The people in your accounts.

Google + Microsoft + Apple. Net revenue, not platform-attributed magic.

• 5+ years hands-on, $5M+/yr in cumulative spend managed personally — not 'overseen by a team'
• Can articulate why branded ROAS is a lie and design a non-brand efficiency floor
• Has shipped feed work and PMax architecture with brand-exclusion and audience signal — not 'set it and let it run'
• Writes Friday change logs without being asked, in plain English a CFO reads

Meta + TikTok + LinkedIn. Creative is the lever. Math is the language.

• 5+ years hands-on, $3M+/yr cumulative Meta + paid-social spend personally managed
• Can write a creative brief and direct UGC / video — not just buy media others made
• Comfortable saying 'this campaign is dead' on Tuesday after a Monday launch
• Has shipped iOS-14-era attribution work and knows where Meta's reported numbers lie

Amazon + Walmart + DSP / AMC. Retail media as a real channel.

• 5+ years deep in Amazon Ads with hands-on DSP / AMC experience
• Has shipped at least one $10M+ GMV Amazon book and survived a Buy Box loss
• Reads contribution margin, not just ACOS
• Writes weekly readouts that include 'this didn't work, here's why'

Klaviyo / Customer.io. Deliverability is half the job.

• 5+ years Klaviyo or Customer.io, with shipped flows on at least 3 brands
• Can debug a Postmaster Tools complaint rate and explain DMARC to a CTO
• Has rebuilt a list after a deliverability incident
• Reports on revenue-per-recipient and net new contribution — not opens

Technical, content, and AI search citability — one operator, three muscles.

• 5+ years SEO with at least one site grown past 100K monthly organic sessions
• Has shipped programmatic SEO and lived through the de-indexation that follows when it's done lazily
• Reads server logs without complaining
• Has a stance on AI search and can defend it

Hypotheses with kill dates. Tests that conclude in 14 days.

• 5+ years CRO with at least 50 shipped tests and a 30%+ kill rate (it's a feature, not a bug)
• Knows when not to test — has a stance on minimum traffic / sample / power
• Can sit between paid, creative, and engineering and translate
• Treats kill dates as binding, not aspirational

Positioning the paid team can pick up day one.

• 8+ years in brand strategy, agency or in-house, with shipped strategy work for at least 5 brands
• Can interview a founder, a churned customer, and a salesperson in the same week and translate
• Has rejected your own first draft because it 'wasn't operator-ready' — and means it
• Writes more than decks

A system, not a logo. Built to be built inside of.

• 8+ years in identity, agency or studio, with shipped work for at least 5 brands at category-defining quality
• Designs in motion as well as static — the days of static-only identity are over
• Comfortable handing off tokens to engineers without a redraw
• Has a portfolio that tells you what they refused to ship as much as what they did

Voice that produces a different sentence.

• 8+ years writing — agency, in-house brand, or independent — with at least 3 shipped voice systems and a body of long-form to point at
• Comfortable interviewing founders, support reps, and salespeople in the same week
• Can defend a tagline against a six-person founder objection without losing the bet
• Has refused a piece of work for being off-voice — and was right

The site is the brand's largest piece of collateral. Ship it green on CWV.

• Senior designer with shipped engineering chops, OR senior FE engineer with shipped design chops — both 8+ years
• Has launched at least 5 sites that landed CWV green on production traffic
• Has the discipline to design components before pages
• Reads bundle-size reports without complaining

Content as an editorial product. Built to compound.

• 8+ years editorial — magazine, B2B media, in-house brand, or agency — with a body of long-form to point at
• Has run a calendar through one full year and not blown it up
• Can edit a junior writer to ship-quality without rewriting from scratch
• Treats engagement metrics as a secondary lens, not the primary one

The reason 'AI-native' isn't a marketing claim.

• 5+ years senior software engineering with shipped production systems
• Comfortable across Python and TypeScript; familiar with LLM tool-use, MCP, and agentic patterns
• Has built internal tools at a shop where the engineers weren't the customers
• Reads platform API docs as a primary research method, not a fallback

The PM that makes senior-only delivery actually senior.

• 5+ years agency PM or client-services lead — boutique, not pod factory
• Can read a Looker dashboard and a Klaviyo flow with equal comfort
• Has fired a client when the engagement turned toxic — and was right
• Writes weekly recaps in a way the founder reads in 90 seconds

Finance, contracts, hiring ops. The reason the engine doesn't sputter.

• 4+ years operations / finance at a service business or boutique agency
• Comfortable with QuickBooks / Xero, contracts, and hiring ops in equal measure
• Has run a 10–30 person services firm's ops solo, OR was the deputy who actually did
• Treats process as a tool, not a religion