Fifteen years in B2B SaaS marketing across startups and scale-ups, with a working habit that starts with AI and automation and then hires only for the strategic inputs that need human judgment. At OLOID I was the first marketing hire and built the function from zero. At Shipsy and Innovaccer I joined existing functions and grew what they produced. I am looking for a senior marketing leadership role at a B2B SaaS company, owning the function end to end and reporting to the founder or CEO.
First marketing hire. Function built from zero. Team of six across search, performance marketing and outbound.
Markets, sectors, the functions I own, the systems I use, the company stages I have worked across, and the motions I have managed.
OLOID is a cybersecurity software startup working in workforce identity and access, which is the software that controls who gets into a building or a system and how they prove who they are. I was the first marketing hire, managed the function for close to three years, and built a team of six across search, performance marketing and outbound.
There was no marketing function when I joined. No demand engine, no positioning, no sales enablement material and no team.
Both products were technical, and each needed its own positioning, messaging and enablement. Security and IT leadership for the enterprise product, self-serve users for the product-led one.
Paid and organic search was set up as mid-funnel support with broad targeting, on the assumption that senior security and IT leaders search for passwordless authentication when they have the problem.
The form-fills came from end users looking for password reset help, none of them from the buyers the enterprise product is sold to, so by the measure it was set up for the campaign did not work.
Going through the leads it did produce, fifteen or more traced back to a single Fortune 500 consumer goods organisation. I built an account-based outbound campaign to the CISO and CIO in that account, the executives who own security and technology, using the form-fills as evidence of demand from their own frontline staff. The campaign opened a pilot, and the pilot converted into a multi-year, multi-million-dollar contract.
Before marketing existed the motion was founder-led and ran on warm connections, and the CISO was treated as the decision maker because the account intelligence supported that.
The CIO holds the budget, and deals without CIO buy-in early stalled later in the cycle even where the security team was sold. Messaging, positioning and collateral were rebuilt for both commercial personas, and sales managed the cycle on the corrected model from that point. This came out of the discovery calls my own outbound campaigns generated, worked through with the sales team.
We began product-led, where people sign up and use the product before sales speaks to them. Mid-market and enterprise buyers do not arrive through a signup form, so the second product needed a sales-led motion with account-based outbound. Both motions ran in parallel with one team of six managing the full set of channels.
$360K in early product traction from $100K of marketing spend. G2 is the software review site buyers check before they shortlist, so the badges supported conversion on both motions.
Close to $2M in sales pipeline into Fortune 500 accounts, with events and partners producing meetings the team could plan for.
Marketing existed at both scale-ups when I arrived. The work was to grow what it produced and connect it to how sales worked.
Shipsy sells across the US, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and India. I managed a product-led motion for the US market alongside sales-led motions in the other regions.
By the end of the year marketing was a working input into the sales motion.
Innovaccer was operating between $20M and $40M in annual recurring revenue during my time there, and reached unicorn valuation in that period. The growth market was the United States and the work was managed from India. I directed five marketing verticals across the US business.
The community work and the demand engine ran at the same time, so the audience built in one supported the pipeline in the other.
Across four companies I have built events for audiences as different as enterprise security buyers, senior healthcare leaders, consumer smartphone communities and business conference attendees, from owned conferences with audiences in the thousands to field presence at industry shows to multi-city consumer activations.
I have advised early-stage B2B SaaS founders in two separate stints. The first ran from January 2017 to June 2020. The second started in January 2025 and continues today. The current stint is my main work, taken on at my own pace across healthtech, insurtech, logistics and agentic AI.
Employee insurance, India. Client name withheld under confidentiality.
The work covers ideal customer profile and positioning, go-to-market motion design, first marketing hires and team structure, demand generation and channel strategy, and the marketing automation and pipeline analytics that make the numbers reportable.
This is the sequence I have worked through three times as a first marketing hire, and the plan I would bring into the first six months of a new role. The same sequence works for a zero to one build and for a one to ten rebuild. The operating principle is that AI and automation carry the operational work first and hiring follows only for the strategic inputs that need human judgment.
Establish who the product wins with, who inside those companies decides and who holds the budget, and write positioning that sales can say on a call.
Decide whether growth comes through a product-led motion, a sales-led motion or both, based on what the product, the price point and the buyer support today.
Build the content engine, search, performance marketing and outbound against that motion, starting with the channels that can produce pipeline now.
Set up the AI, automation and self-serve tooling that removes the operational work from the function, covering research, list building, sequencing, reporting and the routine parts of content. Hire people only for the strategic inputs that need human judgment, in the order of what is limiting pipeline.
Set up the CRM workflows, lead scoring and pipeline analytics that show the founder and the board what marketing contributed and where the funnel leaks.
Manage enablement, market insight and campaign analytics on the same cadence as sales, so marketing is part of how sales sells and how the founder talks about the company.
I built and manage an AI outbound engine that connects seven tools into one workflow. The input is a single field, which can be an industry, a company size or the name of one company. The output is a live multi-channel campaign with qualified replies flagged for a person to pick up. The system removes the research and drafting work that would otherwise take a small team most of the day.
The calls on which accounts are worth pursuing and what the offer should be stay with me. The engine runs in two modes that the operator chooses between, and the same engine is used inside client engagements. I build the rest of the client infrastructure alongside it, covering HubSpot workflows, lead scoring and return-on-investment analysis, so reporting is ready for board and investor reviews.
MBA in Marketing from IILM, Gurugram. BSc in Biotechnology from DAVV, Indore.
Bengaluru, India. Open to Bengaluru, hybrid, or remote roles with North America or Europe overlap.
A senior marketing leadership role at a B2B SaaS company, owning the function end to end. That covers building the function from zero where no marketing exists today, and rebuilding how an existing function is structured, staffed and measured where the current one is not producing revenue at the pace the company needs.
Own the pipeline target and marketing's contribution to closed revenue, reported to the founder and the board on the same terms sales reports on.
Establish who the product wins with, what it is worth to them, and the messaging, packaging and enablement used in every commercial conversation.
Build the channels and account programmes that create qualified opportunities, and make the calls on which accounts and segments are worth the spend.
One operating rhythm across the three teams, since enablement, win-loss insight, expansion and reference accounts all come out of that cadence.
Use the systems I already run so that research, list building, sequencing and reporting are handled by software and output stays ahead of headcount.
Run the function with AI and automation carrying the operational work, and hire people only for the strategic inputs that need judgment. That keeps the team lean while output stays high.