FOR THE DIRECTOR OF GROWTH MARKETING ROLE · INDIANAPOLIS
You need someone who has built the function. Not worked inside one.
I have built a demand engine from zero, owned a revenue number, and hand-rolled the workflow Markup AI sells: a brand and voice standard, content generated against it, and a review gate before anything ships.
THE RECORD
Four numbers I have actually owned.
From my own record at Zerply (2012–2016), Cisco/ScanSafe (2009–2012), and Top Rated (2016–present).
THE FIT, LINE BY LINE
Your requirements. What I can show against each one.
The posting is specific, so this is specific. Six of the seven requirements I can evidence directly. One I cannot, and it is marked as such.
Zerply (2012–2016) was an $8M VC-backed B2B SaaS CRM and marketplace. I was Product Marketing Manager and a co-founder, which meant I owned the number, not a channel.
Cisco/ScanSafe (2009–2012) put me against partner revenue directly: 50%+ YoY growth, 70% growth in public-sector revenue, and a 40% reduction in sales-cycle length from process work I led.
At Zerply there was no demand function until I built one. I designed the acquisition system end to end: sourcing, enrichment, segmentation, sequencing, and measurement.
That system produced 50,000 users in six months with no paid budget. It was not a campaign. It was infrastructure that ran without me once it was built.
I built a literature production system that ingests a brand style guide and voice, generates on-brand collateral against it, and reviews the output before it ships — across a 278-model, 12-brand portfolio. It is live at carrier.toprateddesign.com.
That is scan, score, and rewrite, hand-rolled. I have lived the problem Markup AI productizes, which means I can write about it from experience rather than from a positioning doc.
I ran Zerply’s email messaging strategy as a testing program — A/B structure, performance analysis, and iteration against conversion, not opens.
At Top Rated I have run the P&L since 2016, growing it to roughly $1.3M in revenue over three years. Budget decisions there come out of my own pocket, which is a useful teacher.
At Cisco I managed contractual relationships with 20+ strategic partners and led the cross-functional engagement — sales, marketing, legal, and technical — that made those relationships produce revenue.
At Top Rated I have shipped through Sony and Microsoft certification and coordinated the outside production of 400+ digital assets and 15 AR experiences.
The $8M raise at Zerply came out of decks I wrote and presentations I delivered. Investors are the least forgiving executive audience there is.
This site is a sample of the written work: strategy stated plainly, with the assumptions and the gaps on the page rather than hidden.
I have not run HubSpot as an administrator. That is the one requirement on the list I cannot claim, and I would rather say so here than in week three.
What I do have is the underlying discipline: I built Zerply’s acquisition and prospecting infrastructure myself in SQL and APIs, including the BDR prospecting system, so lifecycle stages, scoring logic, attribution models, and the marketing-to-sales handoff are concepts I have implemented rather than configured. HubSpot is a tool I would expect to be productive in inside two weeks and fluent in inside a quarter.
THE PART I WOULD LEAD WITH
I have run your product’s workflow by hand.
That is why I can market it.
I took a manufacturer’s 88-page brand guideline — palette, typography, and a defined brand voice — and turned it into a production system. Content goes in as plain text. The system composes it against the brand standard and renders a print-ready PDF, at a scale of 278 model-lines across 12 brands. Then it gets reviewed against the same standard before it ships.
A brand and voice config, not a PDF nobody reads
Tokens and voice principles encoded as machine-readable configuration, so “on brand” is a check a machine can run rather than an opinion a reviewer holds.
Generation that cannot drift off-brand
The author only touches content. Colors, type, and layout are guaranteed by construction. That is the difference between a writing assistant and a governance layer.
Review before publish, every time
Every draft checked against the standard before it goes out, which is the bottleneck teams try and fail to fix with headcount.
Why this matters for a growth role: your buyer is a marketing leader who has already been burned by volume without control. I have been that buyer. I can write the content, the nurture, and the paid copy for that person without translating from a positioning document, because it is my own problem I would be describing.
WHERE I STAND
Straight answers to the obvious questions.
Are you actually in an eligible state?
Yes. I live in Indianapolis, which is both on your residency list and where the role is based. No relocation, no timezone gap, and I can be in a room on short notice.
Your last several years are not a marketing title.
Correct. Since 2016 I have run Top Rated, where I own the product, the P&L, and the go-to-market. The marketing title is Zerply, 2012–2016. What has been continuous is ownership of a revenue outcome, which is what the posting actually asks for.
Have you worked in an AI-native org?
Not as an employee. I have built AI-assisted production systems as an operator, which is the specific thing the posting asks for — a builder, not a user. The literature system above is the artifact, and I can walk through the code.
What would you do in week one?
Listen and instrument, in that order. The plan is on the next page, and the first thirty days of it are almost entirely questions rather than campaigns.
The plan is the rest of the argument.
Ninety days, written from the outside, with the assumptions and the places I could be wrong stated on the page.