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I offer board advisory services where I share my cumulative go-to-market knowledge…
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Bill Macaitis shared thisExcited for Fasthub's launch! Democratizing integrations for all.Bill Macaitis shared thisWhy should integration software be reserved for companies with enterprise-sized budgets? Next in our Advisory Board series: Bill Macaitis, former SVP at Salesforce, former CMO at Zendesk, former CMO and CRO at Slack, on why FastHub is taking a different go-to-market approach. Many established integration platforms were built around large enterprise deals. Their pricing and implementation models often reflect that. FastHub takes a different approach: easier to get started, with a faster path to value. Watch Bill’s take below. What part of adopting integration software is still harder than it should be? #DigitalTransformation #iPaaS #IntegrationPlatform
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Bill Macaitis shared thisEducation can change the trajectory of a life. My daughter is helping lead a fundraising effort through her school to support girls in underserved communities in Kenya with access to secondary education and leadership training through Daraja Academy. She asked me to help spread the word because this cause means a lot to her, and I’m proud to support her in it. We’re incredibly fortunate to live in a community with access to strong schools and opportunities. This is a chance to help make that possible for others. A like, comment, or share would help extend the reach. And if you’re able to contribute, even a small amount would be deeply appreciated (link in comments). Thank you for your support.
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Bill Macaitis reposted thisBill Macaitis reposted thisOn this week’s episode of Growth Journal, I speak with Bill Macaitis about how AI is reshaping B2B and B2B marketing. Barriers to entry are collapsing, opportunity is exploding, and it’s a little terrifying. Standing out matters more than ever. Episode 2 with Bill Macaitis out now https://lnkd.in/ebWg47Be #B2Bmarketing
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Bill Macaitis shared thisExcited to be going over the key insights from Brand vs Demand Gen budget survey we did. Join on Jan 22nd at 10:00am PT if you'd like to hear it!Bill Macaitis shared thisI’ve died on this hill more times than I can count. As a CMO, I knew brand mattered. I believed it was the moat. I still do. But when revenue pressure hit — brand was always the hardest thing to defend in the room. New data just published makes that tension painfully clear: 💸 ~70% of marketing budget still goes to demand 💸 When budgets get cut, 55% protect demand — only 11% protect brand 💸 And yet 73% of CMOs say brand makes demand more efficient So why does brand STILL lose? Because most of us can’t prove it in a pipeline meeting. That’s why I’m excited to host a conversation with Bill Macaitis (former CMO of Slack, Zendesk, Salesforce), who led the research behind a study of 168 B2B CMOs. This won’t be theory or brand philosophy. It’s a CMO-to-CMO conversation about what the data actually says, where brand arguments fall apart and what you can practically do about it before your next budget cycle. If you’ve ever felt the tension between what you know works and what you’re allowed to fund — join us.
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Bill Macaitis shared thisLove what Turing is building.Why Real Enterprise Deployments Are the Secret to Better AI ModelsWhy Real Enterprise Deployments Are the Secret to Better AI Models
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Bill Macaitis posted thisFor those AI forward fellow CMO’s I wanted to share a really cool company. Fuse.is does real time AI optimization of all your paid media campaigns (think Google, Meta, Shopify, Instagram, Tiktok etc..). The really cool thing is they do optimization within a specific channel BUT also optimization across all your channels. So it can basically tell me which ads are working, which campaigns aren’t, and which channels are working best . It then can give recommendations on how to get a 10%, 20%, 50% boost with ad improvements, campaign optimization, budget allocations and overall cross channel optimization. Pretty cool for those CMO’s that have a pipeline number and are looking for an easy boost.
