Dave Gerhardt is the founder of Exit Five, the largest paid B2B marketing community in the world. Former CMO at Drift and Privy, he built Exit Five from a $10/month Patreon into a multi-million-dollar membership business. In this episode, Dave breaks down why most B2B communities die, what it takes to build one that compounds, and why he refuses to invest in attribution dashboards despite running a content-driven media business.
47 min.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Hey Alice, welcome to the show!
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Hi, thanks for having me.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Alice, you're the ex-CMO at Cognism. Can you walk us through your journey at Cognism?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I was at Cognism for nearly seven years. I joined when we were just under three million in revenue. I remember our €3M revenue party, probably about a month into having joined. When I left, fast approaching the hundred million mark.
Across that seven years, it was an amazing journey. Leading the marketing function from a team of three when I joined to about 28 of us in the marketing organization, operating globally across core European markets and the US. We went from a very SMB-focused offering to a consistent revenue split across small business, mid-market, and enterprise.
Company size: we went from maybe 25 people total to at one point 450. We acquired a couple of brands during that time. The reason I was brought on was to create a predictable, scalable, revenue-generating marketing engine. That was the job for the last seven years.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What was the biggest difference between three million in revenue and almost a hundred million?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
When you're at zero to one or three to four, you have to find out how good you are at problem-solving and building things with little to no resources. You learn things that traditionally wouldn't fall into your role, because there isn't a role for that.
You build operational infrastructure from the ground up. You'd never do that at a larger organization, but you absolutely have to do when you're in those early days. Can you troubleshoot problems no one else is owning? Are you willing to get stuck in?
You get good at unscalable things in early stages because that's what gets success. You operate fairly blind on data — there's only the foundations you build. I'd built for the fact that we would scale, thinking through "will this break when we get further?" Worth putting time into building a foundation. You have to be comfortable acting on directional insights, not full datasets.
And then it was hard for me to move more hands-off as we got bigger. The expectation is that you're no longer the bottleneck to scale. You need to give that knowledge and repeatability to your team.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You were hired as Head of Marketing, then became CMO. How did you build the trust to become CMO?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
First: don't have unrealistic expectations. This doesn't happen overnight, especially when you're a first-time CMO.
The way I thought about it: every year I was reinterviewing for my job. Whether it was Head of Marketing or CMO, every year I needed to re-interview for the role. Nobody told me. Nobody put me in that process. It was just my mentality, because I had never done that next phase. So having that as my foundation was helpful.
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Second: I worked out what mattered to the CEO. For every CEO it's different. I was fortunate — working for an inspirational founder-CEO who was passionate and clear about what he cared about. Part of the skillset of a CMO is working out what matters more than others.
I used to say: I know something really matters to James (the CEO) when he's mentioned it multiple times in the same time period of a day. Not within a week — within the same time period of a day. That meant: highly critical, prioritize getting an answer.
I worked out how he wanted to be communicated with, where he'd get frustrated. He was a founder-CEO operating at hugely high intensity. He wanted people to operate at that level with him. Learning quickly: when he asks me a question, give him an answer in the moment. That was where I needed to meet him.
Always have the numbers. Same reason as the communication piece — if he needs an answer, it's because there's a piece of work, a board member, an investor. Being on top of your numbers all the time, not having to come back or find it out from someone else, was important. Helped build a trusting relationship quickly.
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I wasn't very good at this in the early years, but I got better later: be super proactive distilling down what marketing was doing and how it led to the overall growth.
What I needed to be less afraid of was repetition. Repetition is what builds memory. The more I proactively communicated marketing's role in our growth and wins that mattered strategically, the better. He wasn't going to come and ask. It had to come from me.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Does this apply to all CMOs?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
It applies to anyone in a job who has a boss. Understand what matters to them. Communicate effectively. Proactively understand how what you do helps the overall goal. Be on top of your numbers. Repeat and internally market. Regardless of CMO title, those concepts are true.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How did you build your team?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I was big on: don't just hire to hire. I needed something to break or nearly be breaking before I'd hire into that role. Second, we were resource-constrained. I wasn't hiring people for tenure. I was hiring for attitude and ability to understand the new playbook and philosophy I wanted to build.
I had a core belief and understanding of what kind of marketing organization I wanted to build. People are a good or bad fit for that. Quickly. We trained up people at lower experience levels, more generalist. As things scaled, they became more specialist where the data showed we should invest.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
When you left, what did the marketing organization look like?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Paid acquisition function for paid channels. Demand generation — my business unit owners. They owned targets per region or segment, fully responsible for revenue and pipeline. Other parts of marketing acted as mini specialist agencies to them.
Content and SEO were split: SEO for capturing demand (organic search and LLM search). Content for building the demand creation media engine.
Customer marketing and product marketing under the same VP layer. Then the enablement team — video, website, design — a resource across the whole org.
Critical at scale: an incredible project manager who kept every cross-departmental project on track and built processes around it.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What would you have changed if you had AI tools when you were at Cognism?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Two categories of mistakes I made. First: when to in-house and when to outsource. We went through a growth-at-all-costs era where we just threw people at problems. The problem: you can only keep quality of hires to a certain level when your team is a certain size. At too large a scale, you make sacrifices. The overall ability of your team diminishes with scale. Hiring more people doesn't mean more scale — it just adds complexity, silos, training requirements.
Two concrete examples: paid and SEO. I had a strong belief I wanted all the experience and domain expertise in-house. Still important. But the cost of managing that number of people — ensuring career pathways, work variety, engagement — it can't happen at scale efficiently. There's a ton of execution work that's really boring. AI is taking a lot of that away.
Specialist in-house — your strategic knowledge and domain expertise — plus an agency or AI for execution. That's where I ended up. You execute at scale efficiently. You outsource the HR and career development issue. You don't lose internal domain expertise. People get rewarded more appropriately for strategic work. Had AI been where it is today back then, that would have happened sooner.
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Second mistake: senior hires. My philosophy was to grow people within the organization. That got challenged as the C-suite tenure changed. I'd built a marketing function with clear attributes and beliefs, not based on years on the CV.
