July 22, 2025 • 35 mins
I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
The traditional B2B marketing playbook is crumbling before our eyes. Forms, cold calls, and digital ads aren't delivering like they once did – and marketers are scrambling to adapt to a new reality where trust, authenticity, and human connection reign supreme.
Elaine Zelby, founder of AI-powered marketing platform Tofu, brings an electrifying perspective to this seismic shift in go-to-market strategy. With her unique background spanning biomechanical engineering, marketing leadership, and venture capital, Elaine breaks down the perfect storm reshaping how B2B buyers make decisions today.
Three powerful forces are converging: macroeconomic pressures pushing companies upmarket, demographic shifts as millennials and Gen Z take buying positions, and technological disruption from AI that's both enabling creativity and drowning channels in spam. The result? A marketplace where your buyers are starting their journeys in small, trusted circles – not by clicking your ads.
What's working now? In-person events are experiencing a renaissance. Niche influencers with genuine expertise are thriving. Direct mail is back. Most importantly, authentic human connections within small peer communities are becoming the cornerstone of buying decisions. As Elaine puts it, "In-person is the antidote to digital distrust."
This episode isn't just theoretical – Elaine delivers tactical insights on building influence authentically, creating content that genuinely resonates, and leveraging AI as a force multiplier for human creativity rather than a replacement for it. Her philosophy? "The humans need to be the creatives. What is our messaging? Our positioning? People buy emotionally, and good marketing connects at an emotional level."
Whether you're a CMO rethinking your entire go-to-market strategy or a practitioner looking to enhance your daily impact, this conversation will reshape how you think about connecting with today's B2B buyers. Get ready to take notes – this is marketing wisdom you can't afford to miss.
🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.
New episodes drop regularly with unfiltered conversations from the frontlines of B2B and tech marketing.
Catch the video version of the podcast on our YouTube channel.
👉 Subscribe, share, and connect with us at www.mightyandtrue.com
📩 Got a guest idea or question? Email us at kevin@mightyandtrue.com
🔗 Follow Kevin on LinkedIn for more insights and behind-the-scenes takes.
📰 Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at: Subscribe to Kevin's Substack at: https://kevinkerner.substack.com/
📰 Want more tech marketing insights? Subscribe to the Drag & Drop newsletter for fresh thinking, real talk, and tools that make your job easier.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin Kerner (00:00):
Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech
Marketing Rewired.
If you think the oldgo-to-market playbook alone
still works, forms outbound coldads, you may be wrong.
In this episode, I sat downwith Elaine Zelby, founder of
Tofu, and we got into why thetraditional demand gen model is
collapsing, how influence andauthenticity are driving the
next wave of go-to-market andwhy your future buyers are
(00:22):
starting their journeys bygathering in small, trusted
circles, not clicking ads.
Elaine brought a lot of energyand ideas to the conversation.
Make sure you have a notebookhandy.
Let's get to it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
Okay, welcome to Tech MarketingRewired.
(00:43):
Today I've got Elaine Zelby onthe show, founder of the amazing
Tofu, which I've been hearing alot about lately, and someone
who's building something that isreally at the forefront of B2B
go-to-market, so I'm superexcited to talk to you.
Great to have you here, elaine.
Thanks for joining.
Elaine Zelby (00:59):
Thank you for having me, Kevin.
Kevin Kerner (01:00):
Yeah, yeah, I know you're super busy because I saw
your posts about your toddlers.
So I know you're super busybecause I saw your posts about
your toddlers.
Elaine Zelby (01:11):
So I know you have some toddlers.
I don't know how you make timefor this and tofu and all that
stuff.
Kevin Kerner (01:13):
So I do appreciate it.
Ruthless prioritization, that'sright, that's good.
Yeah, I needed to steal that,okay.
Well, I'd love for you to givea little intro on yourself and
maybe talk a little bit aboutTofu, just to get us kicked off.
Elaine Zelby (01:27):
Happy to.
I always joke to people that Ihave the most bizarre background
you'll ever see.
I was a biomechanical engineerdoing med device stuff.
That then moved into B2Bmarketing at early stage
startups somehow found my waythere, then moved into venture
capital.
I was a partner at a venturecapital firm called SignalFire
and then started Tofu.
(01:47):
So super linear path there.
Kevin Kerner (01:49):
Yeah.
Elaine Zelby (01:51):
The fun thing about Tofu is it's combining so
many pieces of my life together.
I actually started playing withgenerative AI in 2018, coming
from the marketing background,and I'm also obsessed with
podcasts, so love your podcastand a hundred others.
I consume information inauditory format and I wanted to
be able to turn a lot of theseblogs that had really rich,
(02:14):
really good content into audio.
So, using GPT-1 in 2018, if youcan believe this built a tool
called SoundSpot that couldingest your blog and then spit
out a podcast, an actual RSSfeed, and it felt like magic at
the time.
If you go back and listen,you'd laugh how horrible it was.
But that was the first thingthat was getting me extremely
(02:34):
excited about generative AI.
I followed the trend throughthe venture capital days and in
2022, I really started getting alot of companies pitching me on
these thin wrappers aroundGPT-3.
That was the kind of flavor dujour and I'm meeting these
companies and I'm like you knowthere's something here, but this
isn't it.
But it was clear that there'dbeen a step function change in
(02:56):
terms of the quality of the AI.
So I started thinking about thebiggest things I wanted as a
marketing practitioner andleader and where I thought the
puck was going in terms of AI,and to me there was also another
thing at play, which isrebundling.
So I forget who said it, butthere's the famous quotation of
there's only two cyclesunbundling and rebundling.
(03:18):
And I had been talking tohundreds of CRO CMOs, through
diligence with the VC.
Everyone was telling me thesame story Fewer tools don't
want more tools.
So it was clear rebundling wasgoing to happen.
So I started thinking whatwould it look like to rebundle
or actually bundle for the firsttime?
The MarTech stack usinggenerative AI at its core, and
(03:43):
that was the kernel that led towhere we are today with Tofu Wow
, cool, that's awesome.
Kevin Kerner (03:47):
And there's so many now, right?
So you were early on in this,so you must have learned a ton
about the AI space as it relatesto MarTech.
It's really, really cool.
I want to get into the Tofuplatform in a bit, but I really
want to seeing that you've beendoing this for a while.
(04:09):
I really wanted to get intowhat's broken in the traditional
go-to-market.
We talked a little bit aboutbefore the call about the use of
influence and how influence isbecoming more important, and
authenticity maybe is anotherthing that's becoming needed,
because there's just so much AIslop out there, I guess.
But I'm curious for your takeon how the go-to-market motion
seems to be evolving over thelast year, especially given that
you run a platform that is inthe go-to-market stack.
Elaine Zelby (04:32):
I think there's a few different ways to slice and
dice this.
Number one is you havemacroeconomics at play.
So when you look at what thingshave shifted there, it is
harder and harder to land netnew logos, which means people
are trying to look at more netdollar retention.
How can I go and get more frommy existing customer base?
What can I upsell, cross-sell?
(04:53):
There's been more emphasis onthat.
When it comes to thego-to-market motion,
additionally, more SMB churn inthis situation, which means
every company I talk to istrying to move more upmarket.
That is the most common thing Ihear, and when you move more
upmarket, it tends to also leaditself to different types of
go-to-market Lots more of ABM,lots more of sales enablement.
(05:13):
Everything that marketing isdoing tends to be in service of
pipeline gen and sales.
So there's a shift in terms ofteam construction.
There's a shift in terms ofchannels and strategies and how
campaigns are executed and runand then what that relationship
looks like between marketing andsales.
So that's macroeconomic.
Next, you have something that Ifeel like is very under-talked
(05:34):
about, which is demographicshifts.
So we now have millennials whoare in, now buying positions
where they never were before.
You have Gen Z and even cominginto play, gen Alpha, who are
now in the operator seats.
And the way that people buy inthese generations is different.
They have more peer groups andcommunities.
(05:55):
They do a lot more researchoffline.
They're a little bit more techsavvy.
Potentially they want to seeexecutives on social media and
understand the culture of acompany in making a buying
decision.
These shifts are different andthese shifts actually force
companies to think differentlyabout how they market themselves
, how they sell, how do they goto market.
(06:17):
And so that's number two.
And then number three isobviously technological shifts.
So what is AI doing right now?
We are in the early innings ofthis and it is moving so fast.
Even being at the epicenter, Ican't keep up, and I don't think
anybody can.
It's kind of like I was in thecrypto space in 2016, 2017, and
there was similar thingshappening.
(06:38):
Just felt overwhelming thespeed and the volume of stuff
that was going on With AI.
