Pranav Piyush

The martech industry is broken, and I’m devoting the next 15 years of my life to fix it.

After a decade leading growth and marketing teams at places like Dropbox, Pilot, Magento and BILL, I realized there was no measurement tool on the market that was statistically valid, simple and holistic. 

So I went and talked to every CMO and VP of marketing in my network. Their number one complaint? Attribution. 

And this is why we built Paramark.

Because I believe that measuring your marketing efforts is not that hard. 

Through the power of MMM, experimentation and data science, we’ve created the holy grail of measurement tools. So marketers like you can confidently understand the impact of your marketing investments – and communicate them to your CFO and CEO.

Learn our method at Paramark.com.

Co-Founder & CEO

Before starting Paramark, I spent the last decade leading growth and marketing teams at fast-growing companies like Dropbox, Pilot, Magento, and BILL.

During that period, we evaluated hundreds of martech tools and, for the most part, were sorely disappointed. Here's why. We found few solutions that could handle the needs of fast-growing marketing teams. They were either incomplete, hard to use, or claiming things that were just flat-out wrong!

This trend is especially true for marketing analytics. Synthesizing and analyzing marketing data to understand effectiveness should be a solved problem. After speaking to hundreds of marketing leaders at some of the fastest growing companies, I was honestly surprised that the truth is far from it. Understanding and communicating the return on marketing investment continues to be one of the top challenges for marketers.

That's why we decided to build Paramark. Our goal is to help fast-growing marketing teams measure and forecast the impact of their investments, unlocking sustainable growth.

Dave Gerhardt

Hey I'm Dave Gerhardt. I created Exit Five, which has turned into the top community for B2B marketing professionals. Before starting Exit Five I had a 10 year career in marketing and grew from PR intern to CMO. I even once had hair! My wife says I'm more handsome now though, and she's quite pretty so that means a lot -- but the internet just boxes me in as the typical bald guy tech bro. So oh look, another bald tech guy writing on LinkedIn! whoopty freaking do.

Anyway. Where was I... OH. Receipts! I wanted to talk about receipts, because in a world of fluff and online influencers, I actually have some receipts and I want to tell you about them here because it signals power, credibility, and makes it seem like I'm super rich, so: I used to be pretty good at marketing, and my work as a marketer played a key role (at least I think so) in helping two software companies to successful exits: Drift for $1B+ and Privy for $100M+. I certainly helped the founders make a bunch of money, and I was able to comfortably purchase a brand new Toyota Sienna minivan for my family in 2021.

Today I spend my time working on Exit Five, and it's actually been super fun and given me a bunch of purpose. We're a team of six full-time team members now, and we have a private online community and host in-person events around the world. Plus there's a popular podcast and newsletter for marketers. We reach something like 20 MILLION marketers with our content every year, and we've got a pretty special thing going on. I hope to keep it going. You can learn more about it all at exitfive.com.

I spent most of my life in the Boston area but now live in the woods in Vermont with my wife, two kids, two cats, and one dog.

You can reach me at dave@exitfive.com if you want, but TBD if I reply. Depends on the message. But please don't send me any more swag or books. But if for whatever reason you do want to send me something, I play the ProV1x golf ball and like the low numbers.

PS. Find my podcast “The Dave Gerhardt Show” on Spotify

Founder & CEO

Exit Five is a media company focused on B2B marketing. We help B2B marketers build successful careers through our content and community. Learn more at exitfive.com

We polled ~100 CMOs at companies $50M - $500M+ ARR on what their top marketing challenges are right now. Here are the top takeaways.

_________________________________________________________

1. AI. No surprise. 85% said AI adoption is # 1 priority for 2026.

But this goes beyond the cute use cases you see on LinkedIn and from the AI creators showing you all the new things to do with the new tools.

"I need practical use cases and quick wins to show” - VPM $25M ARR

“We are expected to be using AI to scale marketing  efficiently” - VPM $30M ARR

“We are under pressure to demonstrate hard savings and additional value created via AI adoption.” - CMO $450M ARR

“Wondering am I moving fast enough on AI transformation — not just adopting tools, but truly rethinking how marketing works from the ground up.” - CMO $600M ARR

_________________________________________________________

2. Everyone said some version of this: "We need to grow more, spend less, & prove marketing did it.”

Grow more. Spend less. And PROVE that marketing did it. That is the key word there.

They all talked about revenue growth, but the framing has evolved beyond "drive more MQLs."

The dominant language was:

• Marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced pipeline (not just leads)
• Pipeline quality over volume
• Tying marketing to ACV expansion and retention, not just new logos

“We ned to tie marketing more directly to revenue outcomes — not just MQLs, but marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced pipeline, ACV growth, and expansion revenue” - VPM $85M ARR

_________________________________________________________

3. The other repeat topics we heard included:

• Team too small for scope of work
• Feeling  caught between strategic work (positioning, GTM, C-suite influence) and heavy day-to-day execution
• Structural misalignment after acquisition or reorg
• AI search disruption
• Moving upmarket
• Moving from single product to multi-product

_________________________________________________________

PS. We run a private group for in-house B2B marketing leaders. If you're running the marketing team at a company doing $50M+ ARR you should check this group out. Apply here:

exitfive.com/cmo-council

Building ExitFive.com. Former CMO. Author: Founder Brand. Get my newsletter: exitfive.com/newsletter

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