# Marcel Santilli

> Marcel Santilli is the CEO and Co-Founder of GrowthX AI, a San Francisco-based 'service-as-software' company that combines expert-led strategy with AI workflows to drive organic growth for B2B companies. Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Santilli spent 15+ years as a CMO and marketing executive at companies including IBM, HP/HPE, HashiCorp, Scale AI, and Deepgram, helping scale a combined $1B+ in ARR across three unicorns. After spending over 1,000 hours encoding marketing workflows into AI at Deepgram, he co-founded GrowthX AI in September 2024 with CTO Daniel Lopes. The company reached $7M+ ARR profitably in under 12 months — using only its own methodology, zero paid ads — before raising a $12M Series A led by Madrona Ventures in May 2025.

- **Role:** CEO & Co-Founder at GrowthX AI
- **Organizations:** GrowthX AI, Deepgram, Scale AI, ServiceTitan, UpKeep, HashiCorp, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, TechBeacon, IBM
- **From:** São Paulo, Brazil
- **Nationality:** Brazilian-American
- **Education:** D.B.A. (Doctor of Business Administration), ESADE, Business / Marketing, University of Texas at Austin, Red McCombs School of Business
- **Known for:** Co-founded GrowthX AI, reaching $7M+ ARR profitably in under 12 months with zero paid advertising, Raised $12M Series A led by Madrona Ventures (May 2025), Helped startups grow a combined $1B+ in ARR, including three unicorns: Scale AI, ServiceTitan, and HashiCorp

## Career timeline

- **2009-2013** — Multiple leadership roles at IBM in digital marketing & social media; launched SecurityIntelligence.com which generated $50M pipeline from under $1M investment
- **2015-2016** — Head of Content Marketing & Demand Generation at HP/HPE; co-founded TechBeacon, growing it to 1M monthly organic visitors and 200K newsletter subscribers
- **2016-2017** — Global Head of Publishing & Content Operations at HPE; scaled TechBeacon into top lead source for the business unit
- **2017-2018** — Director of Digital, Brand & Growth Marketing at HashiCorp
- **2018-2019** — Head of Digital, Brand, Revenue Marketing & GTM Operations at HashiCorp; scaled company from $6M to $100M ARR
- **2019** — VP of Growth Marketing & Digital at ServiceTitan (now a multibillion-dollar company)
- **2019-2021** — First CMO hire at UpKeep (maintenance management startup)
- **2021-2023** — Chief Marketing Officer at Scale AI; created Transform X conference: 10,000 attendees, $100M pipeline, budget under $100K — featured Sam Altman and Andrew Ng
- **2023-2024** — Chief Marketing Officer at Deepgram; invested 1,000+ hours building AI content workflows; achieved 24x traffic growth and 4x revenue increase
- **2024** — Co-founded GrowthX AI with Daniel Lopes in September 2024
- **2025-05** — GrowthX AI raises $12M Series A led by Madrona Ventures; company had reached $7M+ ARR profitably in under 12 months

## Achievements

- Co-founded GrowthX AI, reaching $7M+ ARR profitably in under 12 months with zero paid advertising
- Raised $12M Series A led by Madrona Ventures (May 2025)
- Helped startups grow a combined $1B+ in ARR, including three unicorns: Scale AI, ServiceTitan, and HashiCorp
- Scaled HashiCorp from $6M to $100M ARR in approximately 2 years
- Created Scale AI's Transform X conference: 10,000 attendees, $100M pipeline, under $100K budget; featured Sam Altman and Andrew Ng
- Launched SecurityIntelligence.com at IBM: $50M pipeline in year one from under $1M investment
- Co-founded TechBeacon at HP/HPE: grew to 1 million monthly organic visitors and 200,000 newsletter subscribers
- At Deepgram: 24x traffic growth and 4x revenue increase through AI-encoded content workflows; produced 3,000 pages in 3 months
- GrowthX clients include Reddit, Webflow, Ramp, Superhuman, SentinelOne, Airbyte, Udemy, and Abnormal Security
- Ran paid workshops for 170+ people, with demand that could not self-implement becoming the GrowthX business thesis

## Latest updates

- **2025-05** — GrowthX AI raises $12M Series A led by Madrona Ventures; Karan Mehandru joins board
- **2025-04** — GrowthX AI reaches $7.2M ARR with 48-person team, all via organic growth with zero paid advertising
- **2024-11** — Featured on Code to Market podcast discussing 'service as software' model
- **2025-08** — Appeared on Chain of Thought by Galileo AI podcast discussing building AI-native startups

## Links

- Website: https://growthx.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelsantilli
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/santilli
- GitHub: https://github.com/marcelsantilli
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarcelSantilli
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/santilli/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/marcel-santilli
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-25