I was open to experimenting. It comes at high cost to your P&L, hiring with much higher experience levels. The promised land: it'll be better, you'll manage less, you'll be less in the weeds, you'll learn from someone better at that domain than you.
A good example: product marketing. We tried a couple of these hires — with no success. Never lived up to expectations or cost.
Just because someone has tenure and numbers of years on their CV does not mean they'll best execute that role in your organization. Done at scale, it's detrimental to culture. People see they're hired over with the promise of learning from someone more experienced, and if that value isn't delivered, it's just an additional layer between you and the work. It's a career blocker, more expensive, less efficient.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
When does it make sense to hire someone with 10+ years from a big company?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I wouldn't. The only exception: someone like that who went to a build-phase company, stayed there two to three years, succeeded, then went back into building. I don't think hiring someone from that enterprise type and putting them into a build phase if they haven't been in build phase for 10 years is ever going to be successful.
You really differentiate the manager versus the builder. We were never at a scale where anyone could just manage. I don't know if any company can afford to just have people manage now. Everyone has to be operational and delivering unique value.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What do you see first-time CMOs consistently get wrong?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Too hands-off for too long. CEOs say to me on a weekly basis: "I just want to get some stuff done. I want to get into execution mode."
That's a critical piece marketers are shying away from — the execution work. There's a pandemic out there: people are scared to hire marketing leaders because all they think they're going to get is a positioning statement, a bit of messaging, but nothing that moves the engine.
Tied to this: it's critical to set expectations upfront with the CEO about what they're trying to achieve with a fractional hire on board. Make sure you're aligned on the output. It's not about buying hours — you should be buying an output. I should be delivering a product that helps your business move forward.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you sell demand creation to a C-suite?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
The Cognism story. I was a full-on advocate of ebooks, gated content. The best company at generating them at the best price. I took Chris Walker on a podcast and challenged all his beliefs. I was committed.
Then we got to another phase of growth. I was doing the math. I split the funnel: declared intent demo requests on one side, content leads on the other. Conversion rates from demo request to closed-won versus content leads to closed-won.
It was super stark. I needed 25 demo requests to close 1 deal versus 100 content leads to close 1 deal. On top, ACV decay on content leads — half the ACV size of demo requests.
When you do that math, look at next year's targets, think about budget and resources — not just on marketing, on sales to follow up — the math doesn't math. It becomes unscalable.
I knew the first question was: "can't we just do more demo requests?" Yes, but how do I do it scalably and repeatably? That came from building a truly engaging, authoritative content engine that acted like a media machine — always on, all the time, to everyone in our ICP, delivering differentiated value. I couldn't do that AND gate content. Those two things didn't exist in the same world.
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
I started showcasing the data and showing the inefficiency of the old way. At the same time, sales didn't love calling content leads. To have them convert one in 100 times — they didn't enjoy that. I surfaced that feedback.
The thing that really started to work: I asked the C-suite, "how do you buy?" When you see an ebook, do you give your real personal details or use an alias? You know it's coming — a PDF in your inbox. Does it actually get read? You know you'll get cold-called from an SDR. Does that give you a great feeling? Are you more ready to buy? The answer was always no, no, no.
It's hard for people to go against the logic that this isn't the reality of how we should be consuming content. The math, the reality, plus surfacing that sales are aligned — those three things generated buy-in.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You have investors. You need to show numbers. How do you make the math math?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
This was always my argument back to Chris Walker. We're not going cold turkey. I'm going to turn down and turn off the most inefficient content campaigns. Repurpose that money into ungated content. And go to my CEO with a hypothesis showing how I'll scale demo requests in line with the spend that fills the gap on content leads.
The thing in my advantage: the crazily terrible conversion rates on content leads. I didn't need many more demo requests to fill that gap in deals closed. By turning down inefficient campaigns and turning up the new way, within two months I had correlation graphs showing spend and demo request increase. That kept the buy-in.
Then it gets more sophisticated. As you scale, putting hundreds of thousands monthly into ungated content, you get more sophisticated. You invest in software — Fibula on the LinkedIn ads side. We ended up with Dream Data, which helps across the board on the journey before they're known to you. And finally we were building proper marketing mix modeling — that's the €100M+ mark.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Why do some companies fail at this pivot?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
It can be made to sound very simple: "you just ungate your content and demo requests go up." Some people aren't getting it ungated and they expect demo requests to go up. That's not what I'm saying. There's a lot of nuance.
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
You need a strategy driving the create demand engine. We sat down and thought: we need topics we want to be known for. Memorability is built through repeatability. Random acts of content, even ungated, won't have impact. The four content buckets we covered:
And distribution. If you ungate a PDF and put it on the website, no one knows it's there. Understand where your audience hangs out, how they want to engage, what formats work for those channels.
You cannot cheat quality. That was always my bet. We're never going to be as big as competitors on spend. But we can create truly authentic, free quality content that an LLM can't write and competitors can't do at their scale, because we go to the best in the industry, get their insights, drive content from that. People don't do that. That's the other part.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Cognism acquired companies. How did you manage brand and operational integration?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Pragmatic. Strategic reason for the acquisition drives everything. Take Caspr as an example — they had an incredible brand presence in France and we were going into France. We weren't going to kill the brand. We were going to maintain and utilize it.
It was a PLG motion, we were sales-led. Helped us decide we weren't fully integrating — we didn't want to cannibalize our SMB audience on a sales-based motion. Different brand for that reason.
On the back end, fully integrated. In Paris, Caspr and Cognism in the same office, same systems, integrated teams. The Caspr marketers became the French leads — experts in the territory. Front-end strategy by acquisition rationale, back-end fully integrated where it made sense.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You wrote two books. Give me the sales pitch.
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
There isn't much of a pitch. The honest ramblings of someone trying to master the CMO role for the first time. A story of two halves — the early growth phase is so different to the later stage. I had to interact differently with the C-suite, scale my strategic lens, get less in the weeds.
