Founders Ink

Professional content production services for experts and entrepreneurs.

Founder

UNIGNORABLE

Community Advisor

Demand Curve

Demand Curve (YC S19) creates courses, content, and events to teach founders and marketers how to grow companies. Our weekly newsletter goes out to over 100k founders and marketers.

A few highlights:

Helped create a best-selling marketing course and email sequence that generated 5 figures in revenue, plus ongoing sales.

Wrote dozens of high-quality long-form content assets, including course curriculum, blog articles, deep-dive playbooks, newsletter issues, and much more.

Senior Content Lead

Advocate SEO

Advocate SEO helps law firms attract new clients with search-focused content marketing.

Partner, Head of Content

HumanN

Grew the blog from 20,000 to 65,000 monthly visitors. Restructured the blog and built a content team, designed a quiz funnel generating $25,000 in monthly revenue, lead the SMS and email marketing channels for prospecting and acquisition, developed and designed several long-form sales letters (acquisition), and wrote copy for at least one product page (ok, just one).

Senior Content Strategist

Natural Stacks Inc

Grew the blog from 25,000 to 125,000 monthly visitors. Wrote content for the blog, product pages, landing pages, and the website. 

Email marketing team of one: I handled the copy, creative, planning, and execution of the email marketing channel.

Digital Marketer

Examine.com

Writer & Researcher

Self-Employed

I ghostwrote for a NYT Bestselling author and serial entrepreneur.

Ghostwriter

What do Jesus, Socrates, and Marco Polo have in common? 

They all used ghostwriters to capture their knowledge. 

My name's Dennis, and I run Founders Ink — my specialized ghostwriting agency.

We help experts and entrepreneurs create professional thought leadership. 

How do we do it?

By ghostwriting value-led social media posts, articles, and newsletters that help generate inbound.

I say "ghostwriting" because everyone understands what that means.

But to be honest, the work we do is closer to that of a scribe.

Here's the difference:

Scribe: 100% your ideas, in your words, in your voice.

Ghostwriter: 30% your ideas, fill in the rest with conventional wisdom.

We help our clients unlock the wisdom and expertise that's stuck in their head.

Then we scale that knowledge across digital media to attract those who will benefit from it most. 

Your target audience.

Send me a DM to learn more about our process. 

Or grab time on my calendar if you're interested in working together: 

https://savvycal.com/dennisbuckley/f736de7c

Dennis Buckley

Rafael (Eun Suk) Gi

DUER

Sr Director of Marketing & Brand

Rove Concepts

Rove Concepts is a 9-figure omni-channel luxury furniture brand that services design-seeking customers across the US & Canada. My role was to lead a brand transformation for the business, manage the eCommerce operations, and maximize performance marketing channels. I led a team of 7 specialists across eCommerce, social media/influencer, performance marketing, email & affiliate.

Senior Director of Brand, Marketing & eCommerce

Bell Curve

Bell Curve started as a full-service growth consultancy based in San Francisco supporting venture-backed scale-ups with growth, performance marketing, CRO, positioning, and fractional leadership. We found ourselves working with some of the fastest-growing SaaS & eCommerce brands in the world. We've grown dozens of companies from zero to millions in revenue. We've worked with Flamingo Estate, Pilot, Ancestry, Tumblr, Microsoft, Cash, Clearbit, Imperfect Produce, Invoice2Go, Perfect Keto, and many others.

Scaled the agency to mid-8 figure run rate.

Managing Director

Bell Curve is a full-service growth agency. We combine the rigor and business acumen of a consultancy with the execution capabilities of an agency. Our fractional growth teams will build out your marketing foundations, develop a strategy, and accelerate growth.

We work with some of the fastest-growing SaaS & and eCommerce brands including Pilot, Flamingo Estate, Gantri, Ancestry, Tumblr, Microsoft, Cash, Clearbit, Imperfect Produce, Invoice2Go, Perfect Keto, and many others.

