If you’re not quite sure why you’re getting this – my name is Ilia Markov, I used to head up content and marketing for companies like Toggl, ChartMogul, and Groove.
But no more, which brings me to…
In 2024 I am making the transition to being a full-time advisor. I want to use my experience of over a decade leading marketing programs for B2B SaaS companies to help the next generation of startups achieve liftoff.
This transition has been in the works for a while. The writings of Elena Verna and other top operators have been a major influence on my thinking and have convinced me to branch out on my own.
In the next section, I will explore in more depth my motivation to go down the advisor route vs. continue working as an internal team members.
But first – why build in public?
In short, because it’s not enough to commit and even make the first steps. There’s a long road between that and having a fully operational practice – and many potential detours.
That’s why building in public is my way to keep myself honest and focused on the task. And I hope that you, the reader, will help in that – by sharing timely and candid feedback and asking questions.
However, the reason to share everything publicly goes beyond instilling motivation through the threat of public shaming. Here are the other equally-important reasons that made me commit to building in public:
Writing is the best way to clarify your own thinking.
Of course, through this practice, I hope to get in front of potential clients and start building trust and relationships.
Building in public allows me to get immediate feedback from peers, helping me clarify things, and fix mistakes early on.
For any potential clients, having this information in public, would allow them to quickly understand what they can expect from working with me.
In this first piece, I want to tackle the foundational questions of this initiative: the why, the what, and the how (much).
WHY the independent advisor route?
Fractional CMO, Interim Marketing Lead, Growth Advisor... These titles have become fashionable – it seems that no one wants to be a full-time employee anymore.
Why is that?
I talk to industry peers all the time and I hear different things. For some, it’s a way to leverage their experience and formidable resumes.
For others it’s because they feel burned from the stress of working as internal team-members and being the first line of shit-taking when things growth doesn’t go as promised (to investors).
(Even Elena mentions the pressure and frustration of being an internal growth employee as part of what led her to become full-time solopreneur.)
To be honest, for me it’s a mix of those things as well. But it goes beyond that – I have a specific set of goals that can be served by going down the advising route:
To broaden my exposure to a number of teams, products, and niches, expanding the range of areas where I have experience and hopefully discovering the product and/or vertical where I want to spend the next phase of my career.
To meet a range of founders and marketers, forge relationships, and learn from them. Being a full-time remote professional, based outside any of the major tech hubs, this is my opportunity to create a meaningful network.
To quickly gain tactical experience in areas in which I want to become a deep expert – for example monetization, GTM strategy, etc. Working on projects with multiple companies would allow me to learn these areas in a much faster way than by focussing on a single company. (Because how often do SaaS companies change their pricing models?)
With the motivation clarified, let’s review what services I plan to provide – and to whom.
WHAT services am I going to provide?
My starting plan is to leverage my existing experience and the skills I have developed.
This makes it likely that at the beginning a lot of the work I do will be focussed on things I know well and have deep experience in – e.g. content & SEO audits and strategy.
However, the last 3 years I spent in a strategic role have exposed me to the potential impact owning GTM/marketing strategy can have on the success of a startup.
I want to expand my experience and knowledge further, help the next generation of successful startups to break through the noise, and participate in their success.
With that in mind, and stepping on my existing experience and expertise, I am going to start with the following services:
Content Strategy and Implementation
Leveraging my deep background in the content & SEO space, I can help companies quickly set up their content strategy on the right footing.
From auditing the existing approach, to drafting a whole new strategy, and assembling a team to implement it, the goal of this type of project is to give founders peace of mind that they’re doing the right thing when it comes to content.
Content marketing is changing: it’s saturated (as a channel), shifts in the industry (AI) are affecting it deeply, companies need to innovate constantly to stay relevant. I seek to be the force that helps marketers navigate this tough environment.
Marketing Strategy & Leadership (i.e. Fractional CMO)
Many founders, especially those come from a non-business background (technical or product/design), struggle to formulate a coherent marketing strategy for their company.
They read a few LinkedIn posts and try a bunch of different tactics and channels, but never manage to find the right mix that can produce sustainable growth in attention, trials, and customers. Let alone hire the right team to implement that in a meaningful way.
The goal of this type of work is to help founders do that – understand how to build a marketing strategy that won’t be wasting resources, but also not leaving things to chance or having them rely on “miracles” such as a blog post going viral.
Along with that, I can help companies bridge the gap in hiring by stepping in and leading marketing teams for short periods of time (typically 3-6, up to 12 months) while also helping them hire a permanent person for the position.
At the same time, this would not be a good fit for founders who don’t have the patience to achieve a steady marketing engine that generates sustainable growth and who instead want to rely on hacky tactics and one-time viral miracles.
Go-to-market Strategy
This sounds close to marketing strategy (see previous section) – and, in effect, GTM should be called that.
The reason I’ve broken them in two parts is because for some founders the work starts even higher up – by figuring out who they want to sell to, what challenges those people have, and how to solve them – i.e. what product to build.
GTM Strategy is meant to address the needs of founders of (very) early stage startups – typically those <1m in ARR. However, in my career, I’ve seen that even companies bigger companies do not always have a clear picture (and a clear PMF) about their core GTM approach.
Often this manifests for companies that decide to reignite growth by building or acquiring second (or third, etc.) product(s), only to find out that the success they had with their initial business is not automatically repeated.
Usually, the culprit is the (missing) GTM strategy.
