DOES THIS SOUND

LIKE YOU?

You’re a founder

who's built something real. But growth has slowed —
and pressure is increasing.

You might be dealing with one or more of the following:

  • Revenue or pipeline has plateaued
  • Marketing activity is high, but impact is unclear
  • You have junior or mid‑level GTM talent, but no senior strategy or leadership
  • You need to show traction to raise the next round
  • Your story doesn’t land clearly with investors or the market
  • You’re acting as the de‑facto CMO — and it’s unsustainable

At this stage, doing more isn’t the answer. Clarity, focus, and leadership are.

You’re an executive

overseeing a well-known brand...
that is dormant, in decline or losing revenue

You might be dealing with one or more of the following:

  • Revenue has plateaued or is in decline
  • Marketing activity is high, but with decreasing impact
  • Your team knows something has to change but no one wants to get blamed for a bad decision
  • Board members and investors are getting impatient
  • Your brand is well-known but monetization is not working
  • You need to launch a brand extension but have no idea how

Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity." – Albert Einstein

LIKE YOU?

WHAT I DO

Zero >>> One >>> Exit in 12 mo

AI / Data Infrastructure B2B

3x pipeline | series b >>> Exit

AI Content Moderation - Enterprise B2B

$18 m raised | 3k providers in network

Healthcare FinTech B2B2C

For Seed > Series C CEOs & Founders:

I step in as your CMO — bringing strategy, structure, and momentum.
I don’t sell campaigns or channels.

I take ownership of the repeatable growth problem.

That typically includes:

  • Clarifying positioning, messaging and brand narrative
  • Defining a focused GTM strategy tied to revenue
  • Establishing KPIs, priorities, and operating cadence
  • Leading and leveling up existing GTM teams
  • Creating a credible traction and fundraising story
  • Building demand engine for repeatable growth

The goal is simple:

make progress visible and repeatable — fast.

Case Study

For Executives & IP Owners:

I bring the outside perspective you need – with no political baggage
– and a detailed plan to relaunch and monetize your brand.


I align your team on the relaunch & growth plan.

That typically includes:

  • Revealing the disconnect between internal and market perceptions of your brand and it's market
  • Distilling market opportunity, positioning and narrative
  • Defining a focused GTM & Product strategy tied to revenue
  • Establishing KPIs, priorities, and operating cadence
  • Leading a rebrand or launch and growth plan

The goal:

reconnect your brand to its market – and grow.

Case Study

Justin Davis

CEO & CoFounder Spectrum Labs AI (Acquired by ActiveFence)
Matli's brand and product marketing leadership was instrumental in building the Spectrum Labs brand to become the most trusted leader in AI content moderation, positioning it well for it's eventual acquisition.

Greg Ahearn

Chief Marketing Officer, LeapFrog Enterprises (Acquired by VTech)
Dave is the unique combination of creative talent and
business sense… No task was ever too big or timeline too aggressive.
He was the person I would go to when I had to "make it happen.”

Josh Newman

CoFounder & CTO, Nurdle AI (Acquired by DUCO Partners)
Dave’s early-stage product marketing and brand launch expertise were critical in getting Nurdle's brand off the ground quickly.
He helped us build a pipeline of pilot customers in the early design and product-market-fit stages and was a great thought partner developing product, ICP, and use-case hypotheses. He showed a keen ability to distill advanced AI product details into simple and compelling value propositions.

SERVICES

Fractional CMO

(Seed > Series C stage)

For founders who need results in the next 4–8 months

Typical engagement

  • 3 - 12 months
  • Hands-on leadership, not advisory theater
  • Weekly working cadence with you and your team

What changes

  • You have a clear growth strategy, not just activity
  • Your team knows what matters — and how success is measured
  • You can articulate where growth is coming from and why
  • You regain leverage with investors, your board, and your team

Brand & Growth Strategy

(Enterprise & IP Owners)

For established brands and IP owners who need to build relevance, growth & revenue

I  partner with senior leaders at mid-market and enterprise companies who need to:

  • Reposition a brand that has lost momentum
  • Modernize GTM strategy without breaking the business
  • Monetize IP through new products, partnerships, or extensions
These are focused, senior-level engagements — designed to unlock clarity and direction, not add complexity.

