Instead of being a defensive tactic to hide an idea, stealth mode can be an offensive marketing strategy. By creating a 'velvet rope' and cultivating mystery, founders can build 'potential energy' and anticipation that converts into powerful market momentum at launch.
Future marketing teams will divide labor between humans and AI. Humans will be the 'artists,' focusing on creativity, strategy, and crafting compelling experiences. AI will be the 'tactician,' handling the complex data analysis and journey orchestration to determine who gets what message and when.
As AI models improve their reasoning abilities, complex, multi-step prompts are becoming less critical. The new essential skill is 'context engineering'—the ability to provide the AI with all the relevant background information it needs to generate a truly valuable and accurate output.
The ultimate promise of AI personalization is not simply auto-generating an email. It’s about acting like a social media algorithm to orchestrate a 'playlist' of the next-best actions from a library of human-created assets, delivering true relevance at scale to move a buying group toward revenue.
As a company grows, a non-CEO founder's role inevitably shrinks as specialists are hired. This can diminish their sense of ownership, making the company feel more like a job than "their baby" and prompting them to leave and start something new, as was the case for Jon Miller at Marketo.
The biggest challenge in B2B marketing is the clash between measurement expectations and reality. Stakeholders demand linear, predictable results (like a 'gumball machine'), but buying is a complex, non-linear process. This pressure forces marketers into short-term tactics that harm long-term customer relationships.
AI's impact on go-to-market is twofold. It enables entirely new, "AI-native" business models that couldn't exist before. Simultaneously, it fundamentally changes how customers buy by using AI agents for search and email, rendering traditional metrics like open rates obsolete.