There's a few things that areobvious.
Number one SEO has changed.
Google is now surfacing thingsin a single answer in their
Gemini AI response, which meanstrying to optimize for being on
the first page and understandinghow to reverse engineer
(06:59):
Google's algorithm is no longerimportant.
People are now trying to figureout what is the new GEO, aeo,
ll, mo, whatever we're callingit and how can I optimize for
this new channel?
People love new channels.
Anytime a new channel opens up,people want to exploit it.
Number two AI has made it easierthan ever to spam people.
It is very easy.
(07:19):
We already had the Tinders inplace, the Apollo Zoom.
Zoom info is the way to getcontacts at scale.
Now we can do personalizationat scale, and what people have
done is they've taken crap,quite frankly, and used AI to
just expand the scope and expandthe scale.
(07:40):
So email is now a channel thathas very diminishing results,
just because people are beingbombarded and overwhelmed and
the majority is not good, quitefrankly.
Other channels calling.
Some people claim that callingis still working for them.
I have not seen the reality here, nor have I picked up my own
(08:01):
phone in a decade if I don'tknow the number.
And again, this kind of comesto my point.
Before, around millennial orjust generational shifts,
different people would answer aphone and now, when you have
your buyers who are in theyounger generations, they're not
answering phones, like for them.
The phone is the actual phone.
Call is the least used app ontheir entire phone.
(08:22):
That's right.
So you have a few of thechannels that just were working
before that aren't.
So what am I seeing shift?
In-person is having a massivecomeback physical events, direct
mail, meeting in person,influencers as a category, peer
groups and I'm not saying giantcommunities, I'm seeing more
(08:44):
small peer groups where it'struly trusted peers who
potentially have a longstandingrelationship, where they share
information and they're yourgo-to people to ask for advice,
especially when it comes totechnology, managing your team,
go to market motion, things likethat.
So all of that stuff is kind ofhappening at the exact same
time right now.
Kevin Kerner (09:00):
Yeah, the demographic shift.
I don't think it's talked aboutmuch, but I think you're right.
I mean just the way people ofthat generation consume
information and look forauthority or seek out authority
or communities.
This is changing everything.
How has that changed your ownapproach in your own marketing?
Elaine Zelby (09:17):
A few things.
Number one is I'm not a socialmedia person.
I'm not a public person.
I have had to force myself tobe much more public on LinkedIn
because two things.
Number one lesson in go tomarket is understand your ICP
and learn where they live in thephysical and digital world and
be present there.
(09:37):
So where's my audience?
They are on LinkedIn.
I have to be on LinkedIn.
Number two is to the pointbefore around the demographic
shifts, they want to seeauthenticity.
They care about brand, theycare about executive presence.
That is very important to thisnew wave of buyers.
So it's really important for meto build up my own and through
me, tofu's brand and to be asauthentic as possible.
(10:00):
And I think for me I also guidepeople is no matter what.
It has to be authentic.
The way I speak on LinkedIn isthe way I speak in private
conversations and situationslike this.
I try to lead with value.
I try to add a little levityand humor to it.
I try to be a bitself-deprecating, but at the end
of the day it's.
Did this provide value to thepeople I'm trying to provide
(10:22):
value for?
If so, great, that is a usefulpost.
But if not, it's not worth mytime, it's not worth theirs.
So I think that is how it'splaying into us.
The other thing is reallyunderstanding those pockets of
influence, and that looks like afew different things.
Number one I actually hadwritten a newsletter for about
four years called Three Things.
It was a weekly newsletter withthree business ideas why now?
(10:46):
How I'd build it and how I'dmonetize it.
And back in either 2020 or 2021, one of the newsletters
included an idea around a B2Binfluencer marketplace.
So I saw that B2B influencerswas going to be a thing, and
this is something I've kind ofbeen waiting for for a while,
and last year it finally feltlike, okay, we're ready for this
(11:07):
, this is a thing.
And so what I wanted to do wasfind people who I felt their
content was already speakingexactly the way we would speak.
Their audience is already theaudience we're talking to.
We are extremely aligned, andhow can I make their sphere of
influence my sphere of influenceand vice versa?
And so, finding very specificpeople I'm not trying to go for
(11:28):
huge influencers.
I'm trying to go for people who, again, have very tailored
content to a very tailoredaudience and making sure that
they would be posting thiscontent, whether we were
providing information to them ornot.
So that's been that strategywhich is working very well for
us.
The other strategy around thespheres of influence is finding
(11:49):
these pockets of minicommunities.
So if you go and ask 100marketers, where do you go for
information?
What communities are you a partof?
You're going to get an insanenumber of answers.
But if you start to hear littlepockets of overlap, that's
where I try to dig in.
I also find certain people tendto be natural connectors or
(12:09):
natural central pivot points.
If you can find some of thosepeople and, better yet, if
you're naturally aligned withthem and really make them a
champion of yours, you now havethis champion who's going to be
this jumping off point to abunch of other, these small
communities and small spheres ofinfluence.
So that's also been how we'retrying to navigate that.
(12:31):
Can we find some of thosepeople, can we equip them,
enable them, champion them, andthen, by proxy, we're brought
along for the ride.
Kevin Kerner (12:40):
Yeah, wow, yeah, that's really great.
What's been the effect for youusing some of these tactics?
Is it working?
What's working and what's notworking?
Because I'm curious, because wedid it ourselves.
Elaine Zelby (12:51):
It's working really well.
We are still, to date, 100%inbound.
We've done no paid inbound.
We have doing.
We've done no paid um digitalpaid.
We are doing.
We're starting to do moreevents like physical events, but
owned we do small dinnersacross different cities.
That's working extremely well.
Uh, too, that also pairs wellwith those pivot people or, like
(13:15):
the, you know, the champions.
We're trying to bring them intothe conversation to make it not
just about us but make it aboutthem, have them be able to
invite some of their people anddo joint things.
We also tend to partner withevents, so we find another
company or a recruiting firm whorecruits the exact type of
people that we want to talk to,somebody again who's really
(13:37):
aligned, and to make this muchmore of a community as opposed
to a tofu pitching event orthings like that.
So that's working well.
On the influencer side, workingextremely well.
And again, I think that peoplehave sometimes misaligned
expectations around what aninfluencer program looks like
For us.
I'm very aware and veryconfident that today's buyers
(14:01):
are doing so much behind thescenes, before you ever see them
, before they ever come to yourwebsite, before they ever talk
to somebody, before they fillout a form, and part of that
story is how they're seeing usshow up in other people's
content.
And so I know, because I canlook at calls, call recordings,
that so much of this is beinginfluenced by those people, or
(14:21):
that's where they heard about us, or that's where they were
reminded about us, and that'swhere they went to our site and
started researching us, orthat's how they understood what
we did, and so helping to shapethat narrative using other
people and not just us has beensuper, super important.
I think that there's a lot morewe can be doing, quite frankly,
but I think what we've startedwith is definitely performing
(14:41):
well.
Kevin Kerner (14:42):
Yeah, I saw that happen today.
I sent you a note today aboutthe MarketOne note.
You guys were listed as the topthird out of the three.
You know, probably I guessthere were like 20 or 30
platforms.
You guys were one of the threebiggest boxes of something I
think people wanted to try,looking forward to trying, and I
don't think you had seen thatyet forward to trying and I
don't think you had seen thatyet.
(15:02):
So it's just something thatjust showed up, which is so.
Whatever you're doing, it'sworking.
In that case, it's a communitythat you want it to be known,
with your message aligned withwhat they talk about, and
somehow they had found you andgotten there into, or somehow
their community had found youand in the survey they did, they
mentioned you as a platformthey're interested in using.
Elaine Zelby (15:20):
Really interesting and again, this is intentional
right.
We know that that is aninfluential place for our
prospects and our customers andwe want to make sure that we are
showing up in places like that.
So, while I hadn't seen thatexact article, it was extremely
intentional that we should getmentioned in market one content.
Kevin Kerner (15:40):
Yeah, you've turned it into somewhat of a
system, right, it's not just a,it's not just something you do
as a hobby, it's an actualsystem for you.
Elaine Zelby (15:47):
Yeah, I think less , I think a bit less is like a
system, because, again, yeah,and it's it's more of a it's,
it's a strategy and it'sintentional.
Yeah, the things we're doing andthe people who we're building
relationship with, and I thinkone of the things that's really
(16:11):
important to me, too, is that atthe core of all of this,
especially when you're talkingabout using other people or
other people's platforms, isit's relationships.
At the end of the day, it isbuilding deep, trusting
relationships where there'smutual benefits and it feels
like it is a long-termrelationship.
