Emily Kramer: [00:00:00] You feel like you're you're, uh, jobs are all over the place. Your career is all over the place. At some point it will sort of come to this.

David Fano: Thanks for joining today, where with Emily Kramer, who I've had the good fortune of speaking to a few times, but I've been a long time admirer of her career and the work she's done and the things she's stands for and fight for. Uh, and so I'm super grateful to get to talk to you about your career and what you've got going on, but it's always best to hear directly from you.

So, Emily, can you tell us a little bit about your.

Emily Kramer: Yeah, thanks for having me Dean. Um, my, my whole career has been spent pretty much as a marketer. The bulk of it spent being an early marketer at startups. Um, so I've been like the first or second marketer, about four times, um, at places like took a fly, a sauna, a seed funded company called Astro and at Carta.

Um, and then, uh, now I am in advisor investor. That kind of [00:01:00] job that people are like, is that a real job? It is, is a real job, but, um, but helping, helping startups to build out their marketing functions now, lots of different ways.

David Fano: Well, I'm going to have to talk to you about that when we mash the stop button.

Um, but, uh, all right. Well, I like to kick off this conversation always with, when was the first time in your life that you thought about your career and what I mean by that is you were taking deliberate action. W where the actions you were taking were going to affect your work. Right? My daughter is very convinced.

She wants to be a singer, which hopefully she will be, but I'm not going to call it like deliberate yet. Um, you know, but when you like, you know, saying, okay, this, this might actually be what I spend my days doing.

Emily Kramer: Yeah. I remember the first story about me talking about my career, but this isn't really the answer, but it's funny anyway.

And so. I was at my friend's like first communion or something like that. Like I was like six or seven, however old. I don't know how old you are at that time. [00:02:00] And some stranger asked me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, I want to be the first woman president. And she said, what if you have to be the second?

And I said, not interested. Uh, yeah, I I'm competitive. So there's that, but no, for real, I don't know. I think. I was always like a academic kid who wanted to do well in school, but not like to, well, you know, I didn't want to be like spending all my time on school, but I wanted to do well. So I mean, probably for me, like I was fortunate enough that my parents gave me the opportunity and middle school to like, you know, pick where I wanted to go to school.

Like, do you want to go to a private school or a public school? Or what's interesting to you. And I think at that point I was like, oh, I want to go to a private middle school so I can go to a really good private high school so I can go to a really good college. So I think for me, I don't know why I was thinking about that at like 11.

Um, but I, but I was, um, so I think that, and then also, um, you know, I [00:03:00] think in high school I was when I probably thought the most about it because, you know, you're kind of like. You know, in my situation at school, like they were very much like, where are you going to go to college? And like, uh, I think I also knew a number of people who were older and were friends with the number of people that were older because I went to, um, summer camp, my whole life, like most of the summer as like a camper and then a counselor.

And, uh, so I was like, friends with counselors are a few years older. And so like, they were starting to think about that. Interesting and helpful. And like, let me think about where I wanted to go to college and those kinds of things. Cause they were in college and I don't think unless you have an older, older sibling that actually wants to hang out with you, which I have an older sibling, but he didn't want to hang out with me until like six months ago.

Um, no, that's not true. It was probably like 10 years ago, but it wasn't that long ago. Uh, unless you have that, like, I don't think you often hang out with people who are like three or four years older than you all the time. But I did like all summer. I think was really helpful. So no, no, at that [00:04:00] point I didn't really know what I wanted to be.

I knew that I probably wanted to, like, you know, I knew that I didn't want to be a lawyer. I knew that I want to be a doctor. So I guess I probably thought that I was going to be, uh, a lady of business, but I didn't really know what that meant. Um, I think I probably, I thought I was probably going to do something more NAFI and like marketing is as a math component, but of course, but I, I, I think.

