What co-founding a startup taught me about marketing
Before B2B, I co-founded a Kansas City company and ran its marketing for four years. Doing everything yourself, with real money on the line, is a fast education in what actually moves the needle.
From 2013 to 2017 I co-founded and led marketing for FEWDM, a Kansas City startup. I developed the marketing vision and strategy, wrote nearly everything the company published, ran paid campaigns, managed the customer experience and pitched the company for awards, start-up challenges, investment and grants. Over those years, our marketing helped generate more than $1.2 million in product sales.
It was the most concentrated marketing education I could have asked for. Here's what stuck.
You learn every channel when there's no one else
At a startup there is no social team, email team or web team. There's you. I wrote the website, the blogs, the emails, the pitch materials, the investor updates and the social posts. I built systems for organizing and scheduling content across channels, and I worked with designers, photographers and videographers to bring the brand to life.
Doing all of it at once teaches you how the channels connect — something that's easy to miss in a larger organization where each one has its own owner.
Every dollar has to earn its place
I managed a monthly advertising budget of up to $50,000 against KPIs. When the budget is the company's runway, you stop caring about metrics that look good and start caring about the ones that pay for next month. That habit — tie spend to outcomes, review it constantly, move money toward what works — has shaped how I approach every budget since.
When the money is yours, vanity metrics lose their charm very quickly.
The customer experience is marketing
We served a customer base of more than 6,000, and I oversaw the experience before and after purchase. That taught me that marketing doesn't end at the sale. How people are treated after they buy — answering questions, moderating conversations on social, following through — shapes what they tell others, and that word of mouth is worth more than any ad.
Consistency beats inspiration
Daily content across channels, month after month, doesn't happen on inspiration. It happens on calendars, systems and schedules built around trends, promotions and what the audience is talking about. The discipline I built then is the same discipline any content program needs.
Pitching sharpens the story
Presenting the company for awards, start-up challenges, investment and grants forced us to explain what we did, why it mattered and why we'd succeed — clearly and quickly, to skeptical audiences. It's the same challenge every B2B firm faces online. If you can't say it simply, nobody will remember it.
What I brought with me
Moving into engineering marketing, I brought a founder's bias toward action, a respect for budgets, and a belief that every channel should serve one goal. Those instincts still guide me — especially in large organizations, where it's easy to lose sight of the simple question every startup asks daily: is this working?
Sources and further reading
- LaunchKC — Kansas City grant and accelerator program