The journey from a content lead generation business into a fully bespoke create-demand motion driven by a systematic content engine. It came about because we were living what we preached — we should be a media company. Publishing books is what a media company would do. I'd been open-sourcing my learnings on LinkedIn the whole time.
It was a great opportunity to test whether this format could be repurposed and packaged for the audience. It worked, but it was for Cognism. Not done for me or my personal brand.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
The ICP is the future first-time CMO of a company?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Anyone in a leadership role for the first time, or someone who wants to be a CMO or is in a role for the first time and is building. There's lots that helps regardless of exact title.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Where can people reach out?
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
LinkedIn. I'm very active. Put the bell on the LinkedIn posts.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thank you Alice.
guest—ALICE DE COURCY—ex-CMO Cognism:
Thank you.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Hey Dave, welcome to the show!
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Thanks for having me, Jordan.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Now everybody's talking about AI. CMOs and VPs of Marketing are scared. There's huge FOMO. The CEO and the board are pushing "how do we double revenue and divide the team by three with AI and agents?" On your side, you talk a lot about events, social, organic, storytelling. What's wrong with you?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I'm not an engineer. This is the perfect time if you came up to marketing from being an engineer. My friend Tom Wentworth, CMO at Incident IO, posts every day about things he's building with Claude Code. He has engineering background — perfect for this era.
My career in marketing is more on the brand side, the product marketing side. So that's my bias. But I also think there's a lot of nonsense out there right now. I run a community of B2B marketing professionals — CMOs and marketing leaders. There's a huge gap between what you see on YouTube and what's actually happening inside companies.
If you go to YouTube and type "Claude marketing," you'll see 20 videos: "I replaced my marketing team with Claude Code in 20 minutes." Then the next one says 16 minutes. There's a huge cash grab and attention grab because of how viral all these topics are right now.
Someone who makes money writing AI workflows content is very different from what's actually happening inside existing companies. I'm not an idiot — there's also real stuff in there. If I was starting a company today, the makeup of the marketing team would certainly be different. But existing companies aren't going to fire 100 people in marketing overnight. Maybe in the next couple years.
I'm at the intersection of "I believe in AI, I believe in where things are going" but I also talk to lots of people every week who'd be surprised how many people aren't even using Claude regularly. Just using Claude is a revelation for them, never mind the use cases shared online.
And ultimately, you're still selling to people. Until my AI agent does research for me and buys on my behalf, exclusively talking to your AI agent, humans are still in the buying process. There's a lot in social, community, and events that pays towards humans.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you use AI?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Absolutely, of course. I am AI. Claude was actually trained on me.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
From the way you use AI, what do you think will be in danger on the marketing side, and what will never change?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
A lot of stuff that can be replaced makes sense. Advertising is a perfect example. It's always been about how many landing page variations, copy, creative, headlines, images you can produce. Even when I worked with a strong growth team and had a great idea, they'd say "cool, but we need 50 variations." Ad creation, landing page creation, automating ads — the future is absolutely going to be: I should just be able to go to LinkedIn, type in plain text "show these ads to these people," and it just happens automatically.
But on the other end, we just came back from doing this event with 100 people in Arizona for B2B CMOs. Highly curated, lots of offline time, real conversations — about work, family, life outside work. There was something there I can't perfectly articulate, but there's something about that human in-person connection.
We're not all going extinct in the next couple years. There's a fundamental need to still want to connect. There's a trend with my kids. Content creators are filming videos with old-school video cameras because they want that look. iPods are back. Landline phones are back. People are dying for a phone with no screen, doing retreats, "raw-dogging" a flight — just sitting on the flight without using your phone or laptop. We're trying to find ways to reconnect, be human, be present, be in the moment.
I want to be in both camps — believe in AI, use it to run my business, but not lose sight of humans since the beginning of time being connected over the campfire, telling stories. Unless you believe everything is going to be automated and your AI agent will buy from my AI agent at my agency, I'm in the middle camp.
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
What's exciting for me as a marketer: I became a CMO because I was good at marketing. You get promoted in your career, eventually rise to the top, and "congratulations, you're good at marketing — you now manage the whole marketing team." Turns out when you do that, you don't actually do a lot of marketing. You do people management, budgets. Most of my day was with HR, the CFO, the CEO, fundraising. I was like, "man, I just like writing copy on a landing page and making an ad."
What's so cool now: I can have an idea — I'm not a designer, my design sucks; I'm not a developer, I only know basic HTML — but I could go this afternoon and build my own website. The speed at which we can go from having an idea to making something is super exciting. I felt this way about Canva before AI: "I can make decent thumbnails for my videos by myself."
Dave the marketer can now do all the things in marketing from my video game station — my computer.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I felt that when you left Drift and Privy, you were at the top of your game. You had to start again from scratch — you built Exit Five and the community. How did you handle that?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I never felt like I went from scratch. The thing that led me to build Exit Five was that when I was doing marketing at Drift and Privy, I started writing about marketing on LinkedIn. I had a podcast and a newsletter. It was fun.
Tale as old as time: if you write about the things you're doing online, you attract the audience of like-minded people. That led to me unintentionally, accidentally building a large following on LinkedIn of B2B marketers. It wasn't because I wanted to be famous or have a personal brand. If you actually know me, I live in the woods in Vermont. I don't drive fancy cars. I don't really care what clothes I wear. I'm never going to be the personal brand guy in front of a Lamborghini. I like to hang out with my family, work out. I do enjoy making money — that part is fun.
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I had a pretty big following. Then it was natural progression — "I have a lot of followers, I'm going to launch a paid version." The closest comparison now would be Substack. Back then it was Patreon. So $10 a month to join my Patreon. People today are like "Patreon? What the hell is a Patreon? Are you making porn?" Where now everyone has a Substack they charge people for. My vehicle was a podcast. I felt the signals in my inbox — every week, no joke, getting messages from founders, investors saying "work with me, do this thing, do consulting?" Took those all as signals: dude, there's something there. People want the thing I'm good at.
