There’s a troubling trend in boardrooms worldwide. As companies move from startup mode and scale into growth-stage execution, many are choosing to underinvest in marketing leadership, mistaking it as a cost center rather than the strategic engine behind revenue generation and go-to-market (GTM) execution.
Instead of hiring experienced VPs or CMOs, founders and investors hire cheaper, less seasoned marketers. While they are often digitally savvy, they have little exposure to the full scope or strategy behind GTM leadership. Many have only worked in one or two areas of marketing, like demand gen or content, and lack the experience with brand, product marketing, operations, analytics and sales alignment needed to grow a company.
Meanwhile, experienced marketing executives sit on the bench
You know these seasoned marketing leaders. They’re battle-tested, data-driven and growth-proven. Suddenly, thousands or tens of thousands of them aren’t getting interviews because companies choose budget over backbone. Unfortunately, the cost of that decision shows up in pipeline gaps, missed revenue targets and stalled growth.
The sad fact is that these leaders were the builders behind the very success stories VCs now chase. Many led companies through scale-ups, acquisitions and IPOs. And yet, they’ve been cast aside in a tech economy increasingly unwilling to pay for experience.
What has changed? Startups think they’re being lean. In reality, they’re blind.
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The market’s miscalculation: A costly mistake in disguise
The logic appears sound: Hire early career exceptional talent now, layer in leadership later. This misstep introduces significant risk. GTM execution and the rise of account-based strategies are not just about sales enablement and running siloed campaigns. They require the orchestration of:
- Product marketing.
- ICP definition.
- Market segmentation.
- Intent data.
- Sales activation.
- Buyer journey strategy.
All of these require building organizational alignment (or what I call herding cats). That requires meeting your stakeholders where they are, not where you are. It is the biggest challenge for marketing and not for the inexperienced or faint of heart.
When startups build without senior marketing leadership, they gamble on short-term activity over long-term strategy. It rarely pays off and is certainly not a sustainable pipeline strategy.
But do startup CEOs know any better? Many do not. Marketing is one of the most misunderstood parts of the business.
The value of great marketing with a great leader
A great marketing leader is not just a storyteller but a strategist, growth driver and cross-functional partner who works closely with sales, product and customer success to accelerate pipeline and expand customer value. They translate market insights into action, structure high-performing teams and build scalable, measurable campaigns.
Marketing doesn’t directly drive opportunities, create meetings or close deals. Sales does that. But great marketing makes doing those things easier, faster and more predictable. Marketing does this by building awareness, generating demand, warming up the market and positioning the brand as the best choice. It shapes the narrative, identifies high-intent accounts and arms sales with the insights, messaging and content needed to convert interest into action.
Marketing is the strategic force multiplier behind every deal closed. When aligned with sales, marketing doesn’t just hand off leads; it fuels pipeline velocity and increases win rates.
If you haven’t hired a marketing leader for this profile, what are you losing and what is the impact on the business?
5 critical risks startups inherit without senior marketing leadership
1. Lack of product market fit and ICP clarity
Startups without seasoned marketing leadership often skip out on:
- Working with the entire revenue team to define their ideal customer profile (ICP).
- Segmenting audiences by those with the highest propensity to buy, lowest churn, etc.
- Aligning/tiering that segmentation across sales, marketing and customer success.
Without this, messaging lacks resonance, product launches miss the mark and teams chase unqualified leads. Misalignment here leads to churn, poor retention and missed revenue from high-fit segments.
2. Sales and marketing misalignment kills pipeline
Without a seasoned marketing leader to align strategy across functions, silos form quickly.
- Sales teams question marketing’s value.
- Messaging gets diluted.
- Campaigns go ignored.
The result is a fractured GTM effort where revenue opportunities are lost not from a lack of leads but from a lack of cohesion.
3. Wasted spend on martech, tools and talent
Startups are racing to adopt AI, automation, big-box ABM platforms and analytics. However, these tools are expensive clutter without the strategic guidance to deploy them effectively and the respected leadership to gain cooperation. Misconfigured platforms and misaligned talent can cost companies hundreds of thousands in wasted budget without moving the revenue needle.
4. Poor market positioning that slows down ARR growth
Without a senior leader to shape the narrative, pressure-test messaging and own win/loss insights, startups often sound like everyone else. Generic messaging kills conversion. Immature positioning leads to:
- Longer sales cycles.
- Lower close rates.
- Weaker investor confidence.
5. Risky vendor selection
Every seasoned marketing leader knows how important it is to choose and partner with reliable and trustworthy vendors. A rebrand or website redesign can quickly go off track due to delays and poor content management, undermining a marketing leader’s credibility. These failures ripple across the GTM engine, stalling demand generation and diminishing revenue impact.
