Building the future of pipegen 🚀

Hi 👋🏼 I'm Josh. Building, Vector to help marketers target their ad spend on the exact contacts they care about (and none they don't)!

Previously:
- Built the Solutions Engineering team @ Drift from Series B - Vista acquisition 🦄
- Exited GrowthStack - A hybrid RevOps agency + SaaS company 🎉
- Exited GoCable - A rapid prototyping SaaS for subsea cables 🐙
- Served as an intel analyst in the USAF ✈️

Joshua Perk

After 3 years of building Vector 👻, we finally announced our leadership principles at our 2026 company kickoff yesterday.

I had held off introducing core values for a variety of reasons:
1/ If you "do culture" the wrong way, it's eye roll inducing
2/ I'd been at companies with such special culture, I felt imposter syndrome grafting our own
3/ We were pretty busy in 2025
4/ I felt it was important to observe the unique culture our team naturally resonated with

Thanks to some incredible wisdom from Heather Doshay, when I finally sat down to build our principles, I did it with intention. I thought about what we wanted to stand for. I gathered perspectives from our team.

But most importantly, I wrote down what we did not want to stand for.

We reject corporate theater. We are:
- Unusual
- Unrelenting
- Unfiltered
- Unfinished

If you're curious, here's Vector's UNculture I shared with the team yesterday 👇

Thank you to our entire team for a wonderful 2026 kickoff and our customers we get the honor of serving.

(P.S. If this culture sounds fitting, we'll be hiring across every department this year! Reach out.)

Joshua Perk 👻

Vector's Unculture

I’m honestly curious…

If you’re in marketing or sales, what’s working for you right now?

I see SO much noise around “my 27 step automation workflow”. 

Then I’ll hear a real marketer or seller in the field and they’ll say they’re struggling with pipeline. 

What are you seeing?

Not a bad way to start the year! Welcome to our newest class of hires!

15 meetings, 3 flights, 1 train, 4 hours in Ubers: Tampa > NY > BOS > SF > Tampa

Headed home after a long, tiring week but my cup is completely filled.

Amongst some secret meetings (🤫 more on that soon), I stopped by Boston to join Andrew and his team for their 2026 Product & Engineering kickoff.

Sitting in one of the sessions, something struck me: we had 2x as many people in this product meeting than we had in out entire 2025 company kickoff.

A great reminder that progress comes from daily growth. 1% better. Compounding.

Note to self: the Caribbean has wifi.

I didn't know that back when I pranked our (back then) new head of marketing.

I also didn't know that prank would accidentally set the tone for the most important dynamic in our marketing strategy.

Here's the setup:

Jess Cook was 4 months into her new role as our marketing leader. When I offered her the job, she told me she had an already-scheduled vacation. No problem.

Before she leaves, I jokingly tell her I'll "do the marketing" while she's gone.

So it's Monday night, her first day on vacation in the Caribbean. I'm trying to think of something witty to post on LinkedIn. You know... "marketing".

Then it strikes me.

I'm constantly hearing our customers (marketers) talk about how difficult their function is. Constantly getting the finger pointed at them. Difficult CEOs who want pipeline, but don't want to make the right investments.

My idea: "What if I leaned into this trope to the point of extreme irony?"

I type up a post. "Jess is on vacation. I'm going to overthrow her. Give me some ideas on what I should do."

The post goes WILD. Hundreds of marketers leaning into the irony with savage rebuttals:

Tas Bober — Hire your cousin.
Stefanie Dombek — Pivot to an athleisure brand that sells lightweight merino wool.
Elaine Zelby — Commit to at least 10 events in H2.
👾 Alex Virden — Totally change the operating plan.

I'm crushing it. But now I need conversions because... "marketing".

So I code a website that next night. imsorryjess (dot) com

The offer? Sign up to our newsletter and I'll personally ship you some Vector 👻 swag.

Here's where it started to go wrong...
1 / Jess had wifi. She was getting pinged hundreds of times as this whole plan unfolded. 😬
2 / Hundreds of people signed up for the newsletter and I painstakingly had to ship each of them swag from my garage.

But one thing went perfectly right:
The shtick between Jess and I was born. The most incidental, unplanned strategy ended up being the foundation for our entire company's brand, identity, and why our community tunes into our content madness. 

Listen to the full story on this week's episode of 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱'𝘃𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁.

8 months ago I posted (while at the gym):

Buying an ABM platform is like joining a gym…
 …and then only using the sauna.

Feels productive.
Smells productive.
Zero gains. 💪❌

That post blew up (by my non-thought leader definition).

