This firm by CMOs aims to solve leadership gaps in hypergrowth companies

A collective of chief marketing officers (CMOs) have come together to launch Fractional, a new operator model with the goal of solving the marketing leadership gap in hypergrowth companies. 

To meet this goal, Fractional will curate the region's top marketing leaders to work for companies on a fractional or part-time basis. This makes high-calibre marketing operators accessible to startups and scaleups in need of marketing leadership. 

Don't miss: Starbucks drops global CMO title: How the role is evolving in 2024 and beyond 

The fractional model also gives veteran marketers an alternative path for how they shape the peak periods of their career journey. By joining Fractional, CMOs access diversity of work, lifestyle autonomy and can also become part of a tight-knit community of marketing leaders in the ecosystem. 

Fractional was founded by three Southeast Asia-based marketing leaders - Sophie Jokelson, Oliver Lo and Rana Saha, who have more than five decades of combined experience.

They’ve led marketing teams at day-zero startups, high-growth unicorns and billion-dollar corporate brands including the likes of Grab, Uber, Sequoia, Mars, Dell, Zynga, PayPal, Antler and Cove, said the release. 

“From my time working in venture capital, I’ve seen that the biggest challenge for nine out of ten founders is actually marketing,” said Lo, founding partner at Fractional.

“From value proposition and brand positioning, to finding repeatable growth motions without the need for unsustainable paid ad budgets - these aren’t simple challenges for most startups. Many struggle without the right marketing leadership," said Lo. 

According to the release, the CMO is often the last C-suite to be hired in a growing startup, with less experienced marketing teams often reporting directly to a founder. This is especially since hiring a full-time CMO can be expensive in a region where funding rounds are not as large as in the US.

“Marketing and brand building are essential for startups as they grow. The fractional model is an interesting approach and allows companies to flexibly engage with experienced talent at the time and stage they need it most. This concept has been mainstream in Silicon Valley for a while and is now gaining popularity in APAC,” added Gayatri Yadav, CMO at Peak XV.

Furthermore, CMOs with deep operator experience can be hard to find in what is still a relatively young startup ecosystem. The fractional model breaks the confines of a full-time job construct, enabling growing startups to access elite marketing talent on a fractional basis at a fraction of the cost.

"We’ve met many marketers who have had to make a difficult choice between fulfilling work at growing companies or stable jobs that pay the bills,” said Saha, founding partner at Fractional.

“The fractional model provides a different path - the opportunity to engage with the most interesting work of their careers without having to make financial sacrifices," said Saha. 

“And as we turn the corner, I strongly believe that companies will find more sustainable ways to grow into the next cycle. Fractional leadership is something I believe will help propel startup growth in a sustainable fashion, and help Asia’s startup ecosystem progress and mature," said Sophie Jokelson, founding partner at Fractional. 

Fractional has selected its first batch of CMOs, each with well over a decade of operator experience in sectors including fintech, D2C, SaaS, e-commerce and logistics. The firm is already taking on projects with founders directly as well as through venture capital and private equity firms.

The launch of this firm comes as Starbucks is getting rid of its global CMO role as it promotes its Brady Brewer to the role of CEO, Starbucks International.

While Starbucks' move can be seen as a tactic to better balance the clear geographical focus of a brand, industry players MARKETING-INTERACTIVE spoke to believed that the move can be attributed to several factors.   

Shufen Goh, co-founder and principal of R3, said it would seem like a sharpening of the global CMO role to be focused on creative aspect of brand marketing with Starbucks' appointment of creative brand leader.  

“This could solve the problem of many global CMOs not having clear business targets and therefore not having a global budget to deploy marketing,” she added. 

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