Victoria Shakespeare
Fractional CMO, pre-seed through IPO
A decade at Fuel Cycle, first marketing intern to Director of Growth Marketing
I spent ten years inside Fuel Cycle going from first marketing intern to running its global marketing function: positioning, demand engines, brand systems, and the team itself, all built from zero. Now I bring that 0 to 1 playbook to companies from pre-seed and seed stage all the way to IPO.
Most early-stage marketing fails before a single campaign runs. The positioning is a feature list. The deck says platform, the site says tool, and the founder says something sharper than both on every call, but nobody wrote it down.
So the money goes to channels: some ads, a conference, a content sprint. Channels amplify a message. Amplify an unclear one and you are just spending louder.
Then the hiring trap. A junior marketer cannot lead, and a full-time CMO is an executive salary you cannot justify yet. The gap between those two options is where early companies stall, and it is exactly what fractional leadership is for.
Senior marketing leadership without the full-time cost. Five engagements, framed the way you will feel them.
Most early products have a clarity problem, not a demand problem. I have repositioned an entire platform and directed a company-wide rebrand. We will nail what you are, who it is for, and why you win, in words a buyer repeats to their boss.
We leverage AI to unlock actionable insights at scale.
Answers from your customers in hours, not quarters.
Channels, funnel, and campaigns that actually ship, sequenced for your stage: first campaigns before attribution dashboards, pipeline before polish. I have run every B2B channel that matters, and I build AI leverage into the engine from day one so one marketer ships like five.
Buyers decide how serious you are in one scroll. I led a rebrand and site relaunch end to end, from identity to launch. You get a brand system and website that make a ten-person company feel inevitable, without the six-month agency detour.
I was the first marketing hire once. I know what the job is, what it is not, and which resumes can actually do it. I will scope the role, run the search with you, and onboard the person against a plan they can execute without me.
A CMO's judgment on your team without the executive salary. Weekly cadence, hands on the work, and in the room for board prep, pricing, launches, and every call where marketing meets revenue.
I walked into Fuel Cycle, the market research and customer insights platform, as the company's first marketing intern. No playbook, no pipeline, no team. I built the first campaigns, the first reporting infrastructure, the events program, the content engine. Whatever marketing needed to exist, I made it exist.
Over a decade I grew with the function I was building: Senior Brand Manager, Senior Marketing Manager, Associate Director of Corporate Marketing, Director of Growth Marketing. When our VP of Marketing left, I took over the entire function and ran it for two and a half years: the budget, the team, the pipeline number. I directed a company-wide rebrand and repositioned the platform for an AI-native market along the way. It was really three jobs sharing one badge: the early-stage build-out, the scale-up demand engine, and the AI-native repositioning.
That is the difference between me and most fractional CMOs. They advise from altitude because they have managed marketing. I have made it: written the positioning, launched the campaigns, built the brand system, hired and trained the team. There is no layer of the job I would be guessing at with your company.
So this is what I do now. You get one shot at your first marketing motion, and I have already spent ten years learning which moves matter at zero. I would rather spend the next ten making that decade pay off for founders who are just starting.
Numbers belong to the marketing function I helped lead, and ran outright for 2.5 of those years.
{{PLACEHOLDER: one rebrand or repositioning outcome (branded search, win rate, or cycle length) and one AI-system before-and-after, e.g. SDR follow-up from 4 hours to 20 minutes}}
Thirty minutes. Bring your stage, your numbers, and the thing that is not working. You leave with a straight read on whether fractional leadership is the right move. If it is not, I will say so.
I go through your positioning, funnel, and data, then hand you a prioritized plan with owners, budgets, and targets. No forty-page deck.
Weekly cadence, hands on the work. I ship the campaigns, install reporting, and start the search for your first full-time hire if you need one. You get a CMO without the CMO hire.
The model: an ongoing fractional engagement, typically one to two days a week. Pricing is a conversation for the call, once I understand your stage.
This works if you are anywhere from pre-seed to public company and you are ready to act on a plan. It does not work if you want a pair of hands for someone else’s strategy, or a shortcut past the positioning work.
I live in Los Angeles. I have spent my whole career inside one growth story: Fuel Cycle, where I started as the first marketing intern and today run global marketing as interim head of marketing. My fractional practice runs alongside that seat.
I build calm, evidence-first marketing. Positioning before channels, systems before headcount, and AI leverage I build myself rather than buy on faith.
If you want the long version, it is on the resume. Resume
07 · The next step
Bring your stage, your numbers, and your hardest marketing question. You will leave with a clear next step, whether or not we end up working together.