Hi, I’m Helen. I am an early-stage investor and advise startups on building and scaling their marketing efforts.

I was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, by a history professor and software engineer. I started my career in advertising and then spent 14 years leading marketing teams at product-first startups, including Facebook, Dropbox, Quora, Plaid, and AngelList.

The companies I work with all have technical founders, an engineering-centric culture, and product levers for growth, allowing them to put off formally investing in marketing for a long time. These essays started from conversations with founders and investors about building a marketing function from scratch and setting it up to succeed.