And I went to college. I thought I was, I, my double major as a freshman was a math and econ. So like, I think I really thought that, um, and then I was like, this is crazy. I don't like math as much. Um, so yeah, so I think it was more than just like going through those motions and like, you know, I think unfortunately being put on the path to like, you know, be able to do what I wanted to do with my career in school and all of that.

So very fortunate in that regard to both have those older people as well. And also, you know, go to the schools that set you up for success in terms of college and career [00:05:00] incident that

David Fano: it's. So this is great because it's such an interesting. Experience that we don't talk about explicitly, because I think a lot of the way we shape our career decisions is by exposure.

Yes. And it is true. Like this exposure to older people. I think a lot of them, a lot of people are our exposures are parents will follow in the footsteps of their parents, but having, that's such an interesting thing of like this benefit of these older CA camp counselors, they're majoring in and you're like, oh, I look up to that person.

Oh, they're studying that. That could be for me. Um, I had never thought about it that way, but that's. Nice benefit of that exposure at a young age. Yeah.

Emily Kramer: I mean, camp was like very instrumental in my life. Like the way I got my, well, we'll get to this, but the way I got my job at a sauna when it was like 35 people, which is a pretty lucky job to get, um, was because someone who was like camper, who was younger, like three years younger than me, was a recruiting coordinator there.

And we stayed in touch. And when she moved [00:06:00] to San Francisco, we stayed in touch and, um, She was like, you should meet the CLL year. And I was like, okay. And that's how I got that job. So like, camp has remained like very, uh, influential, uh, in that regard. So you never know where you're going to meet the people that help you get your, you got your jobs.

David Fano: Oh, that's awesome. All right. So marketing, marketing's been present, you opened with it, you know, you studied econ and

Emily Kramer: art history. I swish, I switched to econ hardest three. I made a left turn or right turn or some sort of chart away from math and econ. Yeah. So I studied econ and art history, which the only thing that makes sense off of that, really not that anybody's major really needs to make that much sense of their career.

But, um, if you go to like liberal arts, well, I, the only thing that made sense was like, you could work at an auction house. I was like, I don't think I dress fancy enough for that, so that wasn't going to be an option, but I did consider interning in one of those places. And then I was like, [00:07:00] no, like I want to go work at a record store, a record label at a radio station in college.

So that's what I did instead. Um, so yeah, those were my majors, but I think what's interesting there it's just that, like, I've always had like the. Mathematical side and the creative artistic side. So I've always been a mix of like left and right brain. So I didn't go once. I sort of realized that that's sort of like a superpower and there aren't a lot of people that have that mix, um, of right brain left brain, um, be creative and being like, you know, do a lot of cool things in Excel.

Like I was like, oh, I should really like lead into this. And so, um, for me, like my mom is a. Uh, she was a teacher for a long time, but for the last, whatever, like 20 to 25 years, she's been doing stained glass full time, like large stained glass panels and stuff. And so she's, my mother is like very creative, um, way more than me, but very, very creative person, very artistic.

Um, [00:08:00] and then my dad was a software engineer way back when, so, um, you know, always had those, like got kind of pieces of both of them. So I started to explore the creative. Industries and creative side a little bit more in college. Whereas in high school I felt like more squarely focused on like, you know, the math stuff.

David Fano: So how did you, so, okay, so you're done with school, like w what was your first exposure to marketing as like an occupation?

Emily Kramer: Yeah, I was actually, I mean, in college, I. I briefly mentioned this, but I, I thought I wanted to work in, in music. I'm the least musical person you'll ever meet. Maybe that's not true, but like I took the piano as a kid and my teacher told me after four years that I plateaued and I wasn't gonna get any better.

And I like tried really hard. So, you know, it was never, I'm just never going to be a musician, but I want it to work. And like the music and entertainment industry, I thought, um, because I have always been someone that goes to a lot of, uh, [00:09:00] Since I was like 13 or 14. So, um, I thought I wanted to work in that.

