Working at MarketMuse: Content Intelligence Platform

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Chuck, thanks so much for joining us,

Charles Frydenborg, MarketMuse  

Keith. Appreciate the time, it's good to see you.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Yeah, I'm excited talking about MarketMuse, because it's a platform that's using AI to really help companies take their content strategy to a whole new level. So what does that mean? What is MarketMuse?

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Well, when you look at what companies are challenged with, when they're creating content these days, they've got two things they've got to figure out. Number one is, what should we be writing about? That's a hard question to answer. And it's a question that typically is very subjective, right, we inject data into that decision to inform them as to how they should proceed. Once they make those decisions on what they should be writing about, we then provide their information to the writers about what it means to be an expert on that particular topic, what it means to be aligned with user intent, and be able to answer the question somebody who does that search is seeking information on. So in a nutshell, it's about making sure your content is visible to its target audience so that it performs and they can find it. And then what happens after that? Does it answer their questions? Does it give them the information they were seeking? And most importantly, does it? Does it drive them to the desired outcome, whether that's a purchase action, or learning more about the company, that is absolutely critical, because now content really is the foundation of demand gen. And purchasers will be looking at content to determine if they want to learn more. And if your content isn't optimized, and it isn't aligned with their intent, there, you're losing the majority of your pipeline before you even know it exists.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Yeah, and this is so important, because it's not a secret anymore, that the journey of a buyer starts in a search engine. And that's where a company is doing a lot of research about your product or service before a sales meeting is held, or a purchasing decision is made. 

Charles Frydenborg, MarketMuse  

Yeah, you're on point there. The days of cold calling, and getting to potential buyers is gone. I mean, I don't know about you. But if somebody calls me and it's a number, and it's not a name, I don't answer. Right. So how do you get to your buyer, you get to your buyer by informing them. Right, that that is how you can drive traffic and interest to your company, and your products and services.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Now your CEO at MarketMuse, talk a bit about the history of the company. And what brought you there?

Charles Frydenborg, MarketMuse  

Well, Aki Bala is our founder. And the company was founded seven years ago. And for the first two years, it was him pounding code out, and figuring out how to create a AI driven platform that would optimize content for quality and topical authority. We actually went to market five years ago, and for the first two years of the company, it was pretty much just that that optimized capability that we marketed. Three years ago, we launched our existing platform, which is called the market Muse suite. And that was right about when I joined the company. What attracted me to MarketMuse was first the people I got to know the two co founders, Aki and Jeff, very well through a prior my prior role. You know, life's too short. If a company's not about the right things about how they treat people, how they do things. It makes being successful and having an enjoyable time, they're very difficult. The second thing for me, and it goes back to what a mentor of mine said to me long time ago, find a company who's differentiated by the things they do, and the combination of business issues that they solve. If you find that you ought to be able to make the rest of it work. That's what brought me to MarketMuse.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Got it. Okay. Now, what's the current stage of the company in terms of, you know, number of employees or whatever else you can share?

Charles Frydenborg, MarketMuse  

So, we are now at about 36 employees. We've had a really good year in 2021. Like many businesses, we suffered a bit during the pandemic, we managed to grow just not at the scale and rate we had anticipated. So this is really been a year about us re accelerating the growth of the company. We've accomplished that. And now we're seeking with capital to increase that, that growth acceleration and that means in that means hiring a lot of people, you know, right now, I said I think we have 36 folks Our plan next year is to have over 6060 people working for market news.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Is that hiring across all different functional areas?

