meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

The ultimate guide to Martech | Austin Hay (Reforge, Ramp, Runway)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Business, Technology, Entrepreneurship

5.01.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2023

⏱️ 85 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brought to you by OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster | Mixpanel—Event analytics that everyone can trust, use, and afford | Brave Search API—An independent, global search index you can use to power your search or AI app

Austin Hay is currently Head of Marketing Technology at Ramp and was previously the VP of Business Operations at Runway, the VP of Growth at mParticle, and the fourth employee at the unicorn Branch Metrics. In 2022 he sold his online course, the Marketing Technology Academy, to Reforge, where he now teaches Martech and has a program launching in the fall. He’s consulted on Martech and growth for companies including Notion, Airbnb, Robinhood, Postmates, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, and many others. In today’s podcast, we discuss:

• What exactly marketing technology is

• What a Martech person can do for your business

• When to hire a Martech person and what to look for

• Austin’s favorite tools

• Advice for doing attribution

• Frameworks on tooling, systems, and building vs. buying

• How to apply the concept of “thinking gray” to make better decisions in work and life

Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-martech-austin-hay-reforge-ramp-runway/#transcript

Where to find Austin Hay:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinahay/

• Threads: @austinahay

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Austin’s background

(03:58) What marketing technology is

(06:17) The difference between typical growth roles and Martech

(10:23) Signs you need a Martech person on your team

(14:03) Hiring and placing a Martech person in B2B, B2C, and B2B2C businesses

(21:15) A day in the life of a Martech professional

(25:05) Marketing technology vs. marketing operations

(31:14) Tooling recommendations

(41:49) The never-ending struggle of how to do attribution well

(50:47) Emerging tools and platforms to keep an eye on

(55:26) MMM modeling

(57:47) What to look for when hiring a Martech professional, and Austin’s favorite interview questions

(1:02:45) His red flags for companies and “false flags” for potential hires

(1:04:51) His favorite frameworks

(1:13:37) Lightning round

Referenced:

• Siqi Chen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siqic/

• Austin’s marketing technology course on Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/courses/marketing-technology

• Notion: https://www.notion.so/

• Sri Batchu on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-scaling-ramp-sri-batchu-ramp-instacart-opendoor/

• Cody Morgan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cody-morgan/

• Braze: https://www.braze.com

• Marketo: https://business.adobe.com/products/marketo/adobe-marketo.html

• Mparticle: https://www.mparticle.com/

• Segment: https://segment.com/

• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/

• Reverse ETL: a primer: https://medium.com/memory-leak/reverse-etl-a-primer-4e6694dcc7fb

• RudderStack: https://www.rudderstack.com/

• Hightouch: https://hightouch.com/

• Mike Molinet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemolinet/

• Thena: https://www.thena.ai/

• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/

• Gong: https://www.gong.io/

• How today’s top consumer brands measure marketing’s impact: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-top-consumer-brands-measure

• About MMM: https://www.marketingevolution.com/marketing-essentials/media-mix-modeling

• Recast: https://getrecast.com/

The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Contrarians-Guide-Leadership-Steven-Sample/dp/0787967076

The Art and Adventure of Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Adventure-Leadership-Understanding-Resilience/dp/1119090318/

Suits on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70195800

Our Flag Means Death on Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Our-Flag-Means-Death-Season/dp/B0B8N4R4X1

What We Do in the Shadows on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-0b10c46a-12f0-4357-8a00-547057b49bac

Silo on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/silo

• Cal.com: https://cal.com/

• Brian Balfour on the Startup Dad podcast: https://www.startupdadpod.com/coping-with-the-loss-of-a-child-and-protecting-your-time-brian-balfour-father-of-2-ceo-and-found/

• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

• AppsFlyer: https://www.appsflyer.com/

• Customer.io: https://customer.io/

• Branch: https://www.branch.io/

• HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.



Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

from 2010 to 2020 we had the golden years of deterministic matching where you know it was very easy to run an ad and

0:08.0

understand with precision who installed the app maybe to know their name but you actually would know their

0:13.1

IDFA and you could tie that to their PII you can't do that anymore so what that

0:16.7

means is like these ad networks are becoming more complex sophisticated and

0:21.7

interesting right at the same time that it's harder for marketers becoming more complex, sophisticated, and interesting,

0:22.7

right at the same time that it's harder for marketers

0:24.9

to really understand how they're spending money.

0:27.2

And so I'm paying a lot of attention

0:29.5

to like how marketers make decisions

0:31.9

with probabilistic data,

0:33.8

because most of the work that I'm doing now

0:35.8

is actually saying, well, given that we don't have

0:39.2

determinist data about a person,

0:40.7

for certain audience or where somebody came from,

0:43.1

how can I find other information

0:44.9

that will create a model for 30% of the population

0:47.8

and we can use that to extrapolate to 100.

0:56.2

Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's

0:59.6

most successful products. Today my guest is Austin Hey.

1:03.0

Austin is one of the smartest people in the world on the field of Martek, aka marketing technology.

1:09.9

He's advised companies like Notion, Air Beam B, Walmart, Postmates Robin Hood, even Pete's

1:14.9

Coffee and Mars on their Martek strategy and tactics. He's currently head of

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lenny Rachitsky, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lenny Rachitsky and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.