North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring, and as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus? Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy?

We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose. I'm Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast.

Let's get to it. Today, I am so happy to be joined by Marcio Arnecke. Marcio is CMO of Apollo, the sales intelligence and engagement platform.

Marcio, welcome to the show.

Marcio Arnecke

Thank you so much for having me, Lindsay. I'm very happy to be here.

Lindsay Pedersen

I'm very happy to have you. To start us off, Marcio, what's the most energizing part of your job that others would never guess from the outside?

Marcio Arnecke

Ooh, I don't know if this will be a surprise to a lot of people, but Apollo is a hyper-growth startup. We're growing really fast, which means everyday challenges to solve for problems that either were blindsided or things, you know, that are just new. So for me, my daily routine is basically solving for internal problems.

It unlocks my organization to move faster.

Lindsay Pedersen

And is that a new muscle or a new-ish muscle that you've had to hone for this setting and context?

Marcio Arnecke

Honestly, I don't think it's a new muscle for me. I mean, if I think back to my career, just a little context about me, you know, I'm Brazilian born. I've been here in America for about 25 years.

I moved to San Francisco when I was very young and I had to find my way, you know, into tech. And to find my way into tech, I had to really solve for a lot of problems. You know, how would I position myself in the market, you know, as a Brazilian, someone from Latin America that did not go to school in America.

I had to really find creative ways to build my profile and be able to, you know, achieve, you know, the job and work for companies that I wanted to. So from the get-go, I had to be very smart of how to position myself and how to solve for those problems. And there's something that I just, I just built it over time, honestly, a little bit of resilience and problem solving.

And it really reflected through my career, to be honest, you know, and being able to quickly grow in a few different startups.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Well, and it sounds like it lights you up to have that challenge as opposed to other challenges, like that challenge tap something in you and the skills that you've built and the career that you've honed, because not everybody would be energized by the challenge that you just described of being in hyper growth and having to just constantly be tackling new problems. Like not everybody wants that, but for you, there's something about your spirit that is really resonant with that challenge.

Marcio Arnecke

I absolutely agree. I do share with my friends, you know, even in San Francisco or other parts of the world, that this job is not for everyone. You have to have very strong resilience.

You have to feel that you're really to a point, like you're really building a lot of energy by solving a ton of these problems. And it's something that I just have within me. And also I don't take a lot of things for granted.

And I bring that a lot here to the business, you know, what I'm taking, if we're succeeding, could be in a campaign, if we're succeeding or whatever project we're doing, I don't take it for granted. So I keep pushing to solve for the next problem that might not even be incredibly clear to everyone. So that's a bit of part of the package.

Not just I'm trying to solve for everyday problems, but also trying to solve for things that are not even in a roadmap just yet, but I know they'll be coming, you know, soon. It's something, I guess, particular to me that not everyone would enjoy it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. How would your team say that you're like as a leader? What's your kind of leadership style with them?

Marcio Arnecke

I have a phrase I use nonstop, which is progression over perfection. And I love driving teams forward, right? I would love for us to make a quick impact and to move the needle really fast.

And I think that that's how the team would describe me. The team also is going to describe me probably that I am a little bit aggressive with no targets, you know, I do think that everything is possible. Understanding that there's limitations, I do set us, you know, higher targets that are even possible, right?

That even, you know, that we can match you. That does drive some creative thinking that does drive, you know, the right conversations. I'm very careful to not burn people out.

I think that's really important as a leader, right? That you're not burning people out by creating unattainable targets, of course, but I'm definitely a little more aggressive when it comes to targets and achievements as well for us to keep moving fast. So progress over perfection and a little more aggressive on targets.

Lindsay Pedersen

What is the progress over perfection look like in like a really mundane example? Like how does somebody really know and feel that progress is what matters, not perfection?

Marcio Arnecke

This is really important depending on the stage that you are as a business and projects that you're working on. I think that works, you know, in different phases of your business. I want to be very clear that not everyone should take this, you know, and run, you know, in a business that maybe is a billion plus in revenue or you work in corporate, right?

It really depends on the phases that you are as an organization, as a business. But what it looks like for me, when we have, for example, product launch, and perhaps not all the information is well documented, and maybe we're missing pieces of the puzzle, at times you can create paralysis or bring in the product to the market, right? Or actually launching the product, being in front of customers, you know, and getting the message out to the market.

