Marketing & Growth — From Zero to $25M

Overview

As CMO I owned the full marketing stack — paid acquisition, organic growth, investor materials, analytics, influencer management, and team leadership. Every decision was data-informed, every campaign was designed to move the needle, and every dollar was tracked.

The result: 67K+ total users, a $4 customer acquisition cost (well below gaming industry benchmarks), and pitch materials that contributed to a $25M company valuation.

What I Did

Paid Advertising — $4 CAC

We operated with no hard ad spend — paid campaigns ran entirely on free ad credits included with our X business subscription ($1K/month), with minimal Meta testing. Growth was driven by organic community building, prize pool events funded separately by the CEO, and sweepstakes incentives that kept users circulating inside the app. Through rigorous creative testing, audience segmentation, and bid optimization on those free credits, I achieved a $4 customer acquisition cost during beta — significantly below the $8–15 industry average for gaming apps.

Organic Growth Engine

Built a multi-channel content engine across X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Combined with community outreach and the 50+ creator influencer network (managed through PokerFlops), organic became our largest and most cost-effective acquisition channel.

• Grew monthly sessions from 18K to 47K (2.6× increase)
• Scaled MAU to 8K+ through sustained organic efforts
• Achieved 50% DAU increase after major redesign launches
• Acquired 54K+ new users through combined organic and paid
• Built social presence to 100K+ followers with 4.5M+ impressions across platforms
• Maintained 84.6% user retention — driven by product quality and community engagement loops

Pitch Decks & Investor Materials

Designed pitch decks and investor presentations that helped the company reach a $25M valuation. These weren't just "nice slides" — they were strategic storytelling documents: data-rich, visually compelling, and designed to tell the narrative investors needed to hear. Every chart, every data point, every visual was intentional.

Product-Market Traction

The combined effect of design, marketing, and community growth drove real business results. SOPO crossed $10M in cash game pot volume — hitting milestones faster even after losing ~25% of the user base when California rolled out new regulations. Over $250K in Poker Predictions volume and 100K+ SC distributed through freerolls and promotions kept the community engaged and growing.

Analytics & Data-Driven Decision Making

Lived in Google Analytics 4, X Ads, Meta Ads, and Hootsuite. Built custom dashboards, ran A/B tests, and translated raw data into design and marketing decisions. Every redesign, every campaign pivot, every feature priority was backed by numbers — not just instinct.

• Custom GA4 dashboards tracking user flows, retention cohorts, and conversion funnels
• Social analytics via Hootsuite — engagement rates, optimal posting windows, content performance
• A/B testing on onboarding flows, feature placements, and marketing creative
• Regular analytics readouts to engineering and leadership in daily standups

Team & Program Management

Marketing wasn't a solo effort. I led a team and coordinated across the entire organization:

• College marketing program — built a campus acquisition channel across 26+ universities (Cornell, UC Berkeley, UChicago, UVA, FSU, UPenn, and more) by recruiting poker club presidents and fraternity heads, running recurring freerolls and season-style leaderboards, and managing a team of college ambassadors — delivering 2,100+ users through the channel
• Team of 5+ including coordinators, content creators, and interns
• Cross-functional coordination — daily standups with engineering, design, leadership, and operations
• Influencer relationship management — 50+ content creators with individual performance tracking

Impact

Key Takeaways

• Design and marketing are the same muscle — Understanding the user is understanding the customer. The best campaigns came from design thinking
• $4 CAC on free ad credits — No real ad budget. Just $1K/month in X credits, creative testing, smart targeting, and the discipline to kill underperforming campaigns fast
• Pitch decks are products — Investors are users. The deck is the interface. Apply the same UX rigor
• Data informs, instinct decides — Analytics showed us what was happening. Creative intuition told us what to do about it
• Organic compounds — Paid gets you started. Organic keeps you growing. The college program, creator network, and community events proved the flywheel works

Like what you see?

I'm currently looking for my next creative role. If you think we'd work well together, let's talk.

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