Lenny Distilled

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe's first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

May 25, 2025

Featuring: Krithika Shankarraman (Executive in Residence, Thrive Capital (Former VP Marketing at OpenAI, First Marketing Hire at Stripe))

3 quotes · 3 insights

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Developer audiences demand authenticity and reliability

You couldn't really play act at understanding the product, especially when developers are trained to spot bugs, right? So not only do they spot those bugs in code, they spot those bugs in marketing.
Krithika ShankarramanExecutive in Residence, Thrive Capital (Former VP Marketing at OpenAI, First Marketing Hire at Stripe) 00:23:24

Use customer words in your messaging

When I was doing the support rotation, there were thematic things that kept coming up. People were asking, 'Hey, do you process subscription payments or recurring payments?' And I was like, 'Of course you could, but there's no reason you should know that because we don't tell you anywhere.'
Krithika ShankarramanExecutive in Residence, Thrive Capital (Former VP Marketing at OpenAI, First Marketing Hire at Stripe) 00:29:54

Track customer value, not vanity metrics

A lot of marketing metrics tend to be vanity metrics about the number of clicks that you got, number of views, number of impressions. I think those are all bullshit numbers.
Krithika ShankarramanExecutive in Residence, Thrive Capital (Former VP Marketing at OpenAI, First Marketing Hire at Stripe) 00:00:18

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