blogs > andrew > mlp > paulkedrosky-on-marketing

Sat, 12 Nov 2005

Paul Kedrosky, Venture Capitalist.

For those of you who are addicted to reading blogs, I recommend Paul Kedrosky. He is a once upon a time techie who is now a fairly prominent venture capitalist (!). He blogs compulsively (frequently quoting other very with-it people), is highly opinionated (on just about everything), and has a pretty good take on trends in the technology marketplace.

A recent favorite was post titled “Just Say No to Marketing”: first he quoted an awesome comment from Bob Feld:

I despise the word “marketing” — it’s often the weakest link in a startup company. “Marketing” is vague and non-specific, often poorly executed and measured, and usually a huge waste of money relative to the output.

Several years ago, I suggested to my portfolio companies that they fire their VP of Marketing and hire a VP of Demand Generation (it could be the same person if the VP of Marketing was willing to accept a quota and meaningful, measurable variable compensation.) Hopefully, this VP of Demand Generation understands the incredible power of having your customers so happy with your product that they’ll talk about it online.

then Kedrosky wrote:

I often tell companies I’m working with that too often marketing (and business development, for that matter) is a joy-ride, essentially sales without a quota. One test when hiring a marketing veep is to tell him/her that 20/30/50% of their comp is variable on revenue — say it even if you don’t mean it — and then see how they react. It’s usually instructive as heck.

The deer-in-the-headlights interview question. Gotta love it.

AfC

paulkedrosky-on-marketing, posted by Andrew Cowie in /andrew/mlp at 03:21, 12 Nov 2005.

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