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Bill Macaitis posted thisBrand vs Demand Gen: who wins the budget? 💸 We surveyed 168 CMOs and the split is telling 📊 10 takeaways marketers will care about 📊 1) Demand dominates the current mix 🎯 Actual allocation is about 70% demand / ~25–30% brand. 2) But leaders want a different future mix 🔁 “Ideal” shifts toward 50% demand / 40% brand. 3) When budgets get cut… brand gets cut first 🪓 55% protect demand gen. Only 11% protect brand. 4) And yet… brand investment is rising 📈 51% increased brand investment in the last 12 months. 5) Most teams believe brand is a demand multiplier ⚡️ 73% say brand makes demand gen more efficient. 63% say brand directly fuels demand. 6) Measurement is the bottleneck 🧱 Only 28% can directly tie brand activity to pipeline. 7) Many teams aren’t measuring brand at all 🤷♂️ Only 45% say they track brand metrics. 8) When brand is measured, it leans on easy proxies 🔍 Branded search + share of voice lead. Brand recall is tracked by only ~25% 🧠 9) Budgets are tightening 💸 Median marketing spend is 8% of revenue. Companies over $500M are closer to 4%. 10) Expansion is still underweighted 🔄 Only about 10% of effort goes to existing customer expansion. 📊👇 Want the full 62 page report? Just ask for it in the comments and I will DM it to you. My takeaway 🎤 Most teams believe in brand ❤️ They just can’t defend it in a pipeline meeting 🧾 Hope these data points help those making tough decisions for their marketing budgeting cycle. It was always hard for me to find benchmarks on demand/brand split when I was a CMO and really wanted to do something for other CMOs. I believed in brand but didn't have the benchmarks to see the level that other CMOs were investing in it. If you found it helpful give it a comment / repost to help other marketers see it. 🙌 I worked on this report with Ray Rike, Carilu Dietrich, and Jon Miller. Huge credit to Ray, who also runs a benchmarking service (highly recommended) and helped pull the data together + shape the insights 🙌 Also a big thanks to all the CMOs and marketing leaders who participated in the survey!! Full Report 📊 The 62-page full report includes all the charts plus deeper benchmarks, including brand vs demand splits and budget metrics segmented by company revenue size. It also includes links where you can segment by revenue, ACV, GTM motion, pricing model, and growth rate. Comment if you want the full report and I’ll DM it to you 📩
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Bill Macaitis reposted thisBill Macaitis reposted thisData labelling is a fricking hard market and there are some core questions. 1. Why does no player want to be called a talent marketplace? 2. Is the proclaimed “revenue” real revenue or GMV? 3. What are the margins given the GMV structure of the business? 4. Are the players not concerned by the concentration of revenue with 2 customers being over 50% of revenue for every player in market? 5. If synthetic data continues to improve, WTF happens to their core business? We do not pull punches in this discussion with Jonathan Siddharth Spotify 👉 https://lnkd.in/eHiZkdUC Youtube 👉 https://lnkd.in/euVU54UN Apple Podcasts 👉 https://lnkd.in/eMt5J73y Top 5 takeaways below 👇 1. The Entire Nature of Jobs Will Change: We Will Be 100X as Productive - Today, I can run one company & Elon could run five. - If everyone will be 100x more productive, I could run 100 companies, while Elon could run 500. 2. We Will See Anyone Be Able to Be an Entrepreneur and They Will Be Able to Start With a Lot Less Money - Today, a lot of founders are intelligence-constrained. - AI will cut the cost of starting a company by replacing many early hires. - Non-technical founders can launch ideas without big funding or full teams. 3. Partial Autonomy Is the Secret to Success Here - Cursor is extremely successful because it is not designed for full autonomy. - It is designed for humans to collaborate with AI. - We need a Cursor-like tool for every role. 4. Why SaaS as We Know It Is Over and What Will Replace It - Four reasons: - 1. Complexity: Software will be cheaper & easier to build yourself - 2. Model Providers: Foundation model providers will move into the app layer. - 3. Agentic Models: Models are becoming more agentic, they could handle tasks without extra SaaS layers. - 4. Experience: SaaS today is built for human GUIs, AI in the future would not require any clicking. 5. Why Hire Great People and Get Out of the Way Is Such BS - I used to believe in the advice of hiring great people & getting out of the way. - Now I believe in working closely with great people and staying near ground truth. - Today I care less about being liked and more about solving customer problems. #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #entrepreneur #startup #investment #20VC
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Jussi Alare Thanks Jussi - excited to see all the momentum behind Fasthub!