Vice President of Strategy

PressReader

PressReader is B2B2C platform that provides access and builds the infrastructure for the world's top publications. I rebuilt the marketing department within PressReader by establishing marketing as a revenue driver; not a cost center. Expansion of mandate included overseeing product marketing, revenue operations, demand generation, corporate communications, creative services, and strategic planning.

(Interim) VP Marketing

Capilano University

Responsible for managing the brand/positioning, and full student lifecycle and accountable for the University’s recruitment (revenue) and retention goals. As the marketing and digital experience lead for the university, my cross-functional team oversees eCommerce, brand positioning, customer research, experience design, lead generation, email, and CRM.

Director of Marketing and eCommerce

Diamond Integrated Marketing

Director of Strategy & Insights

Rethink

Rethink is Canada’s most awarded independent creative agency and the top global independent creative agency. It is the playground where I learned to create culturally relevant brands and drive exponential growth. I started my career here as a Digital Strategist, capturing user requirements for websites, introducing digital analytics and performance marketing to the agency and developing social/digital strategies for some amazing clients. From there I transitioned into a leadership role in the Toronto office where I was responsible for driving strategic integration across all media channels, brand/business strategy, and new business.

Strategy Director

Digital Strategy/Planning for Molson Canadian, Rickard's, A&W, Shaw and Earth's Own.

Digital Strategist

Anomaly

At Anomaly, I created content and built media plans for our client’s digital and social media programs. My team (5) delivered best-in-class digital/social strategy, content creation, analytics, and community management for lifestyle brands such as Nike and Spotify. Our success helped us win Digital Agency of the Year, a first for Anomaly.

Senior Manager, Digital & Social Strategy

Best Buy Canada

I was fortunate enough to join Best Buy during a time of transformation, where I was exposed to a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer evolving into an omnichannel powerhouse. The role was multifaceted, requiring website administration, merchandising management, content / SEO management, and product management. Had the pleasure of working closely with merchandising, supply chain, IT, and marketing teams to deliver revenue growth.

Online Category Analyst - eCommerce - Dual Brand (Best Buy and Future Shop)

Fractional CMO | Managing Director at Bell Curve (Demand Curve) | Product Marketing, Brand, Creative & Strategy Advisor | Tech, Growth, Startups Consultant

Rafael is a growth and brand professional who has driven over $500 million in revenue during his 12-year career. He excels at combining the craft of brand storytelling with a technical understanding of digital marketing techniques to drive growth for organizations.

His curiosity and adaptability across multiple industries and business models give him a unique ability to pattern-match and deliver effective outcomes. Here are some highlights:

Go-to-Market / New Product Launch: Launched Spotify in Canada, increasing daily registrations by 21% compared to the previous period. During the campaign, the Spotify app rose to the number one position among music streaming apps across iOS and Android, and the net promoter score increased by 30 points among the brand's monthly active users.

Brand Strategy: At Capilano University, decreased customer acquisition costs by 61.8% by creating a performance marketing-focused strategy and redesigning the website to emphasize conversion. This increased domestic student enrollment by 9.98%, reversing three consecutive years of decline by expanding into new markets and defining a differentiated brand position.

P&L Management & Leadership: Scaled a growth consultancy from low 7 figures in revenue to high 7 figure revenue run rate within 12 months by updating the sales pitch, recruiting and restructuring the team, and rebuilding services and products. This improved efficacy, client experience, and financial outcomes for clients.

Agency Experience: Before moving client-side, Rafael was a brand, growth and strategy leader at top agencies in North America, including Rethink, Anomaly, and Diamond.

