Grow your B2B software company with Founder-Led Marketing
Project 33 helps B2B software startups create awareness for their solution, build trust & credibility in their market, generate inbound demos, and drive efficient growth by implementing Founder-Led Marketing and positioning their founder as an authority in their space.
How Founder-Led Marketing works
Founder-Led Marketing
[faʊndə-lɛd ˈmɑːkɪtɪŋ] • noun
Founder-Led Marketing (FLM) is an approach to B2B growth that leverages the founder's unique story, expertise, and authority to create awareness, build trust, and generate demand by turning their insights into shareable, bite-sized marketing assets. Why the founder? Because in order to efficiently drive revenue today, B2B marketing needs to be built on deep customer, product, and market insights – and no one understands them better than the founder.
Jay Flores, Director of Demand Gen & Growth Marketing at Project 33
Anurag Gupta, Founder & CEO at Shoreline
1 hour interview with our team / week
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& more
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short-form video, text & image content for your Linkedin, Youtube, ad campaigns, podcast, website, newsletter, Tiktok, etc.
Why it works: the 7 Hour Rule
In B2B, prospects need a certain amount of time to warm up to your company and your offer before they're able to buy. That's the "7 hour rule": it takes people, on average, 7 hours to make big decisions.
These 7 hours include researching your product, understanding the features, talking with peers, getting internal buy-in from their team, comparing you to competitors, thinking about the decision, reading reviews, etc.
Traditionally, B2B companies "accumulate" these seven hours through Sales: multiple calls, meetings, back-to-back emails, another phone call, another meeting, taking them out for dinner, etc. It's extremely time intensive and requires 1:1 interactions.
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With Founder-Led Marketing, you provide 80% of the information your prospects need upfront and in places they already spend time (Linkedin, Youtube, email, etc), so they can educate themselves about your solution and validate your domain expertise on their own. And because it's a scaled approach (you can record videos once, and thousands of prospects can all watch the same videos), you spend your time as a founder efficiently while giving your sales team aircover — so they can close deals faster and at a higher win rate.
Create awareness
Sophisticated B2B buyers want to hear from an expert, not a marketing person. Because the founder has been with the business since day one, they have the backstory and expertise to get your buyer's attention.
Build trust & credibility
To build trust and credibility in your market, you need to be able to communicate deep, technical insights. And no one understands your company, product, customers and market better than the founder.
Generate more demand
To create demand for a new product, you need someone who is actively evangelizing your category and carrying the flag for your company, and no one is better suited to do this than the founder.
Founder-Led Marketing vs Status Quo
Traditional B2B Marketing | Personal/Founder Branding | Founder-Led Marketing | |
|---|---|---|---|
Objective | Generate leads / MQLs | Grow personal social media following of the founder | Drive revenue & business growth |
Channels | Google ads, website blog/SEO, email marketing | Linkedin, Instagram, TikTok | All channels (channel agnostic) |
Content | Product features, product pitches, CTAs | Personal anecdotes, personal opinions | Insights, industry commentary, educational content |
Organic/paid | Organic & paid | Organic | Organic & paid |
Demand | Pure demand capture | Demand capture & demand creation | Demand capture & demand creation |
Target market segment | The 3% who are actively looking to buy right now | The 97% who are currently not interested in buying | 100% of the market by creating different messaging for each segment |
Lead quality | High volume, low quality | Highly variable | Low volume, high quality |
Lead to win rate | 0.01-1% | Highly variable | 3-10% |
Assumption | In order to sell more, we need more leads and email contacts for our sales team to pound | In order to sell more, we need more followers and likes on social media | In order to sell more, we need to build trust with customers and educate our buyers long before they talk to Sales |
Effectiveness | Declining | Highly dependent on the charisma of the founder | High |
When FLM doesn't work for your company
❌ Your founder is new in the field or doesn't have deep domain expertise
✅ Your founder has deep domain expertise of the field you’re in (eg. in cybersecurity if you’re selling cybersecurity software) and is respected by peers
❌ You're still building the product or don't have a clear buying persona (you sell to anyone)
✅ You have traction (> $1M ARR) and know exactly what you're selling & to whom
❌ You're selling a low-cost, B2C or a very simple, self-explanatory product
✅ You're selling a complex, expensive solution ($10k+ ACV) to sophisticated buyers (Director-level & up)
❌ You're running product-led growth (PLG): Your users can self-sign up, easily trial your product, and upgrade to a paid plan without talking to Sales
✅ You're running sales-led growth (SLG) or have a hybrid PLG + enterprise sales motion: Your users can't self-sign up for free and trial your product on their own
❌ Your founder is only involved in a narrow area of the business or doesn't interact with customers and prospects
✅ Your founder is still involved in most functions of the business and has regular interactions with customers and prospects (usually means between 10-100 employees, sometimes larger)
❌ You just want some "Linkedin content" for your founder
✅ You have the willingness to make Founder-Led Marketing an organizational approach to growth
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❌ Your founder is new in the field or doesn't have deep domain expertise
❌ You're still building the product or don't have a clear buying persona (you sell to anyone)
❌ You're selling a low-cost, B2C or a very simple, self-explanatory product
❌ You're running product-led growth (PLG): Your users can self-sign up, easily trial your product, and upgrade to a paid plan without talking to Sales
❌ Your founder is only involved in a narrow area of the business or doesn't interact with customers and prospects
❌ You just want some "Linkedin content" for your founder
