreinvent25 event without seeing so many friends!

What an incredible first day at AWS re:Invent! I had the chance to sit down with Mona Chadha, Director of Worldwide Infrastructure ISV Partners at Amazon Web Services (AWS) - a person who has been shaping the AWS ISV ecosystem for more than a decade.
 
This was Mona’s 13th re:Invent, and you can feel her experience in every insight she shares. 

We covered how AI has reached a new level of maturity this year, with Bedrock, Agent Core, AI competencies, and Marketplace innovation all coming together to help partners move from pilots to production.
 
One of my favorite parts of our conversation was when she talked about what the best co-sell partners are doing right now:
 
✅ They integrate early with AWS AI services
✅ They build messaging that aligns with the AWS field
✅ They bring their sales, marketing, product and partner teams together
✅ They share information openly so the co-sell motion stays aligned
✅ And, as Mona said, many of the strongest partners are also strong AWS customers themselves

We also dug into one of the big Marketplace announcements: multi-product solutions. This unlocks new ways to package solutions, attach services and create real revenue opportunities for ISVs, SIs and channel partners. 

Also Express Private Offers gives partners a powerful way to deliver prescriptive solutions directly to buyers at the right price based on pre-defined criteria. 

Mona summed it up perfectly: AI only delivers impact when it reaches production and drives measurable ROI.  

I will drop a link to the full Substack article and video in the first comment.

Matt Yanchyshyn Allison Bishop Megan Barbone Jazmin Eusébio (she/her) Chris Grusz Christopher Sullivan Julia Chen

AI, agentic, Marketplace, SCAs, co-sell, channel transformation - my conversation with Allison Johnson covers it all.

Allison is Director of the Americas Technology Partners organization at Amazon Web Services (AWS), working across some of the biggest infra players, fast-growing ISVs, and the newest born-on-Bedrock startups. Her perspective is shaped by nine years inside AWS and a front-row seat to how quickly partner motions are changing.

A few themes stood out:

✅ ISVs everywhere are trying to understand how to build agents, embed AI, and accelerate their roadmap.

✅ Allison’s team runs an internal agent check ride - building their own automations with Q, Flow, and other tools - so they can guide ISVs with firsthand experience.

✅ Marketplace continues to be the first route to co-sell. For many ISVs, it’s becoming a competitive advantage to close deals faster through AWS procurement.

✅ ISVs, GSIs, VARs, MSPs, distis - the lines between partner types are blurring, and channel partners increasingly play multiple roles.

✅ SCAs only work when there is real sales alignment and a commitment to quarterly outcomes.

✅ Industry alignment is less about matching AWS’s industries and more about focusing on two or three sectors where you already win.

✅ Nice shoutout to Jeff Grimes and the AWS ISV Startup team as well!

Allison offers one of the clearest, most practical views into what ISVs must get right today - and why this moment feels different.

If you want a grounded look at how AWS is approaching co-build, co-market, co-sell, agentic, and Marketplace expansion, this is an episode worth watching.

Thanks for taking the time to share your insights Allison!

Short video here. I’ll link the full interview and breakdown in comments.

Christopher Sullivan, Matt Yanchyshyn, Allison Bishop, Chris Grusz, Julia Chen, Ruba Borno, Karthik Balakrishnan, David Cristini, Charles Lewis, Mona Chadha, Eamonn Colman, Reagan Koryozo, Jessica Rudy, Louise Strandoo, Alayna Broderson, Bojidar Krapchev, Megan Barbone, Connor Coughlan, Vineet Anshuman, Jagjit Dhaliwal (JD), Brian Shadpour, Asher Mathew, Scott Sherman, Josh Greene, Diane Krakora

Wheels up from SFO on my way to Las Vegas for AWS re:Invent - always one of the most energizing weeks of the year.

Packed schedule ahead with meetings, live conversations, and a full slate of Inside Partnering interviews from the show floor. Can’t wait to share the insights coming out of this week.

And kicking things off… my brand-new interview with Matt Yanchyshyn drops this morning at 8:30am. Big announcements, big implications. Stay tuned.

See you in Vegas. 🚀✨

Allison Bishop Jazmin Eusébio (she/her) Megan Barbone

Fantastic day at the CMO Huddles SuperHuddle yesterday!

Great sessions, great content, and great conversations about the challenges and opportunities CMOs are navigating right now. 

Always energizing to reconnect with fellow CMOs and marketing leaders who are shaping the future of our industry. 