Notable Clients:

eCommerce: Best Buy, Daily Gem, Rove, Flamingo Estate, IKEA, UNIQLO, Ford

Invoice2Go, Clearbit, Ancestry, IKEA, Best Buy, Squarespace, Nike, Spotify, MINI Cooper, UNIQLO, Earth’s Own, Shaw, Silk, Bud Light, Budweiser, Converse, Johnny Walker, Shomi, RDIO, League, Moneris, Dairy Farmers of Canada, General Mills, TD Bank, Aphria, Questrade, Hershey, Reese Peanut Butter Cups, Ford, Molson Canadian, McCormicks, A&W, Scott’s, Vancouver Canucks, Top Shop, Lucky Charms, Dairy Farmers of Canada, Ford, Fresh Prep, Grant Me, Gantri, Flamingo Estate, Daily Gem, and Mr. Lube.

Brand makes performance efficient. Performance makes brand accountable.

You can’t performance your way to love. And you can’t brand your way to profit.

But when you connect the two, your ads don’t just convert — they compound.

That’s how modern brands are built:
Desire fuels efficiency.
Efficiency funds desire.

DTC Marketing & Growth Executive | Connecting Brand, Performance & Culture | Fractional Marketing Leader | Player-coach

Here’s an uncomfortable truth I don’t think enough marketers are talking about:

Influencers aren’t just influencing people anymore.
They’re influencing the algorithm that decides which brands matter.

Every creator video becomes training data.
Every caption reinforces (or confuses) your positioning.
Every inconsistent message tells AI: “I can’t quite tell what this brand is.”

And if AI can’t define you, it won’t recommend you.
It won’t surface you in semantic search.
It won’t associate you with the category you think you own.

This is the new reality:

Your influencer + UGC ecosystem is your brand’s LLM reputation layer.

And here’s the part most teams miss:

If your positioning is fuzzy → creators amplify the fuzziness.
If your story is inconsistent → creators multiply the inconsistency.
If your brand strategy is weak → your AI footprint becomes generic.

Most brands don’t actually have a “creator problem.”
What they have is a clarity problem.

Creators can’t fix that.
They can only scale whatever you give them, good or bad.

If you want influencer and UGC to actually work in the AI era, you need:

1) clear positioning
2) simple, repeatable messaging
3) a sharp POV
3) brand story creators can naturally echo

When creators are aligned, they create a recognizable pattern.
Patterns are what AI models latch onto.
Patterns are what get repeated.
Patterns are what get recommended.

When they’re not aligned, your brand becomes noise.

Nothing consistent.
Nothing memorable.
Nothing that sticks.

The brands that win in AI-led discovery will be the ones whose creators tell a unified story —
because that’s the story the algorithm will learn to tell for them.

So here’s the real question:

Are your creators reinforcing your positioning — or rewriting it?





#growth #brand #marketing #AI

Most brands don’t know what happens when they stop spending.

If your revenue flatlines the moment you pause ads, that’s not growth, it is a dependency.

Baseline growth is the revenue that happens regardless of how much you spend.

You can measure this when people come directly, search your name, or type your URL because they remember you.

That’s the truest signal of brand strength.
And it’s the one metric every marketing leader should track before any other.






#BrandStrategy #Growth #MarketingLeadership

Profitable DTC brands don’t create demand for the category. They focus on becoming the obvious choice when a customer enters the market.

To do that consistently, you need two things:

1) Distinctive creative that builds memory and sticks.

2) Organizational alignment around the market you want to own in the customer’s mind.

The market you choose becomes the mental trigger. Creative is the tool that builds the association between your brand and that trigger. When those two work together, your brand becomes easier to recall in the moments that matter.

That’s the real job of brand. Everything you ship should be building mental availability in the right market, not just noise or activity.

You’ll know it’s working when you look at baseline demand, the people who seek your brand out directly, and you see it growing steadily over time.






#growth #marketing #dtc #brand

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The Battle

Dennis Buckley

Rafael (Eun Suk) Gi

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The Battle

Dennis Buckley

Rafael (Eun Suk) Gi

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Rafael (Eun Suk) Gi's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreRafael (Eun Suk) Gi's LinkedIn Performance