Episode 298: Larry Kim - Founder & CEO, Customers.ai

Becoming an influencer for a particular topic is very challenging. It’s hard to build up a following at scale. It requires a lot of work in terms of building up an effective content, social media, and speaker strategy to build up engagement. As a serial entrepreneur, not only was I interested in learning about Larry's journey around building companies, but I was also interested in learning how he went on to become one of the top names and faces in the world of digital marketing. Larry is an influencer and a highly recognized expert in the digital marketing circles. He has over 725,000 followers on Twitter and is ranked the #8 most popular author on Medium. He is pretty much everywhere - Inc. magazine, CNBC, Business Insider, plus lots of niche publications in the digital marketing industry and he is also involved in lots of speaking engagements at top conferences like Dreamforce, INBOUND, and others. During our interview, he discusses this topic and shares advice on how others can become an influencer too. His latest company, Customers.ai is an AI powered sales outreach automation platform. The company recently announced a $4.99M Series A round of funding. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The early days of Larry’s career and how he ended up making the change into digital marketing. * The full lifecycle story of WordStream from the initial ideal to scaling to an exit, plus the story of the AdWords Performance Grader product that was a massive and early PLG success story. * Advice for founders on bringing in a CEO from the outside and the benefits. * What led Larry down the path of starting Customers.ai and all the details on the company. * AI and its impact on digital marketing. * The meaning behind Larry’s statement - “be a unicorn in a sea of donkeys.” * And so much more. If you are listening to this podcast, then it is highly likely that you are interested in the founder journey and lessons learned around building companies. Please make sure you don’t miss any episodes by subscribing to The VentureFizz Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or Soundcloud. Oh, don’t forget to leave us a review. It will really help us out!