LF(GTM): What Leaders Can Do to Make Marketing Successful | Zayi, Kelley & Eve

distinct pleasure of moderating this panel on what we can what we can do to make marketing um successful. So, if I can invite up my fellow panelists, we have Kelly from Melrose, Eve from Yumi, and Z from Chainlink. Hi everyone.

Hey. Hello.

Hi.

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Um so if we can go around and just give the audience um just a short intro who you are, what you do. Um and uh which which ETH Denver is this for you? How many?

So I'm Kelly Weaver. I'm the CEO of Melrose PR. We're one of the original crypto communications agencies. We've been in the space working for 10 years, a decade this year. We started in 2016.

So, I'm really proud of that. And last year, we launched our sister brand, bitwire.com, which is a modern newswire where you can distribute your press releases directly to the publications that actually matter. And this is actually only my second ETH Denver. So, happy to be here.

Welcome, Eve.

Hi, I'm Eve Davies, uh, co-founder of Yumi. for a strategy and design studio that turns really complex meaty tech into accessible magnetic brands. Um, and just an explanatory comma when when we say brand, we're really talking about who you are from the inside out. Um, not just your logo or a slogan of the week, but something that's really deeply um, meaningful and about you. So, your values, your mission, vision, values, your positioning, uh, everything that you think, say, and do, the way you look and feel.

Um yeah and so um this is my second ETH Denver. Um we've been working in crypto since about 2018.

Awesome. Z.

Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Z or Zaji. I'm head of partner marketing at Chainlink Labs. I oversee our blockchain partnerships as well as our startup founder partnerships as well.

So have a lot of insight I'd love to share for the founders in the room. Uh been in the space my entire career uh since like 2017. So I've been at many in ETH Denver. I don't even know probably eight plus at this point. Um but I'm happy to see the evolution and it's awesome just to see everyone here and you know we stay strong but yeah excited to be here.

Awesome. Thanks guys. Um so obviously this is an audience of founders here uh some of whom have marketers on their team. Can I just have a show of hands who has someone who does the marketing function on their team? Okay.

Who who is doing founder marketing? Lots of you. Cool. Um, so I think what would be really helpful for this audience, um, uh, Eve, do you want to give us a little bit, you I know you touched on it in your intro, but do you want to talk a little bit about sort of the differences between different kinds of marketers and and what, um, what people should look for when uh, when building a marketing team?

Oh, yeah. Okay. So, I'm going to come at this from a brand standpoint. Um, so from a brand standpoint, um, when we think about building a marketing team, um, we're really looking at what is that native base layer, the the strategic framework that you use to make decisions about who you are and how you show up with consistency and with confidence. And so um in the very beginning um you are as a founder really responsible for doing the first like the inner work before you even hire a marketer or before you even hire somebody on brand to really start to understand okay what do we believe?

What is our mission? What is our vision? What are our values? What are the values that are going to be helping guide our product decisions along the way? Um, and if you don't do that work, um, you kind of and if you if you offload it to somebody else, you're not really going to go anywhere.

If you if you take that on as yours, as like thinking about brand needs to occupy a room in your brain as a founder, then you'll be able to um really be more impactful and persuade everybody. It's a skill that every founder needs to have. Um, but when it comes to marketing, um, there are lots of different kinds of marketers. You can have marketers that are more brand marketers, marketers that are more product marketers, marketers who are really great at building community and genuine community of builders and developers, and then you have more like growth marketers. And so, uh, PR folks, and so it it really depends on what your goals are and what life stage you're in, um, when it comes to figuring out who you're going to hire.

And then Z, I know you you help a lot of companies who are building on Chain Link to to get access to resources and that kind of thing. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you approach marketing within the portfolio and sort of wider chain link ecosystem?

Yeah, definitely. We have a program called chain link build in which we help teams grow from early stage um all the way to wellunded stages and uh we've pushed through 80 plus teams through this program and it's been really incredible to see their growth. Um, on my ends, I run a team that helps uh them learn how to market and how to grow within our ecosystem. And so, it's an interesting thing. You know, it kind of depends on their stage and their life cycle, whether they're early stage, they're trying to get funding or they're already funded and now they might have one or two in-house marketers, now they're looking to see how do we build out like our ad side or paid or social.