Takeaways: #culture #speed #metrics #customerstories #experiment #aeo 
#positioning #failsafely #penguins 

Thanks to Drew Neisser and the whole CMO Huddles team for an outstanding and valuable event!

Melissa Caffrey Nancy Chou Mandy Dhaliwal Kevin Ruane Rebecca Stone Caroline Tien-Spalding (she, her, hers) 🔬 S. Marshall Poindexter 💊 Liza Adams Carilu Dietrich Suyog Deshpande Jean English Jessica Kao Rohini Kasturi Joshua Leatherman Udi Ledergor Armen Najarian Samantha Stark Guy Yalif

60,000 attendees at #AWSreinvent and you just happen to bump into a powerhouse group of partner leaders? Not gonna happen, but it did! 

Great seeing Chris Samila Cody Sunkel Kenny Browne James Hodgkinson Erin Stanwood Bates Jason Atkins

Guess who dropped into our live shot at Microsoft Ignite tonight?! 

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your insights Jay!

Fun session with Asher and Trevor Burnett!

🔴 Had a fantastic conversation at re:Invent with Rohan Karmarkar, Managing Director of Partner Solutions Architecture at Amazon Web Services (AWS) . 

Rohan and his team of solution architects sit at the technical center connecting customers, AWS partners, AWS field teams, and AWS product engineering. 🎯

What an amazing role - and Rohan brings the insights!

Rohan’s team works directly with ISVs, SIs, and GSIs to help them design, build, and scale solutions on AWS. 

And this year, one theme comes through loud and clear - AI is completely reshaping modernization.

Partners are no longer choosing between modernization and migration. 

As Rohan shared, AI is speeding up testing, code refactoring, and transformation, making modernization more predictable and cost effective. 

🚀 AI becomes a massive driver for migration - and modernization at the same time. 🚀

He also shared insights on powerful capabilities like AWS Transform, Kiro, and Agent Core - plus new extensibility features that allow partners to bring their own domain expertise into modernization workflows.

We also explored how AWS connects partner-built offerings with the field, why co-engineering between AWS and partners is increasing, and the exciting new autonomous agents launching across security, DevOps, and more.

This conversation is a must-watch for partner leaders who want to understand where AWS is heading and how to build their next generation of offerings.

🎥 Full Substack article in the first comment

#AWSreinvent25 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Allison Bishop Megan Barbone Matt Yanchyshyn Mona Chadha Chris Grusz

Seven leaders, seven angles, one theme  -  partner ecosystems are changing fast, and these conversations explore how. 🚀

Big lineup coming to Inside Partnering. Seven leaders from across cloud, data, telecom, retail, and enterprise software will be joining to share how they’re shaping the next wave of ecosystem growth.
 
Brian Landsman – 𝗖𝗘𝗢, 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗘𝘅𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 & 𝗘𝗩𝗣 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀, Salesforce 
Brian brings a view into one of the largest and most successful partner ecosystems in SaaS. We’ll dig into marketplace evolution in the agentic AI world, ISV models, and the next chapter for Salesforce partnerships.
 
Matt Yanchyshyn – 𝗩𝗣, 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 & 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀, Amazon Web Services (AWS) 
Matt will share some exciting AWS Marketplace news on the opening day of re:Invent (wow!), ways AWS is supporting partner globalization efforts, and what’s next for partners working with AWS. 

Chandos Quill – 𝗦𝗩𝗣, 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 & 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀, Epsilon 
Chandos will walk through how Epsilon’s ecosystem drives value on 3 dimensions as an ISV, SI, and data provider.

Kelley Lear – 𝗖𝗩𝗣 & 𝗚𝗠, 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀, Blue Yonder 
Kelley will share how BlueYonder builds scalable partnerships across retail, supply chain, and logistics. A great conversation for anyone building outcome-focused partnerships.

Rohini Kasturi – 𝗖𝗘𝗢, HG Insights 
Rohini sits at the center of data-driven partner strategy. We’ll talk about how intelligence is transforming targeting, partner selection, and co-sell precision.
 
Marc Monday  -  𝗚𝗩𝗣 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘀 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀, ServiceNow 
Marc brings a sharp view into how ServiceNow is scaling its partner ecosystem as the platform expands deeper into AI and workflow automation. 
  
Charlie Pagliazzo – 𝗩𝗣 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀, Granite Telecommunications 
Charlie brings a telecom and enterprise-infrastructure perspective on channels, partner performance, and customer outcomes.
 
