Startup CXO

Chapter 126Fractional Chief Marketing Officer

Scott Kabat

I've worked in every stage of a company from co‐founding a two‐person Y Combinator education technology company up to being acquired by Cisco and working in their enormous machine. I'm a firm believer that every company will need a fully functioning marketing team, and it's important to figure out, when you factor in hiring time and budgets, what the right prioritization of the full‐time roles are. And then you need to think about where you can supplement those people with senior guidance or boots on the ground so they can get more done. The fractional CMO can be an extremely valuable option for some companies, especially startups and scaleups.

Fractional Opportunities for CMOs

There's a big need for fractional CMOs and it's largely driven by the fast‐paced changing nature of marketing. My experience, and one that I think a lot of CMOs are experiencing—especially in late‐stage startups—is that invariably you eventually hit a point where the strategy changes. The needs of the organization change and you realize that you're not right for the company anymore. And for a lot of CMOs, their tenure with a company is 6–18 months and then they're back in the job hunting market. I didn't want to cycle in and out all the time and the fractional role allows me to be in market rather than in between jobs. I started doing fractional CMO work almost exclusively with startups that had raised some capital, launched a product or were ...