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    Aaron Cort

    Aaron Cort

    Marketing, growth, product and operations executive who’s taken companies from zero to $100M+ ARR, $500M+ funding raised, and a $4B valuation.

    Product San Diego University of San Diego
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    Experience
    ClickUp
    ClickUp
    VP of Operations 2021 - Present (about 5 years)
    Overseeing global PMO, business, people and finance operations/$XXM OpEx from 200 to 1,000+ employees and cross-functional GTM/PLG business cadences for scaling past $100M... more ARR. Reported previously to the COO and General Counsel, and now reporting to the SVP, Finance:

    ➝ Built out company-wide Operating cadence and OKR framework in and around ClickUp synthesizing financial Operating model; Executed Business audits for core Operating metric/KPI/OKR attainment (team of 3 (cross-functional 5-7) on the BizOps side supporting global PMO/Business Insights)

    ➝ Developed and managed Executive Leadership Operating cadence, Board of Directors meeting/operating cadence and documentation, and Fundraising and Venture Debt due diligence (team of 2 (cross-functional 3-5) on the BizOps side supporting Business Cadences/ExecOps)

    ➝ Global Facilities negotiation, management and infrastructure in San Diego and Salt Lake City Headquarters as well as in San Francisco Bay Area, Dublin, and Australia/New Zealand, Offsite and On-site frameworks for every department, and Swag management, negotiation and budgeting/supply chain (team of 4 on the People Ops side supporting, specific to Facilities, Change Management and Employee Experience)

    ➝ Global Payroll process establishment and regional Entity setup support, as well as SOC2/ISO HR/People regulatory compliance completion, and Hiring, Onboarding and Termination process development, adoption and maturity implementations (team of 5 on the People Ops side, specific to HR Ops and Compliance)

    ➝ Procurement, Accounts Payable (A/P), Legal Intake/Operations and Internal Knowledge Management/intranet cadence process development, implementation, and adoption and internal “productivity” IT systems, as well as Core business technology contract and negotiation (team of 2 (cross-functional 5-7) supporting on IT Ops and Program/Knowledge Management)
    Director of Marketing 2019 - 2021 (over 1 year)
    Scaled from $4M ARR - $70M ARR in under 2 years, and helped go from bootstrapped to a $400M Series C and $4B valuation. Maintained 3:1 LTV:CAC and 9-month average ARR CAC... more payback while ramping marketing spend from $0 to $5M+ per month ($XXM annual Marketing budget). As first Head of Marketing and one of the first 25 employees, built and hired 20+ person team across Performance/Growth, Product Marketing, PR/AR, Content/SEO, and Marketing Ops/Analytics. Reported directly to the CEO:

    ➝ Built the Growth/Performance Marketing program from the ground-up to $5M+ per month across Google, Facebook, YouTube, OTT, Affiliates, Bing among other channels contributing 35% to New and Expansion ARR ($24M ARR), and fueling total Product Growth from 700K users to 4M+ users

    ➝ Increased total monthly website traffic by 436% from 854K MUV to 4.6M MUV, and organic traffic growth by 289% from 673K MUV to 2.6M MUV contributing to 65% of New and Expansion ARR ($43M ARR) driving a blended $400 CAC, $45 ARPA (MRR)

    ➝ Created foundation for Product-Led Sales (PLS) driving $24M New and Expansion ARR from $XXM total budget creating 111K leads (MQLs/PQLs) with 14K "Enterprise Lead Forms" (ELF/SQLs/SALs) at 35/65 split (Sales Assist/Self Serve)

    ➝ Developed and executed $XXM OOH strategy for Billboards, Airports and Trains major tech cities (SF, NY, ATL, DC, LA, DAL, CHI, SEA, SD) for mid-market and enterprise awareness, as well as key hiring

    ➝ Owned the Public Relations (PR) program for Fundraising ($550M across Series A, Series B, Series C) and CEO/Industry thought leadership (TechCrunch, Forbes, Bloomberg, Fast Company and more); created Analyst Relations (AR) program (Gartner, IDC, Forrester, 451) ; G2 (4.7 star, 5K+ reviews) Capterra (4.7 star, 3K+ reviews) core customer review programs built out and scaled

    ➝ Developed Marketing Analytics/MarTech infrastructure for Multi-touch Attribution (MTA) alongside Predictive (ML) and Prescriptive Analytics (First-Touch and Data-Driven Attribution
    Bitmo
    Bitmo
    Senior Marketing & Growth Manager 2018 - 2019 (about 1 year)
    + Led Marketing team of 5, driving marketing/growth for Fintech mobile payments platform
    + Efforts drove net-new $3M in user GMV, going from $1M to $4M over 12 months
    +... more Grew the platform from an initial 38k users (33k “active”), to 458k users (272k “active”)
    + Lowered paid the cost of new user acquisition by 400% through increasing the viral growth rate - users inviting other users - from a .067 to a .412 viral coefficient
    Bound Hound
    Bound Hound
    Co-Founder & CEO 2017 - 2019 (over 2 years)
    Bound Hound's demand generation platform helped 100+ startup through enterprise companies generate 50K+ Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and $25M+ in pipeline.
    TechMeetsTrader
    TechMeetsTrader
    Director of Marketing 2017 - 2018 (11 months)
    + Led Marketing team of 3, driving marketing/growth for Fintech/SaaS trading platform
    + Efforts helped growth of proprietary futures trading system with $15M+ annual order... more flow to Golden Zone Trading, which was acquired by NeuroStreet Trading Academy in 2018
    + Grew platform from initial base of 200 users (60 “active”) to 5k+ users (3.5k “active”)
    + Developed and executed all strategies for user acquisition, activation, retention and customer conversion
    Founder
     
    Employee
    TechMeetsTrader, Bound Hound, Bitmo, ClickUp
    Investor
     
    Incubator
     
    Advisor
     
    Attorney
     
    Board Member
     
    Mentor
     
    Member
     
    Acquired
     
     
    Education
     
    About
    Achievements

    Aaron Cort is the VP of Operations at ClickUp, the all-in-one productivity platform that empowers more than 300,000 teams and 3 million people around the world to save time and live more productive lives.

    As one of ClickUp's first 25 employees and its first Head of Marketing, Aaron built the company's marketing team from scratch and has helped ClickUp become one of the fastest growing software companies in the world and grow from $4M+ ARR to $70M+ ARR in just two years, as well as go from bootstrapped to raising a $400M Series C at $4B company valuation.

    Today, Aaron is overseeing every level of the business in his new role as VP of Operations. Prior to ClickUp, Aaron was a tech entrepreneur, consultant and Head of Marketing working across early-stage tech companies.

    Describe the most impressive thing you've done.
    Skills
    Advertising Amazon Web Services Business Plan Business Strategies Email Facebook Lead Generation Management Project Management Recruiting Sales Social Media Sports Sports Medicine Automation Consulting Linkedin Marketing Management Purchasing Retail Video WEB Web Development Web Technologies
    Locations
    Remote San Francisco Los Angeles
     
    Q&A
    What's the most useful business-related book you've ever read?

    Millionaire Fastlane by MJ Demarco, Law of Success by Napoleon Hill, Permission Marketing by Seth Godin

    What's your favorite non-business book?

    Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins, Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins, and Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch

    What words of advice would you give your younger self?

    Be patient, keep moving and trust the process

    What words of wisdom do you live by?

    What you resist persists, what you fear appears, and what you experience you can choose to let pass or be with you forever. Just be, and attain oneness through purpose & contribution.

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