Should marketers aspire to be CEO?  Of course that depends on the individual talents and goals of the marketer; but for this marketer, the answer is no.  Early in my career I was sure that I wanted to be a CEO.  I would get there either by working my way up an organization or starting my own company.  Following Uproar.com’s NASDAQ listing in 2000 I was given the opportunity to try my hand at general management.  As President of European operations I discovered that there were some significant downsides to general management.  Managing European sales, finance, engineering, and staff reductions in a post bubble internet company, I had very little time to focus on my true passion and talent – marketing.  

So following Uproar’s acquisition by Vivendi Universal in 2001, I ran worldwide marketing for an established software company, Graphisoft.  It was a classic turnaround situation.  While the new executive team did a great job getting the company back to profitability, I discovered that “established companies” weren’t my cup of tee either.  It is very difficult to change an established company’s culture to make it marketing focused.  I don’t operate very well in a company where marketing is an afterthought. In addition to internal challenges, I also had to deal with long-standing external channel conflicts.  Resellers were used to near total independence and fiercely protected their customer lists.  They had lifestyle businesses and didn’t want corporate marketing help.  Many even complained about a large uptick in trial leads sent via the corporate website (fears that we would collect potential customer names).  Again, this left very little time for productive, creative marketing initiatives aimed at high growth market opportunities. 

So when my former Uproar CEO and founder offered me the opportunity to run marketing for a new startup I jumped at the chance.  Despite the challenges of establishing market traction, I knew startup life offered the most fulfilling job opportunity.  Uproar had been very lucrative and by bringing together some of the key team members we knew we could do it again.  I could also apply many of the lessons I learned at Uproar through trial and error – and avoid some of the costly errors. 

Though it took me a while to reach the conclusion – I’m sticking with marketing and specifically marketing in early stage high tech startups.  Not only does focusing on marketing let me contribute my best talent to an organization, it also significantly increases my chance of a successful exit.