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Bill Macaitis liked thisThirty years of IGN. Congratulations to everyone who has built, protected, and grown something this special. 🎮 IGN was where my career began, and I still carry lessons from those years into everything I do. I arrived not knowing what I didn’t know, and I was surrounded by people who cared deeply about the work and were generous enough to teach me. Three things stuck with me: Change is the only constant. Platforms, formats, and audiences were shifting constantly, and IGN never treated that as a threat. It treated it as the opportunity. Learning to get comfortable there, and eventually to enjoy change has shaped how I lead through every industry shift since. Know your community. IGN’s audience could spot inauthenticity instantly, and they held us to a high standard. Respecting that, and earning trust instead of assuming it, taught me what customer obsession really means. This understanding led to great brand partnerships which happen when you understand what a brand is trying to achieve and find a way to serve both them and the community in the same breath. That dual lens has guided my career through Pandora, Vox Media, Gimlet, Twitch, and now Amazon Ads. To the team that took a chance on me, taught me, challenged me, and made work feel like play: thank you. Many of you became lifelong friends and mentors, and I’m grateful for every one of you. Roy E. Bahat Peer Schneider Yael Prough Kim Hatfield Mark Jung Kym Nelson Carrie Tice Paul Chenier Anne Fermin Dale Strang Charlie Barrett Scott Schwanbeck Bill Macaitis Fran Mirabella Bernard Ho Mo Scanlan Luke Kallis ken keller Tal Blevins #IGN30 #IGN #Gaming #Media #CareerJourney #GratitudeBill Macaitis liked thisToday IGN turns 30. We've been celebrating all year with IGN30: original programming, event activations and merch since January. IGN.com's homepage has the highlights. You can catch up on anything you missed, watch a new Icons episode with Guillermo del Toro, and play IGN30 editions of Trivia and Gamescope. You will also notice some upgrades: an updated site layout, better search, and deeper personalization for logged-in users. We wanted to celebrate three decades by moving IGN forward, and these changes lay the groundwork for the next thirty years. Thank you to everyone who has partnered with us, worked with us and supported IGN since 1996. We couldn't have done it without you. #IGN30
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Bill Macaitis liked thisBill Macaitis liked thisWhy should integration software be reserved for companies with enterprise-sized budgets? Next in our Advisory Board series: Bill Macaitis, former SVP at Salesforce, former CMO at Zendesk, former CMO and CRO at Slack, on why FastHub is taking a different go-to-market approach. Many established integration platforms were built around large enterprise deals. Their pricing and implementation models often reflect that. FastHub takes a different approach: easier to get started, with a faster path to value. Watch Bill’s take below. What part of adopting integration software is still harder than it should be? #DigitalTransformation #iPaaS #IntegrationPlatform
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Bill Macaitis liked thisBill Macaitis liked thisThe AI noise is deafening. While the general AI mania continues, the conversation I'm having with C-level execs about putting AI to work is definitely changing. From "Wow, amazing" to "Uh oh", to "What a mess!" Change at this pace can be bewildering. Real AI progress is happening, in pockets. And real consequences are starting to emerge. Every CEO today wants to see predictable ROI, know the direct costs, and manage side effects. Harnesses make a huge difference, and the many different ones used at every company create a lot of learning opportunities. But the resulting stack of disconnected systems, apps, agents, and data is creating a real crisis in many companies. The token spend that's fueling it is starting to break the P&L. The AI discovery phase for all of us was wondrous. The experiments have been exciting, and the innovations are promising. But the rationalization phase is coming. Some of the ideas we've held about enterprise AI won't hold much longer. Staying open, flexible, and secure is now more important than ever. I'd love to read your perspective on what I share below. What do you think is getting old in the AI conversation?
