The Exchanges

Q Going back to some of the early strategies and tactics at Lattice, what are the kind of campaigns or concrete things that you did back then that had an outsized impact?

A So one thing that worked really well, and it actually scaled all the way up, but it just got bigger and bigger, was like partner marketing and webinars. You know, in HR, there's like a lot of different, like I think of them as like frenemies, right? There's like, um, these HRAS systems like Bamboo, for example, who would integrate with Lattice, but would also sell a little piece of Lattice. And so we would go to Bamboo, for example, and say, let's do a webinar together. We'll make all of the content or we'll do most of the work here. You have a much bigger email list than we do. I'll do my best to drive leads, but like, let's work together to drive a bunch of leads to this webinar. And then we'll, we'll like split the leads afterwards and we can follow up with them. And so that was like one tactic that really helped us build an audience in the early days is we would go to all these companies that were bigger than us. And, you know, we would be able to sort of piggyback on their brand, get in front of their audience. And we would pick partners based off of who we knew they worked with. Like bamboo was a great one because they worked, you know, sort of like upper SMB, lower mid market, which was exactly where we wanted to be. That's not a tactic I've actually used yet at doc, this partner market. Eventually I think it will, but I think like people are tired of webinars a little b…

AI assessment note: “one thing that worked really well... was like partner marketing and webinars.”

Q What do you think today is a good early stage marketing stack? And so let's say you're selling a product that's between 25 and 50 K in terms of ACV in some sort of B to B context. Is there sort of a favorite stack that you've kind of figured out after trying dozens of tools over the last few years?

A I'm a huge web flow. Fan. Um, in terms of building your website, that has been incredibly helpful. Like pre web flow, I always had to work through developer to like change a little headline or something on the website. And now I'm like constantly changing it, uh, maybe to my own detriment, but that has made me incredibly fast and powerful when it comes to like the website side of things. So web flow, um, HubSpot has been incredible. Like we didn't use it at Lattice, but I'm using it now at doc. And it has been amazing both in terms of like, honestly, the sales CRM side, But in terms of like marketing automation and most of what you need in early stage marketing honestly comes in, in HubSpot when it comes to sending emails and forms and attribution, organizing lists, like been very impressed with what they've built. When it comes to like the SEO and content side of things, generally what I would recommend is you get a tool like a refs where you can look for keywords, use a tool like clear scope to make sure that, um, you're actually writing really, really good content. And that's kind of like maybe the two, two sides of it. And then, you know, One community and thing we've been using a lot to kind of find different writers as super path and Jimmy Daly has done an awesome job with that community, but like finding some, some freelancers on that side of things. Figma is one of my a…

AI assessment note: “So web flow, um, HubSpot has been incredible.”

Q Let's go back to a couple of the things that you mentioned that you stood up in that first year as you were working towards Getting to a million in recurring revenue. What are some of the things you've figured out about creating your first website?

A So the best thing about a website is you can do like a magic trick in the market, right? You can just feel so much bigger than you are if you nail your website. And so if you would just invest a little bit more into the design of your website, but if you even also make your website like bigger, right? Go look, you know, extreme examples, go look at SAP's website and then go copy a bunch of those different types of pages. You can do a magic trick in the market and just feel a lot bigger than you are. And so the classic pages people stand up, at least in the early days is just like, you know, single landing page on their website. But I think it actually makes a lot of sense to build out more sections. So, you know, I have a full product section that explains your different product offerings. Solution section is another really good one where you talk about the different use cases. Customer case studies is obviously another one, you know, and these are all really obvious low hanging fruits. But when people land on your website, they can get a sense of like how big you are. And so if the faster you can kind of Make your website look bigger, the better. And then the other piece of this puzzle is this like SEO content side of things. So setting up a CMS and the library or blog on your website where you can start to host content and just, you know, you don't have to have a hundred blog…

AI assessment note: “makes a lot of sense to build out more sections. So, you know, I have a full product section”

Q there's so little that's been open sourced about doing very early stage marketing well in the world of B to B. And so maybe we could start by talking about what the first maybe year looked Like when you joined Lattice, what was going on at the company? What are the experiments you ran? Maybe what are the, some of the early learnings or things that really worked for you?