I think that's like, again, it's like an exposure thing. You're like, I like this. Maybe it would be cool to like work in this. Um, it's not always true, but, uh, I, I worked at a radio station in college, um, and kind of the only thing I was for a summer, the only thing I was really like qualified to do, it was like to be one of those people that like goes to the shows and like hand out.

You know, like there were a bunch of shows put on by the radio station in Boston, in the summer. So I would like go and like man, the booth, um, and do like other things like that. So that was in marketing. So I guess like that sort of exposed to me a little bit, so that a little bit more, and I guess I was just aware of marketing and, and then my next internship, like the next summer was at a record, a small record label in New York.

Um, and that was in marketing as well. So it just was like made sense from what I'd done before. Um, So after college, I was considering both, [00:10:00] um, like working for a record label. It's a larger record labels was talking to a couple in New York. I decided that that was not a viable option because they paid like $0 in New York.

Uh, in 2006, six was like loudly, more expensive than San Francisco, which is where I ended up moving. Um, so I quickly became disenchanted with the idea of working for a record label when I realized that I would not be able to, um, afford anything else. Um, so I moved to San Francisco on a whim. Um, like all my friends from college in Boston were, um, moving basically to New York or staying in Boston, but I was like, I've got seven SKO and like try something new.

And I had a couple of friends from college who, uh, Like had an extra room in their house like month and month. And we're like, come out here and interview. So I had some interviews in process, um, and I was kind of looking at like a, a range of things, but mostly in [00:11:00] marketing, just cause like I had done those internships and kind of thought that that would leverage my, you know, kind of dual skillset.

And um, yeah. So I guess I was like interviewing at Google for like some ad words related to job search related to. Um, I can out, like I was doing those interviews, but Google, especially the I'm like their interview process was like nine years long. Um, like most time for that, I mean, in retrospect, maybe I should have waited it out, but, um, I came out here and did some interviews and I interviewed at an ad agency and like got a job at an ad agency within a couple of weeks of like moving up to San Francisco again, it was in a different, different time, but, um, I got that job and that kind of just like propelled the.

Forward and marketing. So kind of just like happened.

David Fano: So actually that's a theme. Um, I bring up every once in a while for the folks that have experienced it and then you have we'll get into it, but is, um, what I call like product-based versus project. Uh, [00:12:00] contexts for your work. And I've heard, I, you know, I've never worked in an ad agency, but I've heard from a lot of marketers that that's really good experience.

Like it's different than being like in-house and I think any kind of craft-based position architect, lawyer, accountant, this kind of like in-house is, is always kind of challenging, but I'm with marketers, I think less so. Um, but there is this agency in-house, um, dichotomy, I think in marketing as well. And.

And w how, how do you think about that now? Uh, in terms of like, in terms of career advice for aspiring marketers?

Emily Kramer: Yeah. Look like agencies have pros and cons. I was working at a huge agency, a universal can as part of like McCann world group. Like the biggest agencies is huge. Um, I was in San Francisco, there were 600 people in services, but at the time.

And our primary account was Microsoft. And it was like a long-term like agency of record, as they say situation, I wasn't working on a creative side. I was working on the media side. I mean, it [00:13:00] has some creative components, but I wasn't like making cool labs. Um, I was on the media planning side, which is like choosing where ads go and like optimizing them and like, but I got to work on, I guess I should have said this.

It wasn't like totally random because I got. Microsoft Zune, which was like the one competitor at the time, like the MP3 player. Yeah. So I was like, okay, I'll go here. I'll get to work on Zune. Like, uh, sort of like this will, I'll get to work with a bunch of music, publications, like, so I worked with like, you know, magazines were still kind of happening.

Um, we're still kind of doing okay. So like, I'll get into like work with salespeople from like rolling stone and like buy ad space. Pitchfork and like, you know, those which still exists. Um, so I, it was kind of adjacent, right? So like, it was like, I'm doing kind of a different job, but I'll get to do it related to something that I care about and know about, um, What was I saying?

