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Today I sit down with Jane Alexander, Chief Marketing Officer at Carta, a platform that helps people and companies manage equity, build businesses, and invest in private companies.
Launched in 2012 by Henry Ward, Carta is used by nearly 30,000 companies and over half a million employees to manage cap tables, compensation, and valuations. Carta also works with over 4,500 funds representing over $92B in assets under administration.
They have raised over a billion dollars from a very long list of investors, including Union Square Ventures, Tribe Capital, Spark Capital, Silver Lake, Lightspeed, a16z, Insight, and many more.
In this episode, we discuss:
The role of a CMO at companies and how generative AI tools are transforming the job
“If everybody is just using [AI Tools] to send custom emails, then the value goes to zero. But how can you use AI to just accelerate where you already have an edge and to build your moat even further? And I think that takes the human-in-the-loop to know what that edge is.”
Jane is excited about the potential of AI in marketing and sales, predicting that it will change the way people work and lead to a proliferation of use cases. However, she also warned that as AI drives the marginal cost of custom emails to zero, the value of those emails will also decrease, leading to the saturation of communication channels. To maintain an edge, it will be imperative for businesses to focus on using AI to accelerate their unique advantages and invest in owned channels to connect with customers and prospects more directly.
The power of content creation and why it’s been an incredible source for organic growth at Carta
“People want to learn, there's so much opportunity out there to share the nitty gritty to share the raw data. It's real. I think there's a temptation to sugarcoat things… but people are smart, if you give them the information that they need to be able to draw their own conclusions, that goes so much further.”
When it comes to content creation, Carta has done an extraordinary job at mining, analyzing, and sharing their data with interesting insights. In the process, Jane has learned three key lessons:
Providing raw matters. Customers are hungry for real data and they appreciate authenticity and transparency.
Let people draw their own conclusions. It’s important to treat people like adults and giving them the information without sugarcoating it.
Feeding people's curiosity and providing them with valuable insights is key to the success of a company’s content marketing strategy.
Navigating the pressures of a more competitive and challenging business environment
“I think you can take pressure in one of two ways. Either take the pressure as something that causes you to clamp down and go to what's known, or you can take that pressure as something that really helps fuel you and enjoy it. And I certainly enjoy the pressure.”
It’s no secret that SaaS companies are facing meaningful challenges as a result of market pressures and a more competitive environment. Instead of succumbing to the pressure and focusing on value extraction, Jane emphasizes the importance of remaining committed to value creation for customers. As an example, Carta recently launched a new, more affordable package, allowing companies to access their platform at a lower entry point. Through strategies like this one, Carta hopes to demonstrate the company's commitment to meeting customer needs, which can lead to long-term success by building stronger relationships with customers during challenging times.
Time management and productivity hacks, importance of customer feedback… and a lot more!
“If you're doing everything all at once, there comes a point where you're actually just doing nothing.”
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
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