Strategic Operator

JD
PRATER

Position. Build. Align.

The output is a marketing function that shapes how the market thinks, builds a compounding growth engine, and owns the number.

3x VP of Marketing 4 Companies Acquired AI-Native
JD Prater
The rare combo

I'm a 3x VP of Marketing who came up in performance and grew into go-to-market strategy. The person who can hold ROAS to account and write the brand brief.

0 → 1

Build the function from scratch. ICP, messaging, demand engine, first hires. Have it generating pipeline in six months.

1 → 10

Reposition and scale past the ceiling. New market, new category, new story. With the measurement system to prove it's working.

New Leader

Step in when the VP moves on. Land fast, protect momentum, raise the standard of what marketing is held accountable for.


Depth Map

My strengths, stack-ranked. Hover each bar.

Positioning + Category
Positioning + Category
  • Category creation
  • Narrative & messaging
  • ICP development
  • Sales enablement
  • Competitive positioning
Performance + Demand Gen
Performance + Demand Gen
  • Pipeline generation
  • Paid acquisition
  • ABM programs
  • Full-funnel analytics
  • Lifecycle marketing
Brand + Creative
Brand + Creative
  • Brand strategy
  • Copy & voice
  • Creative direction
  • Conference speaking
  • Audience psychology
AI-Native Marketing
AI-Native Marketing
  • 6 AI workflows built
  • AI startup PMM
  • Competitive intel system
  • Customer signal miner
  • Autonomous reporting
Revenue Measurement
Revenue Measurement
  • Mutinex MMM
  • Marketing mix modeling
  • CFO-ready reporting
  • Attribution frameworks
  • Budget optimization
Technical Marketing
Technical Marketing
  • Snowflake + Looker
  • HubSpot lifecycle
  • SEO/AEO infrastructure
  • MarTech stack
  • Vibe-coding
What I'm not

a brand creative, an event factory, or a VP who disappears into strategy and resurfaces at the quarterly review. I came up in performance. I still think that way. The strategy always has to work in market or it's just an expensive deck.


The Work

4 companies · 4 inflection points.

Ting
VP Marketing Strategy  ·  Jun 2025 – Present

Flat budget. Depleted team. Three brands. Twenty markets. No model for what was driving revenue.

Bought Mutinex MMM and built the measurement model. The argument became math, not narrative. The brand budget held. Rebuilt the team around one campaign brief: one brief, three brands, consistent signal across 20 markets. Q1 '26 was the best quarter.

20%
YoY revenue growth on flat budget
47%
Marketing ROI improvement
7.8%
Mobile attach rate
AssemblyAI
Head of Product Marketing  ·  Jun 2024 – Jun 2025

Speech AI platform with the right product and the wrong story for enterprise. Buyers trusted the tech. The deal died in the internal sell.

Used GTM Bullseye to identify the highest-urgency enterprise segment: conversational intelligence. Rebuilt the message from the ground up: out with API accuracy, in with deal intelligence, rep coaching, compliance coverage. Named the category. Sales had a story they could sell.

2x
Revenue growth
70%
Close rate, conversational intelligence
VP of Marketing  ·  Jun 2021 – Jan 2023

Real product. No category. Sales was explaining the product instead of selling the problem.

First move: customer transcripts, not copy. Found "first-mile data ingestion" in customer language, not a brainstorm. Named the category. Built the content engine around it. Rebuilt sales so every rep could articulate the problem before the demo. Osmos now owns the term in search. Acquired by Microsoft.

$2M
Pipeline in 6 months post-SLG pivot
Netflix
Plus Harman, Rahi, Taxbit, Sage Intacct
Quora
Head of Product Marketing  ·  Aug 2018 – Jul 2020

Quora Ads was being sold as a publisher, competing against Facebook and Reddit on audience size. That was the wrong fight. The wrong category. Revenue was $10M.

Shifted the competitive frame to intent-based B2B reach: buyers in research mode, not scroll mode, at a fraction of LinkedIn CPCs. Built the enterprise GTM as the company's first PMM hire: ICP, proof framework, battlecard library, sales enablement. Sales started winning the first meeting. Revenue grew 400% in 18 months.

400%
Revenue growth in 18 months
$50M+
ARR
Earlier Work
Amazon Web Services
Global Head of PMM, Activate
15% new member growth. 60% product adoption in 3 months across 330K+ developers.
Graft
VP of Marketing
$1M qualified pipeline in 6 months from zero. No ICP, no messaging, no infrastructure on day one.
Acquired
AdStage
Director of Marketing
43% MRR growth. 47% ARPU increase. Built the marketing function from scratch.
Acquired
Hanapin Marketing
Director of Strategy
Scaled social advertising from 2% to 15% of company revenue.
Acquired

Tools I've Built

Tools

Free tools built on frameworks I use on real problems.

5M Constraints Diagnostic
Diagnose which of five core marketing constraints is blocking growth. Ten questions. Instant output with a confidence tier.
Pricing Research Finder
Match your pricing question to the right research methodology. Built on Wynter and Ariely frameworks.

Open Folders

Writing

Marketing science applied to real decisions. Evidence over instinct.

Older posts →

The playbook doesn't build itself

I've built it three times. The situations look different. The work is always the same: build the engine, own the number, give the CFO something to defend.

Let's build it.