Kieran Flanagan

Kieran Flanagan is the CMO at HubSpot, where he's led the transformation of their growth strategy from SEO-led to multi-channel and AI-powered. Formerly SVP of Marketing, he helped scale HubSpot's user base to millions and revenue past $2B. Before HubSpot, he drove breakout growth at Marketo and Salesforce. Kieran is one of the most respected voices in SaaS marketing and a pioneer in growth-driven content strategy. Agenda: 00:03 – The Death of Growth Teams? Kieran's Wild Prediction 06:44 – AI Innovation Pods: The New Org Structure for Startups 10:18 – Email Personalization That Tripled Conversions 13:21 – From Software Budget to Labor Budget: The Shift is Happening 16:35 – The Big Lie: Why Autonomous Agents Still Suck 19:24 – The Secret Sauce Behind HubSpot's Email AI Stack 21:44 – Segment-Based Marketing Is Dead. Enter Micro Audiences. 24:15 – Content Collapse: Why Google Organic Is Getting Torched 30:52 – The Future of AI SEO: 1 Product, 100 Pages, Infinite Prompts 33:16 – Memory = Moat: Why ChatGPT Is Becoming Unbeatable 35:46 – Prompt Engineering is the New Coding: Here's How to Win 41:03 – The Death of the Middle Manager Marketer 46:17 – OpenAI vs. Anthropic: Kieran's $400M Bet 48:00 – Europe Is Falling Behind: The Harsh Truth on Regulation 52:39 – CMO Playbook 2025: Micro-Audiences, Creator-Led, AI at Scale

Kieran Flanagan

SVP of Marketing

HubSpot

Despite the ease of product building, sustainable growth has become increasingly challenging as many traditional channels no longer deliver the same results. In these challenging times, we explore the remaining growth opportunities. How can we achieve a balance between efficiency, profitability, and growth? Which channels are still relevant and how can they be effectively mastered in 2023? Join us as we discuss these questions with three seasoned experts who have successfully navigated similar confusing times in the past: Gina Gotthilf, leading Latitud and renowned for her impressive tenure as the VP of Growth at Duolingo; Kieran Flanagan, a long-time SVP of Marketing at HubSpot; and Bryan Kim, Consumer Partner at a16z, who held various leadership roles during Snap's hypergrowth phase up to its IPO.   Topics Covered: 00:00 – What growth opportunities exist in 2023? 03:00 – What still works in growth? 05:02 – The fundamentals and framework of growth 07:02 – Assessing growth potential and product lead growth 09:33 – Distribution 11:15 – Your moat and growth 14:00 – Integrating AI for product lead growth 16:23 –Trust as a moat 17:23 – B2C growth - discovery and breaking through 18:51 – Can you get ahead of the incumbents? 22:03 – Examples of companies and products 24:59 – How do you foster a growth culture? 28:38 – Experimentation   34:20 – How companies using AI in distribution 44:43 – Growth challenge: What would you do with $10K?   Resources: Check out Latitud: https://go.latitud.com/ Check out Zapier: https://zapier.com/ Find Bryan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirbyman01 Find Kieran on Twitter :https://twitter.com/searchbrat Find Gina on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ginag   Stay Updated:  Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/ Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Stay Updated: Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gina Gotthilf

Founder

Latitud

Kieran Flanagan

SVP of Marketing

HubSpot

Casey Winters is the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. Prior to Eventbrite, Casey led the growth product team at Pinterest. Before Pinterest, Casey started the marketing team at Grubhub and scaled Grubhub's demand-side acquisition and retention strategies. Elena Verna is the Interim Head of Growth at Amplitude. Former exec @ Miro, Netlify, SurveyMonkey. Growth Advisor to companies including Krisp, MongoDB, Ledgy, Builder.io and SimilarWeb. Kieran Flanagan is SVP Marketing at HubSpot, where he has helped the business grow internationally, move to a product-led business, quadrupled its marketing demand, and built out its media team, including the acquisition of 'The Hustle.' Andy Johns career started in growth at Facebook when the company scaled from 100M-500M active users. Since he has worked in some of the leading growth orgs at companies like Twitter, Quora and more recently at Wealthfront as Head of Growth and President. Bangaly Kaba is the Director of Product Management @ Youtube. Prior to Youtube, Bangaly led the product growth and consumer product orgs at Instacart and before Instacart was Head of Growth @ Instagram, helping grow Instagram from 440M to > 1B monthly actives in 2.5yrs. Ed Baker is a growth advisor to various startups including Lime, Zwift, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer, and Playbook. Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013-2017. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook. Adam Fishman was the Chief Product and Growth Offer @ Imperfect Foods. Before Imperfect, Adam was VP of Product and Growth @ Patreon, Before Patreon, Adam was the Head of Growth @ Lyft, Adam was the first growth and marketing employee hired and grew the team to 18 people. In Today's Discussion on When To Hire a Head of Growth: 1.) When is the right time to hear your first growth hire? 2.) Is this hire a senior growth leader or a more junior growth engineer? 3.) What can early-stage startups do to entice senior growth leaders to their early-stage company? 4.) What data infrastructure should be in place prior to hiring your first growth hire? 5.) What does the optimal onboarding process look like for all growth hires? 6.) What can founders and CEOs do to set their growth hires up for success?

Casey Winters

Chief Product Officer

Eventbrite

Elena Verna

Head of Growth

LovableElena Verna ConsultingAmplitudeMongoDB

Kieran Flanagan

SVP of Marketing

HubSpot

Kieran Flanagan is SVP Marketing at HubSpot, where he has helped the business grow internationally, move to a product-led business, quadrupled its marketing demand, and built out its media team, including the acquisition of 'The Hustle.' He is also an advisor and investor in early-stage companies. In Today's Episode with Kieran Flanagan We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Growth and Marketing: How did Kieran make his way into the world of growth and marketing? What has been 1-2 of Kieran's biggest lessons from seeing firsthand the hyper-scaling of Hubspot? On reflection, how would Kieran summarise both Hubspot's community building attempts and also their product messaging? 2.) Why You Need Growth Hires Pre Product Market Fit: What does "growth" mean to Kieran? Where do so many get it wrong? Why does Kieran believe that you should have a growth team/people before product market fit? What specifically do they do and work on during this stage? Pre PMF, what is the core metric that all startups should focus on? How does it change with time? 3.) Building Your Growth Team: What does Kieran believe are the 3 key stages to hiring for growth? How should founders determine whether to have external standalone growth teams or integrate them into existing functions? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when hiring for growth? 4.) The Future is Content: Why does Kieran believe every great tech brand will have to become a media brand? Why is Elon Musk an example of the perfect brand? What has he done right? Why does Kieran say that data is the best and worst thing that has happened to marketing? 5.) WTF Really is Community: How does Kieran define "community"? What is it? What is it not? What makes the best communities? Why do some work and others not? Should every company have a community approach? Who does it make sense for? Have Hubspot done a good job at community building? On reflection, is there anything that Kieran would have done differently?

Kieran Flanagan

SVP of Marketing

HubSpot

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr), Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Kieran Flanagan (@searchbrat) discuss: - Crafting the perfect cold email to catch Sam's attention. - The grueling process of selling a company and how to do it right - The best advice on how to negotiate correctly (silence is your friend). - How the D.E.N.N.I.S system can help you sell a company. - Why every deal needs a "deal dual". - What it feels like to be rich? Today's episode is brought to you by FOCUSAID. It’s the #1 and first nootropic drink in America that’s sold over 100m cans. For 30% off your first order, go to DrinkFocusAid.com. Check it out! Have you joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kieran Flanagan

SVP of Marketing

HubSpot