Testimonials

Curious what former clients say? Read on.

“When I read some of Emily’s articles about open source on LinkedIn, I was surprised and intrigued at how accurate her perspective was. There are a lot of misconceptions and concepts about open source, but she clearly understands what’s going on, and we think a lot alike.

As a rapidly growing Series A startup, we needed help with our positioning but weren’t sure where to start. Although our marketing had evolved over time, we lacked a well-thought-out strategy.

I knew we needed to approach our positioning thoughtfully and make sure we did everything right because we had a lot riding on this. It made sense to reach out to Emily and mind-meld with someone who could help navigate our positioning process.

Her workshop was unique because we ended up with a positioning canvas, a set of opinions, a point of view, a positioning statement, and a breakdown of how our features meshed into that statement. She walked us through a set of questions, acted as project manager, and helped us reach consensus.

We left with an artifact, surprising new discoveries, and a written distillation of the workshop. Emily did an excellent job of managing the team, making them feel heard, and getting people on the same page. Ultimately, as CEO, I felt like I was able to absorb the final result and make it my own. My team walked away feeling the same way because everything just made sense.

Emily was the first moment where we actually had positioning and a clear point of view. She helped us understand the importance of the language we use to describe our brand, products, and services.

Customers may have a visceral sense of what you do, but they’re going to use the language you give them. If that language is in the wrong category, or is too complex, or doesn’t convey the value your customer will receive, they’ll be communicating convoluted phrases to everyone down the line who needs to hear clear reasons for working with you. This includes their procurement department, their managers, and the person who signs your contract.

With the shift in positioning and language used to describe our products and services, we’ve received a lot more calls from customers who are speaking the same language as we do. This has resulted in an improved conversion rate in terms of demos booked. If you’re looking for someone to help you get your positioning signed, sealed, and delivered, Emily is well worth the investment.”

— Mike McNeil, CEO, Fleet

“We were in our first year of business when I first heard Emily speak on a podcast about positioning for developer products.  It really caught my attention that she had experience with developer-focused products as a niche as well as open-source developer marketing. In the podcast interview, she gave very specific and actionable suggestions. It wasn’t just fluff or obvious best practices—she stressed the importance of being opinionated to filter out those who you can or can’t help. I knew immediately that we needed to write content like she recommended.

Whenever we had presale conversations, our prospects could understand the value of our products and services in about 20 minutes. However, our website wasn’t reflecting the same clarity to visitors and our positioning and messaging wasn’t helping our business. It felt wrong or incomplete, even though it contained technical content.

We weren’t in position to hire a full-time marketer, so we decided to engage Emily as she is an expert in positioning, messaging, and coaching. Some of our goals were to build out our pipeline, kickstart our sales funnel, get as many beta users as possible, and reduce our prospecting call time.

After Emily’s workshop, we experienced fundamental changes in how we thought about our messaging and positioning. We learned how to structure a more targeted persona, improve our messaging, and draw from the output to create future content. One of the workshop exercises was to rewrite our tagline. The discussion itself had a huge impact on our company because it resulted in systemic positive changes in everything we do. It helped us home in on the next year of product development.

I’m not a professional marketer. I don’t know what “good” looks like, or what we should be benchmarking against. Because Emily works with so many relevant companies in a broader segment of technology, she was able to bring a baseline of actual data, not just her intuition. You can’t just Google or buy this knowledge. It comes from experience and being engaged with current companies who are selling to customers and knowing what the trends are.

I consistently refer Emily to technical founders and non-marketing founders such as salespeople, domain experts, and product people because they don’t know what good marketing looks like. You need an expert who does. There’s no doubt that eventually you’ll need to build out a marketing team, but the number one thing that’s hurting your business is not being able to communicate what you do well. Emily can coach you and give you the skills you need to actually start marketing right now.”

— Jonathan Beri, Founder & CEO, Golioth

“We were an early-stage start-up with a lot of big ideas, and we needed help with our messaging and positioning. I had experience with marketing and branding exercises in the past and knew that the companies that took them seriously got serious results. It’s important to take the time to figure out how to articulate who you are, what you’re doing as an organization, and how you’re going to make your customers’ lives better.

Emily’s workshop helped us gain that perspective. There were two unique positives about working with her that we noticed right at the beginning. First, she was a journalist for a long time, and when you write stories, you learn how to ask questions, such as “why is this interesting?” or “how does this earn a spot on the page?”. Second, she has a really keen understanding of how to focus attention in a workshop and get everyone on the same page.

The results were a ready-to-go home page, the first slides of our deck, a new tagline, and a new understanding of who we are, what we’re doing here, and how to speak to our audience. In fact, after the workshop, a VC asked me for our buyer persona. I literally copied the description from Emily’s documents. 

Over time, our product may change, but what we’re trying to do and for whom has not. Like many founders, we think our products are revolutionary and have ideas about what terminology we should or shouldn’t use. Emily kept it real and helped us understand how to speak to our target audience using the best language. 

Who are you going to find that’s better than Emily? No one else has the context she does. She knows the space, your audience, and its personality. 

Working with Emily was an absolute pleasure. Whatever you’re paying, you’ll get ten times back in value. By outsourcing the hard thinking, you’ll be off to the races with deliverables in hand.”

— Michael Tanenbaum, CEO and co-founder, Mycelial

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Before we work together, I have to be confident that a) your problem is positioning and b) everyone on the leadership team is willing to change your positioning.