I went on the Zune, the Zune rabbit hole.

David Fano: So yeah, you were at a big [00:14:00] agency, some intentionality to going for, it kept with the passion for music, but you couldn't be a musician, but you could limit,

Emily Kramer: I want to show up. So I like artists and I like, you know, like learning about the, having discovering new music like this.

I still do that. Um, so anyway, yeah, it related, I think, I think the agents you would ask that the agency thing is a good one. Pros and cons like smaller agencies. It's like super cyclical, like are not cyclical necessarily, but it ebbs and flows a lot based on clients. If they're not for a, long-term like, again, like we didn't have that as much, but a little bit.

Um, and typically like a lot of young people, at least in my experience, like everyone was like my age. We had a lot of fun. Um, like again, we were like parenting with sales ad salespeople that would like take us out to do crazy things. It's a really weird job being a media planner. You get like wooed by like salespeople, it starts, it's really true.

It's like, if you've been a media planner, especially at that time from like 2006 to 2008, [00:15:00] you kind of have like a secret handshake. You're like, that was strange. Like we were making zero money, but we were getting all of this like weird free stuff. Like they would take us to like parties and like buy us jeans.

Like, we'd go to like gene stores. He'd be like, here are fancy jeans, like weird, weird things where like, I can't. To get home except for on the bus, but I'm getting free design energy. It's like, it just didn't make any sense. Okay.

David Fano: So when's that next moment that, uh, kind of, you know what I call career plateaus?

You're like, okay, cool. I think I'm good. And like, I'm ready for the next thing. How, how did that come about? Yeah,

Emily Kramer: I went and got an MBA. I went to Harvard business school, um, which makes it sound like really casual. Like I, I, you know, worked hard to do all of those things and like take the gene out and do well.

And I had done well in college and so I have a sort of set up for that. So I think in some ways it just felt like I should go to grad school. I don't know if I ever thought to actually want to do this and like, what will this do for my career? But it just kind of like all came to be, and I was like, you know, proud of myself for like, achieving that.

Yeah. Getting into a school like that and all of that. And so I, I, I [00:16:00] went and, uh, I was one of, there's not many people that come from ad agencies that go to business school. Um, especially I started in 2009. So all of the applicants were from like 2008 when the market crash. And we had a lot of like disgruntled IBM.

Um, and there's always going to be a lot of consultants, but there weren't even a lot of like tech people in business school at the time. Like it's shifted a lot and curriculum has shifted to like accommodate those people. But, um, I mean, there were certainly people that were interested in tech and startups and like, but it wasn't as many as there are.

So

David Fano: you finish, you got some exposure to marketing in a tech company, um, inside of it, and now you're done with.

Emily Kramer: I was still really interested in music, music and music tack and a dozen things related to that in business school and was like, what had to start like a secondary ticketing company that competes with StubHub, but isn't so evil, which would work really now.

I'm like the web three on a T world. It wouldn't have worked then. And so all that sad, I ended up working at ticket [00:17:00] fly and that's some people they're like ticket by Jason ended up working there, um, which at the time, which now is part of Eventbrite, but like same sort of concept is Ticketmaster event Eventbrite.

Mostly I'm marketing to venues and promoters, but there was like a consumer element too, but mostly like a B2B thing. Um, so I was leading product marketing and digital marketing. There was like a community and content person when I joined, um, and like help build out that, build out that team and, um, yeah, kind of get used to like, or get experienced, like scaling a startup marketing team and how startups operate and all that stuff.

And. I was there for a year and a half. Um, that was again, like somewhat optimizing for lifestyle as well. Like all of the people that work there will actually go to shows and like blogs too. We're like interested in things that I was interested in and made a lot of really good friends that way. And so, um, [00:18:00] yeah, like it really fit with what I liked to do.

