Intro

#237: Strategy | Udi Ledergor (former CMO, now Chief Evangelist at Gong) helped turn Gong into one of B2B’s most iconic brands—and now he’s sharing how they scaled it to a multi-billion dollar valuation. In this episode, Dave sits down with Udi to unpack lessons from building Gong’s category, brand, and marketing engine (and why B2B marketing needs way more courage). 

You’ll learn:

• Lessons from building Gong from 0 to $100M in revenue
• How to make B2B marketing not boring
• How to measure and justify brand investments in marketing
• Why you need to be more courageous with your marketing

Udi also shares stories from his new book Courageous Marketing, featuring specific plays and strategies any B2B marketer can steal.

Timestamps

• (00:00) - – Intro to Udi
• (07:34) - – Early career lessons and building a marketing role from scratch
• (10:34) - – How Gong achieved early product-market fit
• (14:34) - – The importance of picking the right company and founder
• (16:34) - – Why Gong’s focus, clarity, and positioning stood out from day one
• (18:44) - – Why Udi wrote Courageous Marketing and what it’s about
• (19:34) - – What “courageous marketing” actually means
• (22:34) - – Defining brand personality before visual identity
• (27:30) - – Campaign breakdown: Times Square billboards, employee spotlights, and perception hacks
• (30:50) - – The “punching above your weight” formula for early-stage brands
• (34:20) - – How to measure soft ROI and prove brand impact
• (37:50) - – Super Bowl ad, Michael Lewis podcast, and tying brand to pipeline
• (42:35) - – How to budget for experiments and get CFO/CEO buy-in
• (43:50) - – Building a courageous team: culture, process, and psychological safety
• (46:50) - – Gong Labs: Turning product data into content with staying power
• (49:50) - – Product + marketing alignment: the real unlock
• (51:20) - – Where AI fits in the future of courageous marketing
• (53:40) - – Udi’s book Courageous Marketing (and why you should go read it)

Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.com
Join the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletter
Check out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/
Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership

***

Today’s episode is brought to you by Zuddl.

We’re halfway through 2025, and one thing’s clear: events continue to be one of the highest performing marketing channels. Niche meetups, conferences, curated dinners, networking - you name it. Everyone’s leaning in.

Events are a core part of our playbook this year at Exit Five. So far, we’ve hosted two virtual sessions each month, one large virtual event, one in-person meetup, and we’re deep in the weeds planning our Drive conference coming back to Vermont this September.

Zuddl helps us run a smarter event strategy - from driving registrations, managing invites, automating comms, reminders, analytics, tracking. Their Salesforce integration also makes it simple to report on pipeline and revenue from events without pulling in ops.

On top of that, the differentiator with Zuddl is how their team is insanely good at supporting us. They always go above and beyond for us - and that’s how we’ve been able to keep the momentum going with 12+ events already this year, with plenty more to come.

If events are part of your marketing strategy, you need to look at Zuddl to see how companies like Zillow, CrowdStrike, and Iterable are using the top event platform for Business events in 2025. 

Head over to zuddl.com/exitfive to learn more.