It is a long-term relationshipand I think that if you can
start from that place as opposedto what can this do for me it
will, in turn, pay back inspades.
I think so many people enter alot of these things very
one-sided.
I always tell younger people intheir career the number one
(16:33):
thing I did in my career in mytwenties to get me to where I am
today is I gave away my timefor free, with zero expectation
of return, and even now, aswe're doing things, I try to
give as much away as I can forfree, spend as much time,
provide as much value withoutany expectation, though knowing
just from history that it willcome back and serve us.
Kevin Kerner (16:54):
Yeah, yeah, I was.
I'm a little bit older than youand I always did that too, and
now the the technologies inplace make it so much easier to
build these relationships.
You can build relationships allover the place with people both
online and offline.
It's really incredible.
I think one of the things youmentioned around more
authenticity, and I wonder ifthe reason why events and other
(17:16):
communities are forming isbecause there is so much
uncertainty right now with whatto do.
Things are so disrupted.
There's an opportunity now totalk about things.
There'll be a new voice, or afellow voice, let's say, with
people that are trying to figureall this out.
Do you agree with that?
Elaine Zelby (17:33):
I think that's a piece of it.
I also feel like there's a lackof trust with so much digital
stuff right now that in personis the antidote to that.
What I mean by that is numberone.
So much of the stuff is nowmachine produced and that
removes that human element andalso removes some of that trust.
On top of that, social media ingeneral has created a facade of
(17:59):
how people show up.
It is very far from reality andI think people have gotten
burned a bit by that.
There was that whole Be Realapp.
I never actually did it, but Iunderstand why that rose in
prominence and I think that whenpeople are meeting up in person
, all of that's removed.
It is real people showing up astheir real selves.
It just feels like that trustis there versus.
(18:20):
I think there's just so muchunknown and distrust on the
digital world right now andthat's only getting exacerbated.
It's not getting better, and soI think the more that happens,
the more people will swing toin-person as a source of refuge.
Kevin Kerner (18:34):
Yeah, when you're thinking about the topics, the
things that you talk about, thatyou want to align with, what do
you find that those topics arethat are getting the most
engagement, getting thecommunity most involved?
What are people most interestedin right now?
Elaine Zelby (18:48):
People want real examples of stuff.
So many people whether it's atan event where you're on a panel
, or online on LinkedIn, onother channels people speak in a
lot of high-level fluff withoutgiving the actual tactics.
The.
Here's exactly the play thatwe're running.
Here's exactly the pool set andhow they connect with each
(19:11):
other.
Here's exactly how we did ourAI hackathon.
That was successful.
I mean, just saying you shoulddo a hackathon is great, but
that's not the level of depththat people are looking for, and
I'm finding the conversationsthat engage people the most is
when it gets very real.
So here's exactly what we did.
Here's exactly what worked.
Here's what didn't work.
Here's how we changed it.
(19:31):
Here's where we are, even ifyou're really early in the
process.
Here's exactly what we'reexperimenting with.
Here's what we wanted toexperiment with.
Said we were going to anddidn't because of bandwidth or
whatever.
It's those type ofconversations.
Ai is the center of everyconversation right now.
No question, people have talkeda lot more than they've done.
So in general, there's been alot less activity than people
(19:55):
would make it seem, and I thinkbecause of that, people get
caught up in this.
I have to look like we've donea lot too, but in the reality
it's new for everybody.
Everyone is at early days andexperimenting, but people want
real things that will help themand their teams utilize some of
this technology to help, andthat's what they're craving.
Kevin Kerner (20:15):
Yeah, I agree my email inbox.
I delete stuff real fast, butI've got a whole glut of emails
right now that are from peoplethat actually have a list of
things like here is what'sactually done.
Like here's the platform,here's the tools, here's how we
connected it together.
Here, maybe, is a list ofplaybooks that I've created and
they're literally like theplaybooks those are.
Those are the things that Isave and, um, uh, you know I got
(20:39):
to get through all those emailsnow because I got a ton of them
, but it's like the Kyle Poyersof the world and they're really
good at finding content andexplaining it in a very
actionable way.
So I completely agree.
When you take now thisinfluencer authenticity approach
(20:59):
that you're doing as a companyand you think about the
marketing technology that you'rebuilding, where does that come
into play?
Now, talk a little bit abouthow you're seeing MarTech being
maybe a complement to some ofthe stuff that you might be
doing on the influencer side ofthings.
Elaine Zelby (21:20):
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of what we're doing
from a technology perspective isreally trying to enable
marketers in general and ourinfluencers are marketers right,
they're marketer practitionersand the idea is we're not trying
to remove humans from theequation.
It's never been our goal.
You know, there's a bunch ofcompanies that are like no more
SDRs.
We're not that.
(21:41):
That's not our tacticwhatsoever.
We are trying to say hey, oneperson, there's always been that
concept of a 10x engineer.
There is going to be 10x, pickyour discipline, 10x marketers,
10x ops people, 10x salespeople.
And I think those are thepeople who really feel like they
have hate to use this termbecause it's overused.
But they have these co-pilots,they have these team members,
(22:03):
they have a tool that they canrely on to offload a lot of the
stuff that is not strategic orcreative, where I think the
human element needs to beplugged in, otherwise we revert
to lowest common denominator.
Everything and everythingsounds the same is the humans
need to be the creatives.
What is our messaging?
What is our positioning?
How are we talking about ourdifferentiation?
How are we talking about ourcustomers, our ICP?
(22:27):
That's a lot of the creativity.
What is our brand meant to feel.
What emotions are we evokingwith people?
People are emotional.
People buy emotionally, and alot of good marketing is how do
I connect at an emotional levelto a buyer, and that's where we
really need the humans is how doI connect at an emotional level
to a buyer, and that's where wereally need the humans.
The second piece of strategy,strategy.
Ai, is really good atsynthesizing information.
It is really good at showcasinga bunch of stuff to you.
(22:49):
I think what it's not good atis understanding the broader
landscape and helping to makestrategic decisions who are we
targeting and why?
It can help you surfacepatterns.
It can help you identify thatfor financial services, you have
3x ACVs and half the close time, the sales cycle time, but what
(23:10):
you do with that information isputting in place a holistic,
go-to-market strategy.
That I think only the humanscan do and that's where people
like to spend their time.
That's the fun work and I think,the more we can allow
individuals to do that whetheryou are a content writer,
lifecycle marketer, customermarketer, demand gen person,
abm-er, like any of thosedifferent disciplines allowing
(23:33):
tools to offset all the rest iswhere the world is moving, and
that's really what we've alwaysbeen trying to do and trying to
say and I think even the peoplewho are an extension of us,
that's what they're saying andthey're doing too.
And it's been fun for us toalso allow our influencers, our
champions and fans who areexternal but helping us to be
able to use the product forwhatever they're trying to
(23:56):
accomplish.
And it's so cool to see the touse the product for whatever
they're trying to accomplish.
And it's so cool to see thedifferent use cases and the
variety.
And that's the nature ofbuilding a platform, which is
hard.
It's hard to build a platformfrom day one, but I think we
made the right strategicdecision because if you see how
many point solutions are poppingup for every little discipline,
and if you see how easy it isto build some of these AI point
solutions, people don't want 18tools.
(24:22):
They're specifically saying canI replace a lot of tools or can
I buy one thing that's going tocover 80% of all my use cases?
And so I think we did make theright strategic decision.
Obviously, it's hard, and it'shard from a messaging
perspective of like we do thesehundred different things, and I
think that's something I'm stillfiguring out, but that's where
we are today.
Kevin Kerner (24:39):
Yeah, I completely agree with you on the strategic
part too.
It's like the fun work.
The thing that we're focused onnow is that we're taking away a
lot of the manual work, a lotof the things that we really
don't want to do, so we canspend more time on creativity
and strategy.
And the AI as a thought partneris fantastic, and I'm so
excited about the tools likeyours and a couple others that
are out there that are doingthis, where they're serving up
(24:59):
the information in a way thatgives you, let's say, three
different angles that, with thecontext that you have as a
marketer, you can actually thinkabout what the AI has given you
and take off in anotherdirection.
It's a great thought partner.
How are you operationalizingsome of that inside of the Tofu
platform?
What are the types of use cases?
Are you building?
What's the technology trying todo that helps with some of that
(25:22):
assist human assist, I wouldsay.
Elaine Zelby (25:26):
Oh, love this.
Okay, I'll give you some of theones that are less obvious.
When I talk to prospects andcustomers, one of the areas when
I ask them where do you feellike you have gaps or not doing
a good job?
