Alex Poulos

Crossbeam

Crossbeam is the first and largest Ecosystem-Led Growth platform, used by over 30,000 companies to leverage their partner ecosystems to attract, convert, and grow customer relationships.

We are building something special here in the form of a new go-to-market motion we call Ecosystem-Led Growth. While all traditional playbooks are tapering off, ecosystem-led motions are becoming the most prolific drivers of efficient growth. As CMO, I lead Growth & Analytics, Brand & Content, Experiences & Events, Product Marketing, and Pricing & Packaging.

Chief Marketing Officer

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, Stage 2 Capital

Pavilion

Instructor at Pavilion University's CMO School.

Executive Member

MadKudu

Advising the CEO and exec team on GTM strategy & execution topics.

Advisor

MadKudu is a no-code data activation platform that allows marketers to use data and science to run all of their go-to-market motions (product-led, marketing-led, sales-led, channel-led) with their current team and stack.

After serving as an advisor to the CEO, I joined as CRO to help shift the company from founder-led go-to-market to a more scalable motion. Developed the right customer profile to pursue, refined the right messaging to hook folks in, and recruited/promoted the right GTM exec talent (VP Marketing, VP Sales, VP Customer Success) to accelerate growth. During this time, we doubled ARR, got NRR to 130%+, and doubled the size of the GTM organization. We also raised a great Series A round in the midst of the economic downturn.

Chief Revenue Officer

Advising the CEO and exec team on GTM strategy & execution.

Various Companies

ON THE SIDE, I Invest in and advise great companies and leaders in software. Some of the companies I've been involved with through the years include:
⏵ Stage 2 Capital (2023-present): Limited Partner in the Catalyst fund that 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.
⏵ Pavilion (2022-present): Executive Member and Instructor at the CMO School.
⏵ Product-Led Leaders (2022-present): Founding Member of a community of Product-Led Growth leaders sharing knowledge and best practices.
⏵ Cowboy Ventures (2022-2024): Wrangler for new investments.
⏵ Switchboard Software (2021-2023): Advisor to the CEO. Switchboard's next-generation software turns the constant deluge of data that enterprises experience today into smarter revenue decisions made faster and with more confidence.
⏵ Blendo.co (2019-2020): Advisor to the CEO. Blendo is a lightning-fast data integration platform for cloud data. Acquired by RudderStack in 2020.

Advisor & Investor

Dropbox

At DocSend we enable business leaders to confidently share critical documents and get real-time, actionable feedback. Acquired by Dropbox in 2021.

As CMO I was responsible for go-to-market and partnerships for a Product-Led Growth model. Created the DocSend Startup Index (https://docsend.com/index) to track the activity of the startup fundraising market and demystify the capital raise process. Set up the company's channel program with VCs, banks and strategic technology partners. Launched the DocSend Fundraising Network (https://docsend.com/fundraising-network) to connect quality founders with committed VCs. These strategies drove 2x YoY ARR growth resulting in a successful exit to Dropbox.

After the acquisition, I managed the DocSend marketing integration into the Dropbox organization, retaining all members of the marketing team and maintaining the highest growth rates across all Dropbox product.

Chief Marketing Officer (DocSend)

Chartio

Advising the CEO on GTM strategy & execution.

Chartio couples incredibly powerful data processing and visualization with an intuitive user interface. Our vision: the democratization of data. Acquired by Atlassian in 2021.

I ran go-to-market strategy and execution based on a 100% inbound marketing model targeting data-conscious SMB teams. I implemented a full customer lifecycle marketing approach that delivers value from awareness (DataSchool.com), interest & engagement to acquisition, onboarding & advocacy (Data Heroes). I also owned and managed all partnerships and alliances with companies like AWS, Snowflake, Fivetran, and others. In this capacity, I brought to market an industry-first OEM offering for an automated cloud data stack that led to streamlining customer experience and blue ocean growth.

Support.com

Support.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPRT) is a leading provider of cloud-based software and services to disrupt customer support and deliver a fantastic customer experience leading to happier customers and greater brand loyalty.

I was part of a new executive management team that came in to lead the transformation of the company from technology support services to a cloud software provider. I launched and marketed a brand new SaaS product in the customer support space that reached $1M ARR in 15 months via an ABM go-to-market strategy targeting midsize and enterprise customers.

VP Marketing & Customer Success

NetDimensions

Established in 1999, NetDimensions (AIM: NETD; OTCQX: NETDY) is a global provider of performance, knowledge and learning management systems. Acquired by the Learning Technologies Group in 2017.

I joined as CMO to build the marketing function from the ground up, create a model for growth internationally and establish the company as a leader in the enterprise learning & talent management market. I led the transformation of the company's offering to a SaaS model and I drove new product innovation by successfully launching four new products as part of a rebranded product suite. This resulted to a 4x increase of revenue during my time with the company.

Covisio 

Boutique agency providing expert online marketing services to technology companies worldwide.  Covisio’s clients included global brands like Interwoven/Autonomy, OpenText, SPSS/IBM, Biodesix, Xyleme and NetDimensions. 

I co-founded and built organically from the ground up a profitable marketing agency focused exclusively on the technology sector and offering solutions for integrated content marketing, social media engagement, webinar & email campaign execution and sales enablement.

Managing Director & Co-founder

SaaS GTM leader and entrepreneur at heart | CMO with multiple exits

Engineer turned marketer with 20 years executive experience developing marketing strategies and leading global, integrated execution for software brands. Exceptional record in building high-velocity, data-driven SaaS marketing teams for new products in high-growth environments. Proven effectiveness in partnering with product, sales, and customer success to create outstanding outcomes across the entire customer lifecycle for sustainable and profitable growth. Multiple successful exits.

Leadership - I am a fair and decisive manager with experience leading international and matrix teams working remotely. I believe in building a strong culture of marketing measurement, linking marketing objectives to revenue growth, and differentiating via unique points of view and strong moats. I build and develop teams that excel and have fun.

Skills - Superb analytical, organizational, communicational, and presentational skills. Results-driven reflecting individual leadership and a strong team spirit. Ability to lead by example and innovate with an excellent grasp of both business and technology issues.

Overseeing marketing, sales, customer success, and partnerships. Humbled & excited to be working with some of the most forward-thinking B2B marketing teams in the industry as our customers.

MadKudu is a no-code platform that allows marketers to use data and science to run all of their go-to-market motions with their current team and stack. We power PLG marketing at scale.

CEO @ Limelight | Helping Brands Partner With 2,000+ B2B Creators | The First-Ever B2B Creator Partnership Platform | 3x Founder | 10+ Years in B2B SaaS

If you're reading this, you're either:

a) A brand struggling to conduct high ROI marketing
b) A B2B creator struggling to monetize your brand

Limelight solves both problems.

We are the first B2B creator partnership platform. 

I built Limelight with a world-class team (previous: Uber, Amazon, Indeed).

↳ 40+ years of combined B2B SaaS & tech experience
↳ VC-backed by two incredible billion dollar AUM funds
↳ Team of well-known strategic angels and advisors

Limelight help brands:

- Discover & match with creators (10,000+ SME’s)
- Create partnerships fast (automate 90% of process)
- Reach engaged audiences (book ad slots in seconds)
- Measure & scale results (with real-time ROAS metrics)

Limelight help creators:

- Promote their content & get paid (set up a storefront)
- Discover brands & other creators (collaborate instantly)
- Get inbound paid proposals (accept or reject in-app)
- Monetize content (automate invoices & payments)

We built a recommendation engine that connects amazing brands with relevant B2B creator audiences.

Delivering high ROI through scalable content partnerships. 

$10 vs. $27 (avg influencer CPM vs. LinkedIn paid ads).

The results don’t lie.

🔥 50M ORGANIC REACH IN 9 MONTHS!
"Managing campaigns was chaos. Limelight changed that."
(Bruno, Growth @Clay)


🔥 500 LEADS IN FIRST CAMPAIGN!
"Our cost-per-lead is already 35% more efficient."
(Dominic, Paid Ads Team Manager @HubSpot)


🔥 BOOKED OUT FOR 6 WEEKS! 1,000 LEADS!
“From 50 demos a day to 1K booked in one day.”
(Keith, Head of Growth @11x)


🔥 200 SIGNUPS FROM ONE CREATOR!
"A significant increase in high-quality sign-ups."
(Anna, Head of Marketing @Nethunt CRM)


🔥 SAVED 60% CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT TIME!
"We have a much more established pipeline."
(Casey, Sr. Growth Manager @ActiveCampaign)


Sign up for free at LimelightHQ dot com.

