Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com

Krithika Muthukumar is a marketing veteran. She is currently the VP of Marketing at OpenAI where she was the first marketing hire. Before that, she was Head of Marketing at Retool. Her longest tenure was at Stripe where she was hired as the first marketer and scaled with the company over nine years, from a 60-person team to 7500+. She began her career in Product Marketing at Google and Dropbox. 
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In today’s episode, we discuss: 
 
Marketing lessons from OpenAI, Stripe, and Retool 
 
The 3 pillars of Stripe’s approach to brand 
 
How to manage resource allocation as a marketer 
 
Adapting marketing strategy to different business models 
 
Advice for early marketing hires 
 
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Referenced: 
 
Coca-Cola AI-generated wish card campaign: https://theprint.in/ani-press-releases/coca-cola-ignites-diwali-celebrations-with-unique-personalized-ai-generated-wish-cards/1840093/ 
 
 
Cristina Cordova: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristinajcordova/ 
 
 
Gong: https://www.gong.io/ 
 
 
Greg Brockman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegdb/ 
 
 
Kenzo Fong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenzofong/ 
 
 
Retool: https://retool.com/ 
 
 
Stripe’s “Capture the Flag” campaign: https://techcrunch.com/2012/08/22/stripes-capture-the-flag-2-0-a-hands-on-contest-for-app-developers-to-test-their-security-know-how/ 
 
 
Stripe Press: https://press.stripe.com/ 
 
 
Stripe Sigma: https://stripe.com/us/sigma 
 
 
Tanya Khakbaz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-khakbaz-a725732/ 
 
 
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Where to find Krithika Muthukumar: 
 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krithix/ 
 
 
Twitter/X: https://x.com/krithix 
 
 
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Where to find Brett Berson: 
 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ 
 
 
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson 
 
 
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Timestamps: 
(00:00) Intro 
(02:43) Getting involved in Stripe 
(05:37) Evaluating success in product marketing 
(06:35) The 3 pillars of Stripe&#039;s approach to brand 
(12:10) Managing resource allocation as Stripe grew 
(17:22) How Stripe scaled taste 
(21:30) Were Stripe reviews micromanaging? 
(24:16) Marketing under founders with strong marketing skills 
(26:44) Advice for early marketing hires 
(31:52) Marketing at Retool vs Stripe 
(33:59) Marketing to mid-market vs SMB vs enterprise 
(37:02) Marketing programs that had an outsized impact 
(39:59) Marketing horizontal vs vertical products 
(43:20) Lessons from OpenAI 
(52:22) Inside OpenAI’s recent website relaunch 
(55:57) How OpenAI’s marketers use OpenAI tooling 
(59:53) When to start hiring marketers 
(61:34) How to screen early marketing hires 
(66:39) The biggest influences on Krithika&#039;s career 
(67:52) Outro

In Depth

The Data