The people behind the read and the build.
Marshall founded Stetson VCP and leads every portfolio baseline and AI roadmap himself, so one person is accountable for the read. Behind him are senior operators and specialists, engaged per project.
Marshall Lincoln
Marshall spent three years as VP of analytics and customer data at a roughly $1B private-equity-owned telecom, brought in through the sponsor’s operating partner. He stood up the team, the customer-data platform, and the operating model from scratch, with first delivery in 90 days, then owned the analytics side of a major carve-out integration for eighteen months, reconciling metrics across two companies until the numbers meant one thing. The head of GTM operations there credited that work with enabling “board level discussions that have fundamentally changed our strategy,” and when the company went through a balance-sheet restructuring, the numbers his team built grounded the five-year plan the lenders approved.
He has been a practicing data scientist since 2017, and his 2019 research on AI in financial services appeared in the Financial Times and The Times, and was cited by the Bank of England, the European Parliament, and the World Economic Forum, three years before the current wave. At MessageWorks, the company he founded, he built at the leading edge of AI: working applications, agent workflows, and a marketing methodology of his own invention, built around synthetic audiences.
He also knows this world from the buyer’s chair. In 2021 and 2022 he ran a self-funded search: roughly a hundred CIMs reviewed, IOIs issued, and a financing stack assembled around a bank letter of comfort for up to $5M in SBA 7(a) debt plus $2M of mezzanine, alongside committed investor capital he never had to call. No acquisition closed. He remains an LP in a fund backing SBA 7(a) searchers.
That history set how he works: enterprise value first, then process, data, technology, adoption, and measurement, with the no’s and not-yets named as clearly as the opportunities. The model is often not the hard part; the hard part is the operating system around it. And the systems he recommends, he builds himself.
- VP of analytics and customer data, ~$1B private-equity-owned telecom; function built from scratch
- Founder of MessageWorks; built working AI applications, agent workflows, and a synthetic-audience marketing method he invented
- 2019 AI research covered by the FT and The Times; cited by the Bank of England, European Parliament and World Economic Forum
- Self-funded search, 2021-2022: roughly a hundred CIMs reviewed, IOIs issued, no acquisition closed; now an LP in a fund backing SBA 7(a) searchers
Venkat
Venkat has spent more than two decades where AI meets B2B growth. Nearly seven years at McKinsey & Company, leaving as an Associate Principal, then the operating chairs: CRO at Splashtop, EVP and CMO at Mitel, and co-founder and CEO of Mariana, an AI-for-marketing company acquired by 8x8. He is currently COO of RudderStack. On Stetson VCP engagements he advises where senior go-to-market and growth judgment is required.
- At 8x8, marketing transformation supporting sustained 30% growth while halving customer acquisition costs; an account-based motion generating 35% of pipeline
- Co-founded Mariana and led it from inception through its acquisition by 8x8
- Currently COO of RudderStack
Mike
Mike is a B2B technology marketing and go-to-market executive with more than 25 years across cybersecurity, cloud, SaaS, and enterprise infrastructure, most recently as Chief Marketing Officer at MessageWorks, Marshall’s prior company. His career centers on technically complex markets: defining categories, sharpening value propositions, and building the go-to-market systems and enablement around them. On Stetson VCP engagements he reviews findings and leads delivery where a senior marketing executive is required, up to a fractional chief marketing seat.
- Led global product marketing for Fortinet’s FortiSIEM portfolio; pipeline grew 25x following the acquisition
- VP of Marketing at AccelOps through its acquisition by Fortinet
- Product marketing leadership at Sumo Logic, Nok Nok Labs, ShiftLeft, and 8x8
Magnus
Magnus is an AI systems architect: AI systems and automation, company-wide deployment, and the architecture, implementation, and adoption work that makes new systems stick. At Microsoft he supported the migration of roughly 40 million education users to Microsoft Teams and designed the global adoption programs behind that transition. On Stetson VCP engagements he designs and oversees the technically complex builds: connected systems, agent workflows, knowledge architecture, and validation loops.
- Ran Microsoft’s global customer feedback and validation programs, vetting features before release to more than 70 million users
- AI workshops and practitioner communities since 2017, including a 63,000-member practitioner community
- Continues deep independent AI systems work
Amartya
Amartya leads go-to-market automation delivery. He builds what the roadmaps call for: outbound engines, signal and data infrastructure, and the revenue-operations automation behind them, and he runs this work daily for market leaders in the AI space itself. He knows these systems from both ends, the underlying technology and the workflows it has to serve, builds them himself when it matters, and brings a specialist delivery team behind him, engaged per project.
- Leads outbound automation for market leaders in the AI space
- Builds across the stack: signal and data infrastructure, outbound engines, revenue-operations automation
- Brings a specialist delivery team, engaged per project
One name owns the judgment.
Every baseline and roadmap is Marshall’s read, personally: one senior person your partners can question, with his name on the work.
The full team can weigh in on the free fund-level baseline and the portfolio-company assessment that follows it. From there, the advisors take roles in delivery and execution as the work requires, decided by need and availability, project by project. Nobody here sits on a payroll waiting for a roadmap to say yes, which is part of why the roadmap can afford to say no.
The baseline costs nothing because it is how we choose the clients we build with long-term. Where a roadmap calls for building, the work runs from a defined project to senior operating support, and every recommendation is tagged: where we would lead, where we would bring a partner, and where it is not us.
Thirty minutes tells us both whether a baseline fits your fund. If it doesn’t, we’ll say so.
Book the 30-minute framing call