David Walsh

Today I’m announcing our $2,100,000 funding round 🎉💰
And a HUGE NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH!! ...

Our brand new AI agent for Social Listening is live.

It can:

→ Research your company
→ Precisely define your ICP
→ Identify all of your competitors

Then automatically surface buyer intent from social content and turn it into sales pipeline. 

Early users are raving about it already!!

And just a few weeks ago,
We won the Global Pitch Competition!
On stage at SaaStock (€1M prize money)

THIS. IS. WHAT. MOMENTUM. LOOKS. LIKE.

Here’s why investors are loving Limelight

👇🏼👇🏼

Everyone is talking about personality-led marketing.

- Niche B2B creators are stealing trust.
- Employees are becoming mini media brands.
- Buyers follow PEOPLE, not 40-page whitepapers.

But the problem - up until now?

Everyone KNOWS influence drives revenue.

Yet nobody can measure it.

So budgets have stayed trapped in paid ads & cold outbound.

Limelight SOLVES this problem.

We’re showing brands - how CONTENT drives REVENUE.

We are making influence marketing performance-based.

So brands can track:

🔎 Which post led to $142,000 in pipeline
🔎 Which creator drove 237 product signups
🔎 Which campaign closed $1.9M new business.

(All REAL Limelight case studies! 📈)

We’re turning B2B influence from a “nice-to-have branding play” into a scalable revenue engine.

Big SHOUT out to our new investors for believing in us

Amit at SNR (led the round!) 
Eran at Savyon Ventures 
Kenneth at BackFuture
Kaan at First Degree 
Josh at OpenSky 
Kirby at Ascend

And many others like Ran Makavy, Gert Lanckriet, Suhit Gupta, Amir Ashkenazi, Mike Head, Eli Schwartz, Tom Waddington, Dan Murray🧠, Garrett Scott, Michel Lieben 🧠 & Alex Vacca 🧠🛠️.

A group of incredible operators/investors who know personality-led growth will define the next decade of GTM.

What’s next?

Goal remains the same:
→ Hit $10M ARR with a team of 10.

This funding round lets us:

⚡ Build even faster
⚡ Hire a few elite engineers + AMs
⚡ Push deeper into creator-based attribution
⚡ Power influencer programs for every GTM org

Huge gratitude to my tiny but might team Youngjae JI, Demir Capan, Blas C. and Janine Bulao. 

And most importantly...

The creators and brands (HubSpot, Webflow, Clay + 100s more) who are building this category WITH us 💪🏼

THIS IS JUST THE START.

PS. if you sign up as a new customer in the next 48 hours you get your 2nd month free! (DM me and I will do it for you)

Founder & CEO @ Limelight | B2B Creator Marketplace | 3x Founder | MBA Mentor

In January 2023, I quit my own startup.
Just 12 months after raising $15M.
My mentor said it was “career suicide.”

(His words, not mine).

3 years later, do I regret it?

NO!

It was tough.
I left a great team.
I made mistakes & have regrets.

But it was still the RIGHT decision.

Here's the story...

I was hired to start the company in 2019.
I got offered $120K salary and 10% equity.
I was between visas, desperate to stay in the US.

So I said yes.

And I started the tech startup from scratch. 
(Albeit with a wonky cap table)

It felt like a dream - for a moment.

But after we grew fast and scaled beyond even my wildest expectations, I realised....

I was deeply unhappy.

Every day, I’d stare at my calendar and feel sick.

If I'm 100% honest...

I felt like I was wearing a mask going to work. 
And DEI wasn't the right fit for me.

I scaled a business that wasn't really my own.
And I wasn't the right person to lead it!

So 4 years in…

I had hired great leaders, and it felt like the right time to go.  

When I left, I had nothing lined up.

People thought I was having some sort of breakdown.

(I had old friends/colleagues reach out).

They said I was crazy for:

→ Walking away from security
→ Wrecking my reputation
→ Starting from zero 

I went from Series-A founder to full-time dad.