And the way I work with my team is while we want to try for, you know, to have great content and really have a lot of enough insights there to share with the ICP that we're targeting, we're really going to learn, but just bring it to market as well. So this is for me is progress. Let's progress here.

Let's bring the product to market. You know, let's not wait another two weeks for a cycle of detailed documentation that might not mean much. Let's just go for it.

You know, especially at this stage, again, that we are hyper growth. And it's really important to help us just to move a little faster, learn really fast and make some mistakes really fast, you know, and correct those mistakes to be able to keep moving forward.

Lindsay Pedersen

It strikes me that the idea of risk, obviously it's going to look different for a large company versus a hyper growth startup, but in a big corporate environment, maybe the risk is missing a projected revenue figure for the quarter. And like, there's a certain amount of perfection that's needed in offsetting that risk. And when you're in hyper growth mode, there's also risk, but that risk is more about time.

It's like, we wait too long. We hide behind the idea of perfect for too long. And then it doesn't matter.

So there's still risk. It's not as though you're like a cowboy out there, like a shoeing risk profiles. It's just that the risk is going to look different.

You're actually incurring risk by not progressing and by waiting until it's farther along.

Marcio Arnecke

I absolutely agree. I've been both sides for quite some time in my career on the side of private companies, startups, hyper growth startups, and I've been the public side as well as a public company. And I think your definition is right.

You know, as a private company, the risk is honestly, it's just the same behind, especially nowadays, you know, AI, a lot of new companies, a lot of new ways of working are coming up in a much faster pace than before. And I think just overall the market is changing and the agility is incredibly important. So there's a risk here of just staying behind and not taking the opportunity to own the market, you know, or really make a great impact on the market as quick as possible.

As a public company, it is a little bit different, right? Absolutely. You're really talking more about scalability, you know, have a scalable process, predictable pipeline, predictable revenue.

Of course, you're really then building around, you know, those quarterly reports and those become really important, of course. But as a startup, you're working around time, right? You want to be the fastest, the first and the most impactful in the market.

And hence why you have to move really fast.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes. I know you've led and built teams across Silicon Valley, Latin America, international markets. How do you think your Brazilian upbringing and global experience affect the way you manage teams, affect the way that you do marketing leadership?

Marcio Arnecke

So now marketing leadership, I think it just made me understand that everyone has a background, everyone has a different context, everyone comes from different places. And I think we should all embrace the differences, honestly, to help us build really interesting creative projects when we're embracing all these differences. You're absolutely right.

I have led teams from Singapore to London to Brazil, of course, here in America, very large organizations. And there's definitely different mindsets or different ways of working and thinking of solving problems, right? But I must say that at those times when I led international teams or global teams, those are the times that we made the biggest strides on actually driving growth, driving impact, because we're really aligning in a much bigger picture than just, you know, in a little box, even in San Francisco, in a little box in San Francisco, really driving impact globally.

So that definitely drives you to be a little more creative and mindful, you know, that you are dealing with people very much of different, you know, backgrounds and upbringings, right? But honestly, I think that's what makes life exciting. And that's what makes, you know, for a good startup story.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, it makes life more interesting. And if it's making life more interesting, it's probably going to make your customer experience more interesting. It's probably going to make the employee experience more interesting to have that empathy and richness that you just described and kind of just a broader aperture about the way you're thinking about and solving the problem.

Marcio Arnecke

I absolutely agree. Even in Apollo right now, a very large population of our customers is international. And so we serve all types of businesses, you know, from very small businesses to large corporations all over the world.

So there's a very rich base there with different needs that we supply and have the right conversations. And listen, for me, it's all about scaling at the right pace. And of course, making sure we're scaling globally.

We do keep in mind those differences and we do serve, you know, different experiences when it makes sense for our customers. So I think that's really important that your team is also connected to that base.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes. I've heard you talk about strategic storytelling, especially shifting from feature focused to impact driven brand narratives. How do you take something that's technically so sophisticated and then make it resonate at a more feeling level?

Marcio Arnecke

It's all about education and it's all about bringing to light the value of your platform and your business. I think companies like Apollo or other startups in the market, and especially in the early days, there is a tendency to focus a lot on features, you know, a little more down the product, which makes sense, especially for product founded companies. So a big part of my job is to come in and help those founders to better connect to the ICP by bringing the story up a couple of notches.

And the story is really then connecting value with the customers, right? It's really connecting, you know, what is the value of your business? What is the value of your product that brings to those customers?

