CHRIS HEINEMANN
AI • SaaS • Media • Venture Creation
Building brands, shaping categories, and turning product innovation into market momentum
Welcome to Chris Builds Brands, a portfolio of selected work leading corporate marketing, product marketing and go-to-market strategy across B2B AI and SaaS companies, alongside B2C ventures like Tale Waters and Savvy Wine Food.
Throughout my career, I’ve built and led marketing functions end-to-end, spanning brand strategy, category creation, analyst and media relations, demand generation, digital and field marketing, and product launches.
Along the way, I’ve learned that great marketing sits at the intersection of strategy, story and execution. I align customer-centric narratives with creativity, connecting product innovation to real market demand and, ultimately, building brands that earn trust, influence perception and drive revenue.
Where Strategy Meets Market Influence
Throughout my career, I’ve worked alongside the best in cable news, business and trade press, plus financial and industry analysts. I've turned positioning into perception and perception into brand awareness that drives growth.
How I Build Brands
Approaches that bring together strategy, storytelling, modern marketing execution,
and influence to build brands and drive growth.
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Storytelling That Connects
Creative, engaging narratives that connect people with brands
My storytelling brings brands to life through creative campaigns spanning video, customer stories, use cases, media placements, and analyst research. I simplify complex technology messaging and highlight real customer benefits and outcomes.
Campaigns like Highfive’s Meetings Reimagined and "Agent of Disruption" video series and my Tale Waters outdoor vlog show how narrative-driven marketing connects products and people to experiences that clearly communicate value.
Creative Brand Strategies
Strategies for memorable, impactful branding
In complex technology markets, clarity is a competitive advantage. I help companies translate sophisticated products and innovation into positioning that resonates with customers, analysts, and the broader market.
By anchoring messaging in the customer’s perspective, technology product brands become easier to understand, trust, and ultimately choose.
Venture Creation + Category Creation
Shaping categories and influencing market conversations
My work focuses on category creation, including Advanced Fibre’s IMAP and Invenir’s LaunchOps orchestration, along with driving market influence through analyst relations, media visibility, and thought leadership. Together, these efforts help shape industry narratives and position innovation at the center of emerging categories.
AI Marketing Execution
AI-driven marketing to close the gap between Product and Sellers
AI is reshaping how modern marketing teams execute. To stay compeititve, my approach combines AI-driven launch orchestration, repeatable launch playbooks, and data-driven workflows to close the gap between product and sellers. This enables go-to-market teams to keep pace with product velocity, turning each release into a coordinated launch that accelerates revenue.
AI in Marketing
Building a new category at the intersection of AI and go-to-market execution
SKILLS
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Venture Creation & Category Development
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Executive Marketing Leadership (Founder / Fractional CMO)
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AI-Driven Marketing Strategy & Orchestration
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Agentic AI & Multi-Agent System Development
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Product Marketing & Category Messaging
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Investor Marketing & Fundraising Assets
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Pitch Decks, Investor Videos & 1-Pagers
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Thought Leadership & Narrative Development
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Website, Content & Brand Development
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Go-to-Market Strategy
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Demand Generation Strategy (Early-Stage)
As a fractional CMO in 2025, I set out to solve a problem I’ve seen throughout my career: misaligned product launches.
AI-driven development has accelerated release cycles. Software teams can now plan, build, test, and ship in days while go-to-market teams struggle to keep pace. This misalignment creates a growing gap between product teams and sellers, leading to sales enablement challenges, wasted resources, team burnout, and customers who never fully realize a product’s value.
The result: significant revenue left on the table.
In response, I partnered with former colleagues to build Invenir, the first end-to-end LaunchOps orchestration platform. Powered by Agentic AI, the multi-agent platform orchestrates launches across research, branding, content creation, sales enablement, and analytics—all under human oversight to accelerate go-to-market and drive sales execution.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
Joe Manuele, USA
CEO
Silicon Valley Entrepreneur
“Whenever I needed to build a marketing team, Chris' name always rises to the top. He's always the
first call I make."
Leone Kemp, AUS
Marketing Leader, APAC
NTT Data
"Chris brings an outside-in, client-centric view to a problem and creatively suggests new and innovative ideas to address marketing, sales and communications challenges."
Venetia Rowland, UK
Owner and Director
Right on the Line
“Chris is a savvy, strategic-minded marketing professional whom I found to embrace new ideas and out-of-the-box thinking.”
Brand Strategy and Storytelling That Connects
SKILLS
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Executive Marketing Leadership
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Brand Strategy & Repositioning
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Category Creation & Market Positioning
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Video-Led Marketing & Storytelling
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Product Marketing & Messaging
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Go-to-Market Strategy (GTM)
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Analyst Relations (AR) & Public Relations (PR)
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Partner & Channel Marketing (CDW, ScanSource)
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Demand Generation & Sales Enablement
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Strategic Partnerships (Amazon, Okta, Verizon)
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Integrated Campaign Leadership
At Highfive, I led corporate and product marketing and developed the Meetings Reimagined brand strategy to reimagine how people, organizations, and the industry thought about and used modern video conferencing and meeting room collaboration solutions.
Viewed through the lens of special agent June, the episodic serires, "Agent of Disruption," introduced a new value proposition and messaging framework that simplified the complexity of workplace video technology while highlighting real benefits for distributed teams.
As a company built around video collaboration, I leaned into video as our primary storytelling medium. Through product and solution videos, campaign narratives, and customer-driven content, I brought the product experience to life, clearly communicating its value in a crowded competitive landscape.
Meetings Reimagined was integrated across go-to-market programs with our global channel partners and strategic alliances such as Amazon, Okta, Verizon, Expensify, Mimeo, and Orange for Business in Europe.
Highfive's Strong brand Contributed to Its strategic merger with Dialpad
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Venture Creation
Launching and growing ventures across B2C and B2B through brand strategy, compelling storytelling and visuals, and go-to-market execution
Beyond leading marketing for established companies, I’ve built and launched my own ventures from the ground up, spanning B2B AI and SaaS to B2C lifestyle and content brands.
Each venture reflects the same core approach: tap into passion, define a clear position, build a compelling narrative, and execute with creativity, consistency and authenticity to grow audience engagement and market presence.
Define Position Build narrative execute beautifully
SKILLS
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Brand Development
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Visual Branding & Creative Direction
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Premium Brand Positioning
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Experiential Marketing
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Community Building
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Content Strategy & Editorial
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Web Development
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Retail Marketing + Package Design
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High-Touch Client Engagement
Savvy Wine Food was founded in 2005 after Chef-Owner Erika Heinemann left Duckhorn Wine Company, where she served as the winery’s first executive chef following her time at The French Laundry. She left DWC to pursue her dream of owning her own business and sharing her passion for food and wine. Chef Erika was one of the pioneering chefs in Napa Valley to introduce curated food and wine pairings into the modern tasting room experience.
Moving Savvy Wine Food to Santa Barbara, California, in 2011, Chef Erika has become one of the region’s most sought-after culinary talents, serving Hollywood celebrities, musicians, artists, industry leaders, politicians, and foreign dignitaries.
Built on the marriage of food and wine—as reflected in the brand’s identity—the company expanded into consumer products, including gourmet wine-paired nuts distributed in Napa Valley specialty retail shops, Bay Area grocery stores, and San Francisco International Airport.
Through a distinct visual identity, a clear point of view, and Chef Erika's personal style, Savvy Wine Food has evolved beyond personel chef and private dining experiences into a broader lifestyle brand.
Are You Savvy?
Tale Waters Metrics
105
VIDEOS
18K
SUBSCRIBERS
330K
VIEWS
5
SPONSORSHIPS
"the Best Stories Are the ones we share."
SKILLS
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Brand Identity & Development
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Video Production & Editing (GoPro / POV)
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Storytelling & Narrative Development
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Content Strategy & Planning
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Writing & Editorial Development
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YouTube Content Creation & Optimization
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Social Media & Audience Growth
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Visual Storytelling (Photo & Video)
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Community Building & Engagement
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Personal Brand Development
Tale Waters is my outdoor adventure vlog built around fishing, hiking, backpacking and exploration from the Sierra to the sea.
Combining my passion for video, storytelling, and connecting with people and wild places, Tale Waters reflects my core belief: "The best stories are the ones we share." This mantra is what led me to create and launch the brand in 2025.
Through my POV and GoPro lens, every adventure becomes a story in motion. Each episode a mix of scenery, sound, music, and shared experience. Viewers see what I see, hear what I hear and, hopefully, learn something so they're inspired to create their own adventures.
