Mark Organ
CEO and Founder | Categorynauts
Toronto, Canada Area, ON, CANADA
Serial creator of multi-billion dollar categories. Founder/CEO of Influitive and Eloqua.
Biography
Mark Organ is a serial creator of multi billion dollar software categories and companies. He coaches CEOs on how to discover, develop and dominate their categories. He is also creating the largest global community of category creating leaders, the Categorynauts.
Mark is currently the Chairman and was previously founder and CEO of Influitive, the creator of the the advocate marketing and community category. Influitive creates communities of customer advocates, mobilizing advocates to produce massive increases in referral leads, reference calls, social media participation and more.
Mark first revolutionized B2B marketing as the founding CEO of Eloqua (ELOQ), the world leader in marketing automation software, which was recently acquired for $871M.
In between, he was a go-to-market consultant for SaaS companies in North America and Asia.
Mark has also helped over a dozen software companies successfully go to market in asymmetrical or disruptive ways as a consultant and entrepreneur.
With an M.S. in Neuroscience from Northwestern University and a passion for understanding human psychology, Mark is a dynamic speaker with a unique vision centered not only in business success and technological innovation, but also how and why people think, act and interact the way they do.
Mark enjoys sharing his observations, regularly writing and speaking on entrepreneurship, marketing and advocacy. He has energized professional audiences at a number of recent events, including DemandCon, Influence HR Summit, The Globe and Mail Small Business Summit, InsideSales Virtual Summit and many more.
Please see testimonials and video samples here: http://influitive.com/founder-and-ceo
Industry Expertise (3)
Corporate Leadership
VC and Private Equity
Direct Marketing
Areas of Expertise (8)
Category Creation
Demand Generation
Neuromarketing
Disruptive Marketing
Disruptive Innovation
Startup Entrepreneurship
Raising Money
Marketing
Accomplishments (3)
Founder and CEO of Eloqua (professional)
Created the marketing automation category, founded and ran Eloqua as CEO. The marketing automation category is now multi-billion and has transformed the practice, people and technology of marketing. Eloqua went public and was purchased for nearly a billion dollars in 2013. Eloqua was a bootstrapped startup based in Toronto. The company nearly went bankrupt 4 times on the way to building a global giant in the space.
Lived and worked in Asia (professional)
Built a marketing practice in Singapore with clients in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and China. Learned a lot about how to sell and market in the region.
Founder and CEO of Influitive (professional)
Founder of Influitive, an explosive startup defining a new category in advocate marketing. Influitive grew 12x in 2013, after being funded by some of the premier VCs in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and Toronto. Advocate marketing is transforming B2B marketing as profoundly as Mark's previous company Eloqua had done in the previous decade.
Education (2)
Northwestern University: M.S., Neuroscience 1998
Focus was on learning and emotion in animal models
Queen's University: B.Sc.(Hons.), Life Sciences 1996
Affiliations (1)
- YPO
Links (2)
Testimonials (2)
George Larocque, Organizer | Influence HR
“Attendees referred to Mark’s keynote as ‘illuminating’, ‘thought provoking’ and ‘high value.’ Executives from several attending companies identified that they had ‘actionable insight’ from the session to introduce into their marketing strategies. Mark had a true interest in understanding who the audience was, and what their interests in marketing were. This understanding was baked into his presentation and contributed to it being an incredible success.”
Peter Bryant, Partner | Clareo
“Mark did exactly what we’d invited him onto the panel to do – he took the audience just out of their comfort zone with his unvarnished perspective and compelling personal anecdotes. He used evocative language to describe the world exactly as he sees it, and that means not pulling any punches, yet he somehow manages to be thought-provoking while remaining highly optimistic. We’d love to have Mark join us again when we need a jolt of caffeine for our audience.”
Event Appearances (6)
How to build a billion $ category
Dreamforce San Francisco
2013-11-13
How to Raise Money
GROWTalks Toronto
2013-04-17
Leveraging disruptive technology to grow your business
InfluenceHR San Francisco
2013-02-13
Mobilize Your Customer Advocates
Inside Sales Virtual Summit Salt Lake City, UT
2013-06-20
The Advocacy-Centred Company: A Deeper Look at CAC and LTV for CFOs
Bowery Global CFO Summit New York
2013-08-06
Referral Sales Meets Referral Marketing: Clash, Crash, or Collaborate?
DemandCon 2011 San Francisco
2011-10-12
Sample Talks (1)
How to build a billion$ category
Why just build a company when you can build a billion dollar category? In this top-rated keynote given at the Founders Forum of Dreamforce in 2013, Mark discussed his stories around building the marketing automation and advocate marketing categories for Eloqua and Influitive respectively, proposed a new framework on categories, and showed how to build one. Several attendees said that it is was the most informative and entertaining talk in the Founder Forum series.
Style
Availability
- Keynote
- Panelist
- Workshop Leader
Social