Unicorn Marketers
Conversations with B2B marketing leaders of unicorn tech startups.
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Episodes
Thursday May 29, 2025
Thursday May 29, 2025
Astera Labs is a key player in AI infrastructure, providing essential connectivity components for AI servers - including chips, modules, boards, and software. As the "nervous system" of AI servers, Astera Labs works with major hyperscalers and partners closely with GPU and CPU manufacturers. In this episode of Unicorn Builders, I sat down with Paroma Sen, VP of Corporate Marketing at Astera Labs, to discuss her experience joining the company just before their IPO and building a marketing function from scratch in a highly technical B2B environment.
Topics Discussed:
Joining Astera Labs with a tiny marketing team just two months before their IPO
Building infrastructure for marketing: people, process, technology, strategy, and execution
Breaking down complex technical messaging for seven distinct audience segments
The evolution from a two-person marketing team to a structured department
Balancing outsourced and in-house marketing capabilities
Benchmarking social media performance against industry standards
The importance of content marketing in the rapidly changing AI infrastructure space
Crafting an information journey for each audience segment
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Develop a tiered approach to building marketing functions: Paroma implemented what she calls the "Tiramisu Strategy" - layering infrastructure, strategy, execution planning, and alignment simultaneously. "You can't just do one without the others. You're simultaneously working on all of those layers," she explains. B2B founders should recognize that building marketing capabilities requires this layered approach rather than tackling each component sequentially.
Break down complex messaging for different audiences: For technical B2B companies, Paroma identifies seven distinct audiences requiring different messaging: customers, partners, investors, analysts, press, current employees, and future employees. "We don't have to say one thing and have it mean the same thing to seven different audiences," she notes. B2B founders should map out specific messaging journeys for each key stakeholder group rather than creating one-size-fits-all content.
Make the CFO your marketing ally: Paroma emphasizes, "A CFO should be your best friend... that's the first person you need to convince that the spends that you are proposing are the right place to spend all of that money." By securing CFO buy-in early, marketing leaders can avoid the traditional adversarial relationship and ensure smoother budget approvals. B2B founders should encourage close collaboration between marketing and finance from day one.
Create authentic brand presence that exceeds company size: One of Paroma's proudest achievements was when industry observers commented that Astera Labs was "showing up bigger than your brand." This perception shift demonstrates effective marketing that positions a company beyond its current scale. B2B founders should invest in brand presence that reflects their aspirations rather than just their current status.
Balance AI adoption with human expertise: When implementing AI in marketing, Paroma initially struggled with concerns about integrity and quality. Her team found balance by "using AI generating websites and being able to still add our human value on top of that." B2B founders should approach AI tools as efficiency enhancers that require human oversight and expertise rather than complete replacements for marketers.
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.
www.GlobalTalent.co
Thursday May 29, 2025
Thursday May 29, 2025
Anyscale, creator of the Ray open-source project, has emerged as a leading AI infrastructure company, providing an AI compute platform that makes ML workloads more efficient and cost-effective. Having raised over $194 million and achieving unicorn status, Anyscale is powering some of the most innovative companies in AI development. In this episode of Unicorn Builders, I sat down with Rodolfo Yiu, Head of Demand Gen at Anyscale, to understand their unique go-to-market approach in the competitive AI infrastructure space.
Topics Discussed:
Anyscale's position in the AI infrastructure landscape
Building a GTM strategy around an open-source community
The evolution from technical to executive-level messaging
Planning and executing large-scale developer conferences
Bridging sales and marketing alignment in deep tech
GTM Lessons for B2B Founders:
Leverage Open Source as a GTM Strategy: The Ray open-source community serves as Anyscale's "crown jewels" in their GTM approach. Rodolfo emphasized, "If no one uses Ray, Anyscale won't be successful." B2B founders should consider how open-source components can create a natural adoption funnel and community-driven growth.
Navigate Dual Customer Journeys: Anyscale sees two distinct paths to customer conversion: longtime Ray users upgrading to enterprise, and new customers directly adopting Anyscale. As Rodolfo explained, "The market is maturing...people have more needs of like more performance AI workloads then we actually see people just exploring Ray and they realize Anyscale is a great solution already." B2B founders should design their GTM to accommodate multiple adoption patterns.
Evolve Messaging for Enterprise Sales: As deal sizes grow, Anyscale has expanded their messaging beyond technical users to reach C-suite buyers. Rodolfo shared, "Right now we actually need to talk to like a CTO, the CPO, the CIO because the budgets are getting bigger and bigger." Founders should develop multi-level value propositions that resonate with both technical users and executive decision-makers.