Everyone is now leading intoevents.
As we said earlier, almostevery single company without me
leading the witness will say weare not doing a good job of
(25:48):
event follow-up.
And here's why, number one,most of the time you spend so
much effort putting on thisevent and people feel like that
is it, we're done, event over.
That's half of the battle.
The second half of the battleis turning that into pipeline.
So typically what's happeningis people just chuck the list of
registrants or attendees overto SDRs or sales and they may or
(26:12):
may not follow up.
There's no control overmessaging.
They probably don't even knowwhat the event was about or what
was discussed or anything.
So one of the areas that we'vedone, I would say, a pretty good
job inside of Tofu and nowenabling customers is when we do
events, tofu handles the entirefollow-up.
So now we have the informationabout the event because we've
already connected our event site.
(26:32):
We have all of the researchthat gets run automatically.
So when the list of peopleregistrants and attendees gets
ingested into Tofu, itautomatically triggers a ton of
research.
So we have connection to ourCRM.
Have they done other stuff withus before?
Have they had a meeting with us?
Have somebody else from theircompany had a meeting?
Plus all the demographic andfirmographic information.
(26:53):
So things like what industryare they in?
What persona are they?
All that From there, we craftcustom follow-up, we craft
custom nurture, depending onbehavior, and I think that's one
of the areas that's been reallyimpactful for us to offload a
lot of that.
The other thing is this is a funparty trick but for every
single person we're talking to,we create one-to-one content.
(27:15):
So any company we're talking to, we immediately, automatically
in Tofu, create one-to-onelanding pages, emails, one-pager
content.
In general, everything isbespoke because we can and
that's something again that justbeing able to, you know, when
(27:35):
somebody even has an interactionwith us for the first time,
immediately sending them alanding page that's personalized
to them gives them a glimpse ofwhat is possible on their side.
Kevin Kerner (27:47):
Yeah, like hyper personalization yeah.
Elaine Zelby (27:49):
Exactly and in a thoughtful way and I think I'm
trying to use the termcontextualization just because I
think personalization hasgotten a bit of a bad rap and
what I mean by contextualizationis really understanding what is
the next best action and thenext best thing for this person
at this time and on this channel.
And by understanding thehistorical information,
behavioral data, plus all thedemographic information, we can
(28:11):
now create a pretty nice pictureof what are their biggest pain
points, what are our valuepropositions, how far are they
in the cycle and what should weprovide them, and then use that
to contextualize the information, whether it is a section on a
landing page, an email, an ad,any other type of content.
The last thing I'll tell youand this is our brand new
feature, which is probablyalready my favorite feature we
(28:34):
can now create decks, and thedeck is going to be you upload
your corporate template, so yourentire brand template, and
Google slides, powerpoint, andthen we can spit out a deck and
that new deck in your templatefor things like one-to-one sales
decks, webinar decks, productlaunch decks, feature specific
decks, presentation decks and itfeels like magic, because
(28:58):
figuring out how to takeinformation and lay it out in a
compelling way in a deck is sohard.
So we save people hours per deckand that's been pretty magical.
Kevin Kerner (29:07):
Yeah, that's awesome.
I mean I have a GPT set up formy decks and I've looked at
Manus and a couple other things,but they're just okay.
It sounds like you're reallytrying to build a lot of those
features into a single platform.
It's a single platform approach.
What are you working on?
That's the next set of features, maybe not feature-led, but
what are the requests you'regetting from customers down the
(29:28):
road where you're like I thinkwe might go in that direction.
Elaine Zelby (29:32):
The one that we've already started and we're, I
would say, baby steps, but we'regetting.
There is ads, and we've alwaysbeen able to do ads, but not the
images that are alsocorresponding, the image models.
For us, we're always trying tostay call it one to three months
behind where we think the modelis going to be ready.
So right now we're about one tothree months away from image
(29:54):
gen being very good.
Today we can generate imagesthat are on brand.
The things we can't do is Icannot constrain it to a certain
dimension.
So for LinkedIn ads, that'sfine because I can generate it
in any format and we can publishthat.
But for things like display ads, I can't tell it to do a
leaderboard ad like 160 by 600.
(30:14):
It will not do it, not possibleIn three months.
I guarantee you that will bepossible.
So I think for us we're alwaystrying to anticipate three
months ahead of like where do wethink the model is going to
cross that chasm of being goodenough for production, and so
we've already launched some ofthe image gen and the ad gen
stuff.
Now it's just still pretty raw.
We'll give it three months andit's going to be really good.
So the idea here, is whetherit's one-to-one ads, one-to-few
(30:38):
ads, ads for an ebook, it doesnot matter.
We will be able to ingest anyof your content notes, briefs,
anything like that,auto-generate all of your ad
variations and then deploy themto the platforms.
Kevin Kerner (30:50):
Has MCP been any factor in your business at all?
The ability to connect into LLM.
Elaine Zelby (30:56):
Do you have any thoughts?
Kevin Kerner (30:57):
about because I've used for a lot of the apps that
I use.
Today.
I'm connecting Claude throughMCP with some app and it's able
to dig in the data and Claude'sdoing a really good job of
building for me inside the chatwindow.
Of course, you probably havesome of that functionality built
in, but, as a sort oftechnology developer, what do
you think about MCP and how itmight integrate with something
(31:18):
like what you have?
Elaine Zelby (31:20):
There's no question that's the way
everything is going to move.
Everything is going to be.
This is wildly simplified, butit to me feels like the modern
API, the way that what we usedto rely on for API is where it
was.
You had to configure a veryspecific endpoint that had very
limited access and also is veryinflexible.
We're now going to completelyupend that with the concept of
(31:44):
MCP servers, where any datasource can be a connection point
and you're going to have veryflexible, very unlimited access
to that and be able to thendeploy some kind of agentic
workflows on top, and that iswhat I think I'm most excited
about In terms of the phrase,like the word comes up in
conversation every now and thenwith customers, I think for the
(32:04):
most part, our buyers are notthere yet.
It's a little bit more bleedingedge on the technology side.
We're already thinking throughour product, though, of what
that looks like, both in termsof Tofu being an MCP server and
then how we ingest other datasources, so definitely top of
mind for us.
Kevin Kerner (32:23):
Yeah, that's fantastic.
I think composability is thething right now.
Being able to integrate withother stuff, it's one of the
most important things that Ithink of when I buy some sort of
tech, and so it's important.
Okay, so this has been great.
I was going to end with onelast question.
I don't didn't want to take toomuch of your time, and we're
(32:43):
running up against the end here.
I do this thing called AIroulette, which I warned you
about at the beginning of this,and it's basically I load a
question into perplexity.
I've told it all about youthrough your LinkedIn posts,
that I've seen your backgroundand I'm going to press send here
.
It's going to give us aquestion we're going to have to
answer.
You can answer and then I canhelp you with in case you need
some help.
Elaine Zelby (33:04):
Okay, here we go by the way, I think you should
start every meeting you havewith any external party with
this it's just such a fun.
It's like a better icebreakerthan any other icebreaker.
Kevin Kerner (33:22):
No joke, and the questions are always better than
I could ever come up with.
Okay, here we go.
Oh, this is okay.
Elaine, you famously live lifein three times speed, so it must
have picked up on that.
Listening to podcasts faster,juggling startups and toddlers
building tofu, given that tofuis also a food known for being
versatile, adaptable andsometimes underestimated.
If your life as a tech leaderand mom were a tofu dish, what
kind of tofu recipe would it be?
Elaine Zelby (33:45):
Oh, fun question.
It would definitely besomething super spicy.
It would be something also inlike a non-traditional shape.
I'm not as familiar this is ajoke.
I don't like tofu as a food, soI'm not going to have like the
right name for the dish, butI'll describe what it would be.
It would be spicy, it would becolorful, so it would have a lot
(34:06):
of different colors in it,meaning like there'd probably be
like a spicy red sauce withlike green and like other things
like that, like other thingslike that, but it would not be
in cube shape.
Kevin Kerner (34:17):
It would be in a non-traditional shape, I think.
Elaine Zelby (34:18):
I always like things that are a little off,
like to me.
I don't like things to be in aperfect little box.
I always like to do things myown way, and potentially the
harder way, and I think I likelife when it's a little spicier.
Kevin Kerner (34:30):
Yeah, oh, you know what you know it's so weird is,
when I saw that question, thefirst thing I thought I was
spicy.
Weird is when I saw thatquestion, the first thing I
thought of was spicy, the firstthing that I got in my head was
spicy, so I pegged you.
Elaine Zelby (34:41):
You got it.
I do love spicy food.
In general, I like everything.