Lots of range, lots of insight. These conversations are going to be fun!

👇 Full writeup in first comment. 

Allison Bishop | Sophie Baine | Jennie A. | David Gray | Steven Thorne | Rachel Kaseroff | Caroline Parkinson | Carla Goldsberry | Michael Sims | Drew Neisser | Asher Mathew  | Partnership Leaders

I’ll be on the ground at 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗿𝗲:𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝗟𝗮𝘀 𝗩𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘀 - capturing the energy, the innovation, and the big partner stories shaping partner world.

If you’ll be there, come say hello. I’ll be doing what Inside Partnering does best:

🔹 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘁𝘀 from the expo floor
🔹 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀
🔹 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 from across the ecosystem
🔹 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹-𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗿𝗲:𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀 as it unfolds

This is my favorite week of the year for the partner community. Every conversation - from hyperscalers to ISVs to GSIs to emerging startups - has something to teach all of us.

If you’re launching something, announcing something, or just want to share your perspective on where the industry is heading, let’s connect while we’re in Vegas.

See you there! 🎤 🚀 😎
 
Subscribe to follow along:  https://lnkd.in/giGGrPrn

Matt Yanchyshyn Chris Grusz Julia Chen Ruba Borno Christopher Sullivan Allison Johnson Allison Bishop Jazmin Eusébio (she/her) Connor Coughlan Megan Barbone Mona Chadha Rohan Karmarkar Lewis Howarth Charles Lewis Louise Strandoo Jessica Rudy Asher Mathew Chris Samila R "Ray" Wang Scott Sherman Jon Mayer Rob Moyer

Couldn't make it to AWS re:Invent?  Join me for a quick walk through the showfloor - the energy is incredible.
 
From the AWS migration and modernization zone - to the Marketplace and APN area - to long rows of partner solutions from companies like Boomi, Zscaler, Cloudera, Workato, SentinelOne, Datadog, Wiz, Rubrik, Atlassian, PagerDuty, Cohesity, Red Hat, MongoDB, PwC, Salesforce, GitLab, IBM, Commvault and many more. 

re:Invent is a pretty amazing industry ecosystem event.  

It’s impossible to capture everything in one pass, but I hope this gives you a feel for the scale, the activity, and the conversations happening everywhere.
 
Great energy, great partners, and great to see so many familiar faces.

And thanks to Peeyush Tibrewal for being a sport to join in a cameo! 😉

More videos coming soon.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Allison Bishop Jessica Rudy Matt Yanchyshyn Julia Chen Megan Barbone Chris Grusz Asher Mathew Chris Samila Jay McBain Josh Greene

What happens when an SI starts thinking like a product company?  

Learn more from my conversation with Deepak Arora, Global CTO for AWS Solutions and Head of Engineering across the MENA region at Publicis Sapient.

We also go deep into how solution co-building with AWS works.

Deepak’s team is responsible for creating horizontal and vertical AI platforms, shaping product strategy with on-the-ground customer experience, taking solutions through #Marketplace vetting, and then all the way through delivering solutions for customers.

We dive into the full partnership lifecycle:

✅ 𝗖𝗼-𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 - Joint solution design with AWS product and solution architecture teams
 
✅ 𝗖𝗼-𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 - Content, thought leadership, webinars, Marketplace listings
 
✅ 𝗖𝗼-𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹 - Industry aligned motions with AWS field teams
 
✅ 𝗖𝗼-𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 - Engineering teams building and running these solutions in production - and feeding that real-world experience back into co-build solutions

What really stood out is how Publicis Sapient is becoming a 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝘂𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 company. Platforms like 𝗦𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘁 (AI SDLC modernization) and 𝗕𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶 (agentic AI) are now being productized and taken to customers as turnkey offerings.

Deepak also shared how Marketplace is evolving. Instead of services bundles, the next phase is 𝗽𝗹𝘂𝗴-𝗮𝗻𝗱-𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 where customers can buy, provision, and launch solutions instantly - and AWS field teams can retire quota through transactable listings.

So much to learn from this one.  

Thank you Deepak for taking the time to share your insights!
 
I’ll drop a link to the full interview and Substack article in the first comment.

🎥 Video clip attached.

Allison Bishop Megan Barbone Brian Bohan Matt Yanchyshyn Sharonyka Kumar

𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗜𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲. Jason Rook unpacked numbers that every ISV and channel leader should hear.

Great conversation yesterday at Microsoft Ignite in San Francisco with Jason Rook, Senior Director for Product Marketing for Microsoft Marketplace.
 
