Krithika Shankarraman

Executive in Residence at Thrive Capital / Former VP Marketing at OpenAI, First Marketing Hire at Stripe

Krithika Shankarraman was the first marketing hire and VP of Marketing at OpenAI, the first marketing hire at Stripe (the only marketer for three years), and an early marketing leader at Retool and Dropbox. She also did marketing for Android at Google. She is now executive in residence at Thrive Capital, supporting portfolio founders on marketing.

The Growth Architect The Growth Scientist

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 70%

Execution & Craft 75%

Data & Experimentation 50%

Growth & Distribution 90%

Team & Leadership 55%

User Empathy & Research 80%

Key Themes

use case epiphany marketing anti-playbook approach marketing vanity metrics are bullshit understanding your customer deeply first marketing hire playbook B2B companies learning from consumer marketing

Episode Summary

Krithika Shankarraman, the first marketing hire at both OpenAI and Stripe, reveals that even the fastest-growing product in history needed marketing — because everyone knew ChatGPT but didn't know what to use it for. She advocates an anti-playbook approach to marketing, arguing that vanity metrics like clicks and impressions are bullshit and that the real work is deeply understanding your customer and creating use case epiphanies.

Leadership Principles

→ Clicks, views, and impressions are bullshit numbers — focus on what experience you want customers to come away with
→ Everyone knew ChatGPT but didn't know what to use it for — marketing's job was creating use case epiphanies
→ There's no playbook for marketing — you have to spend hours understanding your customer rather than copying other companies

Notable Quotes

"Everyone knew of ChatGPT, but when you clicked one zoom level further, the thing that came up was, 'I don't know what to use it for.' The work of marketing became creating this use case epiphany where people say, 'I had no idea ChatGPT can do that.'"
— On why the fastest-growing product in history still needed marketing

"A lot of marketing metrics tend to be vanity metrics about clicks, views, impressions. I think those are all bullshit numbers. What is that experience that you want your customers to come away with when they interact with your brand?"
— On rejecting vanity metrics in favor of customer experience outcomes

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