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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.

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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.

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Jay Flores, Director of Demand Gen & Growth Marketing at Project 33

Anurag Gupta, Founder & CEO at Shoreline

1 hour interview with our team / week

  • LinkedIn
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  • TikTok
  • youtube shorts
  • Instagram

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& more

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  • Spotify

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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

 
Founder-Led Marketing vs Alternatives
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 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)

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Dedicated Marketing Manager

Marketing Manager ($85k/year)

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Dedicated Copywriter

Copywriter ($60k/year)

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Dedicated Video Editor

Video Editor ($50k/year)

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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

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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

 
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Ready to scale your B2B software company?

 

Speak to someone on our team to find out if Founder-Led Marketing would make sense for your company.

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