For Mack McKelvey, Founder and CEO of SalientMG, the most common marketing mistake startups make isn’t underinvesting, it’s investing too early in the wrong things.
Speaking at POSSIBLE 2025 in Miami, McKelvey offered a clear, hard-won perspective on what makes growth-stage companies stall, how sales and marketing alignment really works, and why product marketers should be in the room long before growth marketers are even hired.
Founders Want Clarity, Not Campaigns
SalientMG was born out of McKelvey’s own experience scaling a startup from $9 million to $100 million and IPO. After working in enterprise marketing and then going deep into startup leadership, she saw the same issue again and again: fast-growing companies needed marketing partners who actually understood the pressure and pace, not just flashy slides.
Her team now focuses on B2B tech startups and scaleups, offering hands-on strategy and execution with a focus on practical impact. The model is lean, senior, and sleeves-up.
Most Teams Outgrow Their Marketing Before They Realize
Many startups keep the same tactics and team structure long after their business model evolves. It’s not unusual to see Series C companies still operating with the same tools and mindset they had at Series A.
That stagnation creates a misalignment between market maturity and message. McKelvey emphasized that companies serious about growth need to evolve how they go to market at each stage. What got them from $0 to $10 million won’t take them further. And when messaging, sales motion, and product-market fit aren’t aligned, the growth curve flattens fast.
The Brand Mistake That Costs More Later
Performance marketing feels like the obvious first investment for a data-driven founder or board. The results are trackable, the metrics clear. But McKelvey warns that delaying brand work until “later” often leads to misalignment, costly rewrites, and inconsistent customer experience.
Her view: start with message, positioning, and foundational clarity. A strong brand makes performance more efficient, recruiting more effective, and customer conversations more consistent. And it’s far easier to build correctly early than retrofit it later.
Sales, Marketing, Product and Finance: One Team, Not Four
One of McKelvey’s strongest points was that “go-to-market” is not a synonym for marketing. It’s an operational alignment that must include sales, product, and finance especially in the early stages.
Too often, those teams work in parallel without shared KPIs. Startups that scale well are the ones that treat go-to-market as a shared motion, with common metrics, integrated planning, and constant feedback between teams. It’s not about which function owns growth, it’s about whether growth is designed collaboratively or not at all.
Don’t Hire for Growth Before You’re Ready
McKelvey is emphatic about sequencing. In her view, product marketing comes first. Founders need someone who can define messaging, test segmentation, build the marketing stack, and set up data systems before they bring in sales or performance hires.
Without that foundation, she said, startups burn through budget trying to scale channels that haven’t been validated or worse, scaling messaging that doesn’t resonate. The first signals of product-market fit should come before pipeline targets.
Metrics Are Directional Until They Aren’t
Measurement evolves. At first, directional KPIs like engagement or demo volume may be all a team can track. But as the business matures, McKelvey advised shifting quickly to metrics that reflect outcomes: MQL to SQL conversion, time to close, retention, net revenue expansion.
She noted that startups often overlook one of the most valuable things they can do early: collect data consistently and cleanly from day one. That historical context becomes essential as the company scales. Without it, there’s no way to understand progress or patterns.
Teach the Market. Don’t Just Sell to It.
While performance channels may dominate budget conversations, McKelvey underscored the importance of thought leadership not as vanity, but as strategy.
Startups that educate their industry tend to win earlier attention, build credibility, and shape their category. The goal is not just leads, but leadership. And in a cluttered market, relevance often starts by showing customers what’s possible not just pitching what you’ve built.
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