I had a spirited conversation with Gary Survis, an operating partner at Insight Partners, a global software investor partnering with high-growth technology, software, and Internet startup/scaleup companies.
Our conversation begins with a discussion of Insight Partners’ unique approach to marketing portfolio companies, the relations that can and should be cultivated between startups and analysts, the interplay between demand generation and sustainability in digital marketing, and the intersection of business and sustainability, an issue that Gary cares about very deeply.
As he observes on his LinkedIn bio, “our world is facing an existential threat from climate change. Business has been a major contributor to the problem and business must be part of its solution. I have been teaching about this concept for over a decade when it was not a highly demanded topic. Today, I hope to teach the next generation about how to drive business growth sustainably.”
We then dive into the issue of the role played by Generative AI in terms of changing the way that marketers do their jobs today, and its transformational potential for business in the months and years ahead.
Discussion topics include:
- How different phases in the growth stages of young companies require distinctly different marketing strategies.
- Why early engagement with analysts is key to shaping their research and influencing category choices.
- The importance of demand creation and harvesting in B2B.
- How a new generation of word of mouth involves B2B influencers and community engagement.
- How using generative AI can bring together multiple ideas, synthesize them, and create breakthrough messaging that differentiates from competitors.
- Why events are taking on increasing importance for organizations to connect with people.
- How the shift from single-word searches to vector-based searches will significantly impact digital marketing, particularly in the way people discover and interact with products and solutions.
- The importance of understanding the risk profile of one’s business, including how people discover and interact with products and solutions, in light of the increasing use of chatbot-related queries.
- The existential threat of climate change, its impact on business, and the role played by business in terms of providing innovative solutions.
- The importance of leveraging AI to reduce friction in workflows.
