The Secret Behind Figma, Slack & Loveable’s Growth with Natalie Marcotullio

Natalie Marcotullio’s marketing bar is intentionally simple: every piece has to be unique and valuable. At Navattic, where she leads product marketing and growth for an interactive demo platform, that rule came from doing too much, burning out, and watching quality drop.

This episode is not a list of growth hacks. Natalie explains why the content Navattic worked hardest on was the content that ranked, why Loveable, Figma, Slack and Clay spread through word of mouth before tactics, and why customer marketing is now one of Navattic’s biggest growth priorities.

She also shares the advisor-influencer programme that gives Navattic both distribution and a direct line to its ICP. The useful part is how specific the system is: niche advisors, monthly updates, quarterly brainstorms, and a three month pilot before scaling.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Tom: What did 10 years as a first marketer at early-stage SaaS companies teach you before you got to Navattic?

Natalie: I have been a startup marketer for about 10 years. I was the first marketer at two different early-stage B2B SaaS companies, helping build and develop the marketing programme from the ground up with limited resources.

The fun part of working at an early-stage startup is that you wear a lot of hats. You are not just growth, product marketing or content. You pick what the company needs.

The formative moment was actually when I was not a marketer. I was Chief of Staff at my first startup, mostly because the company needed help across departments and I had become more operationally minded. That was the first time I really saw how the whole organisation worked together: different priorities, different departments, and the business operating model behind the scenes.

It also taught me how to work with sales and customer success. Before that, I was siloed in marketing. After that role, I understood what mattered to other teams and how to communicate in ways they cared about.

Tom: How did burnout turn into the “unique and valuable” standard you use for marketing now?

Natalie: At my first startup, I got burnt out because I was doing so many different things. The quality of each thing went down. I was doing a lot of inputs, but the outputs were not there.

At Navattic, I wanted to make sure we did not fall into the trap of doing marketing for the sake of marketing. We developed a framework called unique and valuable. Every single piece of marketing we put out has to be both.

Unique does not mean showing up to a conference in a bunny suit. It means we are not copying what everyone else is doing for the sake of copying. We need to add original data, an original perspective or something that is ours.

Valuable means we are not just promoting ourselves or screaming about how great we are. The work has to help our audience. Having that framework created guardrails and helped us prioritise while keeping the bar high.

Tom: You started in growth hacking. What changed when the highest effort articles beat the hacked content?

Natalie: My first job was as a growth hacker, so I was very familiar with hacking the algorithm, putting out a certain number of blog posts and keyword stuffing. At the time, I was not thinking enough about whether the article mattered to our audience or whether a keyword was bringing in good leads. I was just seeing that the keyword produced leads.

As I got more senior, sales would say, “these leads suck.” We might have been bidding on something or ranking for something, but it was bringing low quality leads. I also started seeing that I was spending time optimising pages for audiences we were not actually going after.

The same pattern kept showing up with content. We put out a lot of top-of-funnel content that did not rank and did not produce leads. Then five really well-written pieces, often bottom-of-funnel and very focused on our audience, would rank well and produce results.

When I joined Navattic, I wanted to make sure we produced high quality content from the beginning. Before that, I had seen systems where you put in a blog outline and a random writer who did not know your business turned it into a post. At Navattic, we brought in an in-house writer and made sure pieces had a unique angle, interviews or original data that no one else had.

I saw the same thing with AEO and GEO. The articles that ranked well for SEO, had original thought and a clear point of view were often the ones that performed well there too. You can think about the algorithm, but good content has been what I have seen work across both.

Tom: What do marketers miss when they look at the speed of Loveable, Replit, Figma, Slack and Clay?

Natalie: I go on LinkedIn all the time and think I am doing my job entirely wrong because I do not have 10 AI automations running my day to day. But when you think about tools like Loveable and Replit, there are growth tactics they used, and the thing that got them to where they are was word of mouth.

I did not use Loveable because of an ad. I used it because 10 people told me to try it and I saw examples of it. There are things those companies did to accelerate word of mouth, but the core is a really good product that people want to talk about.

Think about Figma, Slack or Clay. First, you need to create a great product that users love. You make it simple, build possible viral loops into the product, support your customers and make them feel appreciated.

If customers are having a 10 out of 10 experience, then the growth loops on top work because people are already willing to talk about you. If you do not have that first step, the tactics will not work in the same way.

Tom: Why has customer marketing moved to the centre of growth at Navattic?

Natalie: We looked at the business and where we wanted to grow. We had done a lot of the first part of startup marketing: educating the market on what the product does, building brand awareness in the category, and putting out thought leadership.

Then we looked at where the business was struggling. Customers did not always know about new feature launches or product releases. Part of that came from how much faster we are putting out features because of AI innovation and because the team is larger.