Dig deeper: Key marketing lessons from startup to scale-up
The rise of fractional CMOs and GTM consultants
In the wake of widespread tech layoffs and challenging reentry into the workforce, many seasoned VPs and CMOs are turning to fractional CMO or GTM consulting roles — some to stay professionally active and support their families, others as a step toward building their businesses or agencies after leaving corporate life behind.
Each VP or CMO on the sidelines has a unique story, but most are eager to reenter the full-time workforce. Access to health insurance and retirement benefits like a 401(k) are critical for many who support families and plan for the future.
While some enjoy fractional work, they describe it as challenging to find and retain long-term clients. Without a recurring revenue model, which is rare in strategic advisory roles, this path is often unsustainable and falls short of replacing their previous income.
Dogma, opportunity or dangerous holding pattern?
There’s a growing belief that fractional marketing work is becoming necessary in today’s revenue landscape. Sangram Vajre, co-founder of GTM Partners and Terminus, is a leading advocate of this perspective. He promotes fractional GTM consultants and CMOs through a newly launched certification program, offering independent senior marketing leaders the opportunity to leverage his brand, materials and methodologies for a fee.
He believes fractional GTM roles represent the future. They can provide startups with fast, flexible, cost-effective access to senior-level expertise without the lengthy hiring cycles or overhead of full-time executives. He positions fractionals as ideal for early-stage or transitional companies needing to define ICPs, build GTM infrastructure and test strategy until they’re ready for a permanent leader. It’s a model aligned with agility and outcomes.
But here’s the risk: while some experienced marketing leaders intentionally choose the fractional path, the majority view it as a stopgap while they seek full-time roles that fully utilize their capabilities and track record. That is not a true talent evolution. It’s a reactive trend born from a flawed hiring market and perpetuated by misguided narratives.
If the real risks of placing early-stage GTM ownership in inexperienced hands were fully understood, seasoned marketing leaders wouldn’t find themselves sidelined in the first place.
To be clear, I support the value of consultants — I am one myself — but when companies treat fractional roles as permanent substitutes for executive leadership, they normalize a revolving-door approach to marketing. It creates serious risks:
- Inconsistent strategy.
- Diminished accountability.
- A lack of embedded leadership to foster trust, culture and alignment across teams.
Fractionals aren’t in the weekly leadership meetings, and they aren’t present for boardroom decisions. They can’t drive internal culture, mentor teams daily or adapt to shifting business contexts in real time. They may temporarily herd the cats, but once they step away, they can’t transfer the credibility or organizational trust needed to sustain alignment.
Marketing isn’t a gig; it’s a core function. When you outsource leadership, you lose control of the discipline that connects your product, market and revenue engine.
Why this isn’t about ageism; it’s about business risk
This isn’t about age or title. It’s about outcome ownership. Seasoned marketing leaders are expensive because they reduce risk. They’ve built repeatable demand engines, scaled GTM models, adapted to downturns and driven sustainable growth. When companies choose not to hire them, they’re not saving money. They’re exposing themselves to:
- Extended time-to-market.
- Ineffective campaign performance.
- Weak revenue predictability.
- Low conversion rates.
- Poor investor confidence.
In today’s AI-first, ABM-centric world, GTM execution is far too complex for junior staff or part-time leadership.
Startups and scale-ups must shift their mindset
Respecting seasoned marketing leadership protects your GTM from unnecessary risk.
- You don’t ask a junior financial analyst to be CFO.
- You don’t ask your UX designer to lead product strategy.
- You don’t ask an SDR to lead global enterprise sales.
- You don’t ask your IT help desk lead to architect your cybersecurity roadmap.
Why would you entrust GTM strategy to someone without proven executive chops? How important is revenue attainment to your VC or PE investors or to raising your next round of funding?
Here’s what a risk-mitigating, growth-ready C-suite does:
- Hire a full-time marketing executive early while figuring out your ICP and product/market fit and before your messaging calcifies and funnel breaks.
- Align Sales and Marketing goals and reporting structure from day one.
- Make marketing a foundational voice in strategic planning and board discussions.
Don’t gamble on growth without the right leader in place
If product-market fit matters to you, so does marketing leadership. Fit doesn’t scale itself. Without a senior leader driving it, the machine breaks, the product stalls, the pipeline clogs, and the business suffers.
Stop asking why seasoned talent costs more. Start asking what it costs not to have it. Because when the pressure to grow arrives (and it always does), your leader will either be someone who’s done it before or who’s trying to figure it out on your dime.
And in the end, you get what you pay for.
Dig deeper: Rethinking fit, growth and go-to-market for the modern startup
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