Rethink Traditional Demand Gen for Developer Products: Rodolfo revealed they're moving away from conventional conversion campaigns: "I think a lot of like how I would think about a traditional like conversion campaign...is probably what I would drive less." Instead, focus on knowledge-sharing and educational content that helps developers advance their careers and expertise.
Build Sales-Marketing Alignment Through Deal-Level Engagement: To bridge the sales-marketing divide, Rodolfo advocates getting into deal-specific details: "If you are not talking about a specific account, specific people with the rep, they don't want to talk to you because you are not really helping with my accounts." B2B founders should encourage marketing teams to engage at the opportunity level rather than just high-level metrics.
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.
www.GlobalTalent.co
Thursday May 29, 2025
Thursday May 29, 2025
Huntress has carved out a unique position in cybersecurity by staying laser-focused on SMBs while competitors chase enterprise deals. With 70% year-over-year growth and a tripling of company size in just two years, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer Jason Marshall joined us to break down their unconventional approach to building a marketing engine that scales from $45M to $500M ARR. Rather than following the typical cybersecurity playbook of chest-pounding about AI and technology superiority, Huntress has built their growth on a foundation of customer education, community engagement, and an unwavering commitment to making customers the hero of their story.
Topics Discussed:
Huntress's decision to stay focused on SMB market (up to 2,000 employees) rather than moving upmarket
The company's educational content strategy that drives 80% education, 20% product marketing
Building and scaling a 45-person remote marketing team through rapid growth
Transitioning from word-of-mouth and events to a comprehensive digital marketing engine
Reddit and community marketing strategies that actually work without getting "eviscerated"
The "Go Giver" philosophy and how it translates to measurable business results
Channel-first strategy and why Huntress will never cut out partners
Hiring and managing high-performing remote marketing teams
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
Make customers the hero, not your technology: Jason emphasized that cybersecurity is full of "chest pounding" about AI and tech superiority, but Huntress flipped the script entirely. "We put the customer at the center of the story. They're the hero of this journey and we're just here to kind of support them." Instead of leading with features, they focus on customer outcomes and making IT professionals look like heroes within their organizations. B2B founders should resist the temptation to make their technology the star and instead position customers as the protagonist of their success story.
Stay in your lane and dominate it: Unlike most SaaS companies that start SMB and quickly move upmarket, Huntress has stayed committed to serving businesses up to 2,000 employees. Jason uses a car analogy: "There are some great companies out there that service the people that have Formula 1 car budgets... We built a Lamborghini or Porsche... it's still fast enough to wreck hackers, but when something goes wrong, you can take your Porsche into an Audi dealership and get it fixed." B2B founders should carefully evaluate whether moving upmarket actually serves their core value proposition or if doubling down on their initial segment creates more defensible growth.
Lead with education, not pitches: Huntress runs on the "Go Giver" principle of giving more than you take. Their content is 80% education, 20% product marketing, with Jason noting "most people are come to my webinar, book a demo, buy, buy, buy... we put the community first and we put education first." Their Reddit ads show redacted screenshots of actual attacks with the hook "If you'd like to learn how to do this yourself, click this link" rather than product demos. B2B founders should consider whether their content strategy truly educates or just sells with a thin educational veneer.
Community marketing requires authentic value-add first: Jason shared a painful lesson about Reddit marketing: traditional ads failed completely until they shifted to showing real attack scenarios and offering free cybersecurity training. "ROI was terrible... So we kind of took a step back... Let's get back to our roots... rather than putting us at the center of the story... giving back to the community." The key insight is that community platforms will "eviscerate you if you misstep" by trying to sell first. B2B founders entering community marketing must genuinely contribute value before ever asking for anything.
Screen for ownership mindset during hiring: Jason's primary hiring criterion is finding people who "act like owners" rather than focusing solely on skills. His screening method involves asking candidates to dive deep into a specific problem they solved: "You can tell the difference between people who've just read a bunch and know the surface level or like really solved the problem and understood it." He also uses homework assignments (unrelated to his actual business) to test work ethic. B2B founders should prioritize ownership mentality and intellectual curiosity over perfect resume matches, especially in high-growth environments.
Over-communicate clarity in remote environments: Managing a 45-person remote marketing team requires obsessive clarity reinforcement. Jason runs weekly 90-minute business reviews with the entire marketing team, covering every function's progress, blockers, and challenges. "It is incredibly hard when you are growing as fast as we are... making sure that you have the right people on the bus, in the right seats on the bus and they understand... this is the cadence that we are going to row at." B2B founders scaling remote teams should expect to over-communicate goals, progress, and context far more than feels necessary.
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.
www.GlobalTalent.co