I had no expectations. I honestly thought "if I make a couple hundred bucks a month, that contributes to rent." Three to six months in I had a thousand members. That was $10,000 a month in recurring revenue from content. That broke my brain because forever in my mind, $100K in a year was the epitome of success. I was making six figures from a blog about marketing essentially.
That was while I was a CMO. One thing happened to my advantage unfortunately: COVID. We went remote, I was home every day. I built that while still CMO at Privy. I had product-market fit before I even decided to go full-time. I never felt like I was taking a risk. My career has just been stacking things on top of each other that make sense.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you have an idea of what's coming next?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I don't. But I know I'm going to take a risk. I don't think I'm ever going to retire. There's no point. The older I've gotten — approaching 40 — I'm obviously much wiser. I always rolled my eyes at older people giving advice, but I'm 38. I am smarter than I was at 25. Fact. I've had life experience.
If you don't use it, you lose it. I'm not going to retire. I want to keep making stuff. I'm a little nervous right now because so much is changing. I listened to Marc Andreessen talk to Lenny — everything, we're so screwed, AI is going to eat all the jobs. Then I'm like, should I be in AI? Should I build an AI? Then I'm using Claude every day and I'm like, tell me Claude wouldn't just replace every SaaS app in the world.
I'm bullish on real life. I'm going to own a car wash. I don't know what the idea is yet. The marketer and entrepreneur in me — I love writing, creating, communicating, public speaking. My bet would be: use my skills as a marketer to create another entrepreneurial journey after Exit Five.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Most B2B communities are like dead Slack groups. What did you do to make Exit Five work?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
The dead Slack group thing — the real answer will be in five years. It is hard. A lot of communities go to zero. I think that's because they let them get over-riddled with spam and promotional stuff.
One way we solve for that early on is by charging money for it. People thought I was just an awful arrogant evil capitalist. But money is an amazing forcing function to get some level of commitment. We just did our event in Arizona. The two pieces of negative feedback we got were from two people who had free tickets. They were invited from a sponsor.
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Number one, we charge from the beginning. Some level of commitment.
Number two, having a really focused niche. The niche of B2B marketing might not be small to you, but other communities apply to multiple areas — sales, marketing, revenue. From the beginning we've been exclusively for B2B marketers. You have to be in B2B.
Number three: I've written maybe 8,000 posts all-time and 40,000 comments. I'm doing it less now we have a team. But for the first five years, I'm in there every day — writing, commenting, policing comments. If Jordan writes a lazy post, I'm like "Hey Jordan, you should update your post — it's not very specific. What are you trying to get at?" Or "this is clearly you promoting your company." Founder mode. Things that don't scale.
Number four: we have a vibe and a way of doing things people relate to. I get messages all the time: "you're an authentic person, I really enjoyed meeting you in person."
The other thing: the value prop of Exit Five has evolved. It was just an online message board. We needed to evolve. Everyone churns for the same reason: "I didn't have enough time to log in." Like a gym membership you never cancel but never use. Two years ago I shifted from "online community in Slack" to a membership. Pay an annual membership fee and you get the discussion board, plus discounts, tickets to events, perks.
Communities mostly die because they're an acquisition channel, not the product. If a vendor owns it and the goal is nurturing people into a SaaS subscription, engagement drops. Every time. Exit Five isn't owned by a vendor. The community IS the product.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I see a lot of marketers who aren't good at storytelling, branding, communicating online. With AI, storytelling becomes the differentiator. Advice for them?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
It's hard. It's almost like a friend who just has a way. The "je ne sais quoi" — that one thing you can't explain but it's there.
It's like that friend who's just kind of funny. Never annoying. Always down to hang out. Good time in any scenario. You can't go to ChatGPT or Claude and study a storytelling structure and just print it out and have it. I don't think our brains absorb communication that way.
Everyone overused the word "taste" a year ago when AI came out. There's something to it. It's not learning the storytelling framework. It's being curious, observing the world, having opinions about what makes something good, being able to make your version of it.
The people that are really good at marketing have a wide range of interests outside of work. "I like this artist, this musician, this chef, I like how this person does a landing page." Especially in B2B: we're always like "let's go see how Stripe does their website. Let's see how Shopify does their website." Where I'm like "shoot, check this out — this lady down the street has an amazing sandwich shop here in Vermont and her website is awesome."
The confidence to not just copy what's been done in your industry. Have a strong opinion: "yeah, it's okay, nobody writes this way, but we're going to write this way because the goal is to get attention."
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
It's funny you mention taste. I just wrote a newsletter yesterday called "AI didn't kill creativity. It just proved you didn't have any."
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I have a newsletter — exit5.com/newsletter. I use Claude to write it. Guess how long it takes?
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
A long time, I imagine.
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Two hours plus to write a really good one.
I'm the subject matter expert. So it's not "you used AI to write your newsletter." I didn't just give it to AI and one-shot it. It's: "I have this idea. I recorded a podcast with Jordan. Here's the transcript. Here's two other things I've written that relate to this. Here's an example of what good looks like. Go through this, organize it, then come back and ask me questions."
That's where Claude is amazing — like having a creative agency partner on the side. "Cool, got it Dave. Do you want the intro to be like this, this, or this?" I'm like "actually, fourth option — a personal story." Instead of writing start to finish, I'm piecing each section together.
The way I write: I never write start to finish. I have this thought here, "where does it go? That's a paragraph. That's an intro. Let me punch that up." I use Claude as my editing/research/writing assistant. The output is amazing pieces I put together.
It's certainly not saving me time. It's making the output better. As a person who likes to think I'm a writer and creator, the way I use Claude is awesome but it's not saving me time. It's making the output better.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
If you're a marketing leader inside a company — you don't own the company. How do you manage the tension between writing for the company versus writing for you?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
It's easy for me — I run the business, I own it, no investors. But say you're VP of Marketing at a cybersecurity company. You can't write the same way I can. Get direct with the subject matter expert. You can use AI to get more effective content because in 15 years of marketing, the whole game has been "who are the experts inside our company?" Often developers, engineers, product people. Marketing has always needed to get them for interviews.
Now it's more possible because you can interview them, get the transcript, prompt with AI, get closer to being a subject matter expert than ever.