A No, I'd love to talk about it. So I joined Lattice as the third employee in the first marketing hire and the timing, I think it was like roughly 20, 16. And I was like 25 years old. I had a little bit of marketing experience, but I had no SaaS experience. I didn't even know what an MQL was or anything like that. Lattice at the time, yeah, there was just three employees, right? So Jack, Eric, you know, the two co-founders, and then Wes was doing a little bit of customer support and sales, but I was really brought into, okay, how do we grow leads at Lattice? And so a lot of that first year was me just experimenting and trying a lot of new things and also building what I thought of as like the marketing foundations at the time. And so my first project as like most first projects, I think for marketers is actually standing up a better website, right? A website that sort of explains our position in the market. But then also sort of has the backend infrastructure to accept leads and nurture leads and get a sense of attribution. So that was sort of one step of the foundation was the website. Part of the website, a big part, and I think a website is sort of like your, your brand's, um, manifestation to the world, right? It's your homepage to the world, obviously, was figuring out our positioning at the time. And we can get into Lattice's positioning and how it evolved, but Lattice star…

AI assessment note: “So I joined Lattice as the third employee in the first marketing hire”

Q What did you figure out about communicating effectively with a founder and CEO across kind of all those different stages?

A Super direct, honest, transparency, just talking all of The time, like over communicate is maybe the simplest way to think about it, right? I just wanted Jack, I wanted to be on the same wavelength of Jack around the moves I was making, the programs I was building, not necessarily what I was doing, but why. And I think I built up a lot of trust with Jack by not just talking, but by doing and shipping, right? We had a huge shipping mentality on the marketing team. And I was able to say, go into a meeting, you know, my one-on-one one week and say, Hey, here's what I'm thinking about stuff. And then have not necessarily the output of it, but at least the input and the thing that I had accomplished or shipped in that week. And so it was just like staying really on the same page about how I'm feeling about building the program, but then also my own ability to scale. So like, I think the, probably the toughest moment for me at Lattice was, I think it was like series B ish. Like right before I really started hiring some of these more strategic leaders, Jack sort of went to me and was like, Hey, are you the guy? Like, are you the guy who's gonna, can you do that next stage of growth? Are you going to be a VP? And I sort of went to him like, dude, I've been doing it. Like everything you have asked me to do, I have done. I have hit my goals. I have crushed it. And we just kind of had a l…

AI assessment note: “Super direct, honest, transparency, just talking all of The time, like over communicate”

Q a crowded space. And you managed to really capture mindshare and you were not a traditional, you know, the normal thing, which is I'm going to hire a marketing manager or director of marketing at another SaaS company and give them the number one spot that I think most people do when they think about building effectively new functions in a startup. Why do you think you were so impactful?

A The short answer is incentives were really aligned. Like I knew I wanted to start a company. After Lattice, I joined Lattice to learn how to start a company. Like I had felt like this was my personal big opportunity for my career and be successful. And so I really worked hard to figure it out. And I, I had this sort of more entrepreneurial mindset. I acted like a founder of the company where it was like, I'm going to try a lot of different things. I'm going to bounce around. I'm going to bear hug as much of marketing as I can. Like, I think from Jack's perspective, he hired me as like a cheap bet that I come in from a friendly referral. But from my perspective, I was like, I am the VP of marketing. I am not letting this go. I am going to do everything I can to, to learn and get better and to figure this out. And that came with some personal sacrifice and nights and weekends and whatever. But like, I knew that this was sort of, you know, like I felt like it was my chance. I, for some reason in college, I was like, I want to do internet business. I want to start a company. And I felt like I got very lucky with getting my foot in the door with Lattice and kind of figuring it out. And so, yeah, I don't know. That was kind of at least I think what made me successful.

AI assessment note: “The short answer is incentives were really aligned. Like I knew I wanted to start”