Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

It seems like there's a playbook for everything, there's a framework for everything. But the reality is you have to spend the hours and the time to really understand your customer. You were the first marketing hire at OpenAI. I believe ChatGPT is the fastest growing product in history. Let me ask you this, a lot of people might be hearing like oh ChatGPT. It's like why do you need marketing? Everyone knew of Chat GPT. But when you clicked one Zoom level further, the thing that came up was I don't know what to use it for. The work of marketing ended up becoming creating this sort of use case epiphany where people could say, I had no idea ChatGPT could do that. A lot of marketing metrics tend to be vanity metrics about the number of clicks that you got, number of views, number of impressions. I think those are all But together like a four step process that has served me pretty well. The the first step here is Today, my guest is Krithika Shankarman. Krithika was the first marketing hire and VPR marketing at OpenAI, the first marketing hire at Stripe. Where she was the only marketing person for three years. She was also an early marketing leader at Retool and at Dropbox. She also did marketing for Android at Google.

Currently she is executive in residence at Thrive Capital, where she supports their portfolio and founders on all things marketing and helps hire early marketing leaders for their startups. In our conversation, we talk through all of the biggest lessons that she has learned. About how to market your product from her time at OpenAI, Stripe, Retool, Dropbox, and other places, including her four-step diagnostic approach to marketing. Her anti playbook playbook. What B2B companies can learn from consumer marketing.

Career advice for people looking to get into marketing? And also just what people that don't want to get into marketing should know about marketing to be successful. A big thank you to Kevin Garcia and Kelly Sims for suggesting questions and stories to get into. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a bunch of world-class products, including Superhuman, Notion, Linear, Perplexity, and Granola. And more, check it out at Lenny's Newsletter dot com and click bundle. With that, I bring you Krithika Shankar Raman.

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