On personal: people buy from people. If you make a bunch of generic content with AI, it won't stand out. The opportunity is sprinkling in personality and being you. Being you for the company. That might be a false dichotomy. Every business is in the business of social media now because that's how the world gets information. We follow people. Look at LinkedIn engagement: a company page versus a personal page. That's the proof.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you look at data and dashboards for Exit Five?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
I do. I don't obsess as much as I used to because I hired a CEO. That was me spending money to make it so I don't have to. I can call Dan or text him and ask "where are we at?"
I'm a competitive person — this is fun, almost escapism. I get to play this game of business on the internet.
The main things: Revenue. Money. Turns out you have to make money. Goal: make more than you spend. Quarterly P&L meetings. Indicators on those: growth in membership — are we getting new members? Churn — losing more than we're gaining? Churn is a killer. "Wait, we're spending all this effort to grow, but we're losing 60% of it. We should fix that."
Growing our email list. List growth, engagement, opens, clicks, replies, unsubscribe rate. NPS across all our products — are people happy with the thing they're paying for? Would they recommend it?
In B2B inside a company, we were told MQLs are bullshit, content downloads don't matter. But I run a media company — those ARE our metrics. The size and engagement of our list matters. We had an unsubscribe issue — we cut all our newsletter advertising because the list was growing but we were churning out more than we were gaining.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you work on attribution?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Fuck no.
It's so simple — that's why it's easy in our business. Attribution gets complicated when you have a big team, big budgets, spending across many channels, justifying ROI. We don't.
We do get attribution. We ask every person joining our email list or community: "how did you hear about us?" It's amazing because they tell us. "Dave's LinkedIn post. I saw an ad. I listened to the podcast. I subscribed to the newsletter." We export them a couple times a year. Honestly, we don't learn that much. It reaffirms what we're doing is working.
Newsletter drives a bunch of members. Inside a real company, you'd want to be like "this month seven people bought because of our podcast, so we should do more episodes." It just doesn't fucking work like that.
So much of this comes from over-metricing marketing. It's insane. I once interviewed a CMO of a billion-dollar company who said "yeah, we don't really measure anything." Tongue in cheek, but at some point you've seen the whole game and you just know — if you do the right things, people will show up. It's when we get caught in the middle, having to micro-measure every channel, that it gets crazy.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
So you don't think about the ROI of content.
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Hell no. Because I know it. If we put out good content people like, they will join our newsletter, they will be on our podcasts, they make us look good, the brand looks good. It's a game of: if people think we're legit, they will. They're not morons. We need to keep showing up in the places they're at.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Where should we send people?
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
exit5.com is good. Also I'm on LinkedIn — Dave Gerhardt. Connect with me, send a message.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thanks Dave.
guest—DAVE GERHARDT—Founder Exit Five:
Thanks for having me.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Welcome, Adrian.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Merci. Thank you.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
So you're here for the Momentum Tour?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Yes.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Can you just speak about that tour? What is it?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Absolutely. At Webflow, we saw an amazing opportunity across the world with incredible customers. We've seen so much growth across the European business, with customers like Spotify, monday.com, and Anytime Fitness.
We really wanted to go on the road with our customers and partners to talk about how the world is changing and what we're seeing in the web space. It was an opportunity to learn from them while also sharing what we’re seeing across our 300,000 customers so we can meet this moment together, because so much is changing so quickly.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
For my audience, this is the first time they’ve heard me speak English, so apologies if I make mistakes. This is my first time recording a podcast in English, so I’m glad to do it with you.
Today, Adrian, you’re the CRO of Webflow and you’ve been there for about nine months. I’d like to understand your onboarding and your first 90 days. At this level of responsibility, those first months are critical to making an impact. How did you approach them?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
When I joined Webflow, the world was already changing quickly in the web industry, but I never imagined how fast AI would reshape discovery and search.
In my first 90 days, I focused on understanding three perspectives:
I wanted to understand our place in the market, our impact, and where the future was heading.
Since I oversee sales, marketing, support, and customer success, I also spent significant time understanding where revenue comes from, how it evolves, and how we could build a vision for the future alongside our customers, agencies, and partners.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What surprised you the most when you arrived?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
The biggest surprise was how quickly people’s behavior around information consumption changed.
Back in early 2025, AI-assisted search existed, but it wasn’t yet materially different for most people. Depending on where you lived, AI web search was still limited.
What surprised me was how quickly the world changed in the way it consumes information online.
There are now major conversations happening around:
On a positive note, one of the most rewarding surprises has been seeing what agencies and customers build. The creativity, visual quality, and immersive experiences they create are incredible.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You come from Salesforce and Tableau, which are more traditional B2B environments. Webflow has a much stronger design and creative culture. What changed in your role?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
The mission at Webflow is to bring developer superpowers to everyone.
That means helping customers make creativity their competitive edge.
The biggest shift is prioritization. At Webflow, creativity is central:
Because we’re a design-first company, there’s a higher bar for delivering excellent experiences.
For example, relaunching Webflow.com brought pressure to meet those expectations—and I enjoy that challenge.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you have more creative people in your teams compared to previous companies?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I wouldn’t necessarily say more creative people.
The difference is that creativity becomes a top priority.
Creativity shows up in many forms:
At Webflow, it’s simply much more front-of-mind.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you encourage that creativity?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I push people to be bold.
I often tell my team:
“I want you to make me uncomfortable with your idea.”
If an idea makes me uncomfortable, it usually means we’re pushing toward the edge of what’s possible.
We’re operating in a rapidly evolving world, and creativity matters not only for humans anymore—but for AI as well.
We now design for:
That requires a different philosophy.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
As CRO, you oversee sales, marketing, support, and success. How do you balance optimizing individual functions while keeping the revenue engine aligned?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I think about this as rows and columns.
Imagine a spreadsheet:
Each row and column has an owner.
The key is ensuring alignment across functions so nobody works in isolation.
I often tell the team:
“We win together, and we never lose alone.”