Jason had just wrapped a standing-room-only main session, and he brought fresh Marketplace data and one of the biggest announcements of the week for partners.
 
🚀 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵
 
The momentum continues. Software companies and channel partners selling together are seeing 𝟯.𝟱𝗫 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 and deals that are 𝗻𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝟳𝟱 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗿 than average Marketplace transactions.
 
📈 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗿
 
New Canalys (part of Omdia) research ,that Jay McBain shared in the session, shows that ISVs see an additional $𝟭.𝟳𝟱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿 transacted in Marketplace.
 
Channel partners? $𝟲.𝟮𝟲 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 for every Marketplace dollar. That’s implementation, design, support, ongoing managed services, and even other ISV products.
 
🤝 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝘀
 
One of the most important Marketplace updates yet. ISVs can now transfer offers to partners who can sell them directly to customers - now available in 𝟭𝟯𝟬 𝗴𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝘀.
 
➡️ 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗜𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀
 
Marketplace is evolving from a transaction engine into a global channel platform that integrates with co-sell motions and expands opportunities for SIs, MSPs, VARs, GSIs, and boutique partners.
 
Jason breaks down all of this in our latest Inside Partnering episode recorded here at Ignite.
 
👇 Full article linked in comments.

https://lnkd.in/gksqneii

Nicole Dezen | Yvonne Muench | Anthony Joseph | Daniel Rippey | Joerose Tharakan | Jake Zborowski | Sanjeev Nath | Fred Delombaerde | Nina Harding | Vivek Dalvi Heather Deggans | Ali Valdez, M.A. | Asher Mathew

🚀 When 40% of your company’s $5.5B revenue runs through partners, alignment between marketing and alliances isn’t optional - it’s essential.

🎥 Just had a fantastic conversation with Sandy Ono, CMO & EVP of Marketing and Partnerships at OpenText!

We recorded live at the CMO Huddles SuperHuddle in Palo Alto. Sandy shares how she brings marketing and partnerships together to power OpenText’s transformation into an AI-ready, partner-led organization.

A few highlights from our conversation:

✅ 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲.
Sandy breaks down how OpenText organizes its five major partner segments - from strategic alliances like SAP to global system integrators, cloud providers, resellers, and managed service providers. Each segment has its own go-to-market motion and success model, yet all tie back to a unified growth strategy where nearly 40% of revenue flows through partners.

✅ 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀.
In an era of overlapping tech stacks, Sandy explains that success starts with a clear, joint value proposition. Every partner must understand what truly differentiates the partnership - how combining strengths creates a more complete, trusted solution for the customer rather than just another integration.

✅ 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗞𝗣𝗜𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀.
Sandy shares how OpenText brings these teams together under shared pipeline and performance metrics. By aligning sourcing, influence, and revenue goals across the organization, they’ve created a culture of accountability where everyone is focused on outcomes rather than credit.

✅ 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 “𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸𝘆” 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗳𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀.
With examples like Guidewire Software in insurance and Fiserv in banking, Sandy explains how OpenText builds deep integrations directly into industry applications. These multi-year collaborations create seamless user experiences - and long-term customer value - by meeting users where they already work every day.

As Sandy put it:
“At the end of the day, we’re all working toward customer trust. And that takes alignment across every part of the go-to-market engine.”

An incredible perspective on where marketing, partnerships, and AI converge.

🎧 Full writeup in comments

Drew Neisser | Rashmi Vittal | Paige O'Neill | Heidi Bullock | Jamie Gier | Mandy Dhaliwal | Chandar Pattabhiram | Jim Luna | Neil Blecherman, CSAP | Kate Bullis | Jakki Glivicky Geiger | Grant Johnson | Caroline Tien-Spalding (she, her, hers) | Asher Mathew | Jay McBain | Alex Smith | Tifenn Dano Kwan | Tiffani Bova

“Force multiplier.” That’s how Nutanix CMO, Mandy Dhaliwal describes  partners. 

It’s not just a slogan.  It’s a structural shift in how marketing works. 

I sat down with Mandy Dhaliwal, EVP and CMO at Nutanix, at the CMO Huddles SuperHuddle in Palo Alto on Friday to talk about one of her favorite topics - how marketing and partnerships come together to drive growth.

When Mandy joined Nutanix, she realized something surprising: despite the company’s 100% channel-led model, partner marketing wasn’t front and center.

That quickly changed.

“Part of my mission was to bring the partnering aspect of what we do closer to the center of the marketing orbit.”