Everything should be spicy.
Kevin Kerner (34:46):
I always tell people too.
Elaine Zelby (34:47):
When I'm doing LinkedIn Lives or other
conversations, I'm like be asspicy as you want, because I
always find those to be betterconversations.
Kevin Kerner (34:54):
Oh yeah, and I'm from Texas, so I like some spicy
food too.
It's good, nice, okay, so thishas been fantastic.
I really appreciate you beingon the podcast here, elaine.
If people want to get a hold ofyou or Tofu I know you have the
newsletter, you've got yourLinkedIn profile they can go to
Tofu.
What's the best way that peoplecan get more in touch with you
(35:14):
and your community?
I should say.
Elaine Zelby (35:17):
Our website is TofuHQcom.
I'm on LinkedIn.
I'm pretty responsive.
One of my fatal character flawsis I have to respond to people.
I have so much FOMO of notresponding and I will respond to
people.
And anywhere you can find me.
If you reach out, I will likelyrespond Well this has been
awesome.
Kevin Kerner (35:37):
Great to see you, elaine, and I hope to catch up
with you soon.
Elaine Zelby (35:40):
Thank you, Kevin Okay.
Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech
Marketing Rewired.
If you think the oldgo-to-market playbook alone
still works, forms outbound coldads, you may be wrong.
In this episode, I sat downwith Elaine Zelby, founder of
Tofu, and we got into why thetraditional demand gen model is
collapsing, how influence andauthenticity are driving the
next wave of go-to-market andwhy your future buyers are
(00:22):
starting their journeys bygathering in small, trusted
circles, not clicking ads.
Elaine brought a lot of energyand ideas to the conversation.
Make sure you have a notebookhandy.
Let's get to it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
Okay, welcome to Tech MarketingRewired.
(00:43):
Today I've got Elaine Zelby onthe show, founder of the amazing
Tofu, which I've been hearing alot about lately, and someone
who's building something that isreally at the forefront of B2B
go-to-market, so I'm superexcited to talk to you.
Great to have you here, elaine.
Thanks for joining.
Elaine Zelby (00:59):
Thank you for having me, Kevin.
Kevin Kerner (01:00):
Yeah, yeah, I know you're super busy because I saw
your posts about your toddlers.
So I know you're super busybecause I saw your posts about
your toddlers.
Elaine Zelby (01:11):
So I know you have some toddlers.
I don't know how you make timefor this and tofu and all that
stuff.
Kevin Kerner (01:13):
So I do appreciate it.
Ruthless prioritization, that'sright, that's good.
Yeah, I needed to steal that,okay.
Well, I'd love for you to givea little intro on yourself and
maybe talk a little bit aboutTofu, just to get us kicked off.
Elaine Zelby (01:27):
Happy to.
I always joke to people that Ihave the most bizarre background
you'll ever see.
I was a biomechanical engineerdoing med device stuff.
That then moved into B2Bmarketing at early stage
startups somehow found my waythere, then moved into venture
capital.
I was a partner at a venturecapital firm called SignalFire
and then started Tofu.
(01:47):
So super linear path there.
Kevin Kerner (01:49):
Yeah.
Elaine Zelby (01:51):
The fun thing about Tofu is it's combining so
many pieces of my life together.
I actually started playing withgenerative AI in 2018, coming
from the marketing background,and I'm also obsessed with
podcasts, so love your podcastand a hundred others.
I consume information inauditory format and I wanted to
be able to turn a lot of theseblogs that had really rich,
(02:14):
really good content into audio.
So, using GPT-1 in 2018, if youcan believe this built a tool
called SoundSpot that couldingest your blog and then spit
out a podcast, an actual RSSfeed, and it felt like magic at
the time.
If you go back and listen,you'd laugh how horrible it was.
But that was the first thingthat was getting me extremely
(02:34):
excited about generative AI.
I followed the trend throughthe venture capital days and in
2022, I really started getting alot of companies pitching me on
these thin wrappers aroundGPT-3.
That was the kind of flavor dujour and I'm meeting these
companies and I'm like you knowthere's something here, but this
isn't it.
But it was clear that there'dbeen a step function change in
(02:56):
terms of the quality of the AI.
So I started thinking about thebiggest things I wanted as a
marketing practitioner andleader and where I thought the
puck was going in terms of AI,and to me there was also another
thing at play, which isrebundling.
So I forget who said it, butthere's the famous quotation of
there's only two cyclesunbundling and rebundling.
(03:18):
And I had been talking tohundreds of CRO CMOs, through
diligence with the VC.
Everyone was telling me thesame story Fewer tools don't
want more tools.
So it was clear rebundling wasgoing to happen.
So I started thinking whatwould it look like to rebundle
or actually bundle for the firsttime?
The MarTech stack usinggenerative AI at its core, and
(03:43):
that was the kernel that led towhere we are today with Tofu Wow
, cool, that's awesome.
Kevin Kerner (03:47):
And there's so many now, right?
So you were early on in this,so you must have learned a ton
about the AI space as it relatesto MarTech.
It's really, really cool.
I want to get into the Tofuplatform in a bit, but I really
want to seeing that you've beendoing this for a while.
(04:09):
I really wanted to get intowhat's broken in the traditional
go-to-market.
We talked a little bit aboutbefore the call about the use of
influence and how influence isbecoming more important, and
authenticity maybe is anotherthing that's becoming needed,
because there's just so much AIslop out there, I guess.
But I'm curious for your takeon how the go-to-market motion
seems to be evolving over thelast year, especially given that
you run a platform that is inthe go-to-market stack.
Elaine Zelby (04:32):
I think there's a few different ways to slice and
dice this.
Number one is you havemacroeconomics at play.
So when you look at what thingshave shifted there, it is
harder and harder to land netnew logos, which means people
are trying to look at more netdollar retention.
How can I go and get more frommy existing customer base?
What can I upsell, cross-sell?
(04:53):
There's been more emphasis onthat.
When it comes to thego-to-market motion,
additionally, more SMB churn inthis situation, which means
every company I talk to istrying to move more upmarket.
That is the most common thing Ihear, and when you move more
upmarket, it tends to also leaditself to different types of
go-to-market Lots more of ABM,lots more of sales enablement.
(05:13):
Everything that marketing isdoing tends to be in service of
pipeline gen and sales.
So there's a shift in terms ofteam construction.
There's a shift in terms ofchannels and strategies and how
campaigns are executed and runand then what that relationship
looks like between marketing andsales.
So that's macroeconomic.
Next, you have something that Ifeel like is very under-talked
(05:34):
about, which is demographicshifts.
So we now have millennials whoare in, now buying positions
where they never were before.
You have Gen Z and even cominginto play, gen Alpha, who are
now in the operator seats.
And the way that people buy inthese generations is different.
They have more peer groups andcommunities.
(05:55):
They do a lot more researchoffline.
They're a little bit more techsavvy.
Potentially they want to seeexecutives on social media and
understand the culture of acompany in making a buying
decision.
These shifts are different andthese shifts actually force
companies to think differentlyabout how they market themselves
, how they sell, how do they goto market.
(06:17):
And so that's number two.
And then number three isobviously technological shifts.
So what is AI doing right now?
We are in the early innings ofthis and it is moving so fast.
Even being at the epicenter, Ican't keep up, and I don't think
anybody can.
It's kind of like I was in thecrypto space in 2016, 2017, and
there was similar thingshappening.
(06:38):
Just felt overwhelming thespeed and the volume of stuff
that was going on With AI.
There's a few things that areobvious.
Number one SEO has changed.
Google is now surfacing thingsin a single answer in their
Gemini AI response, which meanstrying to optimize for being on
the first page and understandinghow to reverse engineer
(06:59):
Google's algorithm is no longerimportant.
People are now trying to figureout what is the new GEO, aeo,
ll, mo, whatever we're callingit and how can I optimize for
this new channel?
People love new channels.
Anytime a new channel opens up,people want to exploit it.
Number two AI has made it easierthan ever to spam people.
It is very easy.
(07:19):
We already had the Tinders inplace, the Apollo Zoom.
Zoom info is the way to getcontacts at scale.
Now we can do personalizationat scale, and what people have
done is they've taken crap,quite frankly, and used AI to
just expand the scope and expandthe scale.
(07:40):
So email is now a channel thathas very diminishing results,
just because people are beingbombarded and overwhelmed and
the majority is not good, quitefrankly.
Other channels calling.
Some people claim that callingis still working for them.
I have not seen the reality here, nor have I picked up my own
(08:01):
phone in a decade if I don'tknow the number.
And again, this kind of comesto my point.