That means:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Where do revenue engines usually fail?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Most businesses spend too much time diagnosing the past.
Instead of traditional business reviews focused only on what happened, I run a process called “Plan to Make Plan.”
Rather than asking:
We ask:
Revenue engines become harder to manage when:
The goal is to diagnose quickly and adapt before momentum is lost.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What routines do you use to manage this?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
At the start of every month, every leader runs a “Plan to Make Plan” review.
It includes cross-functional partners.
We also run:
The rhythm matters because consistency creates accountability.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What data do you monitor daily?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I built my own dashboard called “State of the Union.”
I monitor:
I also log into Webflow daily to understand:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How deeply do you go into customer conversations?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
As deep as necessary.
I strongly believe you don’t truly understand something until you talk to customers.
When I create a messaging hypothesis, I’ll test it directly with customers within 24 hours.
That prevents strategy from becoming overly academic.
The Momentum Tour has been valuable because conversations in Paris, London, and Dubai continuously reshape the messaging based on what customers are experiencing.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I was surprised to see you attending smaller events. It feels unusual for someone in your role.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Smaller events often produce higher-quality conversations.
Right now, there’s no better place to understand change than by bringing leaders together and learning how they are adapting.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
We saw an opportunity to create more success by bringing our teams closer to customers.
Being close to customers is how you:
We’ve expanded teams across:
Research we conducted showed that 91% of marketers identified their website as their most valuable marketing asset.
Because websites drive revenue, it’s important for us to support customers not just technologically—but strategically and locally.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you draw the line between global and local teams?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I like the phrase:
“Global standards, local innovation.”
The idea is:
For example, data about AI trends may be global—but how you communicate that message should be shaped by local customer conversations.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Different countries are experiencing AI differently. France doesn’t yet have AI Overviews in Google.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Exactly.
Some countries are already testing AI-native search experiences, while others are earlier in adoption.
That’s why local market understanding matters.
You need to think not only about where the market is today, but where it will be:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you approach global/local structure differently across marketing, support, and success?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Support is global and operates 24/7.
AI has improved support efficiency because it allows faster multilingual responses.
Marketing is more centralized, but revenue ownership requires local alignment.
For example:
Customers want to speak with people who understand their market realities.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Partnerships seem to work especially well at Webflow. How do you think about them?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Agencies are not just software implementers.
They are strategic partners.
In a rapidly changing market, agencies provide:
As AI evolves, implementation becomes easier—but creativity and strategy become more valuable.
We’ve built partnership success into:
That’s why partnerships are a strategic investment.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You sit on a lot of data. What do you see happening with AI and websites?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
One thing is becoming clear:
Websites are no longer built for humans alone.
We’ve seen:
This suggests users arriving from AI are more informed and further down the funnel.
The challenge becomes:
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
We think about AI through two lenses:
This includes:
This means creating immersive experiences once users arrive.
Websites need to feel:
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I realized recently that I don’t visit Wikipedia anymore.
The information still exists—but the experience hasn’t evolved.
AI provides answers faster.
This illustrates a broader truth:
Information alone is no longer enough.
Experience matters.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
There’s a debate that websites are dying because of zero-click content. What’s your view?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
For websites to disappear entirely, you’d need a world where:
We’re far from that reality.
AI still depends on websites for understanding brands, products, and positioning.
What changes is the role of the website.
The website becomes:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Marketing is returning to first principles.
Clear messaging matters again.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I agree.
The future rewards:
AI will force companies to become more intentional.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What is your biggest challenge today?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Helping customers adapt to rapid change.
The rules are changing quickly.
Customers need help understanding:
My focus is helping customers navigate uncertainty while remaining competitive.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thank you very much, Adrian.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Thank you.
For anyone interested, we also created an AEO maturity model that benchmarks your website against trends we’re seeing across customers.
It provides practical recommendations and is freely available.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I’ll include the link in the description.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Perfect.
Speaker #2:
“Just do it. Don’t let your dreams be dreams. Yesterday you said tomorrow. So just do it. Make your dreams come true.”
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Welcome, Adrian.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Merci. Thank you.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
So you're here for the Momentum Tour?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Yes.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Can you just speak about that tour? What is it?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Absolutely. At Webflow, we saw an amazing opportunity across the world with incredible customers. We've seen so much growth across the European business, with customers like Spotify, monday.com, and Anytime Fitness.
We really wanted to go on the road with our customers and partners to talk about how the world is changing and what we're seeing in the web space. It was an opportunity to learn from them while also sharing what we're seeing across our 300,000 customers so we can meet this moment together, because so much is changing so quickly.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
For my audience, this is the first time they've heard me speak English, so apologies if I make mistakes. This is my first time recording a podcast in English, so I'm glad to do it with you.
Today, Adrian, you're the CRO of Webflow and you've been there for about nine months. I'd like to understand your onboarding and your first 90 days. At this level of responsibility, those first months are critical to making an impact. How did you approach them?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
When I joined Webflow, the world was already changing quickly in the web industry, but I never imagined how fast AI would reshape discovery and search.
In my first 90 days, I focused on understanding three perspectives:
I wanted to understand our place in the market, our impact, and where the future was heading.
Since I oversee sales, marketing, support, and customer success, I also spent significant time understanding where revenue comes from, how it evolves, and how we could build a vision for the future alongside our customers, agencies, and partners.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What surprised you the most when you arrived?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
The biggest surprise was how quickly people's behavior around information consumption changed.
Back in early 2025, AI-assisted search existed, but it wasn't yet materially different for most people. Depending on where you lived, AI web search was still limited.
What surprised me was how quickly the world changed in the way it consumes information online.
There are now major conversations happening around:
On a positive note, one of the most rewarding surprises has been seeing what agencies and customers build. The creativity, visual quality, and immersive experiences they create are incredible.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You come from Salesforce and Tableau, which are more traditional B2B environments. Webflow has a much stronger design and creative culture. What changed in your role?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
The mission at Webflow is to bring developer superpowers to everyone.
That means helping customers make creativity their competitive edge.