This week on the pod, Jess casually said:
 “If we’re an ad tech company now… shouldn’t we be running ads?”

All she needed was:
 • A designer
 • Someone to launch them
 • Tens of thousands of dollars
 • Me to briefly consider a second career

So we did the scary thing: We took something that already worked organically and put paid behind it.

Result? That dumb little gym post turned into a thought leadership ad with an 18% CTR.

Which is how I learned I am a total thot...leader.

Big lessons from the episode:
 – Ads are a distribution lever, not a creativity crutch
 – Safe creative = expensive mediocrity
 – Mascots > stock photos
 – Test messaging in ads before you rebuild your website
 – Cost per ICP click > vanity metrics
 – If it’s working, don’t “optimize” it into the ground (looking at you, Chick-fil-A cows)

Also: we shipped cost per ICP click reporting inside Vector 👻 (yes, in our cheapest plan)!

If you’re thinking about starting ads, scaling ads, or realizing you bought an expensive gym membership just to stretch… this one’s for you.

Jess Cook is conspiring to get me canceled.

And I can prove it.

How?

One day her and 👾 Alex called me up (fairly giddy, I might add) with an idea.

Them: "Want to do the podcast LIVE?!"

Me: "You mean the one that we have a professional editor for because of the unhinged things that need to be removed?"

Them: "YEAH THAT ONE. Marketers love realness. We can do a 2026 special episode. All the trends we're seeing. The bets we're making."

So. We're doing that.

Watch the beginning of my end. Live.

I asked Jess if we could afford a Super Bowl commercial 🏈

Instead, Kelly tricked me with this 👇

Jokes aside, we're insanely bullish on CTV!

Normally it's insanely expensive, but with Vector 👻's contact-level targeting we can make sure we're only running our commercial for the right buyers across any DSP (TTD, StackAdapt, LinkedIn, or... our own? 😉🤫)

Adam Robinson

Have you seen him in your feed?

I have. Hard to avoid. (For better or worse?!)

And seeing him in my feed a few years ago was part of the reason I built Vector 👻 the way I did.

Fast forward to today, RB2B and Vector barely come up against each other.

Why? Despite starting in similar places, we took our companies entirely different directions.

Vector moved into the enterprise. Started focusing on advertising and marketing.

RB2B found a way to automate the entire company with 3 FTEs. Vector's Customer Success team is more than 3 FTEs alone.

I'll argue it's because we're building something big. Adam will argue it's because we have VC overlords and have to.

Wish you could see the argument live?

Tune in today @ 3p EST:

Open article: Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: The Build-Off: Inside the Strategic Playbooks of Two Rival Founders. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. by us06web.zoom.us

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: The Build-Off: Inside the Strategic Playbooks of Two Rival Founders. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

"Cheat on everything"

"F**k Slack"

👆🏼This is what I'm noticing in lots of "founder-led marketing"

It seems the playbook most early-stage founders are trying to follow is slapstick, shock factor (placated under the guise of "guerrilla marketing"). 

It's wrong.

They see Adam Robinson and his cease and desist feud with 6sense and think: "Ah! All publicity is good publicity!"

But that's not true. Adam has a massive following and he's brilliant at calculating what his audience resonates with: it just happens to be that sort of content.

When you copy the same playbook to an audience that doesn't resonate, you create a lot of noise and false progress, but struggle to actually convert.

The "cheat on everything" company? Repositioned to "an AI notetaker". The worst part IMO is that the audience who probably cares about call recorders the most (B2B companies) don't resonate with "cheating".

Build a brand that your buyers (and no one else) will care about.

"N$R is the most important metric a marketer should care about."

I was sitting in an Exit Five Drive session with our marketing team when this was said.

I was shocked to hear it.

Across 10 years in martech and agency life, net-dollar retention is something I had NEVER thought about.

But for the last three years, as a founder, it's the ONLY thing I've thought about.

Totally stealing that speaker's content, but here's why I agree that NDR is the most important metrics.

(But first — what is NDR? Let's say you start 2026 with 10 customers and $1M in ARR. If by the end of the year, you've lost 3 of those customers and the other 7 didn't expand, you're at 70% NDR. If by the end of the year, you've lost 1 customer but the other 9 upgraded to be worth $1.5M, you're at 150% NDR.)

Why I agree:
1/ NDR is a whole company health indicator. If you're below 100%, you're bleeding. You're losing customers faster than you can make successful customers pay you more. You're probably going to see shifts in the business, layoffs, etc.