Launch Advisory

(Pre-Seed–Enterprise)

For leaders who need to launch a new category, product or brand and quickly validate product-market fit

For early-stage startups or existing companies launching new categories or products:

  • MVP product-market-fit sprint development, testing and market validation guidance
  • Launch strategy for new products and new categories; team guidance on launch
  • Pitch deck and fundraising advisory
Zero-to-One guidance for teams who can build, launch and deploy but aren't sure how to validate market, thesis, PMF and encapsulate traction & vision for investors.

Selected Outcomes:

0-to-1

PE roll-up exited at strong
multiple in 4 years

$1B+

in franchise licensing revenue
nlocked through repositioning

50%

reduction in marketing creative costs at global scale

#7>#2

Brand preference improved from #7 → #2 in competitive global consumer category

+45%

YoY MAUs
with improving retention and CAC

3×

pipeline growth
at a Series B AI SaaS company

+230%

MQL → SQL
conversion in B2B SaaS

+45%

YoY MAUs
with improving retention and CAC

HOW I WORK

Most growth problems aren’t execution problems. They’re clarity problems.

My work starts with deep discovery — not tactics — to understand:

  • What truly differentiates the business
  • Where it has earned credibility
  • Why it matters now to customers
  • Which assumptions may no longer be true
That process often surfaces a gap between how a company sees itself and how customers actually behave.
Leadership & frontline sales interviews
RAG & Private LLM Consolidation & Market Data Mining
Async AI transcripts of stakeholders
ProprietaryAnalysis Process

From there,
I focus on:

  • Translating insight into clear positioning, targeting and messaging
  • Turning positioning into operating priorities
  • Aligning teams, metrics, and investment around what actually drives growth - and building Brand from that
  • Building and leading the GTM team, defining the tech stack, aligning on RevOps & funnel tracking to create a data-driven GTM org
  • Executing in test-and-learn sprints to distill a repeatable demand engine with high ROI
When strategy works, it doesn’t live in a deck. It shows up in decisions.

This approach
works whether
the challenge is:

  • Creating pipeline at a growth-stage startup
  • Turning positioning into operating priorities
  • Or helping leadership navigate a moment of inflection or break plateaus and scale
DOWNLOAD THE PROCESS OVERVIEW

SELECTED OUTCOMES

Seed > Series A | Wearables Data & AI

B2B Enterprise Sales

Created a new B2B category and built a repeatable GTM engine — turning opportunistic enterprise sales into sustained pipeline and multi‑year growth at an AI & wearables data startup.

Seed > Series A | Wearables Data & AI

B2B Enterprise Sales

Case Study

Series B > Exit | AI Content Moderation

B2B Enterprise Sales

As in‑house CMO, scaled pipeline and conversion quality at an AI B2B SaaS company from Series B through acquisition.

Series B > Exit | AI Content Moderation

B2B Enterprise Sales

Case Study

Series B | Mass Consumer Apps for Kids

B2C Brand & App Store

Drove durable, high‑quality growth by prioritizing intent, engagement, and retention over vanity metrics in a mass consumer app for kids and families.

Series B | Mass Consumer Apps for Kids

B2C Brand & App Store

Case Study

Zero >>> One >>> Exit in 12 mo

AI / Data Infrastructure B2B

Launched an AI/Infrastructure enterprise B2B PLG SaaS startup from 0 to $1.5M in pipeline $250K in sales within first quarter (pre-product), leading to rapid acquisition.

Zero >>> One >>> Exit in 12 mo

AI / Data Infrastructure B2B

Case Study

Zero > Exit | Private Equity Roll-Up

B2C Premium Brand & Product Marketing

Unified a fragmented private‑equity roll‑up under a single brand and GTM strategy, contributing to a successful exit.

Zero > Exit | Private Equity Roll-Up

B2C Premium Brand & Product Marketing

Case Study

Seed | Healthcare FinTech B2B2C

Brand, Product UX & Go-to-Market

Took a healthcare-payments startup from no product to five products in 12 months — $18M seed raised, 3,000+ providers and $66M in loan applications.

Seed | Healthcare FinTech B2B2C

Brand, Product UX & Go-to-Market

Case Study

Enterprise | Mass Consumer Tech for Kids

Brand & Marketing Transformation

LeapFrog's customer base churns every 5–7 years as children age out of the brand—requiring a complete reset with a new generation of parents. When I joined as VP of Global Creative and Head of Marketing Ops & Execution, brand trust and recall among Millennial moms had fallen to #7 while Amazon, Samsung, and Nabi were entering the children's tech category. Internally, the organization had no documented processes, no accountability structures, and some of the lowest employee engagement scores leadership had ever seen. Over two years, I led a comprehensive transformation of brand positioning, marketing strategy, creative operations, and organizational systems—simultaneously improving brand relevance, marketing ROI, and employee morale while cutting costs and time-to-market across the board.