Before, around millennial orjust generational shifts,
different people would answer aphone and now, when you have
your buyers who are in theyounger generations, they're not
answering phones, like for them.
The phone is the actual phone.
Call is the least used app ontheir entire phone.
(08:22):
That's right.
So you have a few of thechannels that just were working
before that aren't.
So what am I seeing shift?
In-person is having a massivecomeback physical events, direct
mail, meeting in person,influencers as a category, peer
groups and I'm not saying giantcommunities, I'm seeing more
(08:44):
small peer groups where it'struly trusted peers who
potentially have a longstandingrelationship, where they share
information and they're yourgo-to people to ask for advice,
especially when it comes totechnology, managing your team,
go to market motion, things likethat.
So all of that stuff is kind ofhappening at the exact same
time right now.
Kevin Kerner (09:00):
Yeah, the demographic shift.
I don't think it's talked aboutmuch, but I think you're right.
I mean just the way people ofthat generation consume
information and look forauthority or seek out authority
or communities.
This is changing everything.
How has that changed your ownapproach in your own marketing?
Elaine Zelby (09:17):
A few things.
Number one is I'm not a socialmedia person.
I'm not a public person.
I have had to force myself tobe much more public on LinkedIn
because two things.
Number one lesson in go tomarket is understand your ICP
and learn where they live in thephysical and digital world and
be present there.
(09:37):
So where's my audience?
They are on LinkedIn.
I have to be on LinkedIn.
Number two is to the pointbefore around the demographic
shifts, they want to seeauthenticity.
They care about brand, theycare about executive presence.
That is very important to thisnew wave of buyers.
So it's really important for meto build up my own and through
me, tofu's brand and to be asauthentic as possible.
(10:00):
And I think for me I also guidepeople is no matter what.
It has to be authentic.
The way I speak on LinkedIn isthe way I speak in private
conversations and situationslike this.
I try to lead with value.
I try to add a little levityand humor to it.
I try to be a bitself-deprecating, but at the end
of the day it's.
Did this provide value to thepeople I'm trying to provide
(10:22):
value for?
If so, great, that is a usefulpost.
But if not, it's not worth mytime, it's not worth theirs.
So I think that is how it'splaying into us.
The other thing is reallyunderstanding those pockets of
influence, and that looks like afew different things.
Number one I actually hadwritten a newsletter for about
four years called Three Things.
It was a weekly newsletter withthree business ideas why now?
(10:46):
How I'd build it and how I'dmonetize it.
And back in either 2020 or 2021, one of the newsletters
included an idea around a B2Binfluencer marketplace.
So I saw that B2B influencerswas going to be a thing, and
this is something I've kind ofbeen waiting for for a while,
and last year it finally feltlike, okay, we're ready for this
(11:07):
, this is a thing.
And so what I wanted to do wasfind people who I felt their
content was already speakingexactly the way we would speak.
Their audience is already theaudience we're talking to.
We are extremely aligned, andhow can I make their sphere of
influence my sphere of influenceand vice versa?
And so, finding very specificpeople I'm not trying to go for
(11:28):
huge influencers.
I'm trying to go for people who, again, have very tailored
content to a very tailoredaudience and making sure that
they would be posting thiscontent, whether we were
providing information to them ornot.
So that's been that strategywhich is working very well for
us.
The other strategy around thespheres of influence is finding
(11:49):
these pockets of minicommunities.
So if you go and ask 100marketers, where do you go for
information?
What communities are you a partof?
You're going to get an insanenumber of answers.
But if you start to hear littlepockets of overlap, that's
where I try to dig in.
I also find certain people tendto be natural connectors or
(12:09):
natural central pivot points.
If you can find some of thosepeople and, better yet, if
you're naturally aligned withthem and really make them a
champion of yours, you now havethis champion who's going to be
this jumping off point to abunch of other, these small
communities and small spheres ofinfluence.
So that's also been how we'retrying to navigate that.
(12:31):
Can we find some of thosepeople, can we equip them,
enable them, champion them, andthen, by proxy, we're brought
along for the ride.
Kevin Kerner (12:40):
Yeah, wow, yeah, that's really great.
What's been the effect for youusing some of these tactics?
Is it working?
What's working and what's notworking?
Because I'm curious, because wedid it ourselves.
Elaine Zelby (12:51):
It's working really well.
We are still, to date, 100%inbound.
We've done no paid inbound.
We have doing.
We've done no paid um digitalpaid.
We are doing.
We're starting to do moreevents like physical events, but
owned we do small dinnersacross different cities.
That's working extremely well.
Uh, too, that also pairs wellwith those pivot people or, like
(13:15):
the, you know, the champions.
We're trying to bring them intothe conversation to make it not
just about us but make it aboutthem, have them be able to
invite some of their people anddo joint things.
We also tend to partner withevents, so we find another
company or a recruiting firm whorecruits the exact type of
people that we want to talk to,somebody again who's really
(13:37):
aligned, and to make this muchmore of a community as opposed
to a tofu pitching event orthings like that.
So that's working well.
On the influencer side, workingextremely well.
And again, I think that peoplehave sometimes misaligned
expectations around what aninfluencer program looks like
For us.
I'm very aware and veryconfident that today's buyers
(14:01):
are doing so much behind thescenes, before you ever see them
, before they ever come to yourwebsite, before they ever talk
to somebody, before they fillout a form, and part of that
story is how they're seeing usshow up in other people's
content.
And so I know, because I canlook at calls, call recordings,
that so much of this is beinginfluenced by those people, or
(14:21):
that's where they heard about us, or that's where they were
reminded about us, and that'swhere they went to our site and
started researching us, orthat's how they understood what
we did, and so helping to shapethat narrative using other
people and not just us has beensuper, super important.
I think that there's a lot morewe can be doing, quite frankly,
but I think what we've startedwith is definitely performing
(14:41):
well.
Kevin Kerner (14:42):
Yeah, I saw that happen today.
I sent you a note today aboutthe MarketOne note.
You guys were listed as the topthird out of the three.
You know, probably I guessthere were like 20 or 30
platforms.
You guys were one of the threebiggest boxes of something I
think people wanted to try,looking forward to trying, and I
don't think you had seen thatyet forward to trying and I
don't think you had seen thatyet.
(15:02):
So it's just something thatjust showed up, which is so.
Whatever you're doing, it'sworking.
In that case, it's a communitythat you want it to be known,
with your message aligned withwhat they talk about, and
somehow they had found you andgotten there into, or somehow
their community had found youand in the survey they did, they
mentioned you as a platformthey're interested in using.
Elaine Zelby (15:20):
Really interesting and again, this is intentional
right.
We know that that is aninfluential place for our
prospects and our customers andwe want to make sure that we are
showing up in places like that.
So, while I hadn't seen thatexact article, it was extremely
intentional that we should getmentioned in market one content.
Kevin Kerner (15:40):
Yeah, you've turned it into somewhat of a
system, right, it's not just a,it's not just something you do
as a hobby, it's an actualsystem for you.
Elaine Zelby (15:47):
Yeah, I think less , I think a bit less is like a
system, because, again, yeah,and it's it's more of a it's,
it's a strategy and it'sintentional.
Yeah, the things we're doing andthe people who we're building
relationship with, and I thinkone of the things that's really
(16:11):
important to me, too, is that atthe core of all of this,
especially when you're talkingabout using other people or
other people's platforms, isit's relationships.
At the end of the day, it isbuilding deep, trusting
relationships where there'smutual benefits and it feels
like it is a long-termrelationship.
It is a long-term relationshipand I think that if you can
start from that place as opposedto what can this do for me it
will, in turn, pay back inspades.
I think so many people enter alot of these things very
one-sided.
I always tell younger people intheir career the number one
(16:33):
thing I did in my career in mytwenties to get me to where I am
today is I gave away my timefor free, with zero expectation
of return, and even now, aswe're doing things, I try to
give as much away as I can forfree, spend as much time,
provide as much value withoutany expectation, though knowing
just from history that it willcome back and serve us.
Kevin Kerner (16:54):
Yeah, yeah, I was.
I'm a little bit older than youand I always did that too, and
now the the technologies inplace make it so much easier to
build these relationships.
You can build relationships allover the place with people both
online and offline.
It's really incredible.
I think one of the things youmentioned around more
authenticity, and I wonder ifthe reason why events and other
(17:16):
communities are forming isbecause there is so much
uncertainty right now with whatto do.
Things are so disrupted.
There's an opportunity now totalk about things.
There'll be a new voice, or afellow voice, let's say, with
people that are trying to figureall this out.
Do you agree with that?
Elaine Zelby (17:33):
I think that's a piece of it.