So it was really solid for like a month and a half. And then, um, I spent 10 days at south by Southwest, like, you know, four ticket fly, uh, you know, like hosting a bunch of events, going to a bunch of things. And, uh, I was like, all right, this will be my last, last hurrah here. Um, not really, but it kind of was like a good send off.

The time before I've been at south by Southwest, I broke my leg. So, you know, um, 10 days of south by Southwest time period, like 10 plus years ago, it was a lot, you know, aggressive. So, yeah. And then soon after that, like right after I, I was interviewing with us on it and I, I got, I got the job that I, it was, you know, great job.

Couldn't turn it down. So went over there.

David Fano: So moments like that in the career. Interesting. Right. That ended up being a really pivotal job for you. A sauna is a fantastic company with, you know, great leadership, but it came about through this previous camper that you [00:19:00] said, so like, how'd you put that out into the world where you were you like sort of talking to people, how did they even know to suggest that you connect with the folks at Asana?

Emily Kramer: I mean, honestly, I think, I think. You know, Kelsey and I had sort of like remained in touch. She moved out here. That's my friend from camp who was a recruiting coordinator. She had moved out here. I was sort of trying to help her find new things. Um, and, um, she wanted to get into sort of startup world and, um, I'm just like stayed in touch.

Like sometimes we would go to like concerts together and, uh, I don't know, like I think she, might've just been like, oh, we're starting to think about bringing on sort of like a senior marketer or we don't really have anyone, um, in the marketing side, um, Why don't you talk to the CLL? I mean, it was just, I don't know, like, it was just kinda like, happens.

Like, I don't know exactly the conversation, but I think it was just like, you know, Kelsey was in recruiting and she knew they were starting to think about marketing and she's like marketing, or I know, like, I think it was just kind of like, as simple as that, I mean, Kelsey [00:20:00] in general is like a really great connector.

So I imagined it was like, um, yeah, came up on her side. But, um, I think I like, I, wasn't looking at a bunch of places. Um, Like I probably told them that I was, but I wasn't really actively looking.

David Fano: So there, you got to be under 50 employees and scale, a big company that achieved a lot of really incredible things.

And so what we're. You know, as a career experience, being there from a small team to growing a team, I mean, I would imagine you had to make a bit of that transition from like IC to manager, then you're hiring, you know, what were some of the most memorable things there, um, in the sort of career

Emily Kramer: pressures?

Yeah. So I was like somewhat spoiled going to a sauna as, you know, an early marketer in that there was a lot of awareness for a [00:21:00] sauna and it was free products that have been a lot of reasons. Um, because the founder was a co-founder of Facebook. So a lot of like, kind of yeah. Uh, advantages there. Um, and the, we didn't have titles at the time or really ever.

Um, but there was certainly like, like areas of responsibility or things that we knew that we own. So like the COO person, like he wasn't, he wasn't CEO, it seems Kenny, he had. How to kind of a background in lots of different things, but had, had led marketing before as well as led product and things like that.

So he was very helpful because I, you know, didn't really know much about content marketing at the time. I'd only done product marketing and I knew the growth marketing, um, or like demand gen is very much growth marketing, but knew that stuff really well because of that. [00:22:00] Background and sort of like paid ads and, and marketing metrics and all of that, like was deep in that, um, in advertising.

So, um, you know, I knew about two thirds of like what to do in marketing, but like, there were certainly things that were a huge gray area for me. So I had a mentor there. I mean often when people go and start a marketing team, they're working with founders who have no idea how marketing. Um, but that wasn't the case for me.

Um, I was able to partner with like a COO who did, so he was really, uh, instrumental in just helping me figure out what the hell I was doing in terms of like hiring a team from like, you know, myself up to like 25 people. So, uh, he was really helpful. I think that that's something too, you do take like a first whatever job to start at.

