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The Founder's Marketing Engine: From Founder-Led to Repeatable Pipeline

Mike H.
By Mike H.5.0· 2 reviewsMarket Story and Pitch for a B2B Raise or Sale | 4 exits, including Dell

Most early-stage B2B founders are still the company's marketing department. Your messaging describes features instead of outcomes. Your budget is spread across too many channels to tell what's working. You can't say with confidence what a customer costs to acquire, and revenue still depends on you being in every deal. Meanwhile, buyers have changed: many now research software in AI chatbots and arrive with a shortlist before they ever talk to you. I've spent 30 years building B2B and tech marketing, as a CMO, an interim CMO, and part of four company exits. I've hired more than 65 marketers along the way. Over eight weeks, I'll help you build the marketing foundation that should come before you scale: positioning buyers understand, one or two channels that produce pipeline, numbers investors respect, and a clear plan for your first marketing hire. For seed to Series A B2B and tech founders with no marketer or one marketer, who need marketing to work without them in every decision. Plan on 3–4 hours a week between sessions. Synchronous and asynchronous. • Six 1:1 sessions over eight weeks, plus templates and video feedback between sessions • Session 1, Diagnose: Where your pipeline actually comes from, how dependent revenue is on you, and how clear your target customer and messaging really are. You leave with a one-page marketing diagnostic and the three fixes that matter most. • Session 2, Positioning: We define your ideal customer and build positioning around the problems buyers search for, not a category they've never heard of. We rewrite your value proposition from features to outcomes. You test it on 3–5 customer calls before we meet again. • Session 3, Focus: We choose the one or two channels that fit your customer and your stage, cut the rest, and build a 90-day plan with weekly actions. • Session 4, Measure: We agree pipeline definitions with sales and calculate your fully loaded customer acquisition cost and payback. We set up a simple monthly scorecard investors will recognize. • Session 5, Visibility: We audit how your company shows up in ChatGPT and other AI answers, and fix the comparison content, review presence and public information that shape buyer shortlists. We build a founder thought-leadership plan on LinkedIn that teaches your market and keeps going after we're done. • Session 6, Build the Team: We decide which first hire fits (product marketer, demand generation, or fractional), then write the job description, an interview scorecard and a first-90-days plan for that hire. • Between sessions: Templates for every step, an AI prompt pack for marketing work, written next steps after each session, and video feedback on your drafts, returned within 2 business days. Founding client rate: $200 off for the first three clients, in exchange for a review at the end of our work together. Raising soon? Pair this with my Market Story and Pitch package. The positioning we build here becomes the foundation of your investor story.

What's included

Coaching Time12h–14h of coaching · Live Sessions$3,000
Total$3,000

My coaching style is direct but easy going. I understand how very important your startup is to you, and we will have honest back-and-forth about closing your present gaps. My conversation style is warm, non-pressure, and I love to share some good humor about the workplace and life in general.

  • Positioning your team and your buyers can repeat, tested with real customers
  • One or two focused channels with a 90-day plan, instead of five channels and no signal
  • A marketing scorecard that shows whether it's working, in terms investors respect
  • A plan for showing up in AI-driven buyer research
  • A founder thought-leadership routine you can sustain on your own
  • A hiring brief and interview scorecard, so your first marketing hire is the right one

Meet your expert

Mike H.

Mike H.

Market Story and Pitch for a B2B Raise or Sale | 4 exits, including Dell

5.02 reviews
60Min coached
3Followers

I've spent 30 years building and leading marketing organizations for B2B and technology companies, including CMO and senior executive roles at Fortune 500 and growth-stage companies across SaaS, enterprise software, IT solutions, data storage, and data analytics—and I bring that experience directly into how I coach. My marketing leadership has contributed directly to four successful company exits: Givful (acquired by iSolved), MEDarchon (acquired by Xsolis), DataFrameworks (acquired by Dell Technologies), and Anacomp's Magnetics Division (acquired by a New York private equity firm). Across these engagements and 25+ years of prior executive leadership, I've built go-to-market strategies from scratch, run marketing operations engineered for top-tier execution, positioned companies for investor and board scrutiny, including pitching venture and private equity firms on Sand Hill Road and in New York, and led and scaled global marketing teams through growth, turnaround, and transition. I've owned P&Ls exceeding $100 million, sat with boards, and been the executive brought in to fix what wasn't working and prepare a company for its next chapter, whether that was a product launch, a turnaround, or an acquisition. Alongside this operating career, I've coached dozens of CEOs, CMOs, and marketing leaders, and spent four years mentoring MBA students at UC San Diego's Rady School of Management, one of whom recently reached back out, twenty years later, to ask me to mentor her again. If you're a founder or rising executive who wants a coach who has actually sat in the seat—who has built the strategy, run the operation, faced the board, and closed the deal—I bring that expertise and enthusiasm directly to you.

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