The New Rules of Growth: Five Takeaways From Krithika Shankarraman and Christy Roach

More than three-quarters of marketing leaders have higher revenue or pipeline targets. Fewer than half have more budget. The gap is forcing teams to rethink which programs deserve investment, how they structure their teams, and what they measure.

Those findings come from the Marketing Leaders Reality Index, AirOps’ survey of 307 marketing leaders. Krithika Shankarraman of Thrive Capital joined Christy Roach, CMO of AirOps, to discuss the data and the decisions behind it.

Their central point: growth teams need a clearer view of the business levers they can change. A higher target alone does not tell a team whether to pursue more leads, better conversion, larger deals, or a different mix of programs.

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Top 5 Takeaways

1. Work backward from the growth target

When leadership raises a revenue target, start with the equation behind it. Will the team need more qualified leads, a higher win rate, or greater average contract value? Which of those changes is plausible within the time and resources available?

“Having constraints is actually very liberating because it helps you focus,” Krithika said. Put the assumptions in front of leadership and agree on the levers that must move. That gives marketing a more useful plan than accepting a target without examining how the business expects to reach it.

2. Follow channel performance through the funnel

Several companies in Thrive’s portfolio saw organic search traffic decline while direct traffic rose. When they asked visitors how they had heard about the company, many pointed to LLMs. Christy described a similar disconnect: “Why are we indexing on organic traffic when the organic sign-up number is healthier than it’s ever been?”

A traffic decline warrants investigation. It does not, by itself, establish that a channel is failing. Look at sign-up quality, pipeline, and revenue alongside visits. The same applies to rising customer acquisition cost: examine the customers acquired and the value they bring before deciding what the number means.

3. Build teams around ownership

“How much ownership do you want to give to one person?” Krithika asked. Smaller teams can give marketers more room to build when each person owns a meaningful area and has the tools and budget to act. Christy and Krithika favored flexible roles that let people solve problems across disciplines over narrowly defined job descriptions.

They also made the case for senior individual-contributor careers in marketing. Strong marketers should be able to grow in scope and influence without becoming people managers. At the same time, smaller teams still need to make room for emerging talent and people entering marketing from other backgrounds.

4. Go three clicks deeper on the budget

At Retool, Krithika’s team examined a substantial sponsorship line item. The programs produced plenty of leads, but few became paid plans or closed deals. Looking beyond the first conversion changed how the team judged that spend. Krithika urged marketers to “look at every channel 3 clicks down rather than just at the top click.”

Audit programs at the level of qualified demand and business results. Reallocate money that is tied to weak outcomes, then make a case for the experiments and distinctive brand investments that need more room. Krithika also emphasized building trust with finance: a strong partner there can become an advocate for a bolder bet.

5. Measure enough to decide, then make bigger moves

Nearly 90% of leaders in the survey said AI search was important or a top priority, but only 23% felt confident measuring its impact. Krithika cautioned against demanding precise attribution from every asset or tactic. That level of granularity can reward small optimizations while crowding out investments in brand and emerging channels.

“Ideally, you’re using measurement as a barometer for where your team should invest their calories,” Krithika said. Her advice was to evaluate performance at the program level. Christy added that teams can diagnose enterprise funnels earlier, even when a sales cycle takes months. Leaders need evidence to make decisions without pretending every contribution can be isolated perfectly.

What the New Rules Mean in Practice

Interrogate the metric before changing the strategy. A decline in organic visits, a higher acquisition cost, or a large volume of leads each tells only part of the story. Trace the signal to qualified sign-ups, opportunities, closed deals, and customer value. Christy described shifting attention from raw sign-ups to “high-propensity sign-ups” at a previous company, which helped her team prioritize the people most likely to convert.

Make durable bets as the buyer journey changes. AI platforms and the sources they surface can shift quickly. Krithika advised investing in topics that matter to customers, community, and useful video instead of rebuilding a strategy around a temporary surge on one platform. Christy added a practical test: participate where the brand can contribute credibly and maintain its quality bar.

Give AI work that expands the team’s reach. Krithika described teams using agents for ongoing competitive intelligence and parts of campaign management and reporting. The larger opportunity is to ask what the team could do with more capacity: understand customers more closely, investigate channel changes, or pursue work that previously required resources it did not have. Faster production alone is a limited measure of AI adoption.

Leave room for work that stands out. Krithika argued that teams may still need more budget for ambitious brand ideas, even after reallocating weaker programs. Christy wants AirOps to be known for the quality of its thinking. Both saw a risk in judging every idea by the easiest immediate metric, especially when attention is crowded and formats become easy to copy.

The practical starting point is to choose one growth goal and work backward. Identify the business lever that must change, inspect the current programs beyond their surface metrics, give someone clear ownership, and decide what evidence would justify the next investment. Then revisit the plan as the buyer journey and results change.

Watch the full conversation for more on team structure, budget allocation, AI adoption, and measurement. Explore the Marketing Leaders Reality Index for the full survey findings.

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