#260 Product Marketing | Dave is joined by Matt De Vincentis, VP of Product Marketing at Atlassian. With a background that spans engineering, product marketing, and leadership at companies like VMware and Palo Alto Networks, Matt shares how Atlassian structures its product marketing team, prioritizes work, and stays tied to business outcomes, even at massive scale.
Dave and Matt cover:
- How Atlassian connects product marketing to revenue and pipeline (and why PMMs need to “own the outcome”)
- How to build high-trust, high-impact marketing teams, drawing on lessons from firefighting and enterprise leadership
- The async work philosophy Atlassian uses to eliminate unnecessary meetings and increase productivity across a global team
Whether you lead a team or want a seat at the table, this episode breaks down how to structure, scale, and lead product marketing the Atlassian way.
Timestamps
- (00:00) - – Intro
- (03:18) - – Matt’s path from engineer to Atlassian VP
- (06:33) - – Why technical backgrounds can be both a strength and a curse in PMM
- (10:18) - – What product marketing looks like at a $5B company
- (11:18) - – “Own the outcome, not the task”: tying PMM to revenue
- (13:38) - – Why product marketers should care about pipeline (even if they don’t own it)
- (15:03) - – How brand and creative marketers can still align to business outcomes
- (17:33) - – Measuring inputs vs. outcomes (and how to stay focused on the right one)
- (18:18) - – How Matt applies firefighting lessons to leading marketing teams
- (19:58) - – Triaging “fire drills” and protecting your team’s focus
- (21:48) - – How to prioritize ruthlessly (and what real prioritization means)
- (24:18) - – From IC to VP: how your mindset and responsibilities shift
- (28:08) - – Why leaders should double down on strengths—not fix weaknesses
- (30:23) - – How self-assurance became Matt’s superpower as a leader
- (33:23) - – The StrengthsFinder approach Matt uses with his team
- (35:23) - – The value of executive coaching for marketing leaders
- (36:53) - – The goal: build the best marketing team anyone’s worked on
- (38:23) - – Why trust and 10x thinking unlock great marketing work
- (40:53) - – Where product marketing sits inside Atlassian’s org
- (42:23) - – How Atlassian uses Loom and async work to eliminate unnecessary meetings
- (44:53) - – What qualifies as a real meeting at Atlassian
- (46:23) - – Why async work helps global teams move faster
- (49:23) - – How Atlassian balances async with intentional in-person gatherings
- (51:23) - – Why trust changes how Slack and email are interpreted
- (52:08) - – How Atlassian thinks about AI’s role in marketing
- (54:23) - – Why it’s hard to stand out in an “AI-washed” market
- (55:38) - – Matt’s mission: help make work suck less
- (56:53) - – Final thoughts and wrap-up
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 Walnut.
Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?
Come on, today’s buyers don’t want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.
That’s where Walnut comes in.
Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond.
That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.
And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what’s actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.
Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA?
Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!