Meet 3 Founders Rethinking Martech with AI

The basic marketing funnel – Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action – was developed in the late 1890’s (thanks, Elias St. Elmo) and has yet to go out of style; you can’t take an introductory marketing course without the funnel being displayed at some point.

What has changed are the tools at a marketer’s disposal (“martech”) to help drive consumers through this process. New technologies are being developed and their level of sophistication are increasing at a seemingly exponential pace within the last few years, and much of this is due to AI.

Recent focus on adopting AI has caused workers across industries to worry “the robots are coming for their jobs,” and marketing is no exception. However, reality shows that AI holds the power to change what a marketer’s everyday tasks look like, and drastically improve their efficiency and quality of work.

The rapid pace of change requires marketing managers to be dynamic, adaptable, and constantly curious. Team functions and processes often must shift to accommodate new technologies and benefit from them.

To find the next changemakers in the marketing evolution, look to startups. We talked to three martech CEOs on how their technology each transforms a different stage of the customer journey, and how marketing managers can best prepare for the years ahead.

• SiLC Technologies, Inc announced $25 million in additional funding to support design wins for its Eyeonic Vision solutions and continued product development, covered by BusinessWire.
• The users have spoken: Druva earned 3 ‘Best of 2023’ Awards from TrustRadius – in Feature Set, Value, and Relationships.
• Halcyon and Endor Labs made CRN 's 2023 list of “Stellar Startups” for being among the most exciting channel focused startup vendors creating opportunities for solution providers.

• Our own Radhika Malik was featured in an Entrepreneur Media piece, discussing eight considerations for founders looking to capitalize on AI.
• “Cheers!” to automation: Why brands, big and small, should start their automation journey now from Andy Williams and Design World , and how Exotec can offer automation to the alcoholic beverage industry in their latest blog.

What’s the key to unlocking technological benefits across industries? Precision. Listen to Madeleine Want , VP of Data, Betting and Gaming at Fanatics and host Satyen Sangani discuss change management and data governance with compelling examples from credit card companies to The New York Times .

Tackling the issues that cloud reliance can create, Krishna Rangasayee , CEO of SiMa.ai joined Danny Fortson to explain his embedded edge technology and share his journey from India, to Mississippi, to Silicon Valley and founding a company at age 50.

What happens after achieving Unicorn status? Fullstory ’s CEO Scott Voigt answers on the Without Borders podcast with Russell Goldsmith and Holly Justice , sharing his background and advice on startup leadership.

All about APIs: Cequence Security ’s Ameya Talwalkar and Varun Kohli unpack the development of APIs over the years, the security challenges that have emerged, and the different ways Cequence provides protection to financial institutions and Fortune 500 companies.

AWS re: Invent | Nov. 27 – Dec. 1 | Las Vegas

Cloud enthusiasts come together to build technical skills and network. If you’re attending, check out these opportunities to interact with our portfolio companies.

Attend sessions

• On Monday, from 2-5 PM in the AWS Jam Lounge, SingleStore will be hosting a custom AI challenge; attendees will compete in teams, testing their knowledge and gaining new skills.
• Immuta ’s Zachary Friedman and Huey Han , Amazon Web Services (AWS) , will take the Theater 3 stage at 5:30 PM on Tuesday for "Simplifying Data Security in a Complex Data Lake Environment." They’ll be talking data security policy management, compliance risk reduction, and how to empower data usage.
• See Sam Partee , Redis , on Wednesday at 12 PM in the Lightning Theater – Data Zone for his session, “Real-time RAG: How to Augment LLMs with Redis and Amazon Bedrock.”

Visit booths

• Drop by booth #1050 to see Domino Data Labs and learn about their tools for building and productizing.
• Druva is stationed at booth #650. Discover ransomware protection solutions and meet Dru, your personal AI copilot for backup.
• Find Redis at booth #168 and see Redis Enterprise 7.2 in action as it reduces cost and complexity and brings speed and reliability.
• At booth 1586, the SingleStore team is ready to show you how to build real-time AI applications with your data and deploy it to AWS.
• Visit Immuta at the Marketplace Pavilion to explore their data security platform.

Make connections

• Redis Reception will take place Monday, 7-9 PM at the Flight Club; join Redis executives and users for drinks, darts, and apps.
• Grab lunch with SingleStore on Tuesday and Wednesday, 12 – 2 PM at Sushisamba for conversations with industry trailblazers on GenAI and data analytics.

Risks, rewards, and rap songs: Rafael Granato , head of marketing at Aidaptive , shared his guiding principles for developing marketing campaigns that make waves.

Congrats, you made it to the end! For that, you deserve an 🍦 

The DTC newsletter is edited by Haley Carroll .