Lomit Patel

Chief Marketing & Growth Officer | Author | Startup Advisor | ex Roku, IMVU, Texture

I help startups turn community into a durable growth engine — not a marketing channel.I’m a growth and marketing executive with 20+ years of experience helping category-defining companies scale revenue efficiently — without losing trust, focus, or signal. I’ve led growth across consumer and emerging platforms, including Roku, IMVU, Texture, TrustedID, Tynker — and now serve as CMO of TYB.At TYB, I focus on community-led growth, customer participation loops, and systems that compound trust, revenue, and retention over time. My work sits at the intersection of community, growth, and AI — using automation and disciplined experimentation to reduce noise and build systems that scale.I’m also the author of Lean AI, a bestselling AI growth marketing playbook in Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup series.Career highlights• Scaled revenue from $1M → $100M+, driving hypergrowth with efficient CAC &amp; ROI• Delivered 5 consecutive years of record-breaking growth at IMVU (#2 highest-grossing gaming app)• Played a key role in 4 startup exits: Roku (IPO), Texture (Apple), TrustedID (Equifax), Tynker (BYJU’S)• Managed $50M+ in annual marketing spend across acquisition, retention, and monetization• Led GTM strategy &amp; launches across emerging tech, including Web3, NFTs, and digital currencies• Built and led high-performing hybrid &amp; remote growth/marketing teams of 20+I believe the next era of growth won’t be won by louder marketing — but by earned trust, strong communities, and systems that quietly compound over time.Always happy to connect with founders and growth teams exploring community-led growth.Views are my own.

Chief Marketing & Growth Officer

Manage the growth and marketing teams (user acquisition, engagement, retention, monetization), including budgets, strategy, channels, branding, PR, research, and data analytics.

The strongest beauty brands don’t sell skincare.

They sell restraint.

rhode skin didn’t launch with 40 SKUs.

They launched with discipline.

Fewer products. Clear positioning. Cohesive aesthetic.

In a world of overstimulation, simplicity became the differentiator.

You don’t buy Rhode for options.
You buy it because it removes friction.

For founders, the takeaway.
Curation is a growth strategy.

When your brand edits aggressively, consumers trust more deeply.

At what point does “more choice” start eroding brand power instead of expanding it?

CMO @ TYB | Scaling Community-Powered Brands with AI | 4x Exits | Author, Lean AI

One of the best parts of working at TYB is partnering with founders who are building brands with real community at the center.

Many of the brands on TYB today were founded by women who get something important about modern growth.

The strongest brands are built with their communities, not just marketed to them.

It’s amazing to see communities forming around brands like:

✨ Emily Weiss – Glossier, Inc.
✨ Selena Gomez – Rare Beauty
✨ Laney Crowell – Saie
✨ Shai Eisenman – Bubble
✨ Jen Atkin – OUAI
✨ Lindsey Carter – SET ACTIVE
✨ Elizabeth Stein – Purely Elizabeth
✨ Amy Liu – Tower 28 Beauty, Inc.
✨ Shakira – isima
✨Olamide Olowe - Topicals 
✨Siffat Haider - Arrae 
✨Babba (Canales) Rivera - Ceremonia
✨Sofie Pavitt - Sofie Pavitt Face
✨Julie Schott - Starface World

And of course, Ty Haney, who created Try Your Best (TYB) after building Outdoor Voices and is now also the founder of Joggy.

These founders and so many more on TYB aren’t just launching products. They’re building brands people genuinely want to be part of.

Grateful to support so many incredible female founders in the TYB ecosystem and excited to see what you build next.

Who are some other female founders building brands with strong communities that we should all be paying attention to?

Celebrating the Female Founders Building the Future of Community Commerce.

Clicks are dead. Community is alive.


In my first 150 days as CMO at Try Your Best (TYB), I realized something big: growth doesn’t come from paid media. It comes from trust, participation, and community.

We built a community-led, content-powered GTM system that:

- Measured zero-click attribution
- Created compounding growth loops
- Delivered 330% YoY growth

Here’s the truth: B2B and B2C buyers don’t convert through clicks. They convert through familiarity, engagement, and social proof, often in dark social channels like DMs, group chats, and feeds.

