UnicornyHow to create valueThese episodes bring rigour to the conversations most marketing teams avoid. Private equity value creation and what PE-backed marketing looks like from the inside. Profitable growth as a method rather than a lucky outcome. The limits of annual budgeting as a tool for running a marketing function. Thesis-driven marketing — the idea that great B2B marketing starts with a commercial hypothesis, not a channel plan. These frameworks help marketers speak the language of the boardroom. The creative work still matters. It just needs to earn its place.
In this episode, Dom Hawes continues his conversation with Dominic Rodgers, Head of Marketing at Frog Capital, focusing on how purpose is practically applied to scale businesses. Dominic discusses Frog Capital’s use of AI-driven toolkits and how engaging…
In this episode of Unicorny, Dominic Rodgers, Head of Marketing at Frog Capital, shares how his company integrates purpose into every aspect of its investment strategy. Dominic reveals Frog's unique methodology for scaling businesses, emphasising the vital…
Welcome back to Unicorny! In this episode, Dom Hawes continues his chat with Andrew Davies, a CMO and serial entrepreneur. Andrew shares his thoughts on how to integrate value-based pricing, the importance of packaging, methods for retaining customers in the…
In this episode of Unicorny, host Dom Hawes speaks with Andrew Davies, Chief Marketing Officer at Paddle, about integrating entrepreneurial principles into marketing strategies. Andrew discusses the benefits of approaching marketing with the mindset of a…
In part two of Rachel Fairley's discussion with Duncan Daines, Head of Engagement at Gama Aviation, she explores the intricacies of growing market share and connecting marketing to business outcomes. Duncan shares his unique approach to achieving commercial…
Have you considered how enhanced leadership techniques can enable more agile market responses? Or how your team could manage uncertainty through innovative management models? In this episode you'll hear: Further exploration of leadership roles in Beyond…
The traditional approach to budgeting is broken. Worse. Budgeting builds dysfunction into business and into your marketing department. There is a better way. This week, we meet Dr Steve Morlidge, thinker, speaker, author of The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting…
This is a podcast about value creation, profitable growth and the client/agency relationship. Dom is joined by marketing consultant, David van Schaick and together they seek to equip marketers with methods to navigate the business desert. Unless you were very…
Value Creation the Private Equity Way This week, we're talking to Peter Russell-Smith about the evolving role of marketers, particularly in sustaining growth. We talk about the relationship between the CFO and the CMO, we get stuck into a bit of theory with…
Value Creation the Private Equity Way Times are tough and marketers need to lead the way in creating value for their businesses because marketing is the value creation engine of any business. While others argue about the various merits of brand versus…
Beyond Budgeting began in 1998 when two finance professionals looked for a better way to budget and realised budgeting is one part of a command-and-control management model. It is now a set of 12 principles, six covering process and six covering leadership, that must be aligned. Steve Morlidge stresses it is not a recipe but a set of ingredients each business combines to suit its needs and starting point. Hear the full discussion in episode 55
Frog has created more than two dozen free, ungated toolkits covering topics like product-market fit, building sales machines and board packs, plus podcasts, videos and downloadable templates. It built a public generative AI tool trained on its toolkits so anyone can ask how to scale their business and get answers from Frog's own expertise. Dominic calls this a 'godfather strategy': giving real value away builds a halo around the brand. Hear the full discussion in episode 85
Dom borrows Geoffrey Moore's idea that venture capital markets for power while private equity markets for profit. Building power means growing brand, market share, awareness and reputation; building profit means pricing to market, packaging well and growing accounts in a measured way. Treating a marketing plan like a venture with both levers makes it easier to explain to a CEO or CFO why some activity will not show an immediate return. Hear the full discussion in episode 70
Duncan Daines says in his aviation market there are only about 25 major opportunities, each on seven to ten year contracts and tied to embedded technologies. Winning two or three points of share organically could take 15 to 20 years while competitors try to displace you. In those conditions acquisitions, joint ventures or partnerships may create more value than campaigns, so marketers should stay agnostic about the solution. Hear the full discussion in episode 63
Peter Russell-Smith suggests studying how competitors acquire, onboard and integrate customers, then going further by actively trying to win their customers. If their customers are easy to take, that reveals weaknesses you can exploit and it devalues the competitor. Dom adds that looking at the quality of a rival's contracts and customer journeys teaches you what to copy. Hear the full discussion in episode 20
