Kevin's Take
Your Marketing Stack Is About to Become Your Marketing Skill
Ok... I’m not saying Clay and HubSpot disappear tomorrow. But the era of "buy a platform and contort your process to fit it" is ending. We have entered the era of "build exactly what you need."
This isn't about saving money (though you might). It's about the freedom to build for your actual workflow instead of jamming your team into a vendor's rigid idea of how marketing works. AI coding tools—like my daily driver, Claude Code—are finally robust enough that non-technical marketers can build custom applications.
I've seen this movie before.
In the early 2000s, we bought enterprise automation because building was too expensive. That made sense then. It doesn't make sense now. Today, a marketer with Claude or Cursor can build a custom lead scoring system in an afternoon—one that matches your specific customer journey, not a generic industry template.
The implication for your team is massive.
You are moving from a standard stack to a personal stack. You will trade subscription costs for building costs. You will need people who understand data flow, security, and context. But you will own the IP, and you will move faster than competitors waiting on a vendor's roadmap.
The First Step:
Don’t overhaul everything. Pick one person. Give them an afternoon. Ask them to solve a workflow that annoys everyone using AI to code a custom fix. It won't be perfect, but you aren't launching a product—you're building a new muscle.
The marketers who learn to build will have an unfair advantage over the ones who just know how to buy.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! - Kevin (Mighty & True Founder)
The Signal
The Enterprise AI Land Grab Is On — TechCrunch
Glean started as an enterprise search tool. Now it's pivoting to become the middleware layer for enterprise AI — the infrastructure that sits between your data and whatever AI interface your team uses. CEO Arvind Jain explains this isn't just a rebrand. It's a bet that the real value in enterprise AI isn't in the chatbot you see, but in the intelligence layer you don't.
Why it matters: If you're a CMO evaluating AI tools for your martech stack, pay attention to where the actual value is being built. The pretty interfaces will be commoditized fast.
The hard part — and the part worth paying for — is connecting AI to your messy enterprise data in a way that's secure, accurate, and actually useful. This shift tells you where to focus your vendor evaluation: not on the UI, but on the data layer underneath
Leaders, Gainers and Unexpected Winners in the Enterprise AI Arms Race — Andreessen Horowitz
A16Z breaks down which enterprise AI companies are actually winning right now — not the ones with the best PR, but the ones with real traction. The analysis identifies both obvious leaders and unexpected players gaining ground fast, with specific data on adoption patterns and competitive positioning.
Why it matters: This is the map you need when deciding which AI vendors to bet on for your stack. Enterprise AI is moving too fast to wait and see. You need to know who's pulling ahead and who's about to get acquired or shut down. Use this to inform your vendor strategy and avoid getting locked into tools that won't be around in 18 months.
On Our Radar
The fastest-growing vibe coding use cases in businesses aren't building custom Salesforce — they're automating internal workflows and data dashboards.
Engineers are now managing 10-20 parallel AI agents at OpenAI — not just using Copilot for autocomplete — productivity gap is widening fast.
Virtual events aren't dead but multiday marathons are — 43% of marketers are planning simpler, shorter formats instead.
AI is now embedded in most UK B2B purchase processes from discovery to evaluation, according to new Norstat research of 175 decision-makers.
Attribution windows directly affect how your channels perform in reports — platform defaults don't always match your actual customer journey.
FROM THE TRENCHES
How we made a CMO the hero, vs the scapegoat.
The Problem:
A recent client engagement hit a wall of friction almost immediately (with a very important stakeholder, the CEO). The issue wasn’t the work—it was the timeline. The CEO hadn’t been fully briefed on the realistic ramp-up time for the project, creating a massive gap between expectation and reality. We had to pivot immediately from execution to "CEO education," realizing that the C-Suite and the marketing team were operating with two completely different definitions of success.
The Fix:
We hit pause to establish a proper measurement framework before moving another inch. Through a series of deep-dive alignment meetings, we uncovered the core need: the company was actually in the process of rebuilding their positioning and GTM strategy. They didn’t need volume yet; they needed validation.
We revised our framework to measure hyper-targeted engagement rather than broad awareness. This shifted the focus to metrics that actually mattered to the CEO’s current business goal.
The Result:
Alignment was restored. By mapping the metrics to the company's specific stage of maturity (the GTM rebuild), the data finally told the right story. The friction disappeared, the strategy was validated, and the CMO went from being questioned to being the hero.
Read this: Here’s our take on how to build a framework to know if your marketing is underperforming or just needs time. Give it a read if you are facing a CEO who wants to "pause on marketing".