Robin Daniels

Chief Business Officer @ Zensai #HumanSuccess & #AI | 3xCMO | 2.5xIPOs 😆 | Ex @Salesforce @WeWork @LinkedIn @Box @Matterport | LinkedIn Top Voice | Creator of Epic Teams | Dad | Runner | Made in Denmark 🇩🇰

Hi, I'm Robin Daniels, The James Bond of B2B, at least according to one legenday VC 😆

I'm an experienced executive focused on growth, marketing, GTM, product innovation, and leadership development to deliver epic results through ground-breaking, fun, and highly differentiated activities, while empowering people and teams to do the best work of their lives. 

I'm Chief Business Officer for Zensai (zensai.com) - where I run Product, Marketing, Partnerships, and GTM.

Throughout my career I've held executive leadership roles in high growth companies of all sizes, including Matterport (IPO) WeWork (near IPO), Salesforce, LinkedIn, Box (IPO), Veritas, and Vera (acquired).

My areas of expertise include growth strategy, product innovation, marketing, product marketing communications and media, GTM strategies, org design, leadership development, innovation management, mergers & acquisitions, top-level leadership, category-creation, brand building, public speaking, and sales transformation.

Here's more about my life story and journey during the last two decades: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/roadmap-life-love-happiness-robin-daniels/

I spent over 20 years in the US and UK, but I'm from Copenhagen, Denmark and an avid runner and movie nerd.

Founding Member & Advisor

byFounders is an early stage venture fund actively investing in tech startups across the Nordics and Baltics. Made up of some of the region's most accomplished entrepreneurs (Zendesk, Unity, Skype, and more), the byFounders Collective invests in and supports the next generation of globally ambitious founders. I help byFounders portfolio companies with deal sourcing, go-to-market strategy, business development, and fundraising advice.

AI usage in our Learn365 platform has gone up 172% year over year to help our customers learn in the flow of work 🚀 

Our customers are seeing more engaged employees with personalized AI-powered learning paths that we made so every person can experience growth, development, and momentum in their lives in a way that's perfect for them.

Super excited to see Fosway Group, David Wilson and Fiona Leteney recognize how much love, innovation, and focus we put into delivering a platform that our customers love 💙 

Thank you for the partnership and the recognition. I know everyone at Zensai appreciates this 🙏 

Onwards and upwards!

Studied and trusted by EMEA’s learning leaders, the 2026 9-Grid™ for Learning Systems is out today. 

The research shows that the market is growing but uncertainty and complexity remain; nevertheless, vendors are continuing to focus on AI-enabled functionality.

Revealing the market and solution trends in the learning systems market, the 2026 9-Grid™ report shows that:

- While AI is the top priority for the coming year – alongside skills, according to Digital Learning Realities 2025 – staples such as compliance and regulatory training are still critically important but have ceded the spotlight to AI due to the market-wide effectiveness of their delivery in modern learning. 
- The proliferation of AI sees face-to-face, cohort-based learning achieve premium status, with the research noting that “…leadership judgement, surgical precision, craftsmanship, [and] complex negotiation” remain capabilities that need observation and social interaction.

Fiona Leteney, Senior Analyst at Fosway Group, commented on the report’s learning experience insight: "It’s official: The LXP as a standalone category of learning system is finally behind us. Organisations still care deeply about the learning experience, but what used to be differentiators like personalised recommendations, intuitive UX, seamless content access, are now baseline expectations. AI is accelerating this shift, and even potentially transforming the traditional ‘Netflix style’ front door of learning into adaptive, conversational experiences where AI coaches and tutors guide learners in real time."

Myself and Fiona Leteney will take questions on the research in a live online ‘Ask the Analyst’ session on 19 March 2026 at 3pm GMT. Register for your free place here.

There are other market analysis models, but there’s only one 9-Grid™. Examine it today to accelerate your buying knowledge.

The links can be found in the comments below.

#Learning #LearningSystems #AI

Thanks for the great conversation about purpose, sleep, exercise, and happiness. I loved it Eric Bomyea - keep doing awesome work.

Podcaster | B2B Brand Director | Yoga Instructor

You don’t need a perfect sleep routine. You need portable anchors.

You already know the sleep science: 

Same bedtime. 
Same wake time. 
Dark room. 
No screens. 
Total consistency.

But your life moves.

Travel. 
Clients. 
Team dinners.
New beds. 
Different time zones.

So when the routine breaks, you feel behind.

In my conversation with Robin Daniels, he shared two anchors he protects wherever he is:

Sleep as a priority — even when it’s imperfect.
Daily physical regulation — move the stress out.

Two commitments that can travel with you. That reframed how I think about living dynamically, not perfectly. 

If your day goes sideways tomorrow, what would you still protect?

https://lnkd.in/gjpvNeF9

Open video: Stop Chasing Perfect. Lead a Dynamic Life (Without Burning Out) | Robin Daniels on youtube.com

Stop Chasing Perfect. Lead a Dynamic Life (Without Burning Out) | Robin Daniels

Brand Marketing + Performance Marketing + Creative + DTC + eCommerce + Start-up + Growth Marketing + Brand Strategy || Ex-Unilever, Colgate, Ogilvy, Soma Water, Morgan Stanley

I earned my MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, specializing in Brand Management and Strategy, and hold a BA in Economics from Union College, where I was a NCAA varsity crew athlete. I’ve always been drawn to the intersection of creativity, strategy, and data, shaping my career around building brands that drive both emotional connection and measurable growth. Outside of work, I live in New York City’s Upper West Side with my wife, Julie, and our two daughters, Anna and Lily.