I also feel like there's a lackof trust with so much digital
stuff right now that in personis the antidote to that.
What I mean by that is numberone.
So much of the stuff is nowmachine produced and that
removes that human element andalso removes some of that trust.
On top of that, social media ingeneral has created a facade of
(17:59):
how people show up.
It is very far from reality andI think people have gotten
burned a bit by that.
There was that whole Be Realapp.
I never actually did it, but Iunderstand why that rose in
prominence and I think that whenpeople are meeting up in person
, all of that's removed.
It is real people showing up astheir real selves.
It just feels like that trustis there versus.
(18:20):
I think there's just so muchunknown and distrust on the
digital world right now andthat's only getting exacerbated.
It's not getting better, and soI think the more that happens,
the more people will swing toin-person as a source of refuge.
Kevin Kerner (18:34):
Yeah, when you're thinking about the topics, the
things that you talk about, thatyou want to align with, what do
you find that those topics arethat are getting the most
engagement, getting thecommunity most involved?
What are people most interestedin right now?
Elaine Zelby (18:48):
People want real examples of stuff.
So many people whether it's atan event where you're on a panel
, or online on LinkedIn, onother channels people speak in a
lot of high-level fluff withoutgiving the actual tactics.
The.
Here's exactly the play thatwe're running.
Here's exactly the pool set andhow they connect with each
(19:11):
other.
Here's exactly how we did ourAI hackathon.
That was successful.
I mean, just saying you shoulddo a hackathon is great, but
that's not the level of depththat people are looking for, and
I'm finding the conversationsthat engage people the most is
when it gets very real.
So here's exactly what we did.
Here's exactly what worked.
Here's what didn't work.
Here's how we changed it.
(19:31):
Here's where we are, even ifyou're really early in the
process.
Here's exactly what we'reexperimenting with.
Here's what we wanted toexperiment with.
Said we were going to anddidn't because of bandwidth or
whatever.
It's those type ofconversations.
Ai is the center of everyconversation right now.
No question, people have talkeda lot more than they've done.
So in general, there's been alot less activity than people
(19:55):
would make it seem, and I thinkbecause of that, people get
caught up in this.
I have to look like we've donea lot too, but in the reality
it's new for everybody.
Everyone is at early days andexperimenting, but people want
real things that will help themand their teams utilize some of
this technology to help, andthat's what they're craving.
Kevin Kerner (20:15):
Yeah, I agree my email inbox.
I delete stuff real fast, butI've got a whole glut of emails
right now that are from peoplethat actually have a list of
things like here is what'sactually done.
Like here's the platform,here's the tools, here's how we
connected it together.
Here, maybe, is a list ofplaybooks that I've created and
they're literally like theplaybooks those are.
Those are the things that Isave and, um, uh, you know I got
(20:39):
to get through all those emailsnow because I got a ton of them
, but it's like the Kyle Poyersof the world and they're really
good at finding content andexplaining it in a very
actionable way.
So I completely agree.
When you take now thisinfluencer authenticity approach
(20:59):
that you're doing as a companyand you think about the
marketing technology that you'rebuilding, where does that come
into play?
Now, talk a little bit abouthow you're seeing MarTech being
maybe a complement to some ofthe stuff that you might be
doing on the influencer side ofthings.
Elaine Zelby (21:20):
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of what we're doing
from a technology perspective isreally trying to enable
marketers in general and ourinfluencers are marketers right,
they're marketer practitionersand the idea is we're not trying
to remove humans from theequation.
It's never been our goal.
You know, there's a bunch ofcompanies that are like no more
SDRs.
We're not that.
(21:41):
That's not our tacticwhatsoever.
We are trying to say hey, oneperson, there's always been that
concept of a 10x engineer.
There is going to be 10x, pickyour discipline, 10x marketers,
10x ops people, 10x salespeople.
And I think those are thepeople who really feel like they
have hate to use this termbecause it's overused.
But they have these co-pilots,they have these team members,
(22:03):
they have a tool that they canrely on to offload a lot of the
stuff that is not strategic orcreative, where I think the
human element needs to beplugged in, otherwise we revert
to lowest common denominator.
Everything and everythingsounds the same is the humans
need to be the creatives.
What is our messaging?
What is our positioning?
How are we talking about ourdifferentiation?
How are we talking about ourcustomers, our ICP?
(22:27):
That's a lot of the creativity.
What is our brand meant to feel.
What emotions are we evokingwith people?
People are emotional.
People buy emotionally, and alot of good marketing is how do
I connect at an emotional levelto a buyer, and that's where we
really need the humans is how doI connect at an emotional level
to a buyer, and that's where wereally need the humans.
The second piece of strategy,strategy.
Ai, is really good atsynthesizing information.
It is really good at showcasinga bunch of stuff to you.
(22:49):
I think what it's not good atis understanding the broader
landscape and helping to makestrategic decisions who are we
targeting and why?
It can help you surfacepatterns.
It can help you identify thatfor financial services, you have
3x ACVs and half the close time, the sales cycle time, but what
(23:10):
you do with that information isputting in place a holistic,
go-to-market strategy.
That I think only the humanscan do and that's where people
like to spend their time.
That's the fun work and I think,the more we can allow
individuals to do that whetheryou are a content writer,
lifecycle marketer, customermarketer, demand gen person,
abm-er, like any of thosedifferent disciplines allowing
(23:33):
tools to offset all the rest iswhere the world is moving, and
that's really what we've alwaysbeen trying to do and trying to
say and I think even the peoplewho are an extension of us,
that's what they're saying andthey're doing too.
And it's been fun for us toalso allow our influencers, our
champions and fans who areexternal but helping us to be
able to use the product forwhatever they're trying to
(23:56):
accomplish.
And it's so cool to see the touse the product for whatever
they're trying to accomplish.
And it's so cool to see thedifferent use cases and the
variety.
And that's the nature ofbuilding a platform, which is
hard.
It's hard to build a platformfrom day one, but I think we
made the right strategicdecision because if you see how
many point solutions are poppingup for every little discipline,
and if you see how easy it isto build some of these AI point
solutions, people don't want 18tools.
(24:22):
They're specifically saying canI replace a lot of tools or can
I buy one thing that's going tocover 80% of all my use cases?
And so I think we did make theright strategic decision.
Obviously, it's hard, and it'shard from a messaging
perspective of like we do thesehundred different things, and I
think that's something I'm stillfiguring out, but that's where
we are today.
Kevin Kerner (24:39):
Yeah, I completely agree with you on the strategic
part too.
It's like the fun work.
The thing that we're focused onnow is that we're taking away a
lot of the manual work, a lotof the things that we really
don't want to do, so we canspend more time on creativity
and strategy.
And the AI as a thought partneris fantastic, and I'm so
excited about the tools likeyours and a couple others that
are out there that are doingthis, where they're serving up
(24:59):
the information in a way thatgives you, let's say, three
different angles that, with thecontext that you have as a
marketer, you can actually thinkabout what the AI has given you
and take off in anotherdirection.
It's a great thought partner.
How are you operationalizingsome of that inside of the Tofu
platform?
What are the types of use cases?
Are you building?
What's the technology trying todo that helps with some of that
(25:22):
assist human assist, I wouldsay.
Elaine Zelby (25:26):
Oh, love this.
Okay, I'll give you some of theones that are less obvious.
When I talk to prospects andcustomers, one of the areas when
I ask them where do you feellike you have gaps or not doing
a good job?
Everyone is now leading intoevents.
As we said earlier, almostevery single company without me
leading the witness will say weare not doing a good job of
(25:48):
event follow-up.
And here's why, number one,most of the time you spend so
much effort putting on thisevent and people feel like that
is it, we're done, event over.
That's half of the battle.
The second half of the battleis turning that into pipeline.
So typically what's happeningis people just chuck the list of
registrants or attendees overto SDRs or sales and they may or
(26:12):
may not follow up.
There's no control overmessaging.
They probably don't even knowwhat the event was about or what
was discussed or anything.
So one of the areas that we'vedone, I would say, a pretty good
job inside of Tofu and nowenabling customers is when we do
events, tofu handles the entirefollow-up.
So now we have the informationabout the event because we've
already connected our event site.
(26:32):
We have all of the researchthat gets run automatically.
So when the list of peopleregistrants and attendees gets
ingested into Tofu, itautomatically triggers a ton of
research.
So we have connection to ourCRM.
Have they done other stuff withus before?
Have they had a meeting with us?
Have somebody else from theircompany had a meeting?
Plus all the demographic andfirmographic information.
(26:53):
So things like what industryare they in?
What persona are they?