Overnight.

My wife became the breadwinner.
(So I could ‘figure things out’)

While soul-searching I promised myself 3 things…

The next time I launch something I would:

1. Find a brilliant technical co-founder.
2. Become a subject matter expert.
3. Build in public this time.

That’s how Limelight began.

Fast-forward to today:

💰 $3.2M funding closed.
🤝 A top 1% Co-Founder (ex-Uber)
📈 90% of our growth from my content.
🔥 Clients like HubSpot, Webflow & Clay
🎤 Spoken on 13 industry-leading podcasts
📢 PR in Business Post, Entrepreneur, Insider
🏆 Featured in Top 50 Entrepreneurs to Watch

And I’ve never been HAPPIER!!!!

Looking back, I would have done a few things differently. 

But I would still SAY YES again! 

There is no substitute for that experience at 27 years old. 

Sometimes you have to kill your old identity to build the one that actually fits.

Success is great on paper.

But if you're not genuinely happy...

It's not worth it.

Life is too short to be miserable.

P.S. I also had 6 months work-free with my 1 year old son. I spent EVERY DAY with him. Time I will cherish forever.

No alternative text description for this image

In July, I looked in the mirror and saw a 34-year-old who’d aged TEN years in 4 months.

I’d spent 120 days fundraising for my startup.

Got 76 "Nos" (yes, I counted).
56 passed after meeting.
17 passed before.

My hair started falling out.
Gained 20 lbs in weight.

I sat in the car outside my house for 30 minutes.

Building up the courage to walk inside and tell my wife:

“Our lead investor just pulled out.”

This was my 76th "no".

SEVENTY SIX!!!

There comes a point where you just think:

“F*ck it. I am done.”

You start questioning everything:

- “Is my idea stupid?”
- “Am I the problem?”
- "Do they know something I don’t?"
- "Do I even want to do this anymore?”
- "Should I become a barista? That seems chill."

Here’s the thing.

In the last seven years, I’ve raised seven rounds.

Most were fine. Some were ugly.
This one = 10/10 brutality score.

I'm talking Michelin-starred pain.

And the no’s all sounded like variations of the same two hits:

1. “The TAM isn’t big enough.”

Translation → Even if you win, we don’t get rich enough. Next.

2. “We love it… but we need more traction.”

Translation → We’re waiting for someone braver than us to go first.


When you’re in this phase, it feels like everyone else is cruising...

And you’re the only eejit getting rinsed.

What's actually happening?

The people saying "WE JUST RAISED $XX MILLION" forget to mention...

- The nights you lie awake calculating runway.
- The constant refreshing Gmail like a lunatic.
- The “circling back” emails that destroy your soul.
- The doubt, the stress eating, the glass (or two) of whiskey.

Founders think admitting this is a reputational hit.

(Tbh, I did too.)

But it’s not. It's just how fundraising works.

The win is loud.
But you grind in silence.

So if you're buried in no’s, ghosted by people who swore they were “super excited”, or hearing the same comments on loop…

You’re not alone.

Every founder gets kicked in the teeth by this process.

A raise I thought would take 2 months took 6.

It was grim.

But I refused to die.

I had a brilliant team of people counting on me to make this work.

So that's what I did.

Last month, we announced Limelight had raised a total of $3.2M.

🫰 🥳

You can go through the gutter and come out sharper, tougher and more convinced than ever.

Stay in the fight.

P.S. Time to get back into the gym!

HOLY MOLY! Just had our BIGGEST month ever. We crossed $200K in monthly transactions 🎉

Still can’t believe I’m typing that.

💸 $200,728 processed (+24%)
📩 370 proposals sent (+36%)
👥 2,661 campaign applicants (+14%)
🔁 159 completed transactions (+73%)
💰 +4.2% annual recurring revenue

Limelight is compounding… FAST!

Next mission?

Make. This. Stick.

November was the month we tackled the tiny, annoying, silent friction that...

⚡ Kills activation
⚡ Slows adoption
⚡ Quietly eats retention alive.

The stuff you don’t notice until you zoom out and go…

“Oh sh*t, THAT’S the problem.”