Today, Nutanix’s go-to-market motion runs through a powerful ecosystem of channel, OEM, and alliance partners - from Dell and HPE to Nvidia and Cisco. 

Every campaign, every launch, and every demand-gen motion now includes a clear partner route to market.

We also talked about:
✅ Building enablement first - then brand and demand.
✅ Running a global marketing team in the AI era.
✅ The power of collaboration and experimentation.
✅ How AI is transforming both the product and the marketing org.

And my favorite advice from Mandy about how partnerships and marketing should work together:

“If we galvanize around the needs of the customer, we’re going to win together.”

Thanks Mandy for taking the time to share your insights!

💡 Full conversation linked in the first comment.

#InsidePartnering #Nutanix #PartnerMarketing #CMO #ChannelPartners Jim Luna | Adrian Liu | Jennifer Massaro | Dan Bingham | Lee Caswell | Erika Munter | Jessica Janis | Ruben Gouveia | Neil Blecherman, CSAP | LAWRENCE WILCOX | Drew Neisser | Paige O'Neill | Jakki Glivicky Geiger | Jamie Gier | Heidi Bullock | Kathie Johnson | Grant Johnson | Guy Yalif | Udi Ledergor | Isabelle Papoulias

If you still think partner marketing is just MDF and co-branding, this episode flips that on its head.

I had the opportunity to talk with Suraj Atreya, Strategic Partner Marketing Leader for Enterprise AI and Technology at Rackspace Technology. 

Suraj brings a rare combination of deep marketing experience, ecosystem understanding, and hands-on GTM execution with AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud across EMEA.

This conversation cuts straight into what’s changing in partner marketing - and why it matters right now.

Suraj breaks down how 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗿, 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗱 𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀, and why that puts partner marketing at the center of the modern go to market motion. 

He talks about AI compressing campaign cycles from months to days, the rise of personalized content at scale, and how ABM is evolving into account based ecosystem motions that integrate partner signals, incentives, and funding programs.

One of my favorite parts of the conversation was Suraj’s point about better together stories. They only work when sellers and partner sellers believe in them. 

That alignment - corporate, product, field, and partner - is what makes the whole system move.

We also dig into how social activation inside partner organizations is changing brand perception, why human + AI will define the next generation of partner marketers, and what leadership mindsets will matter as agentic AI becomes part of day to day execution.

If you’re in alliances, ecosystem strategy, partner marketing, or cloud GTM, this one is worth your time.

🎥 First part of the interview here.
👇 Full interview and Substack article linked in comments.

Renee Taylor | Dusshyant Roy | Mark Martinet | Tara Hopkins | Nilu K (MBA) | John Swanson | Chuck Britton | Sunil Patel

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗲𝗿𝗮 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗧𝗠 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗼’𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 - 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻.

This episode with Rohini Kasturi breaks down how that becomes possible.
 
I sat down with Rohini Kasturi, 𝗖𝗘𝗢 𝗼𝗳 HG Insights, live at the CMO Huddles SuperHuddle in Palo Alto, to talk about how intelligence, automation, and agentic applications are changing the way revenue teams operate.
 
Rohini brings a unique perspective - part product leader, part ecosystem strategist, and now CEO leading a company that is redefining GTM precision. 

Over the last 18 months, HG Insights has expanded rapidly through acquisitions like TrustRadius and MadKudu, creating a unified Revenue Growth Intelligence fabric that blends technographics, spend, contract data, and in-market intent across more than 20 million accounts.
 
𝗔 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:

🌎 Rohini’s stories from visiting 300–400 partners globally and building structured playbooks across pricing, product, and co-sell.

🎯 How a complete AI-driven data view gives marketers the ability to target wide space, understand TAM, and pinpoint competitive takeout opportunities.

🔐 Why bottom-funnel intent from TrustRadius is so important - and how timing makes or breaks pipeline.

🕵️‍♀️ How MadKudu’s agentic workflows generate full account research and sales scripts directly from HG’s data.

☁️ The rising demand from hyperscalers to roll out HG intelligence to their partner ecosystems.
 
This episode is packed with insights for CMOs, partner leaders, and anyone working to build a more precise, intelligence-driven GTM motion.
 
Thanks Rohini for taking the time to share your experience and insights!
 
👇 Full interview and Substack article linked in comments.

Drew Neisser | Rachel Kaseroff | Vinay Bhagat | Allyson Havener | Francis Brero | Rajat Bhatnagar | Katrina Cho

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mark Kilens's LinkedIn Performance

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