2/ NDR is connected to CAC/LTV. The more a customer pays/expands, the better the ratio becomes of how much marketing and sales (or S&M for you finance folks) spent to acquire them. The healthier the ratio, the more likely you're going to get that budget you requested.

3/ NDR directly ties to culture. I have no evidence of this, but I'd bet my paycheck on it. Winning is more fun than losing. Every company I've ever worked at that had > 150% NDR was a BLAST. That means customers love you. Your product probably has PMF. CEOs tend to be slightly less [insert bad word here] when things are going well.

If you don't know you NDR, ask your CS leader (and push for it to be a metric that everyone knows about/talks about).

I went against every piece of conventional wisdom hiring Jess Cook as our first marketing hire.

She's got a content background. Not demand.
She hadn't owned the entire marketing funnel.
She was seasoned in brand versus leads.

The result? She was the best marketing leader we could have found.

Here's why:

1/ Authenticity
The Jess you see online is the Jess I see in meetings. When I'm fortunate enough to share a dinner with her, her incredible husband Brandon, and my wife the evenings go on for ages. There's something special about building with humans (and families!) that are salt of the earth.

Our customers, marketers, are salt of the earth. Creatives. Glass-half-fulls. They see themselves in her.

2/ Brand is the most important currency in 2026
Product is easy to copy. Awareness is not.

The world is filled with noise. Automation is only making it noisier. Standing out takes boldness. Jess dares to be bold. When she joined, I had the idea of using a ghost as our mascot. The rest? Our voice, our events, our brand, our content — her.

3/ Curiosity
Put simply, Jess is one of the most curious people I know. Not knowing how to do things makes her uncomfortable. And she has a bias for action in filling those gaps. Most things can be taught to those who are curious enough to learn them.

So was I genius for hiring her? No. I got lucky.

Am I incredibly grateful I did? You bet.

Jess, you are so deserving of this promotion and I can't wait to see what you and your team achieve in our next chapter!

Ya girl has a new title:
 
VP, Marketing at Vector 👻
 
And while I do my office chair happy dance, I see this as part of a larger and very exciting trend.
 
The next generation of B2B marketing leaders 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 because brand and storytelling have become non-negotiable for growth.
 
In a world where being forgotten is the most expensive problem you can have, the marketers who can: 
→ Tell a story that sticks 
→ Build brand that competitors can't replicate 
→ Create content that makes people feel something
 
... are the ones that smart founders and CEOs will want leading the charge.
 
So to all my fellow content people out there wondering if you can make the leap to marketing leadership:
 
👏 This 👏 is 👏 your 👏 moment.
 
Your ability to translate audience insights into ownable marketing moments is not a nice-to-have anymore.
 
It's the underpinning of modern marketing strategy.
 
And I'm crazy excited to keep proving it with the entire Vector team.

I have a thesis that some of the best marketers are obsessed with pop culture.

At Vector 👻 we have an entire channel dedicated to gossip called #scoop-there-it-is. It's pure mania.

I barely know what anyone's talking about in it.

But I noticed a trend: the most active participants in the channel are our top 1% of "right side brain" employees.

- Jess was telling us about "6-7" before my kids did.
- Sara was giving me the down low on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives before the tell-all was out.
- Meera was sharing news about how Github abandoned toast notifications in their UI (okay, not pop culture.. but do you know a more obsessed PM/Designer?!)
- Alex is constantly posting memes of Ben Affleck smoking cigarettes (yes, I'm checking on her to make sure she's okay...)

Here's my thesis. The best marketers (and generally, the best startup employees) know how to predict where the world is going. They stay up with the trends so they know how to set them.

So here's the question: how the heck do you interview for this?? Do we start asking people which franchise of Housewives they like the most??

After a year of helping 5,000+ customers with site de-anonymization, we've seen three phases of adoption maturity. 


𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟭: 𝗔𝗱𝗱 𝗽𝗶𝘅𝗲𝗹 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 → 𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀
This is where most people get started, and there's no shame in that. 

Being able to pass high-intent visitors to your sales org is a great way to build pipeline. Sadly, it's the play almost everyone else is running. "I saw you visiting our site" is starting to get old. If you're going to run this play, make sure your messaging creates a feeling of serendipity (not creep). Afterall, seeing someone on your website is what's important to 𝘺𝘰𝘶, not your buyer.

𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟮: 𝗔𝗱𝗱 𝗽𝗶𝘅𝗲𝗹 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 → 𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
This is one of my favorite use cases!