HERE'S WHAT WENT DOWN 👇🏼

Very early in the month, we asked a simple question:

“Why are people signing up… but not activating fast enough?”

The answer punched us in the face.

Cue: full rebuild mode.

We tore out our old onboarding.
Rebuilt it with AI agents.
Shipped fixes weekly.

And tackled every tiny UX papercut that’s been piling up for months.

Meanwhile… the numbers kept climbing.

📈 Creators kept applying.
📈 Brands kept converting.
📈 Deals kept closing.

And November very quickly turned into the most productive (and chaotic) month we’ve had this year.


THE WINS 💪🏼

1/ AI Onboarding is LIVE & KILLING IT

Launched mid-Nov and hit 57% success rate in 72 hours. Time-to-value is moving in the right direction.

2/ MASSIVE hire: Head of Customer Success

Took us 7 days to hire an industry veteran. He scaled an influencer-tech company from 35 → 450 employees → ~$1B valuation. FIYAH!

3/ Social Listening & Signals are LIVE

Brand mentions. Competitor tracking. Up to 10 Signals per account. This thing is quietly becoming a full-blown intelligence engine.

4/ LinkedIn is ON A TEAR

359K+ impressions. 189K+ people reached. All organic. No ads. No cold emails. Raw founder-led storytelling = UNBEATABLE!

5/ 108 new brands JOINED us

Including Airtable, Zenzap, Weglot, MarketerHire, Confetti, PandaDoc, and Equitybee. Referrals are ROLLING IN. Absolute madness.


THE BAD 😬

Look... every good month has some ugly bits.

1/ Churn is still the villain

Especially self-serve. But we know the fix: activation → adoption → CS motions. Our new hire will be in charge of this!

2/ Signals adoption needs to speed up

It’s powerful. People love it. Now it needs to become the default behaviour, not a “nice-to-use” extra.

3/ Roadmap vs bandwidth

Demand is high. Resources… not so much. We’re a tight team of 5, so Dec will require ruthless prioritization.


Wrapped it up with a 3-day team trip to Palm Springs!
Sun, strategy and a lot of writing on whiteboards.

(In true startup style 😅)

And now?

We’re ready to GO. GO. GO.

Nov = biggest month in company history!

December is where we BUILD on it.

Most startups will slow down for Christmas.

Not us.

We're going to go EVEN BIGGER!

Let's finish the year swinging 🏌️‍♂️

P.S. Sharing our metrics is loose, should I stop?

Last month, we closed a $2.1M funding round 🎉
Today, I'm sharing our investor deck!
(For the FIRST TIME EVER).

👉 Share this post in a DM.
👉 Hit save for later.

It's been a wild journey.

From quitting my last startup and then becoming a full-time, stay-at-home dad overnight.

To building one of the fast-growing, most highly trusted B2B influencer marketplaces in under 18 months with a tiny but mighty team of 5 people.

The journey has been anything but easy. More on that tomorrow.

But once you’ve experienced real lows (like I did)…

You have so much APPRECIATION for the highs.

Right now, Limelight is on a tear.

Q3 2025 was our biggest ever! 📈

- 14,000+ applicants to campaigns
- 3,244 total proposals sent
- $1.3M in payments

But lets be real... 

Some days I wake up thinking how the hell did this happen 😅

SHOUT OUT to all of our investors for backing us.

They know one thing…

The age of CORPORATE MARKETING SLOP is over!

- Niche B2B creators are stealing trust.
- Employees are becoming mini media brands.
- Buyers follow PEOPLE, not 40-page whitepapers.

And Limelight is 5 steps ahead 🔥

We turn B2B influence from a “nice-to-have branding play” into a scalable revenue engine.

Measurable ROI. 
Trackable campaigns. 
Direct revenue attribution.

Just last week, we paid out $78,000 to creators!!

This CRUSHED our previous record of $68k.

Lesson? 👊

Brands are QUICKLY moving paid ad budgets to B2B influence.

Faster than anyone first thought!

P.S. Let me know what you think of the deck and be sure to HIT SAVE 🔒. Hope this helps others trying to raise 💰

Limelight Public Deck

Most holiday parties are the same:

Cold food.
Awkward small talk.
Someone gets too drunk.
A set menu nobody wanted.
Half the table can’t hear each other.
Someone will have been fired by Monday.

