In this episode of Unicorny, Emma Kriskinans, VP Global Marketing at Tyk, shares her insights on the differences between marketing in big corporations and start-ups.

She draws from her career experience, transitioning from corporate environments through agency into the fast-paced world of start-ups. 

By embracing discomfort, pursuing growth, and learning from both successes and failures, Emma's story serves as an inspiration for all of us looking to get on in the volatile marketing business. 

Her practical advice on understanding the balance between agility and stability, the importance of following the money, and the value of effective internal marketing and change delivers solid takeaways for both big businesses and start-ups. 

If you're seeking to improve your adaptability to different marketing environments, this episode offers valuable lessons and practical strategies to enhance your skills.  

About Emma Kriskinans

For the last fifteen years Emma Kriskinans has helped Founders, the C-Suite and Leaders grow their businesses. She has a strong entrepreneurial streak and thrives on purpose-driven initiatives, brand & community marketing, and change management. 

Links 

Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk  

LinkedIn: Emma Kriskinans | Dom Hawes  

Website: Tyk 

Sponsor: Selbey Anderson  

Episode outline

Differences Between Start-up and Enterprise  

Emma's Start-up Journey  

Attributes Needed for Marketers  

Overcoming Impostor Syndrome  

Embracing Risk and Learning from Failure  

Lessons for Big Businesses from Start-ups  

Lessons for Start-ups from Big Businesses 

Internal Marketing  

Agility vs. Stability Spectrum  

Follow the Money  

Joining a Start-up  

Embracing Challenges and Learning Opportunities  

The Many Faces of Marketing  

Marketing as a Dynamic Practice  

Key Takeaways for Marketers  

Welcome to Unicorny, the antidote to post rationalized business books. I'm your host, Dom Hawes. This is a podcast about the business of marketing, how to create value, who's doing it well, and how you can help your business win the future. Marketing is a career that seldom works in straight lines. The more people that join the Unicorny project, the more I realize that today hardly any marketing leaders got to the top by following a structured career path. Now that in itself isn't necessarily a problem. We've already talked about the issues caused by the lack of foundational and ongoing career development for marketers on this podcast. So we're not going to go there today, but we are going to speak to someone whose career maybe illustrates why such a structured path is almost impossible to create.

If you're in finance, the differences between a start-up and an enterprise are about scale. Well, I'm sure there are loads more differences than that. And if you're shouting at my ignorance right now, well, connect me on LinkedIn and educate me. But from my oversimplified viewpoint, there are generally accepted accounting principles that are applied to every set of accounts, large and small. This is called gap, and gap is the convention all accounts are produced to, and that's a good thing. It helps us read accounts and know that we're comparing apples with apples when we try to benchmark our performance against others. Similarly, if you're a lawyer, the law is the law. You can't make it up or experiment with new law, or you'll quickly be disbarred, jailed, or both.