Melissa Rosenthal knows most brands talk too much and listen too little. To win, companies need to own the conversations that shape their industry — not just push their own agenda.
With experience at BuzzFeed, Cheddar, and ClickUp, Melissa’s seen firsthand how hard it is to engage diverse audiences at scale. That led her to build OutLever, a platform that helps brands lead industry conversations, 24/7.- ■ Be in conversations your customers care about.
- ■ Nothing matters until you’re in market.
- ■ The less you do, the more doubt creeps in.
- ■ Be in conversations your customers care about.
- ■ Nothing matters until you’re in market.
- ■ The less you do, the more doubt creeps in.
Melissa Rosenthal believes companies spend too much time talking and not enough time listening.
“Companies are really good at talking about themselves, but the second you stop doing that, there’s confusion about why you should even enter the conversation,” she says. “It’s a conversation. You should be a part of every conversation that can link back to your existing customers, your prospect customers, your industry.”
For Rosenthal, marketing has evolved. It’s no longer about broadcasting a one-way message; it’s about owning the conversations that define your category. “What do your customers care about 364 days of the year when they’re not buying your product? ” she asks. “How do we speak to the things that matter in their world?”
The challenge, she points out, is scale. She experienced this firsthand in her previous role as a marketer at ClickUp. “Our ICP set spanned a lot of roles and stakeholders, each with different priorities,” she says. The sheer size of the market made it nearly impossible to have meaningful, tailored conversations.
“What do your customers care about 364 days of the year when they're not buying your product? How do we speak to the things that matter in their world?"
OutLever is Rosenthal’s answer to that problem. She designed the platform to help companies not just join industry conversations, but lead them at scale. “We put them in the driver’s seat,” she explains, “so they can own the conversations that matter, 24/7.”
As a founder, Rosenthal isn’t new to the chaos of early-stage companies. “I’ve always joined companies at Series A or earlier, where you’re building something from nothing in many cases,” she says.
Her biggest takeaway so far? Speed. “Getting into market was the single most valuable thing we did. I would’ve done it faster if I could,” she says. “You can sit and pontificate and engineer and overengineer, but nothing matters until you’re in market, getting feedback on the actual product and finding out whether people want it.”