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Bill Macaitis liked thisBill Macaitis liked thisSo I did a thing last night. A one minute stand-up comedy routine in front of 125+ people. It was part of my friend Jessie Jakes 🖤 brand new, incredible comedy experience show about work, "Work Is A Joke". While being on stages and using humor has always been part of my game, having to actually build a one minute set in the actual context of a comedy show turned out to be....pretty freakin stressful! Writing for an audience EXPECTING you to be funny and being constrained to 1 minute was a lot harder than I thought it would be! It ended up being all a blur to me but I'm told it went well ;). Videos will be posted at some point so you can be the judge....and either laugh at me or with me! The Laugh is all that matters! This experience was a good reminder to push yourself. Get out of your comfort zone. Try the hard thing. And while we are all experiencing varying levels of fear about what AI is going to do to our jobs and humanity, I don't believe AI will ever replace human to human experiences like this. Find these and lean into them! We're not going to stop watching humans tell jokes. AI isn't going to replace the emotions of the stress, relief, and subsequent joy that comes from moments like these. AI will never create the community I saw on display last night in Oakland. Work is a Joke will continue on, stay tuned with the website to see if and when it is coming to your city! Or reach out to Jessie and tell her to bring it to you! https://workisajoke.com/Work is a Joke — A Comedy Experience About the Absurdity of WorkWork is a Joke — A Comedy Experience About the Absurdity of Work
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Bill Macaitis liked thisBill Macaitis liked thisNow that most CIOs have agents in production, governance, security, and sovereignty have become primary concerns. The Frankenstein analogy is strong. We've seen many AI-enabled systems brought to life by stitching together disparate data sources and point solutions. But if you have an agentic systems platform in place, that's where the similarities end. https://bit.ly/3TnMpY3Just what have you stitched together? OutSystems CEO says it's time to tame the AI monsterJust what have you stitched together? OutSystems CEO says it's time to tame the AI monster
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Bill Macaitis liked thisBill Macaitis liked thisI attended my 22nd Dreamforce this week - and it was clearly our ‘Best. Dreamforce. Ever.’ I can’t help but reflect on how this amazing Marketing team has grown over the last two decades. It’s clearly the best team in the business (psst… join us, I’m hiring AI node-based workflow design leads https://lnkd.in/gxwhXguS). What made it even more special? Experiencing Dreamforce along side my new UCI grad while he networked with companies all week (psst… if you are hiring AI-forward, Design Software Engineers, hit him up!! Jadon Tapp )
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Bill Macaitis liked thisImposter syndrome FTW!Bill Macaitis liked thisHow to Turn Imposter Syndrome Into Fuel. From the F1 track to the C-suite, Colin Fleming took anything but the conventional route to the top of marketing. His racing past once felt like something to hide. Today, it’s part of what makes his story and his leadership different. In this episode of The Executive Table, Bloomberg Media's leadership video series, Fleming, Chief Marketing Officer, Business, at OpenAI, reveals what happened when he stopped worrying about having the “right” credentials, got comfortable with discomfort and turned imposter syndrome into fuel.
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Bill Macaitis liked thisBill Macaitis liked thisCongress used to be nearly 70% veterans; today it's closer to 20%. And the same research shows veteran members vote in a more bipartisan pattern than their non-veteran colleagues. Veterans share an experience that transcends politics and demographics. I am excited to host a fireside chat on Thursday of Dreamforce, with my friend Rye Barcott ��� Marine veteran, co-founder of CFK Africa and With Honor, and author of the instant NYT bestseller Courage Can Save Us. When I first met Rye, I instantly felt and shared his conviction that public service — done with courage, not partisanship — is what actually moves our country forward. His new book profiles ten extraordinary Americans, veterans and public servants across the political spectrum, who carried that ethic from the battlefield into public office. It's a timely, hopeful case for courageous leadership rooted in principles over politics. Can't wait for this conversation. See you at Dreamforce. #Dreamforce26 #Leadership #Courage #PublicService #vetforce Tom House Dean Robison Kevin Paschuck Bill Pessin Dan Davis
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