Because at the end of the day, you're not just selling a product, you're selling a partnership to a lot of our prospects. In our example, a lot of our prospects don't know what great go-to-market looks like. They actually come to us to learn how great go-to-market looks like.

So you have to introduce those concepts to the customer and bring them along the ride. And the product is how do you get there? The product is based on how you get there, but you really have to drive the conversation from the perspective of education.

What is the value they introduce to their business and how do they get there? And I think that that's a bit of a switch, of course, from when you're a very early startup where you're really focusing, you know, on adoption of your product, really focusing on showcasing the features from when you're scaling, where you have to bring to the market, what is the value that this business is bringing to the users, you know?

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, it makes me think of the way we started this conversation that you love the rapid and challenging problems that you're trying to solve for customers. Like, that's the value, right? It's like whatever is the nature of the problem that you get to help them solve, alleviate a pain that they're in, maybe they didn't even know they're in that pain.

That's the value. And then the feature is the how that enables that problem to be solved, that value to be exchanged. And it also makes me wonder why everybody isn't like that.

Because you mentioned, like, especially early stage or product led companies that are really feature focused, but ultimately, if it's not solving a problem, if it's not bringing value, but also if it's not obvious what that value is to the person who has to make the purchase decision. It's funny to me that there's so much focus on features, and then kind of working a little bit upward toward the value as opposed to the other way around. I'm just curious, like, why do we start with features a lot of the time?

Marcio Arnecke

I think it makes sense if you're a product led founder, it makes a lot of sense because you focus on the product, you focus on the features, you're focusing for solving those problems. And over time as you grow, and especially as you sell into the upper market, you know, mid market enterprise, value solving is very important. You have a very clear point of view of what you're solving for under stack.

It is a bit of a culture shift and mindset shift internally in a lot of businesses. I think we all have seen it many times over, and I think it's a normal graduation, you getting a little larger.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, crossing the chasm.

Marcio Arnecke

Yeah, exactly. There's a graduation point there. It's not something that I would classify as a big mistake, you know, at something that people should watch for.

I think that the right times for the right things. It's stage dependent. There's a stage dependent.

There's a product market fit that has to be created. There's a lot of different stages here that we're talking about. And I feel very lucky that I'm able to jump in companies that have a very rich set of features, that have founders that are very driven to create products that are very interesting, that they're fixing for problems that a lot of people don't even know that they had this problem.

That's my job as a marketer to translate that to the market and connect the dots between the ICP and the existing product. And I think that that's what makes, you know, a fun job for a marketer.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. Along those lines, like, talk to me about working in a purpose-oriented company like Apollo that's also in hyper growth mode. Like, when are there tensions between the two goals of achieving a mission that's larger than dollar signs and also huge growth hopes and reasonable expectations?

Like, what's it like to be marketing a company with both of that in mind?

Marcio Arnecke

I think I am lucky where those two goals are interconnected. Our mission is to democratize access to go to market to all businesses, which means a lot of enterprises or, you know, larger corporations will likely have a rev ops organization, a marketing ops organization that have the resources and funds to buy the latest and greatest tools out there, just to have a modern go to market organization. However, the vast majority of the world, they don't.

Especially the SMB or even lower mid-market businesses, they don't have the same resources available to them. And our job is to democratize access to those businesses, not to these resources, in a very easy to use, you know, well packaged way. And that's where we're offering right now, AI-forced and all.

That goes very much along with their hyper growth, because we are opening up an opportunity for the majority of the business in the world, because I won't have the stats in my hand, but you know, I'm pretty sure it's very high that SMBs partake mid-market and enterprises. So we focus on both. However, democratizing means that we have a vast market and time that we can work with and the showcases in our current stats, you know, we have over 600,000 customers, a hundred thousand paying customers, 3 million users in our base and growing very, very rapidly.

So to answer your question, I think I'm pretty lucky that those things are connected and showing case, you know, in our own world.

Lindsay Pedersen

Have you ever been in an environment where that wasn't the case? Like there's a purpose to the company that sometimes comes into conflict with the economic goals of the company.

Marcio Arnecke

I have. I have been in an environment where the product was being built for a different buyer that was coming through either organically or the buyer that was part of the base. And it was very mismatched.

And that happens when the founder or product leaders have ideas. They are incredible, sure, but very disconnected from where the business is currently. And that goes even deeper if the product strategy is disconnected or go to market.

