Happy Sunday from NYC –
It’s definitely different to be back here after spending time in Vietnam. It's almost like putting yourself back in a mini pressure cooker.
While it’s fun to forget what day it is on a trip, I love building just as much in a completely different way, and I’m so glad to be back here.
COMING SOON: I have some really cool news to share in the next few weeks, but I'm officially going back to early-stage building. If you know me, you know that’s my sweet spot. Excited to share more soon on this.
In the meantime…
Lately, founders (stages Seed through Series D) keep asking me 2 things:
How can we make our product stickier? And what type of marketing accelerates this?
How should we structure our marketing team?
I’ll answer #1 briefly and #2 in-depth.
How to make your product sticky & what type of marketing accelerates this
I’ll keep #1 brief since it depends on your product, user journey, gaps, and goals. I’ll dedicate a future newsletter to this, but for now, here are a few resources that can help:
These are all popular and have great feedback, so be sure to check them out.
How should you structure your marketing team?
Here’s what’s worked for me and why I believe it’s best. I spent 3 years building and iterating on this team structure at Citizen, the #4 grossing news app on iOS and Android.
Grounding Philosophy: Startups fall into the trap of overhiring in-house before their growth levers and models are proven. It’s so much more effective to experiment until you are confident in what works, then staff accordingly.
I like to hire once I have stat sig on something that’s working and want to 10X it.
Current Team Structure at Citizen
Me = Marketing org leader, top marketing executive
Responsibilities include: the entire company’s top of funnel, significant responsibility on the overall revenue of the company derived from the top of funnel, and complete marketing oversight (e.g., everything from strategy, budget, implementation, brand, product marketing, GTMs, etc)
One FTE (full-time employee)
Shaped this hire around one specific goal that I wanted to work on (increasing social media views) because I proved it was one of the pillars of our marketing user acquisition engine; the role evolved into more of a marketing generalist once we cracked social media
Fractional + Agency:
Email Marketer
Paid Marketing Agency
3 Contractors for 24/7 Social Posting (2 Overseas + 1 US-Based)
Meme + UGC Content Agency
FYI, Citizen is the #4 news app in the App Store and Play Store for Top Grossing Apps, and with only 2 FTE (full-time employees), we lean into all the below marketing areas:
Product Marketing (e.g. Building paywalls, copy for enterprise landing page and touchpoints, etc)
Growth Marketing
Email / Lifecycle Marketing
Social Media Marketing (Organic)
Creator Program (we have one that’s best in class, and handle everything like prospecting, analytics, and even payments)
Context Behind My Team Choices:
I’m often reacting to shifts: market changes, board asks, product strategy, new launches.
I keep a flexible budget I can shift monthly (e.g., between email, top-of-funnel, creators).
Managing strong fractional talent is easier and lets me focus on building, not micromanaging.
Fractional pros are rly strong talent right now; I learn what’s working for their other top clients and replicate.
In many areas of marketing, I don’t want someone only focused on my company. I want talent that keeps a pulse on competitors and industry best practices across top brands.
The “Why” Behind the Org Design
1) Lean structure > a bloated in-house team (especially at early stages)
Lean teams stay tighter, move faster, and adapt as things change.
When I speak on panels alongside Fortune 500 CMOs, people are shocked at how lean Citizen’s marketing team is and how much autonomy I have.
At the same time, I have to build a lot of trust with my team, and things like 24/7 publishing means I can’t review every piece. I’d rather risk errors than slow down or miss opportunities.
What’s worked: Train people you trust, give them AI tools/templates for a consistent voice, and let it rip. I built Citizen’s voice and prompts so anyone can replicate it flawlessly, and those same prompts are still used 3 years later.
When you’re not weighed down by layers of process and approval (a hidden killer), decisions happen quickly, pivots are easier, and you’re not wasting burn for your org on nonessential roles.
Every person is either driving growth, leaning into an area of expertise, or helping us 10X+ something.
2) Speed vs. bureaucracy: Smaller teams make faster decisions
I’ve always seen small teams make sharper calls and be more comfortable taking risks. The number of times I asked my peers, “So, should we just rip this and see?”... probably weekly (if not daily).
You can act on signals immediately and get to iterating faster. Bigger orgs end up seeking consensus, and slowness burns time and money.
3) Talent arbitrage: Fractional/agency experts bring playbooks from other companies (that are often in motion) that you can plug in immediately
Fractional/agency experts are for sure undervalued: they’ve solved so many different problems (new and old) and have a portfolio of clients you’ll never have access to in-house.
Renting someone who is working with other winners is such a good way to learn in real-time and use what’s proven.
I also find that they are so much less to manage.
If you own and guide the brand, you can pick specialized fractional talent that truly excels in specific areas.
Learnings from Scaling Teams:
1) Framework I use to hire in-house vs. fractional:
My guide: If it impacts our brand voice every day (e.g., social, customer community) and requires rapid iteration, it stays in-house or with a trusted generalist who “gets” the company.
For channels where performance and expertise matter more than deep brand context (e.g., paid ads, SEO, certain types of content), I go external or fractional.
Example: I don’t need or want to know how to use Iterable (or ESP) deeply and upload/flight email campaigns. I want to figure out how to make the company more money with marketing. That’s my sole focus.
2) I love little friction:
I’ve worked with most of my team for years, and I’ve found that the right agencies and fractional talent create a partnership-like dynamic with our small core team that leads to less internal bureaucracy.
People stay focused on the goal, making the work smooth with less friction. Btw, it’s not that I don’t like hiring in-house, this is just an observation on relationship dynamics.
3) Common hiring mistakes:
Don’t overhire for marketing before you clearly understand your growth lever. Make sure you have stat sig on a new growth lever that works before hiring there, either.
I like to start to prove something myself, then scale out once I have a framework for how someone can 10x my work.
4) Org evolution:
My marketing team changed based on the evolution of our work, scrappy experiments → repeatable engines → scalable structure.
Example: How We Scaled to 1B+ Views
These examples both show how I started running in-house experiments, got stat sig, and then scaled correctly with staffing.
I don’t want to waste time and burn where it’s unnecessary because it’s also a hassle to undo.
Well, How’d I Do?
How to structure your marketing team, and how I structure mine, are questions I’ve gotten a lot recently.
This makes sense given how companies are receiving strong funding right now and look to scale growth that way.
I hope this was helpful. It certainly ties into my style of experimenting and finding winning growth levers → doubling down.
If you have a different team-building style that would be helpful to hear about, reply & share! Happy to feature you in a future week.
There are lots of cool, new people that joined this newsletter over the last week, and it’s great to have you here…WELCOME!
I hope you have an excellent and productive week. Crazy that summer is almost over, let’s make the most of it.
Julia