Can’t think of anything worse 😅

So last week, I took my team on a 3-DAY retreat in Palm Springs, California 🌴🏌️

A 5-bedroom luxury villa.
Set on a golf course.
BBQ every night.
Phones off.
Chill time.

I’ve sat through too many “corporate socials.”

They always felt a bit phoney.

People trying to impress the big boss...
Nobody is able to fully relax.

I'll put my hands up...

In old jobs, I’d make excuses just to leave early.
(Anyone else done that? 👀)

So when I built Limelight, I promised to do things differently.

2023: I worked solo from a laptop in my 'office' (i.e. my son’s playroom).

2025: Our US-based team (we're just making our 6th hire) are spending a few days to:

Announce our fundraise together
Enjoy golf and a hibachi chef
Have meaningful convos

And of course to celebrate 🎉🎉

You can grind 12 hours a day.
Ship features every week.
Crush revenue goals.
Raise millions.

We did all that this year 💪🏼

But if you don’t make space to breathe with the people who carried the weight with you?

You miss the whole point.

As I get older (and hopefully wiser)... I'm starting to realise:

→ Work never stops.

Sometimes you have to slow down to smell the roses.

So make sure during this Thanksgiving break, you do just that.

P.S. I managed to bag a 35% discount - so got the villa for only $2,857. Cheaper then hotel rooms. Crazy!

WHAT. THE. HELL? On Friday, I got a Slack from our EA Janine and it just said "David, brace yourself for what I'm about to tell you."

No context 😅
My stomach dropped.

Her next line said:

"Last week, Limelight paid out $78,000 to B2B creators."

I stared at the screen.
Read it 5 times.
Swore a few times.

That's our COMPANY RECORD!! 🥇
(Roughly a $4M annualised run rate)

From a tiny remote team.
In a market people said “would never scale.”
From an idea investors laughed at 18 months ago.

Insane.

Absolutely INSANE! 🤯

I remember when a creator made their first $1,000.

I screenshotted it and sent it to my wife like it was the birth of a second child.

But even after that...

I'd refresh Stripe every hour.

Thinking…

“Maybe this won’t work.”
“Maybe I've made a mistake."
"Maybe I've got the product wrong"

And now?

Creators earn $30K+ in a single partnership.
Brands run 80-90 creator campaigns a month.
And every metric is in the green zone.

I spent 12 years in B2B SaaS dreaming of building a consumer product…

But I was terrified no one would care and it wouldn't scale.

So instead…

I built the bridge between the two:

→ A platform that gets creators paid
→ A marketplace where brands earn ROI
→ A system where EVERYONE shares the upside

Watching the numbers grow has been surreal.

Not just because of the money...
(Though that's nice).

But for the “holy sh*t, this is ACTUALLY happening” feeling every founder secretly craves.

You can’t beat it!!!

A new era of B2B marketing is forming.

And Limelight is building the rails beneath it.

So to every creator, brand, supporter, early believer...

THANK YOU 🙏🏼

Biggest week ever.

PS: we're launching a new product very soon 👀

I hired this dude 6 weeks ago. In week 2, he put a Zoom call in my calendar (with zero warning) and said: "No offence Dave, but your onboarding is crap."

Fair play 😅

You can't knock his boldness.

Blas TORE our entire product onboarding apart.

Was he right? Yup.

First impressions matter.
And ours SUCKED!!!

20+ companies sign up to Limelight a week.
(FYI: we've $0 spent on paid marketing).

Which is pretty neat.

Brands like ZoomInfo, Webflow & Clay join organically.

But the issue?

Many brands dropped off BEFORE they'd ever understood what Limelight could do for them.

Onboarding was clunky and manual.

Nobody was excited to touch it.

Until Blas C. joined.

AKA our new founding engineer / certified menace!

Week 2, he walks in and says:

“Let me rebuild onboarding with AI agents. Give me the website URL and I’ll automate everything.”

I didn’t believe him.

Then last week…

He showed me the demo.

My jaw hit the floor.

The agent executes 6 tasks simultaneously:

🕸 Reads your entire website
🎯 Maps your ICP
🧑‍💼 Finds employees posting content
⚔️ Identifies your competitors
📡 Detects buyer signals
🤝 Matches relevant creators

Then it builds your company page AND launches your first creator campaign… all in 20 seconds.