So we're really creating a gap, a major gap and impacted revenue, you know, at the time, impacted growth and revenue. So it took a little bit of time, but that was reshaped over some conversations. And that's something I take as a lesson learned, to be honest.

Now, from when I'm interviewing for a new company to my current, you know, positions, I do tend to go a little deeper if there's a strong connection from what we'll be building versus the ICP they're targeting. And sometimes they can identify gaps immediately, which you just make it for a different kind of job, as long as there's an understanding from everyone that there's a disconnect there. But you'd be surprised how many people just don't see it from the get go.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, it can be when you're really close to it as a founder, it actually can be quite hard to see that it's like seeing the inside of your own eyelids, that misalignment. And it strikes me as you're just describing that how much ease is unlocked when there is alignment between purpose, strategy, tactics, the ICP, all of those are flowing in the same trajectory, same vector. It's just easier.

There's just less friction.

Marcio Arnecke

There's less friction. You see more conversion. Your internal alignment reflects deeply of your external alignment as well.

So all the dots are connected. But I do want to emphasize that there is no perfection and it's okay. It's okay to have learnings.

It's okay to fail a little bit at it. But overall, at least on the highest level, you do want to have some strategic alignment across the board. So you understand deeply and whatever you're building is really solving for someone's problem.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes. Ultimately, that's what it needs to do. What about just from your leadership style?

Is there anywhere where you're a contrarian or like a rule that you break that others would raise their eyebrows at that to you it's like it's an important leadership tenet?

Marcio Arnecke

In the early days, I really like getting my hands dirty. I think it's very hard for me to have a strong opinion where I haven't seen details of the project. So in the early days, even at Apollo, I was building campaigns myself, writing some of those campaigns, going a little deeper in our own product, of course, that we use every day here for marketing.

But I think it's really important that as leaders, we have a strong handle of what is going on a little more deeper in our organization. This should be an element that everyone should be doing. I think that it's not really controversial, to be honest.

It's just surprising that a lot of leaders don't go deep with their organizations. And I've seen that even in leaders that I hire for my organization. So I disconnect.

They're just not going really deep. This is really important for a startup and really important for the phase that a startup is in the hyper growth phase, right? A little bit differently if you hire for a public company.

And again, in a very large organizations and revenue, you are hired for a different skill set. But for us or for me, the phase that we are here at startup, it's really important that you go deep, that you're able to actually know what you're talking about. So I did spend a lot of my early days actually going deeper, writing myself comms content, writing myself campaigns, understanding the tech stack more deeply so I could have a strong opinion on where things are broken and how things came together.

Lindsay Pedersen

It sounds like there's an element of feeling the bottom up experience of knowing and living and behaving with the data, with the activity itself. It's like more bottom up as opposed to top down all the time. Like, OK, you know what to do.

You just go do that. Like you actually are talking about how can you make sound decisions if you don't understand what is bubbling up to those decisions? It's almost like a decision making best practice to understand it with your hands.

Marcio Arnecke

And how can you make decisions or hiring the right leaders if you don't know how deep those problems are? How can you set the right structure and leadership in place? You're going to be successful with yourself to understand, you know, what exactly you're fixing at that stage.

And I think that's really important for a startup at scale because I call it this unicorn hires, where you're hiring people that are able to solve problems on the spot, but also can think about scalability and be able to do both. And it's a little more rare than I wish it was. It's not as easy to find the right leader.

And it's OK. Some leaders are really great at scaling teams and organizations. That's fantastic.

Some leaders are very technical, very much, you know, they can fix a problem. Right. But they might have a little harder time scaling an organization.

There is definitely a little bit of a unicorn there, which I know a lot of startups and a lot of my friends. Those are the type of leaders that we look for and start with us. Right.

Getting deep, also being able to enable your leadership skill. Honestly, then you give them the space to do what they're good at.

Lindsay Pedersen

What are you working on yourself as a leader? Like, what's your growth edge? What do you want to get better at as a leader?

Marcio Arnecke

I think it comes with saying that AI is where a lot of us are spending a lot of time. I honestly spend most of my weekend vibe calling, actually.

Lindsay Pedersen

Wow. Every weekend or just most of your weekends?

Marcio Arnecke

Almost every weekend, making a point there. I actually enjoy it, to be very honest. And that's the thing.

If you are curious by nature, this should be an actual fun project. That's very, very interesting. I actually enjoy it.