So it's yeah it's really interesting and I think you have to just approach it from the stage that you're at um your resources that you have available to you and uh what is important to you. It also depends on the vertical that you're focused on. If it's maybe more social side or consumer side, you might need a marketer that's more knows how to run a Tik Tok account versus if you're doing something more on the infra or defi DeFi side, you might need a technical product marketer. So it really just depends on what you're building. But yeah, happy to chat after if anybody wants to talk through their their strategies.

Awesome. And and Kelly, I know you've been in the space a really long time, you know, wellrespected PR firm. Um, how do you obviously in kind of like a a high churn um environment, how do you really encourage teams to take a long view on things like PR and media relations?

Well, it's interesting. I think a lot of founding teams come to us and they want to just get in a little injection of PR and really turn it on like a water faucet, then turn it off. Maybe you want to make a splash around an announcement. And it's really something that is a long a long game, meaning that you have to consistently communicate what you're doing. And um I think you know really leaning into founder marketing really works.

And so a lot of the our job is not just around your major announcements. It's really about working with the amazing spokespeople on your team and matching them with reporters, aligning them with opportunities and helping build that flywheel of awareness um you know through earned media with these founders.

Awesome. Um so and this one next question is for any anyone can take this one. Um what do you see as the biggest marketing mistake that founders are making um that they're still making in the year of our Lord 2026? Um how uh like obviously marketing has evolved uh marketing to web 3, marketing to consumers has evolved in the last 10 years or so. Um how are you really seeing uh like what what kind of mistakes have you seen founders make and how can this audience really uh avoid making those?

Yeah, I'm happy to jump in. Um we often see founders have a very narrow focus. Um they're very focused on their own individual projects, which makes sense. Like of course that's where your passion is, but to survive in this space, you also have to evolve and grow with the space. So you you need to be aware of what trends are happening, how can you tie into new narratives, even if it's not specifically related to your product, you still need to find ways to uh speak to the consumers out there and be able to relate to them.

And so that's something that I've noticed founders sometimes can get too narrow in their scope. And so we often are helping them with uh elevating their profiles, inviting them to speak on different Twitter spaces, having them speak on panels because it's really important for your community to see that you have diversity and that you're able to speak to different different topics and different ver different verticals.

Yeah, definitely.

Um I would add to that that in order to go out into these spaces and have confidence, it really is helpful if you've understood and invested in your brand. Um because that is like the cheat code. the framework that allows you to know confidently who you are and so you know how to respond in an array of like this dynamic environment. You're not rocking up and kind of confused. And so once you have that framework there and that structure, you're really able to go and um meet the moment in a in a different way.

And so I would say one of the biggest mistakes is thinking about brand as something that you do that's decorative at the end versus something that you do at the beginning that's infra.

Yeah, totally. and plus one for just really refining your elevator pitch. It's so foundational. You know, I I was at a founders summit for the past couple of days and there was such an array of when when you asked the simple question, what do you do? The answers were so sometimes people lost me by like the third or fourth sentence.

And really, you know, boiling I think that the work with brand is so important like being able to answer that eloquently, nailing your elevator pitch. you know, people are going to ask follow-up questions if they understand what you're telling them that you do. And so, it really is so foundational and basic, but being able to say speak with confidence and um, you know, really boil it down to something that's understandable so then people can ask follow-up questions is is so foundational to the entire process.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think they say the more you speak, the less you say. Like the longer you argue your point, the weaker your argument. And so finding a way to like simplistically say things that really resonate with a specific audience. Um we we tell our founders that um if you take all of the words in your pitch deck and you have $10 and you have to split up all of those, it's like one, you know, this amount of money per word, how expensive are your words?

