123: Building, Bootstrapping, and Doing It Your Way - with Ruta Sudmantaite of Lava Metrics and Emma Davies of Thesmia AI

About this episode

Ruta Sudmantaite and Emma Davies discuss their journey from coworkers to tech entrepreneurs and the importance of community and collaboration in business.

Ruta Sudmantaite and Emma Davies have built their careers across marketing, consulting, and now tech entrepreneurship. After meeting as teammates at a B2B SaaS company, they went on to become fractional CMOs, podcast co-hosts of Blame It On Marketing, and founders of their own startups - Lava Metrics, a marketing analytics platform, and Thesmia AI, a low-cost AI assistant for HR teams. In this episode, we talk about building while bootstrapping, the realities of fractional consulting, what it’s like to start companies with your friends (and partners), and how they bring kindness, candor, and community into every room they enter. Here’s what we cover: How Ruta and Emma went from coworkers to fractional CMOs and co-founders The differences between starting a consulting practice and a tech company Why they believe “two heads are better than one” in fractional work Building products without outside funding - patience, scrappiness, and first customers How to disagree kindly, give feedback, and earn trust with in-house teams Why executive presence doesn’t have to look like a suit or a script Creating community through honesty: confessions walls, career couches, and real talk The power…

People in this episode

Host: Jane Serra

Guests: Ruta Sudmantaite, Emma Davies

Topics covered

• entrepreneurship
• consulting
• B2B marketing
• female empowerment
• community building
• bootstrapping

Keywords

• B2B SaaS
• fractional CMO
• marketing analytics
• AI assistant
• bootstrapping
• female allies
• consulting practice
• executive presence
• community building

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Lava Metrics, Thesmia AI, Blame It On Marketing

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