From $200M ARR to Pre-Seed: How Karina Lawrence Rewrites the Marketing Playbook for Early-Stage Startups

When you’ve helped scale a developer-focused company from roughly $200M to nearly $250M in ARR, you know what “grown-up” marketing looks like. Today, though, Karina Lawrence is back at the very beginning—leading marketing at Macrovo, a pre-seed, ~10-person startup that blends AI and human expertise to help financial institutions make faster, smarter decisions.

It’s a huge shift: from large budgets and established motion to building the go-to-market engine while the product itself is still being coded. For Karina, that’s exactly the fun part.

We sat down with her to talk about how marketers need to change their mindset and tactics when moving from later-stage companies to young startups—and why “being scrappy” doesn’t mean “being random.”

Laying the Foundation When Nothing Exists Yet

Q: At young companies, marketing isn’t all about revenue. Where do you start?

Karina Lawrence

Before you can sell, you have to establish yourself as a company. You start with the foundation: branding, positioning, and a very clear understanding of who you’re serving. That means defining your ICPs, buyer personas, and the specific verticals you’re going after.

A lot of people think you can jump straight into PR or demand generation campaigns and customers will appear. That doesn’t work at a company no one knows about - you need to define clear positioning, messaging, and ICPs before moving forward. I always build the foundation first and only then layer on channels and campaigns.

At Macrovo, we’re doing that foundational work at the same time the product team is building the MVP—while already securing letters of intent from customers. That traction isn’t a coincidence; it’s the result of focused targeting and clear value propositions even before a full product launch.

Scrappy at Pre-Seed vs. Structured at Scale

Q: How does that compare to your time at a later-stage, post-acquisition company?

Karina Lawrence

When I joined a developer-focused company post-acquisition, we were already at about $200M ARR and part of a much larger Series D organization. I was the first person doing marketing to developers there, and we helped grow to roughly $245–246M ARR in a relatively short period of time.

At that stage, you still need strong foundations, but the focus shifts. You’re thinking more about scaling what already works—programs, processes, and repeatable motions. It’s a different kind of creativity.

At an early-stage start-up, you’re scrappy in a different way. You’re building the machine and testing whether it even runs. You go niche, dig into one vertical—like the financial niche we’re focused on now—and test with potential customers. You rely on founder knowledge, early outreach, and very tailored messaging. Later on, you optimize and scale what you’ve proven.

Scrappy Tactics That Actually Move the Needle

Q: “Scrappy” gets used a lot. What does that look like in practice for you?

Karina Lawrence

Scrappy is about being creative and smart with what you have. In my previous role, for example, I launched a U.S.-wide educational roadshow for developers, bringing hands-on AI training and open-source community engagement to cities across the country. Developers crave fresh insights, and when you meet your audience where they are, that’s when real traction happens.

Today, it’s also about using the tools that make everything cheaper and faster. You can build a website now for a fraction of what it cost a few years ago. I used to see agencies charging $30,000+ for a site. Now you can get something that represents your business well for a fraction of that. But to take advantage of that, you have to really understand what message belongs on that website.

At Macrovo, that meant building a product page and collateral that speak directly to the specific financial ICPs we’re targeting—and to investors at the same time.Early traction can create opportunities, but marketing makes sure what people see when they land on the site or open a deck is sharply aligned with their needs.

Storytelling, Hyper-Personalization, and Team Energy

Q: What mindset does a marketer need to thrive at an early-stage startup?

Karina Lawrence

First of all, you need to love the energy. Early-stage is dynamic, full of ideas, and more than a little hectic. My advice: lock onto your priorities, stay focused and be creative. Learn how to tell stories that resonate with your target audience—and sometimes even beyond it.

We’re in an era of hyper-personalization. Two people can visit the same website and see completely different things. Two users can experience the same product in different ways. Marketing has to embrace that: you must know your customers deeply and serve them in a way that feels personal and relevant.

You also can’t work in silos. Product, sales, and marketing have to be tightly aligned, especially when it comes to how you define your ICP and how you follow up with leads. Without a clear process, even the best leads won’t get the experience they deserve.

And finally—have fun. That’s the whole point of being in the startup world. You get to see something grow from almost nothing and know you were there from the beginning.

Making the Leap From Big Company to Early-Stage

Q: What would you say to a marketer moving from a large, established company to a pre-seed startup for the first time?

Karina Lawrence

It’s exciting—and it’s not for everyone. You don’t have all the boundaries and structures you might be used to. That can feel scary, but it also gives you a lot of freedom.

My advice: understand your target audience deeply, build your foundation first, work very closely with your team, and stay open to being scrappy and creative. If you embrace that, you can be incredibly successful and have a lot of fun along the way.

TL;DR Takeaways

💡 Most impactful “scrappy” tactic:

Building educational experiences—like free roadshows, webinars, and workshops. Targeted high-value tactics—that genuinely teache your audience while quietly validating demand and building credibility at the same time.

🧠 Core mindset in your team:

Start with strong foundations (ICP, personas, value props), stay focused in a niche initially to learn what works, and combine creativity with tight collaboration across product, sales, and marketing.

🧰 Favorite tools or hacks:

Leaning hard on low-cost AI and website tools to replace what used to require big agency budgets, collaborating with micro-influencers, building online communities for engagement,—getting a strong digital presence live for a tiny fraction of the old cost.

🔥 Advice in one sentence:

Embrace the chaos, build your foundations first, and use creativity plus personalization to turn an early-stage startup into something that can really scale.