We also realised we had a great customer base, so the question became how to make sure they are happy and how to make sure they buy more. When we looked at growth opportunities, there was probably more there than only continuing to focus on net new demand.

As a marketing organisation, our two main annual metrics are pipeline and word-of-mouth leads. We use the “how did you hear about us?” field, and we categorise answers such as colleague, friend or word of mouth. Those are some of our highest converting leads and the ones most likely to become pipeline and closed-won business.

We also did six customer events last year. The data there is still more qualitative, but the people we engage with in person are much more likely to become internal champions. They are more likely to support up-sell conversations, give introductions, post about us, engage with our content, and say yes when we need a case study, testimonial or reference.

Tom: How does your advisor-influencer programme work without becoming paid LinkedIn posting?

Natalie: I see two models in B2B. One is the advisor model, where a company pays a senior person in equity and they advise someone junior or the company as a whole. The other is the influencer model, where you pay per post and give someone topics to promote.

Ours sits in the middle. They are actual advisors, and I talk to them frequently about the market, our ICP and what they are seeing work. We pitch them product ideas, strategic ideas and positioning, then get honest feedback from people who are very close to the audience we care about.

They also help promote. They post about us on LinkedIn for big announcements, mention us in communities and events, and help us get the message out. The difference is that they receive a monthly payment, like a freelancer, and we are paying for their expertise as well as their distribution.

At the beginning, we fell into the trap of thinking we needed the people with the biggest follower counts. That was not always the best fit. The more followers someone has, the more diluted the message can become because they are speaking to lots of people at a higher level.

What worked better was finding people with niche topics or industries that spoke directly to our audience. For example, a product marketer with 10,000 or 20,000 followers who goes deep into product marketing can be more useful than someone with 100,000 followers. They understand immediately why an interactive demo matters to their audience.

We started the programme about a year and a half into Navattic. I think you need to know your ICP and the narrative you are trying to push. For us, that narrative is creating a better buying experience because B2B buying is painful and buyers want to see more of the product upfront.

I would start small, with three people and a three month test. We now have around 15 advisors, and we run a monthly update through email and Slack, plus a quarterly advisor brainstorm. The monthly update covers what is happening in marketing, asks for feedback, and any launches we want them to review or promote. The quarterly brainstorm is more strategic.

The unexpected benefit is access to your ICP. If you are doing a website refresh and debating a headline, you can ask the advisors what they think. Suddenly it is not just the marketer disagreeing with the CEO. It is feedback from expert advisors who represent the audience.

Tom: If a marketer wants to test that advisor idea without a full programme, where should they start?

Natalie: First, figure out who your audience follows. Do a survey, talk to customers, offer to buy them coffee, and ask who they trust in the industry, where they get advice, what podcasts they listen to and where they get news.

Some of the names will be outside your range, but you will probably find more niche people too. Then connect with them. If you are not ready to start an advisor programme, do an interview series, a webinar, a podcast or a video clip where you can pick their brain and get their expertise.

That gives you a piece of content you can repurpose into a blog post or LinkedIn clips. The better outcome is that it starts a relationship. If the content goes well, you can show it internally and say, “look how knowledgeable this person is. Wouldn’t it be useful to have someone like this talking about us?”

If you pilot it, start with one or two people for three months. That keeps the test manageable and gives you a way to learn before building a larger programme.

Tom: What tool, skill and lesson have shaped how you work now?

Natalie: One tool I love is Ask Solo. It is like internal support, but it looks into our code base. If you ask whether an integration does something, it is not just pulling from docs. It can pull from the code, flag the answer, point you to the engineer who is the expert, and surface relevant docs.

We use it for blog posts too. If our writer is writing about a new feature and needs more information, she can ask it for the more nuanced parts.

The skill that has helped me is learning how to say no and prioritise. Early in startups, you learn to say yes because no one else knows how to do the thing. Later, there are too many things you could be doing, and humans are not meant to switch between endless tasks all day. I am happiest when I can do deep work.

One mistake that stayed with me was a big feature launch at another startup. The product and UI changed significantly, and I was focused on the rollout plan: which cohort got which email and on which day. I was not thinking enough about how the change would affect customers, especially because the audience was not very technical.

The messaging was not empathetic enough. It was all, “this is exciting, things are changing.” Then someone messaged the company page saying it was the worst product update they had ever seen and that they were making fun of it. It was a reminder that we were executing in silos and trying to get the launch done instead of thinking about whether the timing, messaging and customer experience were right.

For a recommendation, I love the book Uncanny Valley. It is not a marketing manual. It is about someone from the publishing industry getting pulled into Silicon Valley in the 2010s, and it is funny and sometimes therapeutic. If you need a break from all the optimisation talk, it is a good one.