Dominic Rogers, head of marketing at Frog Capital, explains that Frog invests in purpose-driven European software scale-ups at around €3 million ARR and helps them grow to €10 to 20 million. Its scale-up wheel covers three time horizons: day-to-day execution (customer acquisition, product delivery, customer success and applied analytics), month-to-month planning (strategy, talent and organisation) and long-term sustainability (purpose, resilience and value). Operating partners with hands-on experience work closely with each company's leadership team. Hear the full discussion in episode 84
Dr Steve Morlidge says budgeting has barely changed since James O. McKinsey's 1922 book. It is costly, once estimated to take about 10% of managers' time; it is inflexible once set; it distorts performance by judging people against fixed targets that are always wrong; and it creates perverse incentives, since budget-holders win by negotiating low revenue targets and high cost budgets, then spending everything. The result is systematic underperformance. Hear the full discussion in episode 54
David van Schaick, former CMO of The Marketing Practice, says years of cheap money fuelled growth-first investment, especially in tech and SaaS, which raised marketing's profile. Now that money costs more and businesses want profitable growth, marketing is seen as discretionary and easy to cut. The risk is that marketing gets narrowed to communications and short-term sales support, losing its role in pricing, positioning, product and long-term value creation. Hear the full discussion in episode 37
Andrew Davies says Paddle's data shows SaaS businesses that run pricing or packaging experiments every quarter achieve 105% higher average revenue per user over three to four years than those that change once a year. The first step is simply to start, and to set up a pricing committee that meets regularly. One VC-backed company met daily for an hour with C-suite, product and marketing leaders before moving to weekly and monthly meetings, transforming its go-to-market. Hear the full discussion in episode 71
Duncan warns that incumbents can become complacent and rely on perfect KPI scores, even when one contract scores 100%. His team starts 12 to 18 months before the end date, identifies who needs to be influenced and which partners to bring in, and rebuilds the bid from the ground up as if they were a competitor. Assuming the relationship will carry them over the line is the main risk. Hear the full discussion in episode 63
Using the Ansoff matrix, Peter explains that selling existing offers into existing markets is the lowest-risk, highest-return strategy, which is why private equity often applies it. Many firms diversify out of boredom even though they hold a tiny share of their total addressable market. Dom notes that when growth stalls, the cause is often business process, not product or market, so the fix is better process rather than something new. Hear the full discussion in episode 20
Revenue quality covers how predictable, recurring, long-lasting and profitable revenue is. David argues that growing the top line 5% while improving revenue quality by 20% can add more value than 10% growth with worse quality. Dom adds that it depends on value-based pricing and contracts that reserve the right to raise prices, and that revenue should come from a definable market you can dominate. Hear the full discussion in episode 37
Ashby's law says an organisation must balance three things: the volatility of its environment, the flexibility of its processes and the tightness of its goals. A volatile market combined with rigid processes and many fixed targets cannot work, so something gives, often the numbers. Dom notes marketers can use it to argue for a tighter market focus, which reduces the complexity the business has to handle. Hear the full discussion in episode 54
A Unilever foods business in Eastern Europe, struggling in a mature market, let a group of local managers design a new way of running the business, which turned out to be essentially Beyond Budgeting. From its first month it grew steadily at about 7% a year while the market grew at 3%. Growth freed more marketing money in a positive feedback loop, so marketers who delivered good ideas, not those who negotiated big budgets, were rewarded. Hear the full discussion in episode 55
Andrew Davies, now CMO at Paddle, helped decide the brand after Episerver acquired several companies including Optimizely. Episerver had strong retention and analyst ratings but low North American awareness, 'epi' is a US medical term, and 'server' was what they wanted customers to move away from. Optimizely was well known in North America for innovation and experimentation, so it became the brand while Episerver's platform stayed at the core. Dom's lesson is to decide early and move fast. Hear the full discussion in episode 70
Andrew says a value metric should grow as the customer grows, rise as the customer gets more value, and be simple to understand. Useful packaging tactics include reducing package thresholds rather than raising prices, combining seat-based and usage-based pricing, and splitting out add-ons that only 20% to 30% of customers want but will pay well for. At Idio, adding a $20,000 implementation fee unblocked a stalled procurement process with a large asset manager. Hear the full discussion in episode 71