Like first person in X function. If you haven't done it before. I mean, having whether that be internally or externally, like a mentor who has, is like very pretty helpful. Um, and, uh, yeah, so I just [00:23:00] started, um, building up the team and they kept letting you lead it. And that was great. Um, like I didn't go in necessarily thinking, like, I'm the head of marketing, they're just sort of like kept hiring people, kept managing people.

Yeah, it didn't make me stop. So that was cool. Um, but yeah, yeah, something was working. So

David Fano: you established this, uh, I'll call it self-awareness around zero to one stage that you liked. And you'd seen a couple of different companies, a couple of different sizes. So then like knowing that about yourself, having hone these skills, having built a reputation for being able to do this, what can.

So

Emily Kramer: like, I, I guess I always thought that I would start a company. Um, so I was like, maybe I should go back to something, um, smaller to see if I like want to do that. Now at this point, I becoming like a very overly prepared person to start a startup and I probably should have just done it, like, oh, I'll go to business school.

Like, that's not necessarily a great primer for starting the company, but I [00:24:00] was like, I'm going to business school. Like, that was one of the things in my mind for that. And like, oh, like, I'll join multiple startups early on. Like just if you're going to do it, just do it. Uh, I, um, I went to a seed funded company that was like eight people and was the first business hire besides the CEO who was a businessman, um, former, former sales BD person.

So went there and helped them launch a, sort of a similar product. Massada um, And, uh, help them launch, help them raise their series. A like actually it was part of the fundraising process, which is kind of rare as a non founder, but, um, and you know, I've got all the help get all of the initial users and help sort of shape somewhat of what we were doing on the product side as well.

So, you know, lots of exposure to overall like running a startup in general and hired both a growth marketing person and a support [00:25:00] slash. First of all personable trades, I'm on my team and that was over just under two years. Um, and then I was like, I actually want to go back to something bigger. Like I want to be able to build bit of a marketing team or coming to an existing marketing team and build it bigger.

So I just wanted, like I realized that I really liked hiring and like building teams, um, I love figuring out marketing strategy as well, what comes along with it. But I really liked that. I think a lot of people don't like hiring, um, especially for marketing, when there's lots of different roles, it can be complicated.

I actually like love it. Um, a lot of talking to new people, figuring out how people are going to fit into the organization. Again, marketing's like a puzzle. There's so many different combinations of skillsets. I like, like seeing how that fits together. And, um, yeah, so I, I wanted to go back and do that. So that's when I went to.

Carta. Um, and at the time I [00:26:00] didn't want to do exactly what I'd done before, but I wanted to obviously leverage the experience that I knew how to build marketing firm from scratch to like a pretty good scale, um, in terms of startup scale. Um, so I joined Carta. It was just around, still that under 300 people.

Um, it was series C um, It didn't really have, have marketing. It had like a false start on marketing marketing list, sort of like a bad word there. Um, they'd had some sales people that were doing some marketing work. Well, yes, uh, I'll, I'll speak on that. And they had some like, uh, product people doing some like product marketing, but not like a real organized marketing team.

Um, they had rebranded from iShares Jakarta, like a few months before I joined, but they didn't have a marketing team, which is actually like an amazing feat, like if they did it and rolled it out and like rolled out a new website, but there was still a lot of confusion with customers and prospects. I'm like, is this two companies or one or what's happening?

So there was some work [00:27:00] there and there was a large sales team at the time. And multiple different business units. So really like had to double time build out a team to support sales teams and the product teams and multiple business units, and like build out a lot of like ops work at the beginning, like bring our tooling and analytics, like up to where it should be for a company, uh, you know, at 20 million plus ARR.

Um, and so I, I built that team to about a little bit bigger than my team at a sauna about 30 people over. Just under or just over a year and a half. Um, so like double time from how I did that at a sauna and a company like four X in revenue ish in the time, in the time that I was there. Um, so really fast growth when I was there.

Lots of lots going on. And, but like the thing that was awesome about being there, like the positive, like I, I, um, I hired like four people that had worked with me [00:28:00] before. From somebody from ticket fly, um, two people from a sauna and one person from Astro. So like somebody from my previous restart. Okay.

