FirstMark

Responsible for accelerating the growth and success of FirstMark and its portfolio companies through networks, content, events, communities, partnerships, and firm marketing.

VP Community & Content

Director of Community

Guilds by FirstMark

Member of Guilds by FirstMark, an invite-only community for executives at the world's leading venture-backed technology companies.

Member

Commsor 🦕

Advisor

Catalyst Software

Joined as the first Marketing hire, and contributed to Catalyst 3xing ARR two years in a row (with 45% sourced from Marketing); much of which was accomplished via multiple successful viral Marketing campaigns.

Head of Brand & Community Marketing

Manager, Brand & Community

Community & Events Manager

CS in focus

Board Member

Founded and led Canada's largest Customer Success community (3000+ members, 10+ annual events)

Founder

SeamlessMD

Manager, Special Projects & Customer Success

Customer Success Lead

Venture for Canada

Selected as 1 of 50 fellows out of 2000+ applicants for the Venture for Canada program.

Venture for Canada Fellow

Statflo

Customer Success Manager

Marketer and Community Builder with a background in Venture Capital, Enterprise SaaS, and Healthtech.

Currently leading community, marketing, partnerships, content, and events at FirstMark (VC backer of Pinterest, Airbnb, Shopify, Discord, and DraftKings) helping the next generation of category-defining founders make their mark on the world.

Previously Head of Marketing at Catalyst Software, and Founder of CS in Focus.

Large format film photographer on nights and weekends 📸

Off the record. Obsessively curated. Always low lift and high value.

These are the values behind Guilds by FirstMark, which today counts 3,000 executive members representing 80% of the unicorn ecosystem.

Incredibly honored and grateful to have these leaders taking the time to share their knowledge and give back to the community this fall. Truly can't wait for each of these talks!

Learn more and apply to join at https://lnkd.in/eQuVHm7u 🚀

Ben Winn

Announcing our next round of speakers for Guilds by FirstMark this fall! 🤩

We couldn't be more excited to welcome such an incredible lineup of founders and executives from some of the most exciting companies in the world today: Lovable, Brex, OpenAI, Vercel, Justworks, ClickHouse, FanDuel, Greenhouse Software, HashiCorp, Gong, Playlist — with more being announced very soon.

All Guild events are off-the-record, invite-only, and obsessively curated — meant to build community among powerhouse leaders shaping the future of technology, and empower them to learn from each other as they build.

If you're an SVP or C-level executive at a tech company valued at $1B+, and you'd like access to these events, apply to join at https://lnkd.in/eBUPfs65

Brex FULLY AUTOMATED the promotion process from SDR to AE 🚀

How does it work? Does it scale? How do you get finance on board?

We were honored to have CRO Garrett Marker speak for Guilds by FirstMark this week to answer all of the above and share more about the contrarian strategies he's employed to build one of the most efficient AI-powered GTM orgs in tech.

Have gotten a lot of messages in the past couple weeks about getting a job in VC, so sharing a couple suggestions here (many of which are applicable to the larger job market):

1) Follow/subscribe to the VC Platform job board

2) Follow Evan Walden who does regular roundups of VC job opps

3) Attend every tech event you can (VCs are always lurking)

4) Create something unique you can talk about. Vibe-code an app, launch a community, host a podcast (but dear god please make it good), write on Substack...

5) Have a strong (informed) POV on something you're interested in (AI, climate, robots, agriculture...it's not about the specific thing, it's about the fact that you have a strong, informed POV)

6) Do everything you possibly can to get a warm introduction. 

7) If you're reaching out cold, have a "give." Maybe you can do a customer intro for one of their portfolio companies, maybe you see one of their companies is hiring for a role you know the perfect candidate for, maybe you can use Sora to create an ad for their firm (which would be cool, even if they don't use it)...

8) Be as concise as possible in any/all emails. VCs (and execs more broadly) want high information density. Assume they will only read the first 3 lines you write.

9) If you get a meeting with a VC, show up knowing their portfolio, their legacy winners, their recent investments, their content, etc.

10) Treat every single person you meet with incredibly well, regardless of whether they can helpful to you or not in the near term. VC is a relationships business, and the person you meet today might make all the difference to you 5 years from now. Also just a general rule for life...

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