I captured everything in a playbook: how we uncovered our organic baseline, stopped mistaking retargeting for growth, and built a system that scales without relying on paid media.

If you’re a CMO or growth leader, this is how modern GTM really works.

How are you building growth through community and content, not just clicks?

Read the full article below👇

Clicks are dead, and dark social is alive. As CMO at TYB, I built a community-led, content-powered GTM system that scales without relying on paid medi

Open article: Community Over Clicks: A CMO’s 150-Day GTM Playbook for B2B & B2C by Lomit Patel • 4 min read

Community Over Clicks: A CMO’s 150-Day GTM Playbook for B2B & B2C

The strongest accessories brands don’t sell bags.

They sell practicality without apology.

BAGGU made reusable bags cool before sustainability became table stakes.

Bold prints.
Affordable price.
No luxury positioning.

They made “everyday” feel designed.

The lesson:
Utility scales when it feels intentional.

If your product solves a boring problem, brand is what makes it memorable.

Are we underestimating how powerful “simple” can be?

CAC has risen 60% in the past five years.


Most Shopify brands are still spending like it hasn’t.

For years, the DTC growth playbook was simple:
Acquire → Convert → Repeat.

As long as paid social was cheap, the math worked.

But today many brands are pouring more and more budget into acquisition while ignoring the bigger lever: retention.

The result is what I call the leaky bucket problem.

You keep spending to acquire customers…
but they don’t stay long enough for CAC to pay back.

The data is clear
• A 5% increase in retention can drive 25–95% higher profits
• Repeat customers spend ~67% more than new customers

Yet most marketing budgets still skew heavily toward acquisition.

The brands winning in 2026 are changing the question.

Instead of asking

“How do we acquire more customers?”

They’re asking

“How do we turn customers into fans?”

Because fans

→ Buy more frequently
→ Stay longer
→ Bring others with them

That’s when growth starts to compound instead of reset every month.

The real shift isn’t acquisition vs retention.

It’s using retention to make acquisition more efficient.

I break this down in more detail here:
https://lnkd.in/g6zea4zh

Curious how other operators are thinking about this
Are you investing more in acquisition or retention in 2026?

#marketing #ecommerce

Open article: Shopify Retention vs. Acquisition: Where to Invest in 2026 by tyb.xyz

Shopify Retention vs. Acquisition: Where to Invest in 2026

The strongest fashion brands don’t sell trends.

They sell accountability.

Reformation made sustainability visible.

Carbon stats.
Supply chain transparency.
Clear messaging.

They turned ethics into aesthetic.

The takeaway:
When your operations are part of your story, brand feels earned.

How many brands hide the process instead of highlighting it?

Web3, blockchain, DeFi, casino, sports betting software development services

I work with startup founders who need a dedicated software development team but don’t want to gamble on hiring, random outsourcing, or opaque delivery.
Most founders face the same problem sooner or later.
Early technical and team decisions lock the product into tech debt, slow delivery, missed milestones and constant re-hiring. By the time this becomes visible, fixing it is already expensive.

As a CTO and software architect, I help founders design, build and run dedicated development teams that work as a true extension of the startup. Not as a black-box vendor.

My focus is on complex products where mistakes are costly:
* Web3 and blockchain platforms
* FinTech and regulated products
* High-load startup systems
* MVP → scale transitions

We don’t do body-shopping.
We don’t sell generic outsourcing.

Instead, we help founders:
* build the right team structure from day one
* keep technical ownership and transparency
* scale delivery without losing control
* avoid vendor lock-in and hidden risks

Teams are aligned with the product roadmap, business goals and long-term architecture. Not just short-term velocity.

If you are a startup founder building an MVP or scaling an existing product and want a dedicated team that behaves like an internal one, feel free to DM me the word "TEAM".