David Fano: So now you were at Carta, you've found this passion for compensation and helping level.

The playing field. You've started a bunch of incredible initiatives. Um, Yeah. So how has that, and now, you know, you're consulting, you, you made the transition from someone who was, you know, employee, basically a hundred percent of the time with these dreams of starting something to now being able to work on lots of startups.

Yeah, I actually, I just had a conversation earlier with someone who runs a PR his name, Sam Lee does indie collective. And he's a, multihyphenate like, he gets to do lots of things. It feels like you're more in that space now. So what's that, what's that transition like in getting

Emily Kramer: to do that? Yeah. Um, so for me, there was like a number of things that kind of happened simultaneously.

Um, [00:29:00] and I had a pretty over, I mean, everyone's had it had an overwhelming. Yeah, the past couple of years, but I had a lot of, a lot of things kind of all happened at once. So yeah, I became very interested in compensation level. Playing field at Carta actually ended up filing a lawsuit against Cardell when I left, um, that six months later, um, which led me to decide to want to work on some of my own projects and sort of not go in house because of that experience.

Um, Led me to say, like, you know, I'm going to start advising. And then I also got diagnosed with cancer. I'm okay. Um, you got to say that really quickly afterwards. So within six months it was like, uh, filed a public lawsuit. Um, yeah. Started advising some companies and doing some consulting projects and realizing I wanted to do that more than like working with some startup ideas and.

Got diagnosed with advanced stage lymphoma. Um, so it was like a lot happened, but I think all of these things kind of made me realize like how [00:30:00] much I wanted to kind of be able to make my own schedule, be able to like move around to things I want to do work on things that I'm really like interested in passionate.

And also just like have a little less stress. Um, so, and for me, like that means different things for different people. But for me, that means kind of being a little bit more in control of what I'm doing. So all of these things. Um, kind of led. And so I did like five months of chemo last year while building out my advising business with my friend, Kathleen.

Um, so we paired up to start advising companies together and not really sure where to go. Um, and just, there's a huge amount of demand for marketing help for early and growth stage startups, building up function. So we did a handful of things at first from like doing consulting projects, to like advising for equity, to mentoring, marketers, helping with recruiting a whole host of things.

And I've since kind of narrowed in on the things that we do. Um, and also because I was meeting with so many new companies, I [00:31:00] started angel investing quite a bit, um, and kind of got into that. And then that led us to launch, uh, uh, syndicate for investing, which is basically. For any deal, like we get an allocation from the startup to invest, let's say like a hundred thousand dollars.

And then instead of putting our own money in, we can go and raise money for that specific deal and then put that whole bucket of money into startups. Yeah. So we did that for a, you know, a few deals and then. We decided that we wanted to raise a fund so that we can raise money abroad and then invested in a bunch of startups.

So, um, and we had sort of built up a track record for doing that by working with a bunch of companies and also investing with the combination of those two and to show him, you know, we can pick companies that end up being successful and we add a real value and all of these founders really enjoy working out with us.

And we've kind of become this go-to resource for SAS companies, building marketing. Um, so. Yeah. We [00:32:00] started raising the fund. My business partner had a second kid. Well, so we're like kind of doing both things on the side. We'd like to do as many things as possible all at once. Apparently. Like how did we, uh, so yeah, so we, um, are doing that.

So yeah, I'm continuing to just work with a lot of early aggressive SAS companies on building marketing. And a lot of that means helping them hire the right marketers and making sure they're like set off on the right foot with marketing strategy. But sometimes it means going more hands-on and doing.

You know, like helping the company figure out packaging and pricing, like it kind of varies. Um, and it's been flowed over over the last year and a half, but, um, yeah, it's been sort of, I think, you know, when I, when I describe it all, I'm like, it's, it's very simple in one sentence. Like I have a clear through line, which everyone needs, I think to, to get a job, you need a good through line.

