The Desi VC with Akash Bhat E148 - The Ultimate Founder-Led-Marketing Playbook | Aquibur Rahman (CEO, Mailmodo)
Aquibur Rahman is the Co-founder and CEO of Mailmodo, an interactive email marketing software that helps marketers create app-like experiences in email by adding forms, shopping cart, calendar, NPS and other widgets. It helps companies collect feedback from their users, book meetings with prospects, recover abandon carts, generate leads, all within the the body of the email. The company is backed by Peak XV Partners (prev. known as Sequoia India), Y Combinator, BoldCap, Titan Capital & All In Capital.Aquib has been a marketer his entire career. Prior to founding Mailmodo, he headed marketing at Cleartax, a leading tax & investing platform, where he built and grew the practice from the ground up. And before that he had short but impactful stints at P&G, iProf Learning Solutions (I) Pvt. Ltd., and CarDekho.From a small village in Bihar to Super30, IIT Dhanbad, IIM Ahmedabad, and now the Silicon Valley, Aquib has come a long way and defied the odds at every step. Humble, soft-spoken, and incredibly knowledgeable, he brings deep insights into marketing, growth, and startup success.In today's episode, we dive deep into marketing strategies for founders and startups. Aquib shares actionable insights on why founders should position themselves as the face of their companies and how they can do it effectively, proven strategies for scaling market as a strong source of lead generation and brand building in the early stages, and a step-by-step playbook for executing founder-led marketing effectively.This is a MUST-watch episode for every founder and marketing person at startups
⌛ Timestamps:
- Trailer (00:00)
- Introduction (01:16)
- Episode kick-off (03:33)
- How did Mailmodo land its first customer? (03:47)
- Proven strategies to acquire your first paying customer (05:36)
- How Mailmodo landed Razorpay as a customer (10:33)
- Why design partnerships & POCs should be paid (11:55)
- What is "build-in-public"? What's a good playbook for it? (13:56)
- What is Founder-Led Marketing & why it works (18:38)
- The key components of a strong Founder-Led Marketing strategy (20:32)
- Marketing strategies that helped Mailmodo scale (22:33)
- How to build partnerships with lesser-known brands (25:12)
- Is all marketing good marketing? (25:50)
- The dangers of overpromising & underdelivering (27:18)
- Examples of founders who nailed Founder-Led Marketing (29:53)
- When should founders start focusing on Founder-Led-Marketing? (32:15)
- How customer discovery leads to marketing success (34:03)
- The biggest mistakes founders make in marketing (40:50)
- Live Marketing Workshop: Aquib breaks down a real-world example (45:01)
- How AI is changing SEO: What founders need to know (48:33)
- SEO best practices for 2025 and beyond (55:13)
- How AI is reshaping email marketing (59:43)
- How should a brand think about email marketing today? (1:01:59)
- Why marketing is all about building relationships (1:06:03)
- If Mailmodo started today, what would Aquib do differently? (1:09:19)
- With infinite resources, how would Aquib scale marketing? (1:10:13)
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