✅ Your founder has deep domain expertise of the field you’re in (eg. in cybersecurity if you’re selling cybersecurity software) and is respected by peers
✅ You have traction (> $1M ARR) and know exactly what you're selling & to whom
✅ You're selling a complex, expensive solution ($10k+ ACV) to sophisticated buyers (Director-level & up)
✅ You're running sales-led growth (SLG) or have a hybrid PLG + enterprise sales motion: Your users can't self-sign up for free and trial your product on their own
✅ Your founder is still involved in most functions of the business and has regular interactions with customers and prospects (usually means between 10-100 employees, sometimes larger)
✅ You have the willingness to make Founder-Led Marketing an organizational approach to growth
Implementing FLM:
Project 33 vs In-house vs Agencies*
Project 33 | Hiring in-house | Stacking agencies |
|---|---|---|
Dedicated Director of Demand Gen & Growth Marketing | Director of Demand Gen & Growth Marketing ($150k/year) | - |
Dedicated Marketing Manager | Marketing Manager ($85k/year) | - |
Dedicated Copywriter | Copywriter ($60k/year) | - |
Dedicated Video Editor | Video Editor ($50k/year) | - |
Linkedin content | ✓ | LinkedIn agency ($3,500/month) |
Youtube content | ✓ | Youtube agency ($2,500/month) |
Email newsletter content | ✓ | Email Marketing agency ($2,500/month) |
Website SEO content | ✓ | SEO agency ($4,000/month) |
Tiktok/Shorts/Reels content | ✓ | Shortform content/Tiktok agency ($2,000/month) |
Linkedin ads | ✓ | Linkedin ad agency ($3,000/month) |
Facebook ads | ✓ | Facebook ad agency ($3,000/month) |
Time commitment for the founder: 1-2h/week | Time commitment for the founder: Depends, usually 2-4h/week | Time commitment for the founder: Highly variable, easily 5h+/week |
Time to implementation: 30 days | Time to implementation: 120-180 days | Time to implementation: 90 days |
Total cost: $13,000/month | Total cost: $28,750/month | Total cost: $20,500/month |
*This chart assumes that in each case you've already hired your internal marketing leader/exec (CMO/VP/Head of Marketing)
Founder-Led Marketing is easy to implement with Project 33
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What are the results I can expect?ComX generated 3-4 inbound demo requests per week for their $60k ACV product after 1.5 months. Siteimprove grew their pipeline from 5 to 50 $100k deals in 4 months. These are results for dedicated teams with strong product-market fit and a clear buying persona. The full customer interviews are on our case study page.
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How long does it take to get results?Depends on your ACV and sales cycle length. After 1 month, we want to see positive signals (messages, comments, website visits, connection requests from ICPs). After 3 months, we want to see pipeline being generated (demo requests, qualified opportunities) that justify our fee.
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How much does your service cost?Pricing starts at $13,00USD / €12.000EUR per month. More info on our pricing page.
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How does it work?You fill out a questionnaire about your company, product, market and customers, we prepare questions for your founder, interview them for for 1h every week, turn their founder's insights into bite-sized video, text and image content, and distribute it on Linkedin, Youtube, your website, in an email newsletter, podcast, via paid ads on Linkedin & Facebook, and more — to build awareness and trust with your target accounts. More info on our process page.
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What if we don't get results?We disqualify prospects thoroughly based on our criteria. If by the end of month 3, we have not generated qualified pipeline that our service pays for itself, you get out of the contract early.
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How much time does the founder need to spend on this?1-2 hours/week.
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What are the resources & team size we need to support this?Besides the founder, you need 1 person on your side to support our process. They will need to dedicate 2-4 hours/week to it. Their main task is to approve content before it goes live. Usually this is the person who owns marketing on your team, but it can also be the founder themselves.
Frequently asked questions
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What are the results I can expect?ComX generated 3-4 inbound demo requests per week for their $60k ACV product after 1.5 months. Siteimprove grew their pipeline from 5 to 50 $100k deals in 4 months. These are results for dedicated teams with strong product-market fit and a clear buying persona. The full customer interviews are on our case study page.
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How long does it take to get results?Depends on your ACV and sales cycle length. After 1 month, we want to see positive signals (messages, comments, website visits, connection requests from ICPs). After 3 months, we want to see pipeline being generated (demo requests, qualified opportunities) that justify our fee.
-
How much does your service cost?Pricing starts at $13,00USD / €12.000EUR per month. More info on our pricing page.
-
How does it work?You fill out a questionnaire about your company, product, market and customers, we prepare questions for your founder, interview them for for 1h every week, turn their founder's insights into bite-sized video, text and image content, and distribute it on Linkedin, Youtube, your website, in an email newsletter, podcast, via paid ads on Linkedin & Facebook, and more — to build awareness and trust with your target accounts. More info on our process page.
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What if we don't get results?We disqualify prospects thoroughly based on our criteria. If by the end of month 3, we have not generated qualified pipeline that our service pays for itself, you get out of the contract early.
-
How much time does the founder need to spend on this?1-2 hours/week.
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What are the resources & team size we need to support this?Besides the founder, you need 1 person on your side to support our process. They will need to dedicate 2-4 hours/week to it. Their main task is to approve content before it goes live. Usually this is the person who owns marketing on your team, but it can also be the founder themselves.