Charles Frydenborg, MarketMuse  

Absolutely. You know, when you look at the core groups of the business, sales and marketing, customer success account management, all those client-facing functions are critical. But product and engineering is just as important for us. You know, we've got brilliant folks here. That's why we have a product that's differentiated in the fashion it is relative to our competitors. But, you know, we can only ask, ask them to do so much with what they have. We have plenty of ideas and plenty of plans, most notably releasing global languages for the first time next year. But in order to extend our competitive advantage, we need more talented people both in product and engineering, to make that happen, and then finally, marketing. If my VP of Marketing, Elizabeth Ervin was listening to this and didn't hear me mention marketing, she'd get upset with me, and rightfully so, they have been magical in terms of what they've done with the limited budget that we've had over the last few years. And, you know, we're finally going to be able to arm that group to do some of the things that they've wanted to do for so long. So we're really excited about 2022.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

So what's the culture like working at MarketMuse?

Charles Frydenborg, MarketMuse  

You know, and I'll admit, I think our culture is ongoing. You know, I think it's like anything, the building the improvement can never can't stop, right. If you're not getting better than then you're, you know, you're, you're falling or losing ground. Our culture first is about, it's about innovation, it's about not being afraid. You know, as I tell everybody to come here, I don't mind you're making mistakes, just don't make the same one over and over again, let's, let's make mistakes, learn from them. And then go make new ones. But it's also about, it's about how you treat people. And the characteristics and quality that you want in the individuals that you hire, you know, especially being a company, our size, hiring is so important. If you hire somebody that is not a culture ad, and they can't do the job the way you expect them to do. It's a setback. It's not only a setback, but because of that individual, but it also lowers the bar, in terms of the expectations that you can have for everybody else. So we are very diligent and very rigorous in our hiring processes, you know, we're looking for, for people that are selfless, that are not only invested in themselves, but they're invested in the success of the team, and the success of the company. You know, we're looking for people where, you know, really work ethic is table stakes. I mean, we could hire 20 people tomorrow, and we'd all have enough to do. But we need people that have the gift of introspection that can look at a scenario that developed and understand what they could have been that what they could have done better. If every time something happens. And it goes well, it's because of you. But every time something goes wrong, it's somebody else's fault, right, you've got no reason to improve. You know, we need people that when they look in the mirror, they see what's really there. And they understand the strengths and the assets they bring to the table, but also the opportunities they have for growth. We also want people that that are coachable, coachable, and collaborative. I'm 58 years old, I learned something new every day, if I can learn something new every day, so Can everybody on my team. And most importantly, after all of that, we want people that behave with character and dignity and integrity every day, we want them to treat their co workers or partners or clients with the respect that they deserve. And if somebody can check all those boxes, we'll do everything we can to enable their success.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Now, the job market is very active out there. There are lots of opportunities for people to explore, which is a good thing. So why is now the ideal time to join MarketMuse?

Charles Frydenborg, MarketMuse  

Well, I mean, you know, I mentioned my age before, obviously, I'm not I'm not a kid, right? Clearly, Chuck is not in his 20s or 30s. And I've been around a while, right. And what that means is I've seen in I've had some incredible professional experiences. I've also had ones that have been challenging just like anybody else. I look at the culture that we've built here, and I look at the opportunity we have for growth. I mean here we're going to grow 50% year over year in 2021. And you know, we are we wanted to do more that kind of growth. Free is not something you find very often in a company, right? growth rate creates opportunity. If your company's flat year over year, and somebody comes to me and says, Hey, what's my career path? Well, your career path is if the person that reports to you leave, maybe we can consider you for that. That's not where we are, you know where we're growing. We're growing rapidly. And we need to build upon an expanding foundation of people in this organization. So you come here, you perform, and you do so with all those characteristics that I listed for listed for you just a moment ago. And you're going to have the opportunity to pick your spot as we continue to scale.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Well, if you are incent exploring opportunities at MarketMuse, you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz, which is venturefizz.com/marketmuse. You'll see all their listings there. And if you are a marketer watching this and you haven't checked out their platform yet, it is amazing. When you see what this thing does, you absolutely need to check it out. Chuck, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the great things happening at the company.

Charles Frydenborg, MarketMuse  

Thanks, Keith. Appreciate the time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai