Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders S12 Bonus: Marlena Sarunac, The Company Advice
Feb 4, 2026
Marlena Sarunac, Co-founder and Head of Marketing at The Company Advice, shares her inspiring journey from a Mastercard career to startup life. With a unique blend of engineering and marketing skills, she created a playbook for startups in health tech. Marlena discusses the evolution of their scorecard dashboard into a comprehensive tool, the importance of listening to clients, and challenges in hiring. She highlights the pride in helping startups achieve funding and offers practical advice for founders to align their visions with reality.
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Playbook Rooted In Metrics And Messaging
- Early playbooks combined quantitative dashboards with qualitative marketing metrics to reveal repeatable patterns.
- Marlena used that learning to create a foundational playbook focused on messaging and analytics for startups.
Start With Clear Brand Pillars
- Do run workshops to define mission, elevator pitch, and brand pillars before executing marketing.
- Use that messaging framework to inform websites, product UX, and launch campaigns consistently.
Patterns From Advising Multiple Startups
- Advising many startups revealed recurring needs and allowed pattern recognition to refine the playbook.
- Repetition across clients made it easier to predict what founders truly require at each stage.