Enterprise | Mass Consumer Tech for Kids

Brand & Marketing Transformation

Case Study

Enterprise | Global Consumer Products

B2B Enterprise Sales & B2C Mass Consumer Marketing

Repositioned underperforming retail licensing by translating consumer insight into brand strategy, helping unlock $1B+ in franchise licensing revenue.

Enterprise | Global Consumer Products

B2B Enterprise Sales & B2C Mass Consumer Marketing

Case Study

Enterprise | Shopping Centers/Real Estate

B2C Mass Consumer Brand Strategy

Repositioned a legacy retail portfolio around experience, informing real investment and divestment decisions as the category declined.

Enterprise | Shopping Centers/Real Estate

B2C Mass Consumer Brand Strategy

Case Study

Enterprise | Secure Cloud Data Storage

B2B Enterprise Sales Enablement & Brand

Led GTM, brand strategy and sales enablement to launch a new secure cloud storage business for the $1B entertainment division of a Fortune 1000 enterprise B2B.

Enterprise | Secure Cloud Data Storage

B2B Enterprise Sales Enablement & Brand

Case Study

Enterprise | Music & Entertainment

Brand Revitalization, Licensing & New Revenue

Turned a money-losing studio cash-positive and made the Capitol Tower EMI’s crown jewel again — launching five new lines of business, including 8-figure licensing.

Enterprise | Music & Entertainment

Brand Revitalization, Licensing & New Revenue

Case Study

WHAT A TYPICAL ENGAGEMENT LOOKS LIKE

Phase

1

Diagnose & Align (Weeks 1–3)
Executive and stakeholder interviews
Review of GTM, funnel, and performance data
Clear articulation of the core growth problem
Output
Shared diagnosis and a short list of highest‑leverage opportunities.

Phase

2

Define the Strategy (Weeks 3–6)
Clarify or refine positioning
Define growth priorities and tradeoffs
Establish success metrics and operating cadence
Output
A GTM strategy leadership can actually commit to.

Phase

3

Activate & Lead (Weeks 6–12)
Translate strategy into execution priorities
Lead or support GTM teams
Establish accountability and operating rhythm
Output
Early traction, clearer ownership, visible momentum.

Phase

4

Decide What’s Next
Extend the engagement
Transition leadership internally
Narrow focus to a specific initiative
Or wrap up with a clean handoff
Output
The right outcome is the one that best serves the business.

WHO I'M A GOOD FIT FOR

I’m a strong fit if you are:

A Seed–Series C CEO who:

  • Revenue or pipeline has plateaued
  • Is stuck or plateaued
  • Needs senior GTM leadership without hiring too early
  • You need to show traction to raise the next round

A senior executive or investor who:

  • Is navigating relevance or growth challenges
  • Needs repositioning tied to real decisions
  • Values clarity over activity

I’m probably not a fit if you’re looking for:

  • Execution‑only or single-channel marketing support
  • Someone to run channels without strategy
  • Validation of existing assumptions
  • A surface‑level rebrand
  • Open‑ended consulting without urgency
  • A "figure-head" CMO that makes a lot of speeches but doesn't touch operational details or execution

THIS ISN'T

A SALES PITCH

Start with a 30‑minute Founder Diagnostic

I'm not here to pitch you.
But in one call I can tell you if I can help.

We’ll:

Decide quickly whether it makes sense to work together
Diagnose what’s actually holding growth back
Identify where leverage exists
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

HypeScience

Get a glimpse under the hood of how brands and marketers shape our world

Is Starbucks About to Lose Billions in Free Advertising—One Cup at a Time?

Starbucks is phasing out clear plastic cups to reduce landfill waste—but the move may cost them one of their most valuable marketing engines.

Forbes: How to Fix the Marketing Strategy-Execution Gap

Two-thirds of strategies fail in execution. In marketing, the gap usually comes down to how strategy and creative teams work together — and how to close it.

In About 24 Months, AI Agents Will Kill Your Entire B2B Funnel

While marketers panic about AI search, the real threat is already here: AI agents that buy software without ever visiting your website