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

Garner Health

VP of Marketing, Demand Generation

inVest Ventures

inVest Ventures is a community VC fund supporting pre-seed, seed, & series A startups founded by LinkedIn alumni. With a community of 150+ execs, experts, and founders with LinkedIn ties, inVest Ventures is here to help build the next generation of LinkedIn-founded transformational startups.

Limited Partner

ExponentialX

ExponentialX is a collective of independent senior marketing and growth advisors helping early to late stage startups building enterprise SaaS, PLG, marketplaces, and AI tools.

I work with early stage startups on growth, content, and marketing strategy.

Advisor

Andreessen Horowitz

At a16z, I built the first growth marketing program to scale a16z's brand reach and audience of tech founders and leaders. I drove the strategy and launch of the firm's independent media outlet, Future, and later led the team producing the a16z Podcast and newsletter.

• Led channel strategy across web, search, social, email, YouTube, paid, and podcast. 
• Optimized content for greater reach, engagement, and conversion.
• Own growth strategy for the firm's flagship a16z Podcast (Top 10 in tech) while launching new shows to expand podcast network.
• Scaled the a16z newsletter network, helping launch and grow vertical-focused newsletters.
• Developed core digital marketing foundation, including tooling, tracking, and analytics to better distribute and measure content performance.
• Owned and grew strategic partnerships and syndication with global consumer brands.
• Acted as product leader for a16z website and Future. 
• Advise portfolio founders and leadership on marketing strategy.

Head of Growth

LinkedIn

Led content, thought leadership, and community teams for the Talent Solutions business, focused on creating demand and awareness through top and middle of funnel global campaigns. Worked cross-functionally with growth, PMM, customer, insights, sales and other teams.

• Led the thought leadership team (reports, email newsletter, blog, social), launching LinkedIn's biggest annual report, Global Talent Trends, which was the largest driver of leads in 2019.
• Worked cross-functionally with LinkedIn executives across product, design, sales, HR and global marketing leaders on strategic initiatives (Talent Connect, Global Talent Trends, and more)
• Led the business through a transformation from siloed content initiatives to a global content strategy that mapped to business objectives and product roadmap while serving as the basis for nine teams' planning globally. 
• Developed and chaired the Content Steering Committee to ensure strategic alignment and improve coordination and execution of content.
• Designed first insights-driven content program to demonstrate the power of LinkedIn data to ICPs.
• Helped launch two of the biggest talent solutions products—Talent Insights and Talent Hub.

Global Content Strategy Lead

Impact Theory

Launched media and creator startup Impact Theory with Quest President Tom Bilyeu. Impact Theory became a viral podcast/YouTube show and content studio. 

• Grew our audience from zero to half a million engaged followers, drove over 7.6M views on YouTube, generated over 3.4M podcast downloads, and earned a Top 10 ranking on Apple—all in first year.
• Built all first monetization channels, including sponsorships, events, merchandise, and affiliates.
• Developed brand identity, naming, positioning, and messaging.
• Produced and co-hosted After Impact, one of the shows in the Impact Theory network.
• Built and scaled marketing team from 2 to 7 people.

Head of Marketing & Growth

Quest Nutrition

I led all marketing and audience growth for Inside Quest, a branded content show produced by #2 Inc. 500 company Quest Nutrition. After incubating the show as part of Quest, I joined Quest president and co-founder Tom Bilyeu as a founding team member of the new spinoff startup Impact Theory.

• Increase monthly views by 102% increase to 492,00 and total subscribers by 104% subscribers to 72,790 through strategic marketing campaigns. 
• Built all analytics, tracking, and content reporting structure and presented metrics weekly.
• Oversaw paid media strategy for FB ads and Google AdWords.

Director of Marketing

Survey Sampling International

When Instant.ly was acquired by SSI, I was promoted to Director of Marketing leading demand gen, content, and communications. In six months post acquisition, I revamped the email marketing and content programs to increase lead volume. Ultimately I left SSI to pursue new challenges at unicorn startup Quest Nutrition.

• Rebranded Instantly properties, assets to SSI and led messaging and execution for all external and internal comms. 
• Integrated two marketing teams, brands, and infrastructure.
• Overhauled demand generation strategy to improve lead quality and implemented new marketing automation tools. 
• Increased blog sessions by 42% and doubled average time on blog by refining editorial strategy and calendar.

Director of Marketing, Demand Gen & Content

I built the content marketing and social media program from the ground-up for Instant.ly a late stage B2B startup in the market research space. We were later acquired by SSI.

• Delivered roughly a quarter of all MQLs through content.
• Maintained robust email program of 15+ sends per month to 70,000 prospects.
• Achieved 40M media impressions, with coverage in The WSJ, Buzzfeed and Adweek, through data and insights content. 
• Developed all messaging, awareness campaigns, and PR strategy for re-brand.
• Was a key stakeholder on cross-functional launch team for two new products, where I supported messaging and positioning.

Senior Marketing Manager, Content (Instant.ly)

Vantage Media

At performance marketing agency Vantage Media, I produced content for Yahoo.com to drive qualified leads for top-tier brands in education. 

• Increased traffic from Yahoo by 32% with over 118M sessions.
• Managed 20+ freelance contributors, collaborated with Yahoo news editors, and reported performance daily & monthly. 
• Leveraged data to test headlines, thumbnails, images, and decks to increase conversions.

Content Editor

Freelance Marketing and Creative Services

I ran a content marketing and copywriting consulting business while attending graduate school. I worked for brands and publications such as Beats by Dre, Walmart, Toshiba, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Rangefinder Magazine.

Content Marketing Consultant

I'm a seasoned marketing leader and team builder focused on integrating growth and brand disciplines to win. My background in B2B spans startups to established companies, including Andreessen Horowitz, LinkedIn, and Impact Theory, where I've scaled both demand generation and content programs and teams to drive value throughout the funnel. One constant throughout my career: I love to build. Whether teams, programs, or products—the opportunity to build something new is what motivates me.

Jared Smith

I'm seeing an interesting dynamic play out in content strategy right now. On the one hand, companies are using AI to scale output rapidly and reduce team size/resource allocation. On the other hand, top startups and VCs are doubling down by hiring heads of narrative, storytelling, and social. 

There seems to be a bimodal distribution emerging around betting on quantity or quality.

I think of it as a channel maturity curve. In the short term a lot of first-mover advantage to scaling output quickly, but in the mid to long term, as content is further commoditized and the channel reaches saturation, only quality will differentiate. 

So it makes sense that VCs are playing the long-game on content given their economic model.

Marketing Leader | Prev a16z, LinkedIn | Writing to Think

taplio

The Battle

Dennis Buckley

Jared Smith

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJared Smith's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Dennis Buckley

Jared Smith

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);}Jared Smith's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJared Smith's LinkedIn Performance