SaaS & Education nonprofit
~10+ employees
U.S.-based, global programmes
Healthcare education
Fractional Founding Marketer
Women as One runs educational programmes, an awards initiative, and a SaaS platform for women cardiologists. When I joined, marketing was being run by the CEO between other priorities. No system, no measurement, no vendor relationships, no CRM. Four distinct audiences, women physicians, industry (B2B), and academic partners, each requiring a completely different approach. Nobody had separated the propositions. Nobody had mapped the funnel.
The problem
The organisation had two growth objectives that pulled in opposite directions: increase global programme participation, and drive SaaS platform adoption. Initial experiments had been launched but not tracked. There was no reporting, no channel ownership, no acquisition system. Leadership couldn’t tell what was working. The CEO was the de facto marketer.
This is the founding marketer problem. Not a campaign problem. A function problem.
What I did
Diagnosed before building.
First decision: do nothing visible for two weeks. I ran 20+ user interviews across programme participants, partners, and staff. The finding was direct, the organisation was talking to itself in its own language. Neither partners nor physicians understood what was on offer. That diagnosis became the entire first 90 days.
Separated the propositions.
Rebuilt B2B and B2C positioning from scratch. Healthcare organisations and women physicians had been addressed with identical content. I split them, different value propositions, different channels, different conversion logic.
Built the infrastructure before the campaigns
Integrated 10+ no-code tools. Built performance reporting from scratch so leadership had visibility without asking me to interpret it. Separate acquisition funnels for programme participants and SaaS user, the awareness-to-conversion path was completely different for each.
Ran the full stack simultaneously.
Recruited and managed 8–10 external vendors across 6 specialties: web development, graphic design, video, email, SEO, social. One legacy vendor relationships, I sourced the rest, briefed, and managed all from scratch. Then hired and onboarded the first in-house marketer with a performance framework built in from day one.
Expanded scope to product.
Within 3 months my remit grew to include the Talent Directory SaaS product, user research, PRD, development vendor coordination, product roadmap. Because those were the actual blockers to growth, not the campaigns.
Built for resilience.
Pre-documented systems and workflows so the function kept running when leadership became unstable. It did. The function ran without me in the room.
The results
| Metric | Results |
|---|---|
| Website traffic | 500 → 8,000+ monthly visits (1,500% increase) |
| SaaS platform users | +69% growth across 45+ countries |
| Programme diversity | 30% YoY increase, 20%+ participants from outside the U.S. |
| Social reach | 25M+ impressions |
| Newsletter subscriptions | +45% YoY, 47% open rate in average |
Why it worked
Most early-stage organisations make one of two mistakes: they hire someone who can run campaigns but can’t build infrastructure, or someone who builds infrastructure but can’t create demand. This required both simultaneously, on a lean budget. The unlock was sequencing — infrastructure first, campaigns second. Reporting existed before paid spend. Every channel decision was traceable before any budget was committed. That’s why growth held across 10+ countries instead of concentrating in one.
Frequently Asked Questions
A founding marketer builds the marketing function from scratch, not just running campaigns, but establishing the infrastructure, reporting, vendor relationships, and channel strategy that make all future marketing traceable and repeatable. In this engagement, that meant integrating 10+ tools, managing 8–10 vendors, and building separate acquisition funnels for two distinct user types before running a single paid campaign.
The diagnostic phase (user research, positioning audit, infrastructure mapping) takes 4–6 weeks. The first full system, reporting, channel architecture, messaging, is operational within 90 days. Compounding results appear from month 4 onwards, as in this case where organic traffic reached 8,000 monthly visits within the engagement.
When there is no marketing system yet. A CMO optimises and leads an existing function. A founding marketer builds the function first — ICP, positioning, channel selection, infrastructure — then hands it over or scales it. If you are the de facto marketing department, you need a founding marketer.