All that From there, we craftcustom follow-up, we craft
custom nurture, depending onbehavior, and I think that's one
of the areas that's been reallyimpactful for us to offload a
lot of that.
The other thing is this is a funparty trick but for every
single person we're talking to,we create one-to-one content.
(27:15):
So any company we're talking to, we immediately, automatically
in Tofu, create one-to-onelanding pages, emails, one-pager
content.
In general, everything isbespoke because we can and
that's something again that justbeing able to, you know, when
(27:35):
somebody even has an interactionwith us for the first time,
immediately sending them alanding page that's personalized
to them gives them a glimpse ofwhat is possible on their side.
Kevin Kerner (27:47):
Yeah, like hyper personalization yeah.
Elaine Zelby (27:49):
Exactly and in a thoughtful way and I think I'm
trying to use the termcontextualization just because I
think personalization hasgotten a bit of a bad rap and
what I mean by contextualizationis really understanding what is
the next best action and thenext best thing for this person
at this time and on this channel.
And by understanding thehistorical information,
behavioral data, plus all thedemographic information, we can
(28:11):
now create a pretty nice pictureof what are their biggest pain
points, what are our valuepropositions, how far are they
in the cycle and what should weprovide them, and then use that
to contextualize the information, whether it is a section on a
landing page, an email, an ad,any other type of content.
The last thing I'll tell youand this is our brand new
feature, which is probablyalready my favorite feature we
(28:34):
can now create decks, and thedeck is going to be you upload
your corporate template, so yourentire brand template, and
Google slides, powerpoint, andthen we can spit out a deck and
that new deck in your templatefor things like one-to-one sales
decks, webinar decks, productlaunch decks, feature specific
decks, presentation decks and itfeels like magic, because
(28:58):
figuring out how to takeinformation and lay it out in a
compelling way in a deck is sohard.
So we save people hours per deckand that's been pretty magical.
Kevin Kerner (29:07):
Yeah, that's awesome.
I mean I have a GPT set up formy decks and I've looked at
Manus and a couple other things,but they're just okay.
It sounds like you're reallytrying to build a lot of those
features into a single platform.
It's a single platform approach.
What are you working on?
That's the next set of features, maybe not feature-led, but
what are the requests you'regetting from customers down the
(29:28):
road where you're like I thinkwe might go in that direction.
Elaine Zelby (29:32):
The one that we've already started and we're, I
would say, baby steps, but we'regetting.
There is ads, and we've alwaysbeen able to do ads, but not the
images that are alsocorresponding, the image models.
For us, we're always trying tostay call it one to three months
behind where we think the modelis going to be ready.
So right now we're about one tothree months away from image
(29:54):
gen being very good.
Today we can generate imagesthat are on brand.
The things we can't do is Icannot constrain it to a certain
dimension.
So for LinkedIn ads, that'sfine because I can generate it
in any format and we can publishthat.
But for things like display ads, I can't tell it to do a
leaderboard ad like 160 by 600.
(30:14):
It will not do it, not possibleIn three months.
I guarantee you that will bepossible.
So I think for us we're alwaystrying to anticipate three
months ahead of like where do wethink the model is going to
cross that chasm of being goodenough for production, and so
we've already launched some ofthe image gen and the ad gen
stuff.
Now it's just still pretty raw.
We'll give it three months andit's going to be really good.
So the idea here, is whetherit's one-to-one ads, one-to-few
(30:38):
ads, ads for an ebook, it doesnot matter.
We will be able to ingest anyof your content notes, briefs,
anything like that,auto-generate all of your ad
variations and then deploy themto the platforms.
Kevin Kerner (30:50):
Has MCP been any factor in your business at all?
The ability to connect into LLM.
Elaine Zelby (30:56):
Do you have any thoughts?
Kevin Kerner (30:57):
about because I've used for a lot of the apps that
I use.
Today.
I'm connecting Claude throughMCP with some app and it's able
to dig in the data and Claude'sdoing a really good job of
building for me inside the chatwindow.
Of course, you probably havesome of that functionality built
in, but, as a sort oftechnology developer, what do
you think about MCP and how itmight integrate with something
(31:18):
like what you have?
Elaine Zelby (31:20):
There's no question that's the way
everything is going to move.
Everything is going to be.
This is wildly simplified, butit to me feels like the modern
API, the way that what we usedto rely on for API is where it
was.
You had to configure a veryspecific endpoint that had very
limited access and also is veryinflexible.
We're now going to completelyupend that with the concept of
(31:44):
MCP servers, where any datasource can be a connection point
and you're going to have veryflexible, very unlimited access
to that and be able to thendeploy some kind of agentic
workflows on top, and that iswhat I think I'm most excited
about In terms of the phrase,like the word comes up in
conversation every now and thenwith customers, I think for the
(32:04):
most part, our buyers are notthere yet.
It's a little bit more bleedingedge on the technology side.
We're already thinking throughour product, though, of what
that looks like, both in termsof Tofu being an MCP server and
then how we ingest other datasources, so definitely top of
mind for us.
Kevin Kerner (32:23):
Yeah, that's fantastic.
I think composability is thething right now.
Being able to integrate withother stuff, it's one of the
most important things that Ithink of when I buy some sort of
tech, and so it's important.
Okay, so this has been great.
I was going to end with onelast question.
I don't didn't want to take toomuch of your time, and we're
(32:43):
running up against the end here.
I do this thing called AIroulette, which I warned you
about at the beginning of this,and it's basically I load a
question into perplexity.
I've told it all about youthrough your LinkedIn posts,
that I've seen your backgroundand I'm going to press send here
.
It's going to give us aquestion we're going to have to
answer.
You can answer and then I canhelp you with in case you need
some help.
Elaine Zelby (33:04):
Okay, here we go by the way, I think you should
start every meeting you havewith any external party with
this it's just such a fun.
It's like a better icebreakerthan any other icebreaker.
Kevin Kerner (33:22):
No joke, and the questions are always better than
I could ever come up with.
Okay, here we go.
Oh, this is okay.
Elaine, you famously live lifein three times speed, so it must
have picked up on that.
Listening to podcasts faster,juggling startups and toddlers
building tofu, given that tofuis also a food known for being
versatile, adaptable andsometimes underestimated.
If your life as a tech leaderand mom were a tofu dish, what
kind of tofu recipe would it be?
Elaine Zelby (33:45):
Oh, fun question.
It would definitely besomething super spicy.
It would be something also inlike a non-traditional shape.
I'm not as familiar this is ajoke.
I don't like tofu as a food, soI'm not going to have like the
right name for the dish, butI'll describe what it would be.
It would be spicy, it would becolorful, so it would have a lot
(34:06):
of different colors in it,meaning like there'd probably be
like a spicy red sauce withlike green and like other things
like that, like other thingslike that, but it would not be
in cube shape.
Kevin Kerner (34:17):
It would be in a non-traditional shape, I think.
Elaine Zelby (34:18):
I always like things that are a little off,
like to me.
I don't like things to be in aperfect little box.
I always like to do things myown way, and potentially the
harder way, and I think I likelife when it's a little spicier.
Kevin Kerner (34:30):
Yeah, oh, you know what you know it's so weird is,
when I saw that question, thefirst thing I thought I was
spicy.
Weird is when I saw thatquestion, the first thing I
thought of was spicy, the firstthing that I got in my head was
spicy, so I pegged you.
Elaine Zelby (34:41):
You got it.
I do love spicy food.
In general, I like everything.
Everything should be spicy.
Kevin Kerner (34:46):
I always tell people too.
Elaine Zelby (34:47):
When I'm doing LinkedIn Lives or other
conversations, I'm like be asspicy as you want, because I
always find those to be betterconversations.
Kevin Kerner (34:54):
Oh yeah, and I'm from Texas, so I like some spicy
food too.
It's good, nice, okay, so thishas been fantastic.
I really appreciate you beingon the podcast here, elaine.
If people want to get a hold ofyou or Tofu I know you have the
newsletter, you've got yourLinkedIn profile they can go to
Tofu.
What's the best way that peoplecan get more in touch with you
(35:14):
and your community?
I should say.
Elaine Zelby (35:17):
Our website is TofuHQcom.
I'm on LinkedIn.
I'm pretty responsive.
One of my fatal character flawsis I have to respond to people.
I have so much FOMO of notresponding and I will respond to
people.
And anywhere you can find me.
If you reach out, I will likelyrespond Well this has been
awesome.
Kevin Kerner (35:37):
Great to see you, elaine, and I hope to catch up
with you soon.
Elaine Zelby (35:40):
Thank you, Kevin Okay.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.