The biggest shift is prioritization. At Webflow, creativity is central:
Because we're a design-first company, there's a higher bar for delivering excellent experiences.
For example, relaunching Webflow.com brought pressure to meet those expectations — and I enjoy that challenge.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you have more creative people in your teams compared to previous companies?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I wouldn't necessarily say more creative people.
The difference is that creativity becomes a top priority.
Creativity shows up in many forms:
At Webflow, it's simply much more front-of-mind.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you encourage that creativity?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I push people to be bold.
I often tell my team:
"I want you to make me uncomfortable with your idea."
If an idea makes me uncomfortable, it usually means we're pushing toward the edge of what's possible.
We're operating in a rapidly evolving world, and creativity matters not only for humans anymore — but for AI as well.
We now design for:
That requires a different philosophy.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
As CRO, you oversee sales, marketing, support, and success. How do you balance optimizing individual functions while keeping the revenue engine aligned?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I think about this as rows and columns.
Imagine a spreadsheet:
Each row and column has an owner.
The key is ensuring alignment across functions so nobody works in isolation.
I often tell the team:
"We win together, and we never lose alone."
That means:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Where do revenue engines usually fail?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Most businesses spend too much time diagnosing the past.
Instead of traditional business reviews focused only on what happened, I run a process called "Plan to Make Plan."
Rather than asking:
We ask:
Revenue engines become harder to manage when:
The goal is to diagnose quickly and adapt before momentum is lost.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What routines do you use to manage this?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
At the start of every month, every leader runs a "Plan to Make Plan" review.
It includes cross-functional partners.
We also run:
The rhythm matters because consistency creates accountability.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What data do you monitor daily?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I built my own dashboard called "State of the Union."
I monitor:
I also log into Webflow daily to understand:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How deeply do you go into customer conversations?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
As deep as necessary.
I strongly believe you don't truly understand something until you talk to customers.
When I create a messaging hypothesis, I'll test it directly with customers within 24 hours.
That prevents strategy from becoming overly academic.
The Momentum Tour has been valuable because conversations in Paris, London, and Dubai continuously reshape the messaging based on what customers are experiencing.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I was surprised to see you attending smaller events. It feels unusual for someone in your role.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Smaller events often produce higher-quality conversations.
Right now, there's no better place to understand change than by bringing leaders together and learning how they are adapting.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
We saw an opportunity to create more success by bringing our teams closer to customers.
Being close to customers is how you:
We've expanded teams across:
Research we conducted showed that 91% of marketers identified their website as their most valuable marketing asset.
Because websites drive revenue, it's important for us to support customers not just technologically — but strategically and locally.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you draw the line between global and local teams?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I like the phrase:
"Global standards, local innovation."
The idea is:
For example, data about AI trends may be global — but how you communicate that message should be shaped by local customer conversations.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Different countries are experiencing AI differently. France doesn't yet have AI Overviews in Google.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Exactly.
Some countries are already testing AI-native search experiences, while others are earlier in adoption.
That's why local market understanding matters.
You need to think not only about where the market is today, but where it will be:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you approach global/local structure differently across marketing, support, and success?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Support is global and operates 24/7.
AI has improved support efficiency because it allows faster multilingual responses.
Marketing is more centralized, but revenue ownership requires local alignment.
For example:
Customers want to speak with people who understand their market realities.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Partnerships seem to work especially well at Webflow. How do you think about them?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Agencies are not just software implementers.
They are strategic partners.
In a rapidly changing market, agencies provide:
As AI evolves, implementation becomes easier — but creativity and strategy become more valuable.
We've built partnership success into:
That's why partnerships are a strategic investment.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You sit on a lot of data. What do you see happening with AI and websites?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
One thing is becoming clear:
Websites are no longer built for humans alone.
We've seen:
This suggests users arriving from AI are more informed and further down the funnel.
The challenge becomes:
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
We think about AI through two lenses:
This includes:
This means creating immersive experiences once users arrive.
Websites need to feel:
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I realized recently that I don't visit Wikipedia anymore.
The information still exists — but the experience hasn't evolved.
AI provides answers faster.
This illustrates a broader truth:
Information alone is no longer enough.
Experience matters.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
There's a debate that websites are dying because of zero-click content. What's your view?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
For websites to disappear entirely, you'd need a world where:
We're far from that reality.
AI still depends on websites for understanding brands, products, and positioning.
What changes is the role of the website.
The website becomes:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Marketing is returning to first principles.
Clear messaging matters again.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I agree.
The future rewards:
AI will force companies to become more intentional.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What is your biggest challenge today?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Helping customers adapt to rapid change.
The rules are changing quickly.
Customers need help understanding:
My focus is helping customers navigate uncertainty while remaining competitive.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thank you very much, Adrian.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Thank you.
For anyone interested, we also created an AEO maturity model that benchmarks your website against trends we're seeing across customers.
It provides practical recommendations and is freely available.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I'll include the link in the description.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Perfect.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Welcome, Adrian.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Merci. Thank you.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
So you're here for the Momentum Tour?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Yes.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Can you just speak about that tour? What is it?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Absolutely. At Webflow, we saw an amazing opportunity across the world with incredible customers. We've seen so much growth across the European business, with customers like Spotify, monday.com, and Anytime Fitness.
We really wanted to go on the road with our customers and partners to talk about how the world is changing and what we're seeing in the web space. It was an opportunity to learn from them while also sharing what we’re seeing across our 300,000 customers so we can meet this moment together, because so much is changing so quickly.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
For my audience, this is the first time they’ve heard me speak English, so apologies if I make mistakes. This is my first time recording a podcast in English, so I’m glad to do it with you.
Today, Adrian, you’re the CRO of Webflow and you’ve been there for about nine months. I’d like to understand your onboarding and your first 90 days. At this level of responsibility, those first months are critical to making an impact. How did you approach them?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
When I joined Webflow, the world was already changing quickly in the web industry, but I never imagined how fast AI would reshape discovery and search.
In my first 90 days, I focused on understanding three perspectives:
I wanted to understand our place in the market, our impact, and where the future was heading.
