{"id":341,"date":"2024-05-14T17:07:27","date_gmt":"2024-05-14T17:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/?p=341"},"modified":"2025-07-21T14:23:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T14:23:16","slug":"gtm-94-mastering-branding-pricing-and-customer-success-for-ai-startups-with-holly-chen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/14\/gtm-94-mastering-branding-pricing-and-customer-success-for-ai-startups-with-holly-chen\/","title":{"rendered":"GTM 94: Mastering Branding, Pricing, and Customer Success for AI Startups with Holly Chen"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/holly\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Holly Chen<\/a>\u00a0is the Managing Partner of ExponentialX, a Marketing and Growth Advisory Collective for high-growth SaaS startups, advising companies like Miro, Loom, ServiceNow, Appsflyer in their growth journeys. She also guest lectures at Berkeley and NYU, teaches at Section and Maven, mentors at First Round Capital, and is an active angel investor. Previously, Holly was the Global Head of Digital Marketing at Slack, helping it grow $100M to $700M ARR and going public. She was the Head of Growth at Google Store and Global Head of Google B2B Websites. Holly also worked at Gucci, Deloitte Consulting. Kearny and the UN. In her spare time, Holly runs Ceiling Breakers, a group coaching program for underrepresented leaders. Holly lives in San Francisco and speaks Italian and Chinese fluently.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-discussed-in-this-episode\">Discussed in this Episode:<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Strategies for AI startups to differentiate, drive retention, and optimize pricing<\/li>\n<li>The importance of strong branding and concrete use cases for AI market penetration<\/li>\n<li>Evolving customer success models to maximize value in AI deployments<\/li>\n<li>Transitioning from sales-led to product-led growth and key considerations<\/li>\n<li>The rising role of influencer marketing in B2B and how to leverage it effectively<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-highlights\">Highlights:<\/h3>\n<p>11:55 \u2013 Top 3 challenges facing AI startups today<br \/>14:33 \u2013 Differentiating in a crowded AI market<br \/>18:43 \u2013 Painting a concrete picture of AI use cases<br \/>21:42 \u2013 The importance of getting hyper-specific with AI applications<br \/>24:58 \u2013 Best practices for targeting personas and use cases<br \/>27:58 \u2013 Tackling the challenge of retention in AI startups<br \/>31:40 \u2013 Transitioning from B2C to B2B for better margins and retention<br \/>33:44 \u2013 The evolving role of customer success in AI companies<br \/>36:30 \u2013 Pricing strategies for AI: usage-based vs. seat-based<br \/>38:11 \u2013 Making pricing tangible by tying tokens to outcomes<br \/>43:54 \u2013 One thing revenue leaders believe to be true that Holly thinks is bull$***.<br \/>46:33 \u2013 One thing that is working for Holly in go-to-market right now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Guest Speaker Links (Holly Chen):<br \/><\/strong>LinkedIn:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/holly\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/holly\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Host Speaker Links (Scott Barker):<br \/><\/strong>LinkedIn:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/ssbarker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">www.linkedin.com\/in\/ssbarker\/<\/a><br \/>Newsletter:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thegtmnewsletter.substack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">thegtmnewsletter.substack.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sponsor:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Brought to you by<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.demandbase.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>\u00a0Demandbase.<\/strong><\/a>Demandbase helps B2B companies hit their revenue goals using fewer resources by using the power of AI to identify and engage the accounts and buying groups most likely to purchase. Their account-based technology unites sales and marketing teams around insights that you can understand and facilitates quick actions across systems and channels to deliver big wins. It\u2019s flexible, scalable ABM built for you.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The GTM Podcast<br \/><\/strong>Don\u2019t miss The GTM Podcast dropping every Tuesday discussing true stories and experiences including trials and tribulations in the Go-To-Market world.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\/gtm-94-mastering-branding-pricing-customer-success-ai-startups-holly-chen\/\">GTM 94: Mastering Branding, Pricing, and Customer Success for AI Startups with Holly Chen<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/gtmnow.com\">GTMnow<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Holly Chen\u00a0is the Managing Partner of ExponentialX, a Marketing and Growth Advisory Collective for high-growth SaaS startups, advising companies like Miro, Loom, ServiceNow, Appsflyer in their growth journeys. She also guest lectures at Berkeley and NYU, teaches at Section and Maven, mentors at First Round Capital, and is an active angel investor. Previously, Holly was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoltrunakiver.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}