About this Episode
“If we can automate away all of the tasks that make us less human and really bring to the fore all of the things that make us more human, that enables us to scale our empathy.”
Topics Covered
Why Vanessa believes the future of marketing is "radical empathy at scale"
How AI can remove the repetitive work that makes marketers less human and create more room for creativity, taste, discernment, and customer understanding
Why the old model of forms, nurtures, lifecycle emails, and one-size-fits-all journeys is giving way to more personalized buyer support
How marketers can use customer signals, usage data, product errors, search behavior, and drop-off points to improve the experience
Why Twilio runs PLG and sales-assisted motions in parallel with one marketing team
How brand has to do more work when the same company serves enterprise CEOs, solopreneurs, developers, and API-driven teams
How Twilio built a test-and-learn culture where teams own budgets, run two-week experiments, and reallocate spend based on what works
How Twilio uses AI agents across 100% of signups and inbound sales requests to help prospects get started, qualify intent, and route the right people to sales
Why gated thought leadership is no longer the high-performing lead engine it used to be
How Twilio approaches LLM visibility through structured developer documentation, video, Reddit, AMAs, and community participation
How internal hackathons, team-built tools, and experimentation OKRs help create the cultural conditions for AI adoption
About the Guest
Vanessa Thompson is VP of Revenue & Growth Marketing at Twilio, where she leads demand, lifecycle, and growth marketing. She helped scale Twilio from a developer tool into a $5B revenue company, leading teams through category creation, AI-powered GTM transformation, and large-scale events like SIGNAL.
LinkedIn →About the Hosts
Mada Seghete is the CEO and co-founder of Upside, a next-gen revenue intelligence platform for B2B leaders. Previously co-founded and was CMO of Branch, helping scale to $100M+ revenue. Cornell Engineering graduate with Masters and MBA from Stanford. Partner at XFactor Ventures investing in women founders and organizes yearly retreats for 100+ women founders.
LinkedIn →Ethan Smith is Founder and CEO of Graphite Growth, a premium Vertical AI Growth Agency that helps companies like Webflow, Notion, MasterClass, and Captions drive sustainable revenue growth via SEO, content, and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Ethan is also an adjunct professor at IE Business School.
LinkedIn →