Dmytro Nasyrov, PhD

13 years in Pharos Production - web3 software development as a Founder and CTO is a long way.
Over the past 13 years, we have built more than 48 production-ready products, taking them from functional requirements and early-stage startup ideas to full-scale platforms serving up to 10,000 daily users.

We have created a technical infrastructure that allows our clients to focus on business while we take full responsibility for architecture, scalability, security and performance. Our systems are optimized for high load, resilient against attacks and designed for rapid iteration and continuous feature delivery. 

Our team has grown from 8 to 56 professionals. We are also deeply integrating artificial intelligence into platform development and optimization, enabling us to accelerate feature delivery by up to 6x.

I truly appreciate your support and look forward to the next stage of growth together! 🤝

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➕ Follow Dmytro Nasyrov, PhD for software architecture leadership.
📆 Let's work together: www.pharosproduction.com

#softwaredevelopment #web3 #developmentteam #blockchain

CTO | Build dedicated software development teams for startup founders | Web3, blockchain, FinTech

Founder and CTO celebrating 13 years of Pharos Production highlighting software architecture leadership, scalable high-load platforms, AI integration and growth from startup development to production systems serving 10000 daily users

SEO AI: How to Get into AI Search Results

AI answers in search and voice assistants are increasingly replacing traditional search results. Users receive a ready-made answer without visiting the website.
Under these conditions, traditional SEO (top search results) no longer guarantees traffic.
The key goal is to become the source that AI selects for answers.

📌 Mini-checklist for getting into AI answers
1️⃣ Focus on top-rated articles
The "rating" format is one of the most convenient for AI:
structure, hierarchy and an immediately clear "best option."

2️⃣ Adaptation to AI logic
Content is built according to the formula:
❗️ Question → short, direct answer → rating with explanations
Headlines are in question format, with the answer right at the beginning.

3️⃣ Publications on External Platforms
Ratings are posted on authoritative resources (without direct advertising)
to expand the pool of sources from which the AI can choose.

4️⃣ Strengthening Behavioral Factors
Readability, engagement and attention retention. All of these increase trust among both users and algorithms.

5️⃣ Satellites with ratings + link boosting
Additional review and comparison sites
Expand the content ecosystem and add weight.

Why does this work?
AI doesn't rank websites the same way traditional search does.
It chooses the most understandable, structured and usable answer.
This is why explicitly worded ratings work best.

Bottom line: getting into the top results in generative search isn't a coincidence but a controlled process if you understand how AI reads and selects content.

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➕ Follow Dmytro Nasyrov, PhD for software architecture leadership.
📆 Let's work together: www.pharosproduction.com

#SEO #AI #businessinsights #LLM

Portrait illustration of a digital marketing expert in a blue shirt pointing upward, surrounded by AI neural network graphics, SEO analytics dashboards, growth charts and search interface elements representing AI search optimization and generative search visibility

If you want your brain to operate at peak efficiency and solve complex non-trivial problems quickly, physical training is not optional. For any software developer, it is essential.

For me, that choice is CrossFit. It combines strength work, cardio, and functional movement. It is the best reset after intense brainstorming sessions and long hours of deep technical focus.

Today I hit a personal record: 80 kipping pull-ups. And I did them after the full workout.

The session itself was solid. We started with rowing, dumbbell swings, SkiErg intervals, and squats with 15 kg dumbbells. Then five rounds of strength work, again mostly dumbbells plus SkiErg. And at the end, after all of that, 80 kipping pull-ups broken into sets of 14 and 12.

An intense midday workout like that does something powerful. Your brain works sharply in the morning, you train hard, and then your cognitive performance stays high into the evening. No brain fog. No crash.

Physical load is one of the most underrated productivity tools for developers. It directly impacts clarity, speed of decision-making, and resilience under pressure.

What kind of sport do you practice? How do you reset and stay sharp during a demanding workweek?

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➕ Follow Dmytro Nasyrov, PhD for software architecture leadership.
📆 Let's work together: www.pharosproduction.com

#crossfit #sport #worklifebalance #softwaredevelopment

Software architect doing pull-ups in a modern gym with a dynamic background of code screens, neural network graphics and development dashboards symbolizing balance between software engineering discipline and active lifestyle

Founders are getting one thing wrong about AI in software development.

