The Growth Conundrum: How to marry startups, VC's and marketing agencies?
A throuple that benefits all
Founders want "simple solutions that work”, as previously expressed by our client. And the marketing industry eagerly obliges. Agencies act like marketing shops where a client can purchase service by service — SEO, paid ads, or social media - whatever you fancy really.
What this does is damning to the startups long-term success as this approach offers tactical execution without strategic oversight. This results in founders juggling freelancers, burning cash on disconnected efforts, and wondering why growth stalls.
As an agency we have encountered all sorts of problematic perceptions of marketing among founders, and of course, their best friends VCs.
“Marketing people are good at bullsh*t!” is the permeating view, one that we heard first hand at one of our recent events.
To better understand the problem and identify the points of rupture, Solid Water team conducted a survey among almost 200 VCs to understand how the marketing industry can better support startups and their growth.
🦖 Christopher Lowe, Founder of NOTWICS, a leading Investor Relations consultancy, focused on the Seed to Series B funding space, who we partnered with for the survey shared his takeaway:
"Based on the survey results and the subsequent round table discussion, we can say that VCs recognise that most founders in their portfolios do not understand or adopt the right marketing strategies to succeed. This is also one of the top reasons why some of the founders they invest in fail. However, most agreed that they need to allocate more money and hire more people to fix this. But shockingly, the majority openly admit that they don’t or should, but haven’t yet. LPs would be truly shocked by these open revelations from some of the leading VCs in the UK.
But the golden conclusion is if you wisely spend budget on Marketing and Growth Marketing then you stand to succeed and make more MONEY!"
The Challenge: Fragmented marketing efforts 🧩
Priya Downes, CEO & Founder of Nudea, e-comm underwear brand, articulated the frustration she faced:
“My biggest learning navigating the marketing services space has been how fragmented it can be. The industry is generally geared towards specialisms by channel, so as a small brand trying to scale you often end up with agencies or people looking after different parts of the marketing funnel which is often expensive, but also inefficient.
It is so important to have great minds looking at the whole marketing funnel to test and optimise marketing spend across all channels.
Only by being disciplined across all channels can a business truly scale most efficiently.
And with so much investment needed in marketing for B2C brands, this should be the prime focus for any business looking to scale".
Maria Tsarkova, co-founder of Solid Water and Head of Growth at Ooredoo Fintech, shared a similar experience:
“When I was Growth Lead at Loop Money, we handled a significant amount of the strategic marketing work internally. However, with only a two-person team, our resources and time were heavily constrained by daily operations. We engaged agencies to test several growth channels, but often encountered rigid contracts that committed us to specific spend levels.
Early-stage startups typically lack certainty around which channels will deliver results, making such inflexibility daunting and negatively impactful on our business. However, we also couldn't afford to manage everything in-house. This creates a genuine ‘chicken and egg’ scenario, where startups lack senior-level expertise and end up with mediocre execution.”
Why VCs don’t trust marketing agencies 🙅🏻
Investors witness this dysfunction firsthand. They acknowledge startups frequently lack senior-level marketing expertise but do not see agencies as the solution — especially within B2B environments, where marketing is often perceived as unnecessary.
During the event, we heard several perspectives which we felt required a little more reflection and nuanced conversation around them:
🎨 "Marketing comes down to a creative idea."
While creativity is welcome, it must be rooted in in-depth customer research. Creativity doesn’t replace structured funnel strategies for customer acquisition and retention.
💪 "Marketing professionals are skilled at bullsh*tting."
This problematic perception arises from previous negative experiences with agencies which applied an old-fashioned approach to marketing which emphasizes self-focused advertising and sales messages, while overlooking customer feedback and data-backed market responses.
🤖 "AI will replace marketers."
AI evangelists suggest marketing agencies could become obsolete. While AI may impact single-service agencies, it currently cannot replace strategic thinking. AI is great as 'mommy's little helper,' but you need the strategic oversight that a 'mommy' provides. This involves not just preparing meals but planning a comprehensive menu that delivers the optimal mix of nutrients, ensuring children grow and develop, rather than just surviving on quick fixes."
🤝 "We don’t need a marketing partner."
Many VCs acknowledge marketing as a significant blind spot in their due diligence:
- 70% do not work with a designated marketing partner.
- 60% admit their assessment of marketing effectiveness during investments is inadequate.
- Only 20% have a marketing expert on their advisory teams.
As a result, founders frequently face uncertainty about how to drive scalable growth, leading to common pitfalls like over-reliance on word-of-mouth and personal connections, and ineffective budget allocation towards costly channels (e.g., organic social media) without clear engagement and retention strategies.
Key findings from our survey 📋
Our survey confirmed these concerns:
Significant warning signs identified include:
The Solution: treat marketing as an investment, not an expense 🏦
Startups fail when marketing is viewed solely as a cost rather than a growth engine. During the event we discussed multiple ways on how to disrupt this harmful narrative:
1️⃣ Make sure every marketing investment at an early stage is backed with data and prioritise investing in the right martech tools to equip yourself and the team with this data.
2️⃣ Never stop selling - our event guests emphasized that there is tendency to overemphasise the product and rely on it ‘selling itself’. In reality, this rarely (read as never) happens, so the earlier the founder and the team get the grip on their sales marketing funnel the quicker they achieve exponential growth. We need to remove the stigma surrounding salesmanship being something shameful and praise this skill on par with strong coding skills.
3️⃣ Have an agile support team - do not employ people who can operate only one channel or don’t have the flexibility to see the opportunities across the marketing field. Make sure the team approaches every new tactic with a hypothesis and works to get a meaningful result.
Founders need vested marketing partners with expertise in strategy AND experimentation
So where does that leave us? Based on the survey responses and our subsequent in-depth conversations with VCs, the market needs agencies that act as true growth partners not just service providers.
Startups don’t need more freelancers; they need strategic relationships with senior-level marketers who can build scalable, data-driven growth engines.
Authors
Maria Tsarkova
Maria Tsarkova is co-founder of Solid Water growth marketing firm and Head of Growth Ooredoo Fintech, subsidiary of Ooredoo Group, headquartered in Doha, Qatar.
Daria Partas
Daria Partas is co-founder of Solid Water growth marketing firm and founder of Partas Global, London-based boutique communications advisory.