Chief Marketing Officer

also referred to as: chief marketing officers · cmo · cmos

13 statements across 12 episodes · 3 bullish · 6 bearish · 13 people on the record · first statement Oct 21, 2015 by Weston Gaddy · across every show →

Everything said about Chief Marketing Officer, oldest first

Oct 21, 2015 bullish
Prediction Didn’t hold up
CMOs will surpass CIOs and CTOs in tech spending within 10 years
“So marketing technology has under undergone a sort of dramatic shift over the last 10 years, and the CMOs are poised to become the largest spenders on technology inside of the organization, even more so than the CIO and CTO in the next 10 years.”
Weston Gaddy Oct 21, 2015 ▶ 15:51 20 VC 081: From YC to VC with Weston Gaddy @ Bain Capital Ventures
Aug 22, 2022 positive
Insight
Wesley Chan: Sales Leaders and CMOs Often Make the Best Product Managers
“Some of the salespeople, some sales, you know, leaders and CMOs have lots of product expertise. You have to remember, they're close to the customer. They've explained to the customer what the product does. They, you know, in their previous jobs have learned wh…”
Wesley Chan Aug 22, 2022 ▶ 42:09 Wesley Chan: How I Created Google Analytics; The Founding Story of Gmail & Canva | 20VC #919 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 27, 2023 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Canva CMO Zach Kitschke Joined as a 19-Year-Old Contract Content Writer
“Zach, our CMO joined Canva as like Content writer, a contract content writer. He was like, 19 at the time. He's been with the company about 10 years now. He's now a CMO.”
Cliff Obrecht Jan 27, 2023 ▶ 16:55 Canva's Cliff Obrecht: How We Turned Our Yearbook Company to $40B Business | 20VC #971 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 19, 2024 negative
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Duolingo social lead Zaria Parvez has no ambition to become a CMO
“I personally have no ambitions of being a CMO or, like, going higher.”
Zaria Parvez Jan 19, 2024 ▶ 55:30 Zaria Parvez: How Duolingo Scaled to 8M TikTok Followers & How to Create Viral Content | E1105 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 24, 2024 negative
Opinion
Stebbings: There Is a Severe Dearth of Talented CMOs and Marketers
“I mean, dude, there are so few good marketers who are good at marketing. I mean, the CMO generation is one dearth and like, yeah, very few talented people.”
Harry Stebbings Jan 24, 2024 ▶ 6:05 Sean Murray: Why Discovery Today is F***** & How to Scale Into Enterprise Effectively | E1107 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 24, 2024
Insight
CMOs Must Be Sellers and Sales Heads Must Be Marketers
“So the CMO, the marketer, must be very effective at selling and the head of sales must be very effective in marketing.”
Sean Murray Jan 24, 2024 ▶ 2:57 Sean Murray: Why Discovery Today is F***** & How to Scale Into Enterprise Effectively | E1107 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 17, 2024 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Franceschi: CMOs at large companies lack real-time budget visibility
“If you go to any Large probably company and you go to the CMO and you say, Hey CMO, where are you on your budget right now? They don't have an answer.”
Pedro Franceschi Jul 17, 2024 ▶ 26:41 Pedro Franceschi: What Brex Needs to do to be a Public Company | E1178 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 23, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gurski: 30 CMO candidates gave 30 different definitions of brand
“I was in process of hiring of chief marketing officer, and I had maybe 30 different candidates to meet, and I was asking the same question, what's the brand, by your opinion, to 30 different simios, and I got 30 different answers.”
Dmitry Gurski Sep 23, 2024 ▶ 24:10 Dmitry Gurski: From Potato Farm to $200M in Revenue: The Never-Before-Told Story of Flo Health|E1205 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 11, 2025 negative
Opinion
Flanagan: Traditional management-focused CMOs will become obsolete
“Well, I think the CMO that is really fucked is the one who does people management and moves budget around, right? I think the future is really for super ICs. I think the CMO can actually do the craft. Use AI, ship things, understand how to do things because th…”
Kieran Flanagan Jul 11, 2025 ▶ 56:17 20Growth: The Death of Growth Teams? | How Hubspot Use AI to Triple Email Conversion | The Future of AI SEO | Why Prompt Engineering is the New Coding | What Every CMO Needs to Know About AI in 2025
Aug 29, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jason James: Founders most frequently fire CPOs, CMOs, and Heads of Talent
“The three roles that I see that get fired over and over are CPO, CMO and head of talent. They typically have like one and a half to two year stints, and then they like move on to their next thing, you know, sort of like quietly and discreetly.”
Jason James Aug 29, 2025 ▶ 26:32 20Product: Why Most CPOs are Bad | Why You Do Not Need PMs in a World of AI | Why the Design Stage is Dead and How to Use Vibe Coding to Replace It | The Three Roles All Founders End Up Firing on Repeat with Jason James @ Tezi
Oct 20, 2025 negative
Insight
Bouaziz believes high-growth tech companies should hire engineers as CMOs
“But in his mind, most chief marketing officers are not good. The truth is I actually agree with him. And for a while I was looking for a CMO with this experience, that experience, and what I've realized is, like, the best CMOs I've encountered over the last fe…”
Alex Bouaziz Oct 20, 2025 ▶ 26:19 Deel CEO, Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 7, 2026
Insight
Lemkin: Modern CMOs should run marketing campaigns directly using AI agents
“A CMO today should be able to run their own campaigns, and this is why. I'm not saying you have to spin up Marketo or HubSpot. I'm saying you should be able to tell your agent, and our agent, our AIVP marketing started running its own campaigns the last two we…”
Jason Lemkin May 7, 2026 ▶ 1:32:07 Anthropic's Raise & What It Means for Potential IPO? Mag7: Google & Amazon Up, Meta & Microsoft Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 20, 2026
Insight
Petersen: Startups do not need a CMO to execute B2B event marketing
“B to B marketing is events marketing to some extent, and like, that, that's like plain vanilla, but by the way, you don't need an exec, you don't need to go hire a CMO to run events.”
Ryan Petersen Jun 20, 2026 ▶ 44:27 Flexport CEO: Two Questions Every Founder Needs to Ask · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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