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Krithika Shankarraman

Entrepreneur in Residence @ Thrive Capital

First marketing hire at both OpenAI and Stripe. Previously led marketing at Retool.

“Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer, covering strategic decision-making, AI product work, and B2B products.”

Career History

CompanyRoleYears
Thrive CapitalEntrepreneur in Residence~2024-present
OpenAIVP of Marketing (first marketing hire)~2022-~2024
RetoolHead of Marketing~2020-~2022
StripeMarketing (first marketing hire, 8+ years)~2012-~2020

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Episodes (1)

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Quotable Clips

“It does. Not that I can take credit for it.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

5:03
“Yeah. I'm a marketer through and through now. So I mean you got diagnose, D. Analyze, A. Take a different path, T. And experiment for the E. So it's the DATE framework. I've just kind of coined it.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

15:54
“Across my time at Stripe, marketings are very different purposes. And so I kind of see it in different epochs or chapters of my time at the company. The first chapter when I joined, our head of partne...”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

24:40
“Yeah. If we did, we would still be talking about PCI compliance and payment gateways.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

27:34
“Her first PM, actually. Yeah, Raaz is great.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

27:52
“They are definitely a company that zags when others zig. I still have my Wiz socks, which have these beautiful 8-bit characters on them. Their branding really stands out in the sea of sameness in SaaS...”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

28:53
“Talking to customers is at the top of the list.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

31:21
“Yeah, I mean whether it's fear that drives you is questionable because I think it's also a commitment to your craft.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

38:40
“But I think that's exactly right. A brand is an expectation that you create within your audience.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

38:51
“Many, many years. So OpenAI had been around for almost a decade as primarily a research organization. They had launched ChatGPT about a year before I joined. And so that was the first foray into sayin...”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

40:01
“I would be so curious to see a follow-up a few years on on how that's been going.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

42:58
“I think it's going to become so much more important. First of all, I will say I am not a ChatGPT hyphen person. I was an em dasher well before it became a ChatGPT thing.”
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Krithika Shankarraman

Growth tactics from OpenAI and Stripe’s first marketer | Krithika Shankarraman

55:31