I turn deeply technical products in cybersecurity, fintech, and enterprise SaaS into clear market stories, sharp positioning, and real pipeline. Twenty plus years building go-to-market from zero, and I wrote the book on it.
I spent my first seven years inside institutional finance, running performance analytics for pension funds at State Street. I learned how these buyers think, what they fear, and what actually earns their trust. Then I crossed over and spent the next fifteen years marketing to the person I used to be: launching funds, building fintech partnerships, and standing up product marketing functions from zero at Nasdaq and beyond.
That is the through line of my career: deep fluency in the buyer, paired with the craft to turn dense technical capability into a story that lands. Today I lead product marketing for a cyber risk platform built for financial institutions, and I wrote down twenty years of frameworks and philosophy in a book, because I believe this discipline works best when it is shared.
I have always been someone who relishes a hard problem. I lead with empathy, execute with precision, and treat every interaction as a chance to learn something new. Off the clock you will find me in Atlanta, usually deep in some new AI tool I am convinced can save my team another ten hours a week.
I did not start in marketing. I started on the buyer's side of the table, and everything since has been built on what I learned there.
Owns positioning, messaging, and go-to-market for a cyber risk platform spanning SIEM/SOC, EDR, fraud, and governance for banks and credit unions. Built the function end to end, authored the master messaging architecture for CISO, CFO, and Board personas, and is operationalizing AI across the marketing team.
Advises SaaS, fintech, and security companies on positioning, category strategy, and go-to-market. Repositioned Drawbridge from a services-led firm to a technology-first cybersecurity platform, elevating perception with enterprise buyers and growth-equity investors. graycarroll.com ↗
Reporting to the CEO, built product and partner marketing from the ground up and led the launch of two new products, including a bundled CRM platform. Supported the diligence and growth strategy that led to the company's acquisition by Volaris Group, a Constellation Software company, in January 2023.
Built the first dedicated product marketing function from inception for a $150M ARR global SaaS business serving institutional investors, then took over the full marketing organization: more than 20 marketers across North America, EMEA, and APAC. Rebuilt demand gen and ABM, stood up content strategy, and hit all annual revenue targets by August of the final year.
Built a new channel alliances business for a leading wealth management technology platform, including a partnership and distribution model with BlackRock, co-built with their executives from business plan through enablement and measurement.
At a global asset manager with more than $1.6T in AUM, led the product marketing for the first closed-end fund IPO in over a decade, raising more than $250M in seed capital and beating the goal by 25%. Helped land $5B in new institutional business by building the consultant-facing story for the fixed income team.
Launched four new mutual funds, including a private equity product built with KKR that attracted over $99M in assets in its first year. Led PR strategy that placed bylines in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal and put executives on CNBC.
Led a team of eight analysts delivering portfolio analytics to institutional investors, onboarding clients with a combined net asset value of over $13B. Seven years on the buyer's side of the table: the years that taught me how this audience actually thinks, long before I ever marketed to them.
Aligned: Product Marketing for a Crowded Tech World is 128 pages of the frameworks and philosophy behind twenty years of building product marketing functions: positioning and messaging, launch systems, enablement, connecting GTM to business strategy, structuring and leading PMM teams, and how to hire and measure the function.
It is written for PMMs who want to level up, leaders standing up the function for the first time, and executives who want to know what great product marketing actually does. No gate, no email form. If it is useful, it is yours.
A sample of the go-to-market problems I take on and the systems I build to solve them.
Reframed a services-led cybersecurity firm as a technology-first platform, rebuilding the story for enterprise buyers and growth-equity investors.
OutcomeA company now evaluated, and valued, as a technology platform instead of a services shop.Built the single source of truth for how a security platform talks about itself across CISO, CFO, and Board personas, including risk and governance narratives.
OutcomeOne narrative every team pulls from, replacing deal-by-deal improvisation.Rebuilt ICP, pitch narrative, product messaging, and competitive battlecards to sharpen seller effectiveness in competitive security deals.
OutcomeSellers walk into competitive deals with a story and proof points they can actually repeat.Ran structured interviews with bank and credit union security leaders to ground messaging in the buyer's own language across personas.
OutcomeMessaging anchored in the buyer's own words instead of internal assumptions.Led services packaging and a refreshed pricing and packaging strategy, aligning capability tiers with how financial institutions actually buy.
OutcomeTiers that map to real buying behavior, making the next conversation an expansion, not a renegotiation.Led net-new product launches from zero, including a bundled CRM platform, with cross-functional alignment across product, sales, and partnerships.
OutcomeLaunches that land as revenue motions, not announcement dates.Generalized, hands-on versions of real frameworks I have built and used. Each opens in a new tab. All content is illustrative, with no proprietary data or client information.
An AI-assisted content pipeline that lets a lean team operate like a much larger one. Idea engine to brief to draft to brand QA to human review.
Open interactive sample ↗An interactive "digital twins" prototype: six buyer personas mapped to eight products, each interviewable, with a coverage matrix that makes cross-sell obvious. Built as an art-of-the-possible demo.
Open interactive sample ↗One product, three buyers, three stories. A framework for making a complex platform land with the executive, economic buyer, and practitioner.
Open interactive sample ↗A repeatable launch system: aligned team, sharp goals, the right motion, and a readiness bar everyone can see. Fully interactive.
Open interactive sample ↗Turning a book of business into a go-to-market strategy, with interactive charts on product mix, growth, and retention.
Open interactive sample ↗What product marketing owns, how it partners, and how the function matures from a service desk into a strategy driver.
Open interactive sample ↗Most marketers talk about AI. I build the use cases, content systems, and reusable tools that let a lean team operate like a much larger one.
Helped set the AI strategy for a marketing org, where my nominated use cases, market and competitive intelligence and persona-based messaging, became the highest-voted founding pillars. Then turned strategy into working systems rather than slideware.
Contributor to an AI-assisted content pipeline, from idea engine to brief to draft to brand QA to human review, that lets a four-person team deliver five-person output.
Built a reusable skill that scans news, regulatory shifts, and competitor moves every day and translates them into content ideas and battlecard updates.
Automated my own recurring workflow with a skill that generates weekly priorities from project activity, a small but real example of agentic GTM ops.
Authored a point of view on detecting AI-powered voice deepfakes before they become a wire transfer, translating an emerging threat for financial-institution buyers.
Product marketing is the voice of the market, not the megaphone of the product. If your messaging starts with the feature list instead of the buyer's problem, you are doing announcements, not marketing.
A launch is an alignment event, not a marketing event. The win is product, sales, and customer success telling one story at the same time. The press release is a byproduct.
AI does not replace product marketers. It removes the excuse for shallow work. When the drafting is cheap, the differentiator is judgment: knowing the buyer well enough to know what is true and what matters.
Longer-form thinking on product marketing, AI, and where go-to-market is heading. Written in my own voice, with interactive data where it earns its place.
Most AI adoption in marketing is a hundred chat tabs and a prompt library nobody opens twice. The teams getting real leverage build systems instead: pipelines with stages, owners, and a human gate where the risk lives. An anatomy of one, with the interactive pipeline and where the hours actually come from.
Read with interactive pipeline ↗ OngoingI share shorter observations on PMM craft, AI in practice, and market shifts on LinkedIn. More pieces will land here as they outgrow the feed.
Follow on LinkedIn ↗Always happy to trade notes on positioning, go-to-market, and where AI is actually moving the needle. If you read the book, I would love to hear what landed.
Based in Atlanta, GA