Ad budgets are often a fairly large line item (and therefore super scrutinized). Being able to reveal who's clicking your ads (even if they don't convert), gives you two incredible playbooks:

1/ Next-generation attribution to prove that your ad spend is working. 

2/ An even higher quality signal to pass to sales. 

𝗣𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝟯: 𝗔𝗱𝗱 𝗽𝗶𝘅𝗲𝗹 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 → 𝘅-𝗼𝗿𝗴 𝗮𝗱𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
I'm starting to see a pattern in our top 1% adoption. 

Instead of Vector being purchased just by marketing, they get the buy-in from RevOps early. (Shout out Sara McNamara).

RevOps has such a fantastic view across the entire business. So they immediately start seeing opportunities on how site de-anonymization can help ads, attribution, PLG, sales, and even the customer team.

Example. At Vector 👻, we're running tons of plays using our pixel:
 • Open opp visitor → multithreading alert
 • Ad click → marketing attribution
 • PLG visitor → upgrade play
 • ICP → have rep connect on LinkedIn
 • Existing customer looking at playbooks → customer play

𝗕𝗨𝗧 𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘'𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛 😬

Enterprise adoption of site de-anonymization, requires enterprise capabilities. Each of these plays requires different information being sent to different teams.

For a year, we've had the ability to send different signals to different Slack channels, but the message was always the same. 😭

Until now! Starting today, our customers can customize what notifications look like so you can spend 2026 parsing through less noise and more time driving pipeline! Available in all plans!

Hey, real quick...
 
Josh and I are doing a LIVE episode of the podcast in T minus 3ish hours—sharing Vector's entire marketing plan for 2026: big rocks, goals, hiring, the whole shebang.
 
Would love for you to be a part of it if you're free at 12 noon ET. (And if you're not, register anyway so you get the recording!)

Hope you can make it! https://lnkd.in/g8GDaSw8

Hi, I'm Nick! 

I'm the Co-Founder & COO of Vector working to revolutionize how marketing leaders spend their ad budget in a far more effective fashion than in the past. 

I bring 10+ years of experience leading and scaling successful SaaS sales teams through best-in-class technology: 

- Director of Solutions Consulting at Drift (acquired by Vista)
- Enterprise Sales Engineer and SE Manager at Box
- Owning $35M/yr in P&L at GE Aviation
- United States Air Force Instructor Pilot and Program Manager

If you’ve read this far into my profile, let’s connect! 

Finally, follow me on LinkedIn for more insights on Contact-Based Marketing, the latest AI sales tools, and “how to’s” for running hyper-targeted marketing campaigns.

Nick Masters

Saturday is the most productive workday of the week. Prove me wrong.
I bring my work everywhere. Some people call that unhealthy. Others say it’s poor work-life balance. But when you genuinely love what you’re building, it doesn’t feel negative; it feels natural.

Weekends allow for uninterrupted focus. No meetings. No Slack pings. Just enough quiet for a single idea to get an hour of real attention—be fully finished.

I look forward to that focus. That flow state.
And it’s exactly what lets me start Monday with clarity, energy, and purpose.

Co-Founder & COO @ Vector | Y Combinator | US Air Force

I took a sales call yesterday, and the rep was running a 10-year-old playbook. This is the number one thing my team and I make sure we don't do, because we know exactly how educated our prospects are when they show up. 

Biggest mistake...call # 1 is not about you (the seller). 30 minutes of questions is not what a prospect needs to spend time on.

10 years ago, every first meeting started with discovery and a 15-slide sales pitch. We'd spend 30 minutes asking questions, making it sound empathetic as we wanted to "understand the business." 

Today? Buyers show up educated.

They've researched competitors, read reviews, watched YouTube demos, and asked ChatGPT to compare solutions. They don't want discovery, they want to see the product and demand that demo to be specific to them. 

→ Your first call is no longer about gathering information
→ It's about demonstrating you already understand their world
→ Generic harbor tours of your product don't work

We've adapted by keeping Vector 👻's sales pitch to one slide. We have a thesis that Demand Gen leaders in our ICP struggle with Ad targeting, and validate that pain point in 5 minutes, then immediately jump into showing them how the product works in their day-to-day reality.

The preparation changes too:

If they came inbound: Assume they have a genuine interest and similar problems to your best customers.

If you reached out: Speed dating mode. Get through the essentials fast and earn the right to a deeper conversation.

Buyers are more informed than ever. The winners will be sellers who respect that intelligence and demonstrate value immediately, and do discovery throughout giving a prospect value.

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The Battle

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