Viviana Faga's guest appearances

Viviana Faga

Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™

The StartUp to ScaleUp Game Plan

CMO Conversations with Tricia Gellman

Brad Feld

Christopher Lochhead

Dorie Clark

John McAfee

Chris Ducker

Brian Scudamore

Kara Goldin

Hal Elrod

David Osborn

Ken Blanchard

Peter Thiel

Celeste Headlee

Steven Kotler

Scott Kupor

Tim Rhode

OwlTail

Creating a category is a career-defining moment for any marketer. Some are lucky enough to do it once. Viviana Faga has done it multiple times – having held marketing leadership positions at Salesforce (where she and Tricia met), Jive, Yammer, Microsoft, and Zenefits. She’s since moved onto the VC side of things as an operating partner at Emergence Capital, where she advises category-creating portfolio companies on a daily basis. Tricia and Viviana get together to discuss what it was like to work with Marc Benioff in the early days, why technology has become an equalizer for brands, and how VC's think about marketing today.*This episode was recorded prior to social distancing measures.Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends. You can connect with Tricia on Twitter @triciagellman @HYPERGROWTH_Pod

Creating a category is a career-defining moment for any marketer. Some are lucky enough to do it once. Viviana Faga has done it multiple times – having held marketing leadership positions at Salesforce (where she and Tricia met), Jive, Yammer, Microsoft, and Zenefits. She’s since moved onto the VC side of things as an operating partner at Emergence Capital, where she advises category-creating portfolio companies on a daily basis. Tricia and Viviana get together to discuss what it was like to work with Marc Benioff in the early days, why technology has become an equalizer for brands, and how VC's think about marketing today. *This episode was recorded prior to social distancing measures. Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the pod with your friends. You can connect with Tricia on Twitter @triciagellman @HYPERGROWTH_Pod

What Marketers Need To Know About Category Creation (With Emergence Capital’s Viviana Faga)

We have another riveting and insightful episode today with Viviana Faga, Operating Partner at Emergence Capital. She is in-charge of marketing and helped create over 150B in new market cap. Today she shares some of her amazing experiences working both with startups and VCs.The Importance of MarketingViviana Faga worked in Senior Marketing roles with companies like Salesforce.com and Zoom Communications. She was the Head of Marketing at Yammer and pioneered the enterprise social space.At the moment, she coaches CEOs and Founders and leads them in finding the importance of marketing in scaling their businesses.“You just got $5-15M and you're thinking, ‘where do I want to spend my money? I want to spend money on building my product and I don't know who to hire? Why should I hire a marketer? It just seems like one big massive waste.’ That’s what I deal with and those are the kind of questions that I get everyday.” - Viviana FagaThe Best Doesn’t Always WinViv narrates her current client who has a great product, but is currently in a category that his competition built. Viv find it fascinating to explain that the best products doesn’t always win. If a CEO doesn’t believe in this, the CEO then finds himself in a never ending cycle of “catch-up.”“There are plenty of cases where it does. The company just sort of takes off, without great marketing. We've seen that. But for the most part, in the competitive market, if you don't define the category, if you don't create it, you're going to really struggle because now you're gonna look like you're playing catch up.” - Viviana FagaViv advises her clients that the company will never be able to catch up if they continue copying the competition’s message.“You have to change the game. Come up with completely new messaging. You have to go so hard at writing that message ⁠— from your press releases, website and sales collateral. Every single piece of content that is external facing has to speak this new language.” - Viviana FagaCEOs Who Listen Viviana was proud to say that she embedded herself into her client’s company. Other than this, she believes that she can only help those who are willing to listen. She narrated how she turned down the CEO of Yammer, twice.“It was hard to turn him down, but obviously he convinced me. I wanted to work for a CEO who understood the value of marketing and after that conversation, I wasn't so sure but a lot of folks from Salesforce have gone there. It's our job to convince him Sales &amp; Marketing matter.” - Viviana FagaTo hear more about  Startup Marketing: Viviana Faga Emergence Capital and more relevant information about Viviana Faga, download and listen to the episode.Bio:Viviana brings over fifteen years of experience designing and building brand categories for successful cloud/SaaS and enterprise social companies, helping them create scalable growth engines that drive successful exits.Her particular passions are scaling and structuring go-to-market SaaS teams, messaging and positioning, category creation, freemium product strategy, and sales enablement.Before joining Emergence, Viviana served as VP of marketing for Yammer, where she defined the enterprise social category. After Yammer’s $1.2B acquisition by Microsoft, she became its head of marketing for enterprise social, which included Office 365, Skype, and Lync. She also spent over six years at Salesforce, where she launched several key product initiatives. Additionally, she was the VP of marketing for Platfora (now Workday) and the CMO of Zenefits.Links:Emergence Capital - Viviana FagaLinkedin - Viviana FagaTwitter - Viv Faga103 The Power of an IPO with Eric Yuen011 The Perception of your product is your productWe hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life.