Twenty. F*cking. Seconds.

No forms or bottlenecks.

Just AI doing the job a 3-person onboarding team *should* have been doing.

(I’ll take the L - I got complacent 🙋🏻‍♂️)

But now the next era of Limelight is here:

→ Instant activation
→ Instant insights
→ Instant pipeline

The onboarding agent is LIVE.

Sign up for free on our website and check it out.

Prepare to have your mind blown.

P.S. More startups need a Blas - someone who walks in, calls out your bullsh*t and fixes the thing you’ve been avoiding. 🔥

I'm so damn proud of my team right now!
Like STUPIDLY proud 💙

We just shipped our fastest feature improvement ever.

And our client LOVED it!

I contributed nothing.
I just sat there clapping like an excited seal 🦭

My team get all the credit.

7.54am → Slack notification

Janine is RIGHT on it!!

If you don’t know her, she’s our ops sniper.
She catches things before anyone even blinks.

A customer asked…

🗣 “Is there a way to archive old conversation threads on Limelight??"

Janine asks a few clarifying questions.
Gets all the exact context.
Loops in Youngjae. 

If you don't know YJ, he's our dev (ex-Uber).
He codes so fast it’s like he’s on crack.

He built, tested + shipped the feature.

All in UNDER 1 hour.

The customer’s response?

👉🏼 “Nice. Kudos to the team… you will all accomplish great things with this type of speed / care.”

And it wasn’t any customer…

Raaja Nemani, Co-Founder at MarketerHire.

The #1 talent platform to hire expert marketers on-demand, with 6,000+ customers from high growth startups to Fortune 500s.

They’re testing Limelight as a potential solution to roll out to ALL their customers.

The POTENTIAL is insane 🤯

So yeah… we wanted to impress.

Most SaaS companies would've:

✖ Put the request into a Notion graveyard
✖ Revisited it three months later
✖ Forgotten who even asked for it

Us:

→ Top of the list
→ Built same day
→ Closed the loop

That’s the tempo we operate at.

If you’ve ever waited 3 months for a product to fix a basic UX issue, you KNOW how painful slow teams can be 😅

In early-stage SaaS, speed IS the strategy.

Speed = delight
Delight = retention
Retention = growth

This is why we’re winning 🔥

P.S. Want to embarrass your competitors? Make speed your love language.

If you try to use influencers before you're ready? You'll waste budget, blame the channel, and walk away thinking it doesn't work. Here's the truth:

Influencer marketing only works if you already have:

→ A product people actually love
→ Real product-market fit
→ A defined problem you solve
→ An audience that talks about that problem

Without those? You're amplifying nothing.

We run a marketplace.
Anyone can sign up.
That's by design.

But honestly? We've said YES to too many companies that weren't ready.

They see the platform and think:

"Let's try 3 creators, 3 posts, and see if we get $100K in revenue."

That's not a test.
That's a lottery ticket.

And when it doesn't work, they blame the channel.

Here's the pattern I see over and over:

Early-stage founder.
No clear PMF yet.
Tiny budget.
Unrealistic expectations.
Zero commitment.

They dip their toe in.
Run one campaign.
Get mediocre results.
Then disappear.

The companies that WIN do this differently:

✅ Post–Series A (usually)
✅ Clear product-market fit
✅ Enough budget for real experiments
✅ Willing to commit for 3+ months minimum

They don't treat it like a hack.
They treat it like a channel that needs surface area.

Enough experiments.
Enough signal.
Enough time to learn what works.

That's when creators have something real to talk about.

That's when you get data you can act on.

That's when the channel scales.

TAKEAWAY:

Influencer marketing isn't a shortcut to product-market fit.

It's what you do once you have it.

And if you're not willing to invest properly?

Don't start.

You'll waste money, time, and belief in a channel that actually works, just not the way you think.

P.S. If you're pre–Series A and still want to try it? Fine. But commit budget like you mean it. Otherwise, you're just guessing.