Frog believes purpose and growth reinforce each other: for health and safety software firm Evotix, winning business fulfils its purpose and fulfilling its purpose wins business. Dominic says purpose forces focus, builds enthusiasm, drives impact as the business grows and attracts top talent. Unlike strategy, which changes, purpose acts as a constant north star. Hear the full discussion in episode 84
At Frog, operating partners draft each toolkit outline and first draft, Dominic edits, a designer lays it out, and partners review it for gaps; podcasts follow a similar co-creation process. Dom notes CMOs can apply the same model with fellow executives, instead of in-house content teams working in isolation. Dominic describes a flywheel where product insight feeds marketing, sales takes it to market, and feedback returns to product and marketing. Hear the full discussion in episode 85
Steve explains that when a business is off track against fixed annual targets, the two easiest fixes in a marketing company are cutting marketing spend and running promotions that pull revenue forward. Both hit the numbers short term but damage the brand and add costly disruption to supply chains. Annual budgets also act like a bank that opens once a year, preventing money from moving to what is working, so the goal is to frame constraints differently rather than remove them. Hear the full discussion in episode 54
Peter warns that bogus KPIs are worse than none, because people mistake activity, like logging 300 calls, for success. KPIs should link to the company's financial objectives, with EBITDA and quality of revenue the two that matter most. MQLs are not a real measure; what counts is how many sales were made, at what margin and at what customer acquisition cost. Hear the full discussion in episode 20
Andrew's first question for any business is its thesis: why it exists, why the product matters and how people buy it. Data should then strengthen or disprove that thesis, rather than marketers hunting for meaning in numbers without context. He accepts not everything can be measured, says higher brand awareness lifts all direct response metrics, and prefers campaigns that deliver both demand and brand benefits rather than treating them as separate. Hear the full discussion in episode 71
David and Dom argue agencies do their best strategic thinking for free when pitching, then earn money on low-value production work that AI and in-housing are now squeezing. Agencies should tie themselves to client outcomes rather than outputs and move upstream into strategy. David suggests positioning around the outcomes delivered, such as bigger deals or entry into new markets, rather than capabilities like ABM or performance. Hear the full discussion in episode 37
Dominic says early-stage businesses rely on performance to prove product-market fit, but as they scale they cannot 'muscle' their way to revenue and need brand and awareness. Since only a small share of the market is buying at any time, communicating purpose builds consideration with those who are not yet in market. He cites Who Gives A Crap, which turned toilet paper into a purpose-led product people display on shelves, and says B2B firms often miss the chance to explain why their product matters. Hear the full discussion in episode 85
Duncan dismantled his group marketing team in 2021 and aligned marketers into the strategic business units. He now forms dynamic squads from specialists across the business, in pricing, distribution, regulation and operations, to solve problems across product, price, place and promotion. He also uses the title group head of engagement because the word marketing has become associated only with communications, prompting people to ask why 'the marketing guy' is in the room. Hear the full discussion in episode 63
Steve advises building a coalition of like-minded colleagues, especially the CFO, rather than relying on the CEO alone. A CMO can start within their own budget by treating it as one pool and running a continuous competition for resources, backing what is working and cutting what is not. He says the biggest constraint is usually assumptions in people's heads: managers blame 'them', yet he never found the 'them' who was stopping change. Hear the full discussion in episode 55
No. Frog backs businesses such as Cludo, whose investigation software helps make society safer, but also Modulr, whose payments software improves productivity and challenges legacy systems. Dom warns that marketers asked to define a purpose are tempted to make it as lofty as possible, when a truthful purpose, such as helping keep people safe at work or making jobs easier, is more effective. Hear the full discussion in episode 84
Andrew says US West Coast companies with a big domestic market usually grow by moving up-market to larger customers first. Companies starting in smaller markets such as Lithuania or Serbia sell across borders early and face currency, payment and tax complexity much sooner, leaving up-market growth until later. Paddle's data shows offering multiple currencies and payment methods at checkout helps software companies grow faster. Hear the full discussion in episode 70