The One That Got Away: Returning to the Owens River for Redemption
Most Beautiful Hike in the Sierra
Surf Fishing for Beginners: Rig, Bait and Tips to Help You Catch Fish
FALL FISHING: Backcountry brook trout
Building Brands Through Analyst Relations
I've worked with the best analysts and firms, from major evaluation research to roadshows to validating positioning, shaping market perception and accelerating brand credibility that helped significantly grow revenue and market share.
"Nobody knows You Have A Contact Center Solution."
Sheila McGee-Smith
McGee-Smith Analytics
Early in building Dialpad’s first-ever Analyst Relations program, leading contact center analyst Sheila McGee-Smith told me, “Nobody knows you have a contact center solution.” I’ve known Sheila, a highly respected analyst with over 30 years in the industry, for many years. She's the "Queen of the Contact Center" as she's affectionately and respectfully known, and I trust her judgment completely. I loved hearing her honesty, because it was a clear signal there was a lot of work to do.
That insight became the catalyst for my analyst relations strategy. Through focused engagement with McGee-Smith Analytics and other industry analyst firms such as Gartner, IDC, Forrester, Frost & Sullivan, 451 Research, Aragon, Metrigy, Omdia, and Ventana Research, as well as influencers like Dave Michels (TalkingPointz) and Zeus Kerravala (ZK Research), I put Dialpad on the map within the AR community, repositioning a new company in a crowded market.
In parallel, I extended this narrative into the market through initiatives like Dialpad’s AI@Work US City Tour, bringing our AI story directly to customers, prospects, partners, and influencers across key markets. Analyst and customer-led panels reinforced our positioning, created direct engagement opportunities, and helped translate analyst validation into real-world demand and pipeline.
I also contributed to Dialpad’s acquisition strategy as part of the tiger team behind Koopid and Kare Knowledgeware, strengthening the platform and accelerating credibility in the contact center category.
Within two years, my strategy helped transform Dialpad from a VoiP (Voice over IP) company into a recognized leader in AI-powered contact center and unified communications solutions.
Across Dialpad, Highfive and in earlier roles at Advanced Fibre Communications, Actelis Networks (named Marketer of the Year in 2007), Avaya, and NTT Data, analyst relations has always been a core, strategic tool in my marketing toolkit for shaping perception, validating positioning and building lasting market influence.
ARR Grew from $40M to $250M in 3 years
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About Me
My work has focused on helping companies build strong brands and drive growth across AI, SaaS, telecom and emerging technology markets.
My experience spans category creation, brand strategy, demand generation, product marketing, analyst relations, public relations, event management, and media visibility.
I’m particularly interested in the intersection of brand strategy and growth, helping companies define their market position, communicate unique value clearly, and build the momentum needed to scale.
Along the way, I’ve also built my own ventures. In 2005, I partnered with my classically French-trained chef-wife to launch Savvy Wine Food. Sharing my passion for the outdoors and environmental conservation, I launched an educational outdoor vlog called Tale Waters on YouTube based on my core belief: "The best stories are the ones we share."
Most recently, I helped launch Invenir, a Silicon Valley-based AI startup focused on helping companies align product velocity with sales execution through the company's category-defining LaunchOps platform.
Ray Wang
Constellation Research
My Perspective
AI is moving faster than any disruptive technology I’ve worked with over my career, including DSL, Ethernet, IoT, WebRTC video conferencing, and bringing conversational AI into customer experience (CX).
Today, AI is transforming not just how companies build brands, but fundamentally how they’re launching software products. Yet many organizations are still operating with go-to-market models designed for a much slower era of software releases, even as product teams ship innovation at an accelerating pace thanks to AI coding assistants and modern Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) development practices.
At the same time, companies have been struggling to incorporate AI effectively, whether it’s GenAI tools or Agentic AI. The challenge isn’t that the technology isn’t ready, but rather the workflows around it haven’t been thoughtfully redesigned. As one of my favorite analysts, Maribel Lopez, has pointed out, organizations need to rethink how teams work, map workflows before deploying more AI tools, and reward teams that develop real AI proficiency.
Marketing teams today are being asked to do more but with fewer people and budgets, while there’s a heightened demand on keeping pace with both competitors, accelerating velocity of product innovation, and maximizing shareholder value.
To succeed, marketing must evolve from running siloed campaigns to orchestrating launches end-to-end, combining AI-driven workflows and agents with a strong brand strategy, clear positioning, compelling storytelling rolled up in repeatable launch playbooks that turn product innovation into coordinated sales execution.
Let's Connect
Whether you have questions, comments or are interested in collaboration, please feel free to reach out.