We have another riveting and insightful episode today with Viviana Faga, Operating Partner at Emergence Capital. She is in-charge of marketing and helped create over 150B in new market cap. Today she shares some of her amazing experiences working both with startups and VCs. The Importance of Marketing Viviana Faga worked in Senior Marketing roles with companies like <a href="http://Salesforce.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Salesforce.com</a> and Zoom Communications. She was the Head of Marketing at Yammer and pioneered the enterprise social space. At the moment, she coaches CEOs and Founders and leads them in finding the importance of marketing in scaling their businesses. “You just got $5-15M and you're thinking, ‘where do I want to spend my money? I want to spend money on building my product and I don't know who to hire? Why should I hire a marketer? It just seems like one big massive waste.’ That’s what I deal with and those are the kind of questions that I get everyday.” - Viviana Faga The Best Doesn’t Always Win Viv narrates her current client who has a great product, but is currently in a category that his competition built. Viv find it fascinating to explain that the best products doesn’t always win. If a CEO doesn’t believe in this, the CEO then finds himself in a never ending cycle of “catch-up.” “There are plenty of cases where it does. The company just sort of takes off, without great marketing. We've seen that. But for the most part, in the competitive market, if you don't define the category, if you don't create it, you're going to really struggle because now you're gonna look like you're playing catch up.” - Viviana Faga Viv advises her clients that the company will never be able to catch up if they continue copying the competition’s message. “You have to change the game. Come up with completely new messaging. You have to go so hard at writing that message ⁠— from your press releases, website and sales collateral. Every single piece of content that is external facing has to speak this new language.” - Viviana Faga CEOs Who Listen  Viviana was proud to say that she embedded herself into her client’s company. Other than this, she believes that she can only help those who are willing to listen. She narrated how she turned down the CEO of Yammer, twice. “It was hard to turn him down, but obviously he convinced me. I wanted to work for a CEO who understood the value of marketing and after that conversation, I wasn't so sure but a lot of folks from Salesforce have gone there. It's our job to convince him Sales &amp; Marketing matter.” - Viviana Faga To hear more about  Startup Marketing: Viviana Faga Emergence Capital and more relevant information about Viviana Faga, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Viviana brings over fifteen years of experience designing and building brand categories for successful cloud/SaaS and enterprise social companies, helping them create scalable growth engines that drive successful exits. Her particular passions are scaling and structuring go-to-market SaaS teams, messaging and positioning, category creation, freemium product strategy, and sales enablement. Before joining Emergence, Viviana served as VP of marketing for Yammer, where she defined the enterprise social category. After Yammer’s $1.2B acquisition by Microsoft, she became its head of marketing for enterprise social, which included Office 365, Skype, and Lync. She also spent over six years at Salesforce, where she launched several key product initiatives. Additionally, she was the VP of marketing for Platfora (now Workday) and the CMO of Zenefits. Links: Emergence Capital - Viviana Faga Linkedin - Viviana Faga Twitter - Viv Faga 103 The Power of an IPO with Eric Yuen 011 The Perception of your product is your product We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life.

110 Startup Marketing: Viviana Faga Emergence Capital

Doug Landis

Emergence Capital is one of the world’s leading enterprise Saas VC funds – with 7 exits in excess of $500m including Salesforce, SuccessFactors &amp; Box. Doug and Viv joined Emergence - as Growth Partner and Operating Partner respectively - to share their expertise in delivering successful go-to-market and growth strategies at companies like Salesforce and Box. They discuss:  How to prioritise &amp; dominate your target verticals Why you should hire a marketing lead before you invest in sales expertise How to create a new software category for your business How to build harmony &amp; efficiency between your sales &amp; marketing teams Customer Success teams: why they're as important as sales/marketing yet often undervalued at startups   For more insights into Emergence Capital check out https://www.emcap.com &amp; for advice on hiring world class talent for startups &amp; scaleups head over to http://alpinasearch.com

Emergence Capital is one of the world’s leading enterprise Saas VC funds – with 7 exits in excess of $500m including Salesforce, SuccessFactors &amp; Box. Doug and Viv joined Emergence - as Growth Partner and Operating Partner respectively - to share their expertise in delivering successful go-to-market and growth strategies at companies like Salesforce and Box. They discuss:  <ul><li>How to prioritise &amp; dominate your target verticals</li> <li>Why you should hire a marketing lead before you invest in sales expertise</li> <li>How to create a new software category for your business</li> <li>How to build harmony &amp; efficiency between your sales &amp; marketing teams</li> <li>Customer Success teams: why they're as important as sales/marketing yet often undervalued at startups </li> </ul> For more insights into Emergence Capital check out <a href="https://www.emcap.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.emcap.com</a> &amp; for advice on hiring world class talent for startups &amp; scaleups head over to <a href="http://alpinasearch.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://alpinasearch.com</a>

Viviana Faga &amp; Doug Landis, Emergence Capital 