And the more value you can attribute to like one specific thing. Um yeah, so um it's interesting. uh Z you were bringing up uh Twitter obviously X has like was is a massive place of growth it's like a great platform for building an audience crypto Twitter is a its own beast its own animal um but they have XX has come out and sort of decided that they're going to wage war against against crypto Twitter they don't really want crypto Twitter to exist so um so can you talk about how that sort of strategy evolves um in an environment that might not necessarily be friendly to uh to emerging crypto projects Yeah, definitely. Um, we have a really strong focus on staying technical with our marketing just as chain link as a brand. And we advise our the startups that we work with to do the same.

Um, it's really important to stick to your product and try to be as technical and focused on that as you can be. Once you start to become more of like a hype brand and you're just push pushing out that type of content, that's the type of energy you're going to attract. And that's also, you know, maybe going to get flagged by Twitter or sometimes this happens on other platforms as well, Tik Tok and wherever else you might be posting. So, it's really uh I just advise that like you focus on sharing your story, stick to the product, and don't just try to rage bait essentially like just try to stay focused with what you're saying. Anyone else have anything to add to that?

I mean, I think it's important to communicate on different channels, too. we're at the mercy of these algorithms changing. The way that search is changing so quickly with LLMs and so being able to clearly communicate, you know, on a variety of platforms is helpful. And then also your own owned channels like newsletters and maybe a Substack. Uh, you know, there's different ways that you can engage with audiences outside of just Twitter.

And LinkedIn has become like a star as of late. So, it's such an untapped and they're they seem to really it's working well for crypto founders. So lean into other platforms, but don't put all your eggs in one basket because things could change quickly and that that algorithm could change tomorrow.

Yeah, exactly. It's funny. LinkedIn the dark horse winner of this.

I love LinkedIn.

Well, it's like people are hiring LinkedIn influencers and stuff now like it's it's a whole work stream. So, uh I think if you have maybe more of an institutional focus, um that's a really great area to be focused on.

Well, and it really speaks to the growth and maturation of the space as well, right? If we are being run, if we're going to act like adults, then we need to be in an environment where adults are and are talking and are talking. Apparently, that's the adults are on LinkedIn. Um, so let's talk a little bit about I know Kelly, you touched on it a little bit. I think tactically for this this audience could really use like some tactical tips.

Um, many people use incentives of multiple different kinds to be able to grow their audiences. Can you talk a little bit about like different incentives that you could use? Um, we may be exiting airdrop season. Are airdrops marketing? Are they bribery?

Like what what do we think about incentives? And that can be for

I feel like V might be better to answer that. I

talk to us about giving free money to your audience.

Yeah. Um, incentives are are key uh within any industry. Like this happens in web 2. It happens in traditional uh markets, right? Like Starbucks rewards.

Like there's this this happens in other areas. It's just labeled differently. So, I think within web 3, you definitely do see it more from like an airdrop or uh you're getting some sort of incentive mechanism, but it's crucial. I mean, how are you going to connect with your audience if you can't um show them that there's some way that they can be directly connected to you? Um, community is everything in web 3.

And so, I'm constantly pushing founders to find ways that they can have their community engage with their platforms. Um, actually put like tokens into like whatever it is that like, you know, their platforms might be pushing. It's just important that you are connecting, you're giving them incentives, and you're exciting people so that they keep coming back.

Yeah. Um, Eve, can you talk to us a little bit about brand building? Um, I know you touched on it a little bit about founder marketing versus corporate marketing. Um, I know if you are here and you have a small company, um, it's probably you and your brand and you have to kind of oscillate between building one and building the other. Can you talk a little bit about sort of the comparison between those?

Yeah, love that. So from um from a brand standpoint um we work with a lot of startups and um and founders who in the beginning uh it is on them and that's great uh because you need to be doing that inner work first um before you bring others in. Usually about what we like to say is about 6 to9 months and yes six to nine months is how long it takes to do it well and do it right. um is is before a major launch, whether it's um a mainet or a big TGE event or some kind of commercialization inflection point um you need to bring in uh a more kind of seasoned team to help you really invest in your brand in a big way. Um at that point, you need two well three things.