I'm building things for my own personal life that makes my personal life easier, which I think is exciting. And at the same time, building for my own team, you know, things that we know we could be solving for through AI. And that's what I'm very curious right now.

I'm very curious to understand what is the future marketing is going to look like. And we all know that things are going to change deeply. And it's okay not to know exactly how deeply things are going to change, but just by being curious, understanding and being ahead a little bit, I think is really important here to be able to guide your team.

Because I mean, a lot of people are getting questions. I'm getting questions from my leaders to understand what does it mean for us, you know, in a year as marketers of all these agents that we're building now. So that's where I'm spending a lot of my time and having a lot of good conversations with colleagues in the market as well.

Lindsay Pedersen

What do you think is the role of brand given this new reality that we're evolving into with AI? How do you see that changing or not changing?

Marcio Arnecke

It's fascinating. I just hired first head of brand at Apollo not too long ago, which is absolutely fantastic, which probably indicates that I believe is strongly on building a very strong brand foundation across the company. So we were investing quite heavily actually in brand.

And it's fascinating if you look at the market there, for example, Auto Home is sort of back in style. Auto Home was not the preferred channel for a lot of startups. For many years, it was all about digital influence.

Nowadays with not just AI, but, you know, saturation of digital influence, I suppose, Auto Home is back in style. The movie commercial is back in style. Metro advertisement is back in style.

So it's very cyclical, which is very interesting and fascinating. But my point is it's all about experimentation. It's all about coming from the dots.

I believe strongly on that foundation of brand. I believe that we're going to be investing heavily on it, but we're going to apply AI where AI can help us. A little bit of creative, certainly for some writing.

You know, there's ways AI can help us accelerate, be more targeted, better targeted ads. There's a number of ways AI can help us accelerate our brand ambitions. But I still believe, you know, in some of the, I don't want to say old school channels, but channels that I know that are quite impactful, including Auto Home as an example.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's so funny that Out of Home is in. I just think that is adorable because it's, right, it's billboards. It's the most old school.

I mean, it's not even TV. It's that old school. I love that that's back in style.

And there is something visceral about consuming an Out of Home ad that is just different from anything on a screen. So I'm here for it. Okay.

Wrapping up, this has been such a great conversation. I have five kind of rapid fire, fun questions, one word answer or so. Are you ready?

Marcio Arnecke

I'm ready.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. What's your favorite kind of candy?

Marcio Arnecke

Dark chocolate.

Lindsay Pedersen

What time do you wake up?

Marcio Arnecke

Oh, about 6 a.m. every day, including weekends.

Lindsay Pedersen

Even weekends so you can vibe code.

Marcio Arnecke

I can vibe code at the gym.

Lindsay Pedersen

What is your favorite trait in a person?

Marcio Arnecke

Kindness.

Lindsay Pedersen

Kindness.

Marcio Arnecke

People that are kind to others. I think that's really important.

Lindsay Pedersen

What is your favorite sport to participate in or watch, either you choose?

Marcio Arnecke

Oh, to participate, I've been running more and more, some half marathons. I watch. I actually enjoy watching soccer, being Brazilian, I guess.

Lindsay Pedersen

You kind of have to say that. Yeah. Okay.

If you had to go on vacation, would you choose to go to the beach or to the mountains or to a city?

Marcio Arnecke

I always choose to go to the beach. I absolutely love the beach, love the beach, which is very interesting. My partner, he loves the mountains.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, so how do you do that?

Marcio Arnecke

We find places where we have mountains and beaches.

Lindsay Pedersen

Like where?

Marcio Arnecke

Costa Rica, for example. There's beautiful mountains and nature and you have absolutely pristine white sand beaches as well.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. It's fun to think of like constraints unlocking creativity with vacation, like both mountains and beach. Go.

You know what? We've got Costa Rica. We've got Cape Town.

I don't know. Yeah.

Marcio Arnecke

Yeah. We've been to many, to be honest, which I'm always happy to share a list.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh my God, that is great. Marcio, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you.

Where can we send our listeners who want to learn more about you or Apollo?

Marcio Arnecke

Absolutely. For Apollo, Apollo.io, very simple. And for me, please follow me on LinkedIn, where I post, you know, my latest, you know, and thoughts and share more about Apollo as well.

Lindsay Pedersen

Awesome. And I will include Marcio's LinkedIn links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Marcio.

Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders. Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app. If you know of a North Star Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com.

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