Finding Market Fit: Marketing Leaders in Tech Strategic development and structuring an optimal marketing organization as the CMO of Coursera | Kim Caldbeck (Coursera, Meta)
Kim was most recently the CMO at Coursera where she played an instrumental role in driving the company’s revenue from $95M to over $500M in 5 years. The org she led helped shaped the brand, optimized the monetization model, and launched and expanded key initiatives globally as she helped guide the company through it’s IPO. Kim is currently a startup marketing and growth advisor and board member. She specializes in marketplaces across both B2C and B2B models.
We talk about:
- The strategic planning process at Coursera
- Building the marketing operational structure to scale across B2C, B2B, and Partnership motions
- Establishing the right culture and values
- Finding 10X marketing leaders
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Where to find Kim
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Where to find Patrick
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(2:28) Marketing as a service to the business
(5:09) The strategic planning process at Coursera
(8:04) How the 3-year planning process started
(9:45) The product-market fit sprint. Using a 6-8 week window to further validate customer hypotheses and nail the right go to market and marketing motions
(12:50) Building the right operational culture to effectively execute
(15:39) When to inject the strategy and ops function
(16:58) Strategy and ops should live within Marketing
(19:00) Establishing and evolving the values and culture at Coursera
(22:57) Integrating values in performance plans
(25:19) The org structure within the B2C, B2B, and Partnership focal areas
(28:30) The key variables and planning for a re-org
(32:10) Planning out hiring with other teams and regions
(34:29) Executing on company growth bets within the marketing org
(37:51) Finding 10X marketing leaders
(38:57) Where to find Kim!