Portrait No. 001
Mada Seghete
Co-Founder & CEO
Upside
Raised — 6.5M Pre-seed
I was one of the founders and the CMO of Branch.io and helped it grow to over 100M ARR. There, I struggled showing that things I intuitively thought I knew were driving impact and was surprised how marketers were measuring things. I wanted to build something better which led us to create an internal multitouch attribution tool that started shedding light to what actually worked and helped us make much better decisions and double our pipeline while maintaining the same budget. As I talked to 100+ GTM leaders in 2023 I realized this was a problem EVERY single B2B company faced so I decided to start Upside to solve it.
In her words
“I was fired as CMO from my own company because I struggles to understand and show others the impact of my team's work. Upside makes sure no GTM leader ever experiences that again.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
My toughest challenge was overcoming my own insecurities. I grew up in a small town in Romania during communism, so the idea of starting and owning a business was never something I could fathom. At Branch, in many ways, raising over 600M and valued at over 4B I always struggled with impostor syndrome, can I do it again? I am now on that second journey!
Chapter II
Your vision.
One of the main reasons CMOs get fired, B2B marketing teams feel like second class citizens if because understanding what really worked is hard. Upside fixes that and helps GTM team put their time and effort in activities that make a difference.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
Beyond Upside, I also started a female founder retreat. https://femalefoundersretreats.com/