This is from a podcast episode I did with Finn Thormeier, here’s the full episode on: 

- YouTube: https://lnkd.in/e7Cwr2Vt 
- Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eZskqRQU 
- Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/efYr3Qnv

When a brand refuses to share their budget, I know we have a problem.
It usually goes like this:

Me: "What is the budget for this campaign?"

Client: "I don't want to tell you. You'll just tell me to maximize it or that it's not enough."

Me: "No. The budget decides the strategy."

→ It decides if we go wide or deep.
→ It decides if we chase the top 1% or the niche experts.
→ It decides if we do a single-channel or a multi-channel partnership.

In B2B influencer marketing, hiding the numbers leads to a generic strategy.

And usually, that generic strategy is just copying a B2C Instagram playbook:

Pay a celebrity with a million followers.
They take a picture on a beach wearing sunglasses.
Get a 0.5% conversion and you sell 1000's of product.

That works for sunglasses.

It does NOT work when you are influencing a product with $25k, $50k, or $100k LTV.

The top 1% of B2B creators are often already bought and sold. They post every day. It’s saturation. It’s noise.

So, here is the playbook we use:

1. Go Wide, Not Tall

The best ROI right now isn't the superstar with 500k followers.

It’s the "smaller" niche creators.

I’m talking about the 15,000 to 50,000 follower range.
These are the people with actual trust, not just reach.

2. The "Always-On" Rotation

Most companies try to mimic the "11x" style launch: Get 50 creators to post on the same day.

Sure, it drives a spike. You get a thousand demos, and it looks cool.

But the smarter play is Consistency > Intensity.

Here is the exact setup:

→ Hire 20 niche creators.
→ Assign them a rotation schedule.
→ Creator A posts on Monday.
→ Creator B posts on Tuesday.
→ Creator C posts on Wednesday
…

There are roughly 20 working days in a month.

If you rotate them correctly, each creator only has to post ONCE a month.

3. The Compounding Effect

This approach does two things that a big bang launch can’t.

First, it gives you persistent feed dominance. You aren't a flash in the pan; you are always there, showing up in the feed from different trusted voices, every single day.

Second, it cleans up your attribution.

When everyone posts at once, you have no idea who actually drove the result.

When you measure them?

You know exactly who posted on Tuesday.
You can track the website traffic spike on Tuesday.
You can see which specific creator drove the sign-ups.

MY THESIS:

In B2B, you don't win by renting the biggest billboard for an hour.

You win by showing up every single day.

Start with surface area. 
Go wide.
Experiment with 15k-50k followers.

And stop trying to sell enterprise software like it’s a pair of sunglasses.

PS. This is from a podcast episode I did with Finn Thormeier, here’s the full episode:

- YouTube: https://lnkd.in/e7Cwr2Vt 
- Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eZskqRQU 
- Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/efYr3Qnv

I’ve paid out $1.4M to LinkedIn creators. But two years ago, almost every major creator told me: “brand deals will ruin my brand.”

Fast forward…

90% of those same creators now get paid through Limelight.

We’ve had 15,322 applicants to campaigns, paid 1,000+ creators and seen single deals hit $30K.

The misconception was always:

B2B creators = influencers

WRONG.

B2B creators are operators, educators, specialists, advisors - people with *actual* domain expertise and market pull.

Brand partnerships ≠ “influencing.”

They’re:

→ Monetising expertise
→ Distributing insights at scale
→ Scaling trust through commercial partnerships

And when that much-trusted expertise moves into a structured marketplace?

You have a whole new asset class.

→ B2B Influence 

Brands are FINALLY realising:

- One creator post can outperform entire paid campaigns
- Creator-sourced conversations convert 2–3x faster
- Trust-based recommendations > outbound spam

And Limelight is the clearinghouse where it happens.

Creators get paid fairly.
Brands get measurable ROI.
Buyers get trusted insights.

For once… NOBODY loses 🙌🏼

We’re watching the biggest shift in modern B2B GTM happen in real time.

$1.4M paid out is just the starting point.

The next $10M will happen faster than anyone expects.

MARK. MY. WORDS.

When brands like HubSpot, Webflow, Clay, Xero, ZoomInfo (and 100s more) are raving about Limelight…

You know you’re onto something. 😎

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taplio

The Battle

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Likes

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);}David Walsh's LinkedIn Performance

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