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EARLY RELEASE
The $1B Startup's Marketing Playbook
Colin Piper spent a decade scaling Autodesk Construction Cloud's marketing operation to over 100 people. Now, as CMO of unicorn startup BuildOps ($127M raised, $1B+ valuation), he's applying enterprise playbooks to one of construction's most underserved segments: trade contractors.
In this conversation, Colin breaks down the marketing engine behind one of construction tech's fastest-growing companies, from brand-to-demand funnels and account-based strategies to the surprising AI adoption data from BuildOps' latest industry report. Whether you're building a marketing function from scratch or optimizing a mature team, Colin's frameworks translate directly to the bottom line.
In this episode, you’ll:
Learn how to structure a marketing team from your first hire through 100+ people, and which role should always come first
Discover the "incrementality testing" method BuildOps uses to prove ROI on brand campaigns that most companies can't measure
Understand why 78% of trade contractors have already adopted AI workflows (and what's actually stopping the other 22%)
Get the account-based marketing playbook for landing enterprise deals—including the physical "swag box" strategy that still works
Hear why Colin believes the labor shortage and burnout crisis are accelerating technology adoption faster than anyone expected
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: BuildOps' Unicorn Journey
03:13 - Colin's Path from Autodesk to Startup CMO
05:46 - What Marketing Actually Means at Scale
08:43 - Demand Generation Explained: The Three Legs
11:20 - Account-Based Marketing Tactics That Close Enterprise Deals
19:45 - BuildOps vs. Autodesk: Reaching Trade Contractors
22:59 - Building Top-of-Funnel Awareness for a Growing Brand
28:00 - Channels That Work: Where Trade Contractors Actually Are
33:34 - Why Long-Form Research Reports Outperform Everything Else
35:52 - Testing Marketing Campaigns: When to Invest, When to Kill
41:27 - Offline Marketing: Events, Direct Mail, and Out-of-Home
43:27 - How to Structure a Marketing Team from Day One
46:05 - The Marketing Tech Stack Every Team Needs
47:35 - AI in Marketing: Why Every Marketer Must Be AI-Enabled
50:35 - The BuildOps AI Report: 78% Adoption and What It Means
52:26 - Labor Shortage, Burnout, and the Case for Automation
55:14 - How Trade Contractors Should Market Themselves
57:52 - Gen Z and the Future of AI Adoption in Construction
01:02:16 - Closing Thoughts and Where to Find BuildOps
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