You need the team and you need the time and you need the money. Um, and so usually there needs to be someone on your team already who can be that counterpoint along with the founding team. So it always starts with the founding team. Um, and I believe that, you know, hands down. Uh, you cannot offload this entirely.

Of course, you have someone who's running it, but you need to be involved. Um, you need to have, um, someone who's a seasoned marketer and who's ready to shepherd that process on your end and kind of be like receiving that um, for the project side. and you need a crack team like the one who did Aztec over there. Um that was us uh to really bring it uh to really bring it and kind of do the work. And so it takes six to nine months because when you're building a brand it has to be true to who you are and true to your tech and your product, right?

Because we don't want it to just be hype. Um it needs to be compelling to your various target audiences, whether they're institutional or retail investors to build real community. You really need to know what motivates people. Um, and it needs to be unique in a crazy noisy marketplace. And that takes time.

That doesn't happen in like two workshops over a weekend on a retreat, right? That actually takes time. And so you have those six to nine months, you have a six figure budget. You know, you're investing healthfully. Usually this is like post series A.

And you invest that time. And that might sound like a lot, but um I will tell you that when you do that, your brand becomes um an asset, right? It's about 30% lift on your marketing efficiency once you have a strong brand and that's recognizable and people know who you are. Um, this is super trad but in like for the S&P 500 about 30% of equity is in brand. So that is still relevant here in this area I would say.

Um, yeah. And so doing all of that work will really pay in dividends. Um, but it does take time, it does take the right team and it does take you know a financial investment but it's one that repays back um, out the gate. Um what else? Ah there should be a ven diagram between who you are as an individual and the brand that you've developed.

That's your project. It's not one and the same, right? There's you one circle and then the other side is your brand and your company. There is going to be overlap, but you'll drive yourself crazy if it's just onetoone. You need to know who you are as an individual and why you're here building this brand.

And there needs to be this separation kind of of church and state and you know kind of when you play in what field.

And I think you get into a little bit of the like hit by a bus concept like if you build your entire brand around one human being and then that human being

gets sick or like isn't around or or is on the road all the time, right? Like we're we're all a part of this and I'm sure as many of you are as well, we're all on this traveling circus most of the time. And you know, if you're if you're absent for a week, your brand isn't isn't falling asleep during that time.

Exactly. Brand takes what is implicit as a founder and makes it explicit so that everyone else can like march to the beat of that drum and it becomes something that can be sharable. It's no longer in the ether. It's actually something that's tangible. Yeah.

Um Kelly, so you advise lots of startups on, you know, how to spend money on things like PR, how to spend money on marketing. Um, can you talk a little bit about like where do you see companies spending money? If if a founder here has, I don't know, $5,000 to spend on something um where where do you see the that really um packing the most punch

in terms of PR?

Uh yeah, sure.

I mean, I think that there's even things that you can do before you even deploy any dollars and it's foundational to who you are. We've talked a little bit about this like meaning, you know, figure out your your statement of like who you are and why you're doing what you're doing. But beyond that, I think um you know, if you have a a teeny tiny budget, um really there's a lot that you can be doing to build out your messaging strategy and your thought leadership before you even engage PR. So, you know, when we when we engage with teams the and we pitch our clients to reporters, they're going to be looking at like what are you sharing? What are you talking about online?

And so there's a lot that you can be doing to be sharing your own perspectives before you engage PR and really um you know picking a couple maybe two to three swim lanes that you want to be known for in terms of topics that you can speak to and then reporters when they have questions about whether it's whatever topic they'll know to come to you or they'll know that you've been speaking about that for a while. So there's a lot that you can do to kind of build this online footprint before you even engage. Um, I mean, if you only have a limited budget for for press release distribution, you know, there's there's tools. We built one, obviously. Um, but I think that, you know, thinking about what you can do yourself like rel your founder brand, I mean, I know I agree with you in terms of the brand should encompass multiple people on your team, but your personal brand is like your unfair advantage.