Since I oversee sales, marketing, support, and customer success, I also spent significant time understanding where revenue comes from, how it evolves, and how we could build a vision for the future alongside our customers, agencies, and partners.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What surprised you the most when you arrived?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
The biggest surprise was how quickly people’s behavior around information consumption changed.
Back in early 2025, AI-assisted search existed, but it wasn’t yet materially different for most people. Depending on where you lived, AI web search was still limited.
What surprised me was how quickly the world changed in the way it consumes information online.
There are now major conversations happening around:
On a positive note, one of the most rewarding surprises has been seeing what agencies and customers build. The creativity, visual quality, and immersive experiences they create are incredible.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You come from Salesforce and Tableau, which are more traditional B2B environments. Webflow has a much stronger design and creative culture. What changed in your role?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
The mission at Webflow is to bring developer superpowers to everyone.
That means helping customers make creativity their competitive edge.
The biggest shift is prioritization. At Webflow, creativity is central:
Because we’re a design-first company, there’s a higher bar for delivering excellent experiences.
For example, relaunching Webflow.com brought pressure to meet those expectations—and I enjoy that challenge.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you have more creative people in your teams compared to previous companies?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I wouldn’t necessarily say more creative people.
The difference is that creativity becomes a top priority.
Creativity shows up in many forms:
At Webflow, it’s simply much more front-of-mind.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you encourage that creativity?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I push people to be bold.
I often tell my team:
“I want you to make me uncomfortable with your idea.”
If an idea makes me uncomfortable, it usually means we’re pushing toward the edge of what’s possible.
We’re operating in a rapidly evolving world, and creativity matters not only for humans anymore—but for AI as well.
We now design for:
That requires a different philosophy.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
As CRO, you oversee sales, marketing, support, and success. How do you balance optimizing individual functions while keeping the revenue engine aligned?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I think about this as rows and columns.
Imagine a spreadsheet:
Each row and column has an owner.
The key is ensuring alignment across functions so nobody works in isolation.
I often tell the team:
“We win together, and we never lose alone.”
That means:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Where do revenue engines usually fail?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Most businesses spend too much time diagnosing the past.
Instead of traditional business reviews focused only on what happened, I run a process called “Plan to Make Plan.”
Rather than asking:
We ask:
Revenue engines become harder to manage when:
The goal is to diagnose quickly and adapt before momentum is lost.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What routines do you use to manage this?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
At the start of every month, every leader runs a “Plan to Make Plan” review.
It includes cross-functional partners.
We also run:
The rhythm matters because consistency creates accountability.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What data do you monitor daily?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I built my own dashboard called “State of the Union.”
I monitor:
I also log into Webflow daily to understand:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How deeply do you go into customer conversations?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
As deep as necessary.
I strongly believe you don’t truly understand something until you talk to customers.
When I create a messaging hypothesis, I’ll test it directly with customers within 24 hours.
That prevents strategy from becoming overly academic.
The Momentum Tour has been valuable because conversations in Paris, London, and Dubai continuously reshape the messaging based on what customers are experiencing.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I was surprised to see you attending smaller events. It feels unusual for someone in your role.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Smaller events often produce higher-quality conversations.
Right now, there’s no better place to understand change than by bringing leaders together and learning how they are adapting.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
We saw an opportunity to create more success by bringing our teams closer to customers.
Being close to customers is how you:
We’ve expanded teams across:
Research we conducted showed that 91% of marketers identified their website as their most valuable marketing asset.
Because websites drive revenue, it’s important for us to support customers not just technologically—but strategically and locally.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
How do you draw the line between global and local teams?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I like the phrase:
“Global standards, local innovation.”
The idea is:
For example, data about AI trends may be global—but how you communicate that message should be shaped by local customer conversations.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Different countries are experiencing AI differently. France doesn’t yet have AI Overviews in Google.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Exactly.
Some countries are already testing AI-native search experiences, while others are earlier in adoption.
That’s why local market understanding matters.
You need to think not only about where the market is today, but where it will be:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Do you approach global/local structure differently across marketing, support, and success?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Support is global and operates 24/7.
AI has improved support efficiency because it allows faster multilingual responses.
Marketing is more centralized, but revenue ownership requires local alignment.
For example:
Customers want to speak with people who understand their market realities.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Partnerships seem to work especially well at Webflow. How do you think about them?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Agencies are not just software implementers.
They are strategic partners.
In a rapidly changing market, agencies provide:
As AI evolves, implementation becomes easier—but creativity and strategy become more valuable.
We’ve built partnership success into:
That’s why partnerships are a strategic investment.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
You sit on a lot of data. What do you see happening with AI and websites?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
One thing is becoming clear:
Websites are no longer built for humans alone.
We’ve seen:
This suggests users arriving from AI are more informed and further down the funnel.
The challenge becomes:
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
We think about AI through two lenses:
This includes:
This means creating immersive experiences once users arrive.
Websites need to feel:
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I realized recently that I don’t visit Wikipedia anymore.
The information still exists—but the experience hasn’t evolved.
AI provides answers faster.
This illustrates a broader truth:
Information alone is no longer enough.
Experience matters.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
There’s a debate that websites are dying because of zero-click content. What’s your view?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
For websites to disappear entirely, you’d need a world where:
We’re far from that reality.
AI still depends on websites for understanding brands, products, and positioning.
What changes is the role of the website.
The website becomes:
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Marketing is returning to first principles.
Clear messaging matters again.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
I agree.
The future rewards:
AI will force companies to become more intentional.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
What is your biggest challenge today?
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Helping customers adapt to rapid change.
The rules are changing quickly.
Customers need help understanding:
My focus is helping customers navigate uncertainty while remaining competitive.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
Thank you very much, Adrian.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Thank you.
For anyone interested, we also created an AEO maturity model that benchmarks your website against trends we’re seeing across customers.
It provides practical recommendations and is freely available.
host—JORDAN CHENEVIER-TRUCHET:
I’ll include the link in the description.
guest—ADRIAN ROSENKRANZ—CRO at Webflow:
Perfect.
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