Lenny's Podcast

The ultimate guide to Martech | Austin Hay (Reforge, Ramp, Runway)

Austin Hay is currently Head of Marketing Technology at Ramp and was previously the VP of Business Operations at Runway, the VP of Growth at mParticle, and the fourth employee at the unicorn Branch Metrics. In 2022 he sold his online course, the Marketing Technology Academy, to Reforge, where he now teaches Martech and has a program launching in the fall. He’s consulted on Martech and growth for companies including Notion, Airbnb, Robinhood, Postmates, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, and many others. In today’s podcast, we discuss: • What exactly marketing technology is • What a Martech person can do for your business • When to hire a Martech person and what to look for • Austin’s favorite tools • Advice for doing attribution • Frameworks on tooling, systems, and building vs. buying • How to apply the concept of “thinking gray” to make better decisions in work and life — Brought to you by OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster: https://oneschema.co/lenny | Mixpanel—Event analytics that everyone can trust, use, and afford: https://mixpanel.com/startups | Brave Search API—An independent, global search index you can use to power your search or AI app: https://brave.com/lenny Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-martech-austin Where to find Austin Hay: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinahay/ • Threads: @austinahay Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Austin’s background (03:58) What marketing technology is (06:17) The difference between typical growth roles and Martech (10:23) Signs you need a Martech person on your team (14:03) Hiring and placing a Martech person in B2B, B2C, and B2B2C businesses (21:15) A day in the life of a Martech professional (25:05) Marketing technology vs. marketing operations (31:14) Tooling recommendations (41:49) The never-ending struggle of how to do attribution well (50:47) Emerging tools and platforms to keep an eye on (55:26) MMM modeling (57:47) What to look for when hiring a Martech professional, and Austin’s favorite interview questions (1:02:45) His red flags for companies and “false flags” for potential hires (1:04:51) His favorite frameworks (1:13:37) Lightning round Referenced: • Siqi Chen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siqic/ • Austin’s marketing technology course on Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/courses/marketing-technology • Notion: https://www.notion.so/ • Sri Batchu on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-scaling-ramp-sri-batchu-ramp-instacart-opendoor/ • Cody Morgan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cody-morgan/ • Braze: https://www.braze.com • Marketo: https://business.adobe.com/products/marketo/adobe-marketo.html • Mparticle: https://www.mparticle.com/ • Segment: https://segment.com/ • Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/ • Reverse ETL: a primer: https://medium.com/memory-leak/reverse-etl-a-primer-4e6694dcc7fb • RudderStack: https://www.rudderstack.com/ • Hightouch: https://hightouch.com/ • Mike Molinet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemolinet/ • Thena: https://www.thena.ai/ • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ • Gong: https://www.gong.io/ • How today’s top consumer brands measure marketing’s impact: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-todays-top-consumer-brands-measure • About MMM: https://www.marketingevolution.com/marketing-essentials/media-mix-modeling • Recast: https://getrecast.com/ • The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Contrarians-Guide-Leadership-Steven-Sample/dp/0787967076 • The Art and Adventure of Leadership: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Adventure-Leadership-Understanding-Resilience/dp/1119090318/ • Suits on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70195800 • Our Flag Means Death on Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Our-Flag-Means-Death-Season/dp/B0B8N4R4X1 • What We Do in the Shadows on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-0b10c46a-12f0-4357-8a00-547057b49bac • Silo on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/silo • Cal.com: https://cal.com/ • Brian Balfour on the Startup Dad podcast: https://www.startupdadpod.com/coping-with-the-loss-of-a-child-and-protecting-your-time-brian-balfour-father-of-2-ceo-and-found/ • Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/ • AppsFlyer: https://www.appsflyer.com/ • Customer.io: https://customer.io/ • Branch: https://www.branch.io/ • HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/ Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Austin HayguestLenny Rachitskyhost

Aug 12, 20231h 24mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Mastering MarTech: Systems, stacks, and strategy for modern growth

Lenny interviews Austin Hay, a leading MarTech expert, about what marketing technology is, when companies need it, and how it fits into product and growth organizations. Austin frames MarTech as product management for internal systems and tools, sitting at the intersection of engineering, growth, marketing, data, and ops. They dive into org design, hiring profiles, attribution in a post-IDFA world, and the evolution of B2C and B2B/B2B2C stacks around CDPs, warehouses, and reverse ETL. Throughout, Austin shares concrete stack recommendations, decision frameworks, and practical tactics for building future-proof, cost-efficient growth infrastructure.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat MarTech as product management for internal systems, not just tool ownership.

Great MarTech leaders focus on understanding problems, users (internal teams), and long-term system design, rather than just buying and wiring up tools. This product mindset is essential as companies scale beyond a ‘village’ model of shared tool ownership.

Centralize MarTech around growth in B2C, and around RevOps or platforms in B2B/B2B2C.

In B2C, MarTech’s primary customer is growth/marketing, so it usually lives under a CMO/head of growth; in B2B and B2B2C, overlapping needs of marketing, sales, and CS often mean MarTech belongs in RevOps, business technology, or a platform/product org, and the ‘right’ answer is context-dependent.

Design attribution and tracking for multi-touch from day one, even if you start simple.

Set up your website tracking to capture referrers, all UTMs, and ad network IDs; store both first- and last-touch values on users and events so you can later support MTA or MMM without needing to ‘go back in time’ for missing data.

Embrace the warehouse + reverse ETL pattern when you have sufficient data maturity.

Traditional CDP-centric stacks still make sense for earlier-stage or low-eng orgs, but as warehousing (e.g., Snowflake) and modeling (e.g., dbt) become cheaper, pushing modeled data out via reverse ETL (e.g., Hightouch, Census) becomes more flexible and powerful—especially in B2B/B2B2C.

Use the “problem–people–system” (PPS) framework before changing tools.

Instead of jumping straight to a tooling decision, first clarify the underlying problem, identify all stakeholders and constraints, and only then design or modify the system; this avoids costly, tool-driven decisions that don’t actually solve the core issue.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Marketing technology is a product manager whose specific role and focus is the system or the platform.

— Austin Hay

Tools are just meant to solve problems.

— Austin Hay

Most people think marketing technology is just third-party tools, but actually it’s designing, architecting, and building on top of those tools.

— Austin Hay

From 2010 to 2020, we had the golden years of deterministic matching… You can’t do that anymore.

— Austin Hay

There is no right answer for where MarTech should live, especially in B2B. It’s very case-specific.

— Austin Hay

Definition and scope of MarTech as a cross-functional disciplineWhen to hire MarTech and where it should sit organizationally (B2C vs B2B/B2B2C)Day-to-day responsibilities of a MarTech leader (systems, contracts, data flows)Designing modern B2C and B2B stacks: CDPs, warehouses, reverse ETL, CRMsAttribution strategies in a privacy-first, post-IDFA environment (MTA, MMM, probabilistic)Hiring and interviewing for MarTech roles: skills, red/false flags, questionsCore frameworks and philosophies: tools-as-problem-solvers, PPS, build-and-buy, thinking gray

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