You know, you as a founder have, you know, carries like humans want to follow humans, right? and the algorithms do favor personal updates. And so building out your like what you're known for and really getting clear on, you know, what that's going to be and then showing up authentically online, I think is is something that you can definitely do before you engage, you know, a PR team.

Yeah, totally. Um Z, I know, um you talked a little bit about sort of founders investing in their brand. Um, I know you work with companies at multiple different stages. Um, at what stage have you found, you know, I'm sure there's founders here who are like, well, I don't need to do that yet. I'm not big enough yet.

I'm not, you know, I'm not there yet. I haven't hired my first marketer yet. Um, at what stage do you find companies investing in in brand and in marketing? It could be post product market fit, token launch, etc. Like, at what point do they need to really invest in?

We honestly see them bringing marketers in pretty early because most founders are focused on building out their product and don't really have the resources or the time to be setting up a website, setting up a Twitter account, LinkedIn, all of these different brands. So, we have seen that they come in quite early. I usually say it's best to bring in a general generalist type of marketer to start. just somebody that is a bit scrappy, kind of can can get down in the weeds, can start building everything out for you, and is willing to test things for you. Um, and then once you start to scale, once you've raised a bit, then you could start to specialize.

And again, dependent on your vertical or your product, that might be having somebody who's like a meme meme person, right? Like they're out on Twitter, they're creating lore. Or it might be a product marketer because you're really focused on B2B sales. So, um, I I just think that to begin, you you should do it pretty early on because even something as light touch as your deck, I remember somebody was mentioning their deck. Yeah, we review a lot of decks as well.

And I only look at decks for what, a couple minutes max. So, if if your deck doesn't hook me, I'm already out. And so, you might need a marketer just to even help you with the design and the elements there, right? So, it's something as as light touch as maybe just bring them as in as a contractor to help you get started and then later on you can actually have them join your team. But yeah, it's really important from the beginning.

Like it's just something you need.

Awesome. Uh just conscious of time here. Um so in the last last couple of minutes that we have um can you can you each give us your sort of best like hot take on marketing for 2026? What is the the theme that you're seeing people come out with? What is or or a really novel thing that you know hasn't been in previous cycles that is is a bigger deal now?

So give us our predictions. Well, I think just to reiterate, you know, your founder brand is your unfair advantage. Start sharing your thoughts now. It's better to start now than later. You know, hiring a great generalist marketer to help you is great.

Um, and just be authentic and show up authentically as you more. You're going to attract opportunities. People are going to invite you on their podcasts. You know, you're going to be Yeah. Be a magnet for opportunities.

Build your network. Um, and that that foundational those foundational simple things are really so important.

Awesome. Eve or Z or Z, it doesn't matter.

We'll go in order. Um, think like a brander. That's what I would say. Um, think like a brander. You need to have that strategy in your in your head as a framework and that will really drive success and help you stand out and attract people um in a way that is uh just works tenfold.

Um, what I think we're going to see is a lot more substance this year. I think it's tough.

I think so. I think so. I hope so.

I think so.

Yeah. Um, on my end, I'm really focused on retail marketing when it comes to what I think is like really trending right now and also a lot of content creation. Um, in the past we've seen more written type of content on X and X articles and a more behind the-scenes kind of approach within web 3, but within the past year I've noticed a lot more actual video creators, people showing their face, hiring brand uh people to even run these types of uh channel verticals for them because we're at this point where we're trying to reach consumers and so we have to be relatable. We have to be real people. So, I'd say even if you don't have the resources to maybe build out an entire video strategy or a Tik Tok brand, you yourself could be making videos.

You could like be out there showing your face, talking about your product. Um, it's free to make content and that's really where the space is going. We're seeing a lot of UGC. We're seeing a lot of different types of uh channel strategies. So, I would say get out there, show your face, don't be afraid, and just that's the best way to connect with your audience.

Awesome. What a great wrap-up. Um that's all the time we have. Thank you so much for listening audience. Thank you panel

and uh we'll see you next time.