Dave Gerhardt

Hey I'm Dave Gerhardt. I created Exit Five, which has turned into the top community for B2B marketing professionals. Before starting Exit Five I had a 10 year career in marketing and grew from PR intern to CMO. I even once had hair! My wife says I'm more handsome now though, and she's quite pretty so that means a lot -- but the internet just boxes me in as the typical bald guy tech bro. So oh look, another bald tech guy writing on LinkedIn! whoopty freaking do.

Anyway. Where was I... OH. Receipts! I wanted to talk about receipts, because in a world of fluff and online influencers, I actually have some receipts and I want to tell you about them here because it signals power, credibility, and makes it seem like I'm super rich, so: I used to be pretty good at marketing, and my work as a marketer played a key role (at least I think so) in helping two software companies to successful exits: Drift for $1B+ and Privy for $100M+. I certainly helped the founders make a bunch of money, and I was able to comfortably purchase a brand new Toyota Sienna minivan for my family in 2021.

Today I spend my time working on Exit Five, and it's actually been super fun and given me a bunch of purpose. We're a team of six full-time team members now, and we have a private online community and host in-person events around the world. Plus there's a popular podcast and newsletter for marketers. We reach something like 20 MILLION marketers with our content every year, and we've got a pretty special thing going on. I hope to keep it going. You can learn more about it all at exitfive.com.

I spent most of my life in the Boston area but now live in the woods in Vermont with my wife, two kids, two cats, and one dog.

You can reach me at dave@exitfive.com if you want, but TBD if I reply. Depends on the message. But please don't send me any more swag or books. But if for whatever reason you do want to send me something, I play the ProV1x golf ball and like the low numbers.

PS. Find my podcast “The Dave Gerhardt Show” on Spotify

Founder & CEO

Exit Five is a media company focused on B2B marketing. We help B2B marketers build successful careers through our content and community. Learn more at exitfive.com

Content marketers run modern marketing.

Because almost all marketing today is shaped online.

And online marketing shows up as:

- Ads
- Videos
- Articles
- Podcasts and clips like this with Jess Cook
- Social posts
- Newsletters
- Communities
- Influencers

Different formats. But none of it works without a clear content strategy and strong content marketing.

Jess is a great example of this: she started her career as a copywriter for big CPG brands. She cut her teeth writing 200+ variations of a recipe for Rice Krispie Treats.

Then built a career in content marketing: content market manager, director, VP brand and content.

Then turned that into a Head of Marketing role at a startup and was recently promoted to VP on the heels of her success using - wait for it - content to drive revenue.

Not because Vector's content gets a lot of impressions and their podcast is unique or because their little mascot is cute.

But because it's working! Those things are driving revenue. 

I had a conversation with Jess last week (now out on my podcast) and she shared three key marketing plays that she's run over the past year:

1. Influencer Marketing - how does it work in B2B, how did she find influencers, what did it cost, how much pipeline was generated, how did they measure it

2. Podcasting - why they started a podcast, how their podcast stands out, how they record, when/where, how they prep, how they know it's working

3. LinkedIn - we talk a bit about what content types (and strategy) is working well here today

4. Career Path - her path from content to VP Marketing

Erin on my team messaged me last night and said this was the best interview we've done recently - please go listen if you need some tactical inspiration.

Founder: Exit Five | Community Builder | Former CMO

What events are you going to in Q1? We're hosting the first annual Exit Five Marketing Leadership Retreat in Arizona March 18-20.

This event is exclusively for in-house B2B marketing leaders.

It's all about who's in the room and we've pulled together a great group for this event. 

Here are the sessions we have planned:

1. How to Become the CMO Everyone Wants to Work With (with Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital)

2. Building and Leading a High-Performing Marketing Team (led by Hillary Carpio, VP Growth at Snowflake)

3. Managing Your CFO and Board Relationship (led by Pranav Piyush, Founder at Paramark)

4. Personal Branding for B2B Marketing Leaders (led by Jane Serra, Head of Marketing at MemoryBlue)

5. Ecosystem Marketing as the Next Big Growth Lever (led by Emily Kramer, Founder of MKT1)

6. How Are You Really Using AI? At Work and Personally (led by Katie Miserany, CCO and Head of Marketing at SurveyMonkey) 

And I'm interviewing Kim Storin (CMO at Zoom) about how she does things and what's changing this year.
 