Uh, I didn't have the through line in advance and I don't think anybody really did. But now the three lines, very clear. It's like, oh, I, you know, I've always been an early [00:33:00] marketer at startups. I've done that a number of times. And now I help lots of startups do that by both giving them, lending them, my expertise and helping them along and also invest in capital.

So it's become like this very easy story. Um, and I'm like, wow, that seems really, but not like, it seems like a, really a plan there. And let's see, I guess I did, but. Uh, for someone that has a very clear through line, it was not very on purpose. Um, so, uh, I didn't keep that in mind. If you feel like your, your jobs are all over the place, your career is all over the place.

At some point it will sort of come together.

David Fano: Honestly, it's almost happened with every single one of these conversations I've had. Um, because I think people are far more intentional than they give themselves credit for. And, you know, the folks that I feel like are frustrated with their careers are the ones that have this end goal in mind.

And are not enjoying and looking for opportunities to grow in the process, which you were right. You always had, at least it seems like you had a sense of what you wanted to do [00:34:00] next, maybe a lot, like the next next, or the next, next, next, but you know, the next kind of, you know, kept going and you know, the music stuff is still there.

You still do a little bit of it. Maybe it comes back, but it wasn't how the next thing sort of built on onto the thing you ended up. Yeah, I think it's, um, those things end up working out, you know, if you have this intentionality at the base of it, at the

Emily Kramer: core of it, and I think, you know, one of the questions, one of the questions I like asking people in interviews like, oh, I started them off job off guard and like asking people that I'm managing this, like, uh, what do you want your job after this job?

Like, you're looking for a job now. What do you want the job after that? Um, and like what I thought you were gonna ask me what I wanted this job. No. W what do you want your next shots be? Because that, that really matters. Like, if you want to be a head of marketing, like you need to learn all the areas of marketing.

You can't just like, stay in one silo. If you want to be really good at that one part of marketing, then you should stay in that. So it actually kind of matters. So, yeah, I I'm always knew, or I thought I knew like a couple steps [00:35:00] ahead, but again, like, I always thought I would start a startup. I never thought.

Start a fund. Um, but it like, you know, make sense for what I'm doing, what I like to do and, and, uh, yeah, it, it, it now it makes a ton of sense, but it didn't always,

David Fano: well, that's another recurring themes. What I like doing and what I want to be doing and what I'm good at doing, you know, and the more people can, it sounds like even.

You know, the earliest times in your career, you were honing in on that as well. Um, so Emily, thank you so much for the time. This was an awesome conversation. There's so much for people to learn here. Um, how can folks follow along with what you're up to or, you know, the content you're putting

Emily Kramer: out there?

Yeah. So my Twitter is Emily Kramer. Just my name. Um, my work stuff is, uh, MKT1. Like market one, MKT1.co. I don't know if we pronounce it. Market one MKC. One. We, we didn't think too much about our classics [00:36:00] and MKT1.co um, you'll find our newsletter there in the newsletter. Write about marketing stuff. Um, we also help candidates that are looking for.

Experienced marketers who are looking for early in growth stage roles. We work with so many companies that we're always happy to talk to candidates that are looking for those jobs and then match, make across the startups that we work with. So feel free to reach out to me. Um, you can do that through our website, um, on that as well.

So those are the main ways. Uh, and my company website, I guess my LinkedIn too, also just name. Um, and, uh, yeah, that's, that's

David Fano: awesome. Well, we'll link to all of those in the show notes, wherever you're watching or listening. Emily, thank you so much. Uh, I feel like I learn every time we talk to them and a bunch of this time, and I have so many like separate follow-up conversations with you.

So thanks so much.

And that's it for this episode of Non Linear. If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe, share, and rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can learn more about Teal in our website tealhq.com, or follow us on social media @teal_hq. Thanks again, and please join us again to keep hearing about how we make decisions that shape our careers.