Monetization and pricing
This aims to help founders develop their thinking around how to monetize their products – this is much more than deciding on a number for “monthly price per seat”.
Starting with the existing customer/user base and understanding what value they derive from using the product, we will arrive at a holistic strategy on what to charge for, when, and how much.
Monetization is one of the most important areas for startups, yet, few founders and executives feel confident and comfortable enough to revisit it often enough. The goal of this is to instill confidence and make it easier by using a strong repeatable framework.
The HOW (much): Pricing and packaging
Setting expectations early on is paramount to ensuring both me as the advisor and the clients I work with have a positive experience. Providing a very high level of satisfaction would be my #1 goal for my practice (more on this later).
Rules of Engagement
Being open and clear on expectations is the best way to ensure a positive experience working together.
I call these expectations “rules of engagement” and share them publicly in order to instill transparency and accountability. Here is the starting set of guidelines:
Up to 3 clients at the same time. This is to ensure I give enough attention to each client while allowing me to keep pricing reasonable and work with a breadth of interesting clients.
Create a shared channel of communication (I prefer a shared channel in Slack). No limits on the amount of communications and I aim to answer all requests within a 24-hour window.
Weekly 2-hour f2f session (Zoom preferred). Always with a pre-set agenda – we can brainstorm, do a workshop, or discuss a range of questions and issues. The session day and time are scheduled at the beginning of the engagement – I am always open to change them with due notice (and I might ask for the same from time to time), but knowing they are on the calendar instills accountability.
At the beginning of the engagement and throughout, we agree on specific deliverables along with due dates for them. The client is responsible for providing all relevant resources (data, access to tools, facetime, etc.) needed to accomplish the work, while the advisor is responsible for delivering on time and within scope.
Initial engagements typically last 3-6 months. Both clients and the advisor (i.e. me) have the ability to cancel at any time (typically with a months notice – in order to wrap up and deliver work in progress – but it can be shortened or waived).
After the initial period, we have a discussion about what’s gone well, what could be improved, and if/how we want to continue working together.
These are likely to change in the future, but what will remain constant is that they will always be public and apply to all client engagements.
Price
The pricing model is based on a monthly retainer. This ensures I can focus on a small set of clients and on delivering meaningful outcomes for them instead of counting beans (hours) or looking for ways to stretch work.
In order to identify the optimal pricing and incentivize potential clients to commit as early as possible, I double prices after each successfully closed client.
Since each client and request is different, the monthly retainer is custom based on the nature and scope of the work.
I am open to working for 100% cash compensation, but in order to make my service more accessible (and align long-term incentives), payment can be partially taken in equity.
(In fact, I’m actively looking to work under this model with all clients.)
Equity-based payments works under the following guidelines:
Up to 50% payment in equity (rest in cash). The equity allotment usually comes out of the ESOP (employee stock option compensation plan) and shares do not carry voting rights, etc.
The value of the equity is based on the most recent post-money valuation of the client company. This valuation is locked for the advisor for the duration of the engagement.
If the company hasn’t raised any money/hasn’t been evaluated, we’ll look at a (current) revenue-based valuation.
Stock options vest immediately as they are earned (each month) and never expire. (If they need to expire as per your compensation plan, we’ll discuss a workaround.)
100% satisfaction 100% of the time
It is paramount to me that the clients I work with are 100% happy 100% of the time. While this sounds (close to) impossible, it is a real rather than an aspirational goal for me. Here’s why:
The most obvious reason is that clients which are consistently not happy will churn quickly – just this is good enough to strive for high satisfaction.
This type of relationship requires a lot of work on both sides, high degree of trust, and spending a lot of time together. I want the people I work with to be excited before each session – otherwise working together will quickly become a drag for both sides of the relationship.
Finally, sometimes there might just not be a good fit – some founders have a specific thing they’re looking for or are not happy with the direction proposed by their advisor. In this case, I would rather end the relationship professionally and on friendly terms and move on saving both sides time and nerves.
Finally, let’s wrap this up by discussing the founders and operators that will be the target of my services.
The WHO is missing
I have a good idea for who I can help with my skills, but I have left it open intentionally because I want to challenge my assumptions and see who would be the best fit in reality.
I have 3 specific “personas” in mind as my WHOs:
Founders/CEOs of very early-stage B2B SaaS companies (typically, <1m in ARR). What they’re struggling with the most is figuring out how to get their startup off the ground and build a sensible GTM strategy.
C-level (CEO, CRO, CMO) leaders in B2B SaaS 1m-10m in ARR. They need help putting together a sensible marketing strategy that ties with the overall business strategy. In some cases, they also need someone to step in and lead the marketing function and team.
Leading marketing person (CMO, VP or Head of Marketing) who’s been promoted/hired thanks to deep experience in a different channel (Performance, Growth Marketing, Product Marketing) and now needs help to figure out how to make the content marketing program work.
Right now, I am offering the same type of work and pricing for all types of customers, but it might turn out that the different personas need different terms.
The purpose of doing this in public is to figure this out. (Again, happy to hear from you if you have any thoughts on the matter.)
Next steps?
I am actively looking for feedback on the offering – what strikes you in it, what is missing?
I am still figuring out the exact approach talking to and getting started with clients.
However, if you are a founder or an operator who needs help with any of the topics discussed above, please get in touch. I am happy to offer a (both money and obligation) free consultation to understand your challenges and see if there’s potential to work together.