PLUS since it's a "retreat" - we have time for activities like golf, a workout, pool hang, or in-room massage; get lunch, dinner, drinks.
 
Will you join us?

Pass this on to your VP / CMO friends in B2B.

Full details here:

bit.ly/3Lxj75e

Open article: Marketing Leadership Retreat | March 18-20, 2026 by exitfive.com

Marketing Leadership Retreat | March 18-20, 2026

Nextpoint

Vice President Marketing

RevBlume

Throughout my career, I’ve built a reputation for executing go-to-market strategies, starting marketing from scratch, and being a revenue-focused leader for high-growth companies.

I’ve taken those experiences and used them to build my own proprietary system for growing B2B companies.

Founder, B2B Marketing Consultant & Fractional CMO

Pursuit Sales Solutions

Marketing Consultant & Advisor

Delivery Solutions

Place

With Place, SaaS businesses using Salesforce can orchestrate subscription and billing operations, automate and share important financial metrics and calculations, and collaboratively plan for the future.

OneDay

I have the pleasure of being the first marketing hire and serving the marketing team at OneDay. This amazing team owns both the marketing and SDR/BDR function within OneDay, a growth stage B2B SaaS. We are focused on pipeline generation, sales/CS enablement, overall brand strategy, PR & communications, inbound/content marketing, inbound sales, product marketing and thought leadership.

Vice President of Marketing

Director of Marketing

Creative Cave

Creative Cave is an inbound marketing agency that is obsessed with driving more traffic and increasing leads through relevant content structured within an inbound campaign for our B2B clients.  

As a HubSpot partner agency, we utilize the HubSpot platform for marketing automation to help seamlessly guide leads down the sales pipeline to help our clients convert more and grow their company. 

At Creative Cave we offer the full suite of digital marketing services including inbound marketing strategy, content creation, marketing automation, lead nurturing, website design, branding, graphic design, webmaster services, Growth Driven Design, social media growth, paid advertising and more.

Partner, Head of Marketing

BizNet Software, Inc.

• Managing and executing results- driven marketing plans that support the SaaS B2B sales and lead generation for new and current software products as well as continuing to provide value for existing customers.
• Manage strategy development and budget for all inbound and outbound marketing initiatives including but not limited to; website user experience, website content, content marketing, advocacy marketing, SEO/SEM, marketing automation, social media and video content.
• Work with software development team to  integrate information into marketing materials. Coordinate with release management team for timely delivery and methods by which new software products/features are introduced and released into market.
• Maintain brand integrity and overall branding strategy of all internal and external marketing communications.

Marketing Manager

• Executed complete re-build & re-design of all company websites, with continuing optimization and content management.
• Oversee company's digital marketing  with a B2B focus including, but not limited to: website content/design, social media, email marketing, content marketing, paid search & SEO.
• Communicate KPI's & budget allocation/results for all marketing efforts to senior leadership

Digital Marketing Manager

iProspect

• Plan and execute Paid Search / Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, including but not limited to account setup, strategy development, organization and management.
• Daily use of reporting, analytics and trend tools.
• Responsible for all basic tactical execution and campaign audit
• Own all outcomes; effectively prioritizes efforts to focus on delivering on the most important KPI's, tracks and reports on campaign results, data analysis and participate in weekly client calls
• Consistently looks for ways to improve current processes or introduce new approaches that will contribute to client success

Senior Associate, Paid Search

Responsible for the day-to-day management of paid search campaigns from data extraction to account monitoring. Support the overall Paid Search team on execution and overall account support.

Associate, Paid Search

Ivie

Manage development of CMS/CPS programs, websites/apps and business applications for internal and external client digital marketing initiatives.

Digital Analyst

VP, Marketing @ Place | LITEBEAM Daily Planner

I’m a husband, dad, and marketer based out of Dallas, TX. For the past decade+, I have been running growth and marketing for B2B, SaaS, and growth-stage companies. 

Throughout my career, I’ve built a reputation for building & executing go-to-market strategies, starting marketing from scratch, and being a revenue-focused leader for high-growth companies.

I’ve taken those experiences and used them to build my own proprietary system for growing companies.

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