Tools like Cursor, ChatGPT, and Gemini can absolutely make teams faster. I use them myself. The productivity gain is real.

But speed is not the same as judgment.

Recently, we received a React application from a client. The app was stable, clean, and functional. No major bugs. But the stack was outdated and it did not fit our internal environment.

I used Cursor to modernize the stack and generate the integration layer we needed: Docker Compose for local and production environments, PostgreSQL setup, migrations, Dockerfile updates, and the wrappers required to deploy cleanly into our Kubernetes cluster and CI/CD pipelines.

The result was fast.

I built the full integration wrapper in about 20 to 40 minutes. Doing it manually would have taken at least a full day and likely pulled our DevOps engineer away from more important work.

But here is the real point:

If you do not understand architecture, you cannot properly use AI in software development.

You will not know what to ask for.
You will not know whether the output is correct.
You will not know what will break later.

Pasting logs into AI and retrying prompts is not a strategy. It is just a faster way to create messy systems and technical debt.

AI gave me leverage.
Architecture gave me control.

For startups, that difference matters. Faster code is useful. Faster progress is what actually compounds.

Founders and investors, is AI improving execution inside your teams, or just making weak engineering look productive?

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➕ Follow Dmytro Nasyrov, PhD for software architecture leadership.
📆 Let's work together: www.pharosproduction.com

#Startup #AI #SoftwareArchitecture #TechLeadership #CTO

Dmytro Nasyrov discussing how AI tools like Cursor increase development speed while software architecture remains critical for startup teams

The best industry events aren't about who you meet, but whether anyone would notice if you didn't show up.

Most companies show up at industry events chasing leads.

They set up a booth, print some banners, and hope the foot traffic hands them growth.

This has never made sense to me.

If your product only stands out when you're shouting in a convention center, it's not differentiated. It's desperate.

Real impact comes when your solution is so well integrated into the market that people expect to see you at the top-level events.

Not as a vendor. As a standard.

That's how we approach it.

When we land in a new city for an industry conference, our goal isn't just "meet people." It's to make it obvious, even to competitors, that our systems and execution set the pace.

It's not about the booth. It's about whether your presence changes what people expect from the industry.

If you're still measuring event ROI in badge scans, you're missing the point.

Build something that people recognize before you even introduce yourself.

That's the only real advantage left.

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Interoperability won't magically fix fragmented liquidity in Web3. 

Everyone chants the same thing. 
Connect all the chains. Bridge the assets. Unify liquidity. 
Cue the drumroll. 

The story sounds great. 
But it's fiction.

Interoperability in tokenization doesn't erase control. 
It just hides it in new places. 
It decides who gets to coordinate the whole show.

Look at what's actually happening as real-world assets go on-chain. 
Liquidity doesn't flow everywhere. 
It splinters into pools. 
Each pool fenced by compliance, jurisdictions, and eligibility. 
Not one global ocean, but a patchwork of small lakes.

It's not chaos. 
It's air traffic control for assets. 
Planes don't set their own routes mid-air. 
Someone draws the maps. 
Someone sets the rules. 
Someone decides who lands and who circles. 

Same for tokenized markets. 
Interoperability isn't just tech. 
It's a governance layer. 
A filter for who moves assets, how, and when. 
Who decides? 
Not code. 
Not "the market." 
People. Institutions. Maybe you, maybe not.

So here's the uncomfortable truth. 
The next moat in tokenized finance isn't about who mints tokens, or who commands the biggest pools. 
It's about who controls coordination. 
If you think interoperability will decentralize power, ask yourself: who's setting the flight plan?

Are we headed for open skies, or a new breed of gatekeepers?
Drop your take below. 

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➕ Follow Dmytro Nasyrov, PhD for software architecture leadership.
📆 Let's work together: www.pharosproduction.com

Open article: Pharos Production | Software Development Company by pharosproduction.com

Pharos Production | Software Development Company

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