Over the past 20+ years, I’ve led global CPG brands and high-growth DTC startups, scaling businesses through brand strategy, performance marketing, and omnichannel expansion. I’ve tripled revenue for multiple startups, launched award-winning marketing campaigns, and built full-funnel growth systems that drive customer acquisition, retention, and brand loyalty. My expertise spans DTC, retail, Amazon, and marketplaces, with leadership roles at Unilever, Colgate, Ogilvy, Soma Water, Full Circle, Blix Electric Bikes, and Morgan Stanley. I also consult for emerging and established brands to help them accelerate growth.

Now, I’m focused on helping mission-driven consumer brands scale smarter and faster—whether as a fractional CMO, growth advisor, or brand strategist. I thrive on solving complex business challenges, leading high-performing teams, and shaping the future of DTC, retail, and omnichannel growth.

If you’re looking to scale your brand, optimize your marketing, or drive profitability—let’s connect.

Corey Greenhouse

A few years ago, I joined a high-growth startup that had everything going for it:
🔥 Product-market fit
📈 Blazing fast growth
💰 Healthy performance ROAS

But under the hood?
It was fragile.

Our CAC was rising.
Repeat rates weren’t where we wanted.
No one could explain what we stood for—internally or externally.

We were sprinting… but not in a direction.

Eventually, the performance engine slowed down. And we had no brand to fall back on.
No memory.
No loyalty.
No gravity.

That moment changed how I think about brand.

Since then, here’s what I tell every early-stage team:

👉 Don’t wait until performance breaks to start building brand.
👉 You don’t need a rebrand. You need a narrative.
👉 You don’t need a Super Bowl ad. You need consistency.

The best startups today get this:

💊 Care/of built a POV around personalization and self-care before their first billboard
💄 Jones Road made Bobbi Brown the brand
🧃 Caliwater wrapped its mission in every piece of content—from celebrity to desert chic
🧢 Vuori out-Nike’d Nike with brand storytelling from day one

Here’s how I think about it now:

✅ Brand is an accelerant, not a luxury
✅ It lowers CAC by pre-warming every click
✅ It boosts retention by making people care
✅ It makes performance creative convert better—because it means something

Brand isn’t just for Series C and beyond.

If you’re in growth mode and think you “can’t afford” brand…
You can’t afford not to.

#BrandMarketing #GrowthStrategy #StartupLessons #ModernMarketingOS #BrandAndPerformance #EarlyStageGrowth

When I joined Acure, we had a product people loved—but a brand no one could describe.

The formulas were clean.
The pricing was accessible.
The reviews were glowing.

But if you asked 10 consumers:
“What’s Acure all about?”
You’d get 10 different answers.

Here’s what I’ve learned from this (and other) growth-stage brands:

✅ Great products get you distribution. Great brands earn loyalty.

✅ Without a clear POV, you’ll burn money on performance just to stay flat.

✅ And no matter how good your team or product is—if the story isn’t consistent, the consumer won’t remember it.

So we went to work:

🎯 Rebuilt the brand architecture
🔬 Refocused messaging around concern-first, clinically-backed skincare
🧪 Launched zombie cell SKUs with data-forward education
🧠 Designed an editorial engine to reinforce the narrative every week
🛍️ Aligned our DTC, Amazon, and retail playbooks around one unified voice

And here’s what happened:

🚀 Branded search surged
📉 Paid CPAs dropped
🛒 Retail turns picked up in key markets
💬 Consumers started repeating back our core messaging in reviews and social

The takeaway?

Don’t mistake awareness for affinity.
Don’t mistake distribution for brand.
And don’t mistake performance for pull.

Because the only thing that compounds in the long run is brand equity.

It’s what gets you into baskets and into culture.
It’s what makes your media more efficient.
It’s what makes your consumer say: “Oh yeah, I know them. I love that brand.”

And in 2026?

That’s the only kind of marketing that matters.

#BrandBuilding #ModernMarketingOS #BrandAndPerformance #DTCStrategy #OmnichannelGrowth #CMOPlaybook

The most expensive lesson I learned in DTC?”
Waiting too long to invest in brand.

Early in my career, I treated brand like frosting. Something you add once the growth engine is working. ROAS first, brand later.

But here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

If you don’t invest in brand early, your CAC becomes a tax you can’t out-optimize.

Paid performance will get you the clicks.
Brand is what earns the second one.
And the third.
And the kind of loyalty that shows up on shelf, in Amazon search, and in conversations you’ll never see.

The moment it clicked for me?

I was working with a brand doing $40M+ in top line. Performance was solid—but flatlining. We had maxed out the machine. Every channel looked tired.

We didn’t need another hack.
We needed to build brand memory.

So we slowed down, clarified the POV, tightened creative systems, made brand our multiplier — not a line item.

What happened next?

Branded search grew 60%.
Amazon velocity jumped.
Retail partners started calling us.

Not because we spent more.
Because we made the spend matter more.

I see it now in the brands I admire:

🧃 Olipop — storytelling that spans channels
💄 e.l.f. — brand voice that drives cultural velocity
🧼 Dr. Squatch — content that’s sticky, not salesy

And the classics:

📱 Nike — consistency, conviction, and edge
🍏 Apple — simple brand codes that still move markets

So if you’re in growth mode and you think brand can wait—
Trust me, it can’t.

Brand isn’t a luxury.
It’s the unlock that makes performance compounding.

And the brands that figure that out early?
They don’t just drive revenue.
They build something that lasts.

#BrandMarketing #GrowthStagePlaybook #BrandAndPerformance #ModernMarketingOS #OmnichannelGrowth #CMOPlaybook

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The Battle

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