Melissa Chang and the art of making yourself replaceable

Melissa Chang had built a company large enough to need a new CEO. In August 2020, she gave the job to someone else. The announcement arrived with the usual executive particulars: Peter Cannone would take over, Chang would become chair, and her co-founder Barry Harrigan would move to vice chair. Her own account included a detail less likely to survive a board presentation. Her daughters liked visiting the office for the peanut M&Ms.

There were also soundproof pods, which the children had discovered offered an excellent place to scream. Someone had designed a useful feature for a modern workplace. They had found a second application. The company had its objectives; the visitors had theirs.

Chang wanted more time with them. She also wanted room to think about the business over a longer horizon. Both ambitions appeared in the same transition. The business she was leaving in Cannone’s hands had reported revenue growth of 842% between 2014 and 2019. Stepping away from daily management was a decision about what came next.

“Today I leave the best job I ever had.”

Melissa Chang, August 2020

A publisher learns to change the plan

Before the executive titles came publishing. Chang held leadership roles at Ziff Davis, Connexus Media and IDG. The combination matters: editorial judgment, product development and the commercial work of finding an audience would all have a place in the companies she later helped build.

In 2007, she and Harrigan founded Pure Incubation. The name allowed for more than one business and more than one attempt. Its early proposition involved supplying publishers with technology to enter lead generation. Publishers already had audiences. Companies wanted potential customers. Pure Incubation would provide a way to connect the two.

Chang investigated another approach while the first was still being introduced: running media sites and reaching clients directly. Within roughly six months to a year, the information pointed toward that second model. The company changed course. Her research had produced something more useful than reassurance.

The episode offers an early clue to her working habits. She described examining competitors closely and interviewing customers herself. Here, the investigation had consequences. A business can collect an impressive amount of information while keeping its original assumptions perfectly comfortable. Chang let the findings interfere with the plan.

There is a publishing connection here, too. An editor has to consider whether the thing being made serves the reader. A founder has to ask whether the thing being sold serves the customer. That is an interpretation of her career, rather than a formula she has prescribed. But her later advice about marketing returned repeatedly to the customer’s problem.

A company has to get somewhere

Pure Incubation began just before a difficult period for new businesses. In 2008, as the economy weakened, Chang spoke publicly about the discipline tough conditions could demand. She acknowledged the obstacle of tighter financing while arguing that adversity could teach useful habits. Her optimism had a practical qualification: the money still had to be found.

She was equally direct about working in a startup. People joining a small company needed a willingness to make things happen, including when a request extended beyond the tidy boundaries of a job description. A startup offers remarkably few places to send a problem that everyone agrees belongs somewhere else.

That view helps explain the operator in her background. Her career combined responsibility for teams with involvement in execution. The portfolio eventually included PureB2B, ProspectOne and Demand Science. The products and company names changed over time, while the commercial territory remained recognizable: data, business audiences, marketing and sales.

There is a second way to see the persistence of the business. Pure Incubation appeared on the Inc. 5000 every year from 2014 through 2020. Its 2014 position was No. 170. The rankings varied after that. Seven consecutive appearances offer a more useful picture than one number detached from the years around it.

By January 2020, PureB2B was describing an expansion from lead generation into demand generation across more of the sales process. Its additions included lead follow-up and help turning prospects into scheduled meetings. The distinction was commercially significant. A name entering a database still has a long way to travel before it becomes a customer.

Chang described prospective technology buyers as overwhelmed by sales and marketing approaches. The problem was familiar territory for someone working at the intersection of content and commercial intent. Producing more activity would only be useful if it helped a buyer and seller make progress.

Choosing the person who comes next

The August 2020 succession had a specific brief. Chang wanted a leader with digital marketing experience, a focus on customer satisfaction and a record of managing operations through growth. Integrity mattered, as did the prospect of employees feeling positive about the handover. Cannone was her choice for that assignment.

It is worth considering that list alongside her published views on sales hiring. She placed weight on coachability and commitment, while allowing that outgoing people and quieter, process-minded people could both succeed. A recognizable sales personality was less useful than a person willing to learn and contribute.

Her advice left room for individual differences. The question was whether someone could adapt, improve and support the company’s direction. Read together, her hiring comments suggest a preference for judging people against the work ahead of them. They also make the succession feel less mysterious. A growing company presented another assignment to fill.

Her partnership with Harrigan supplies a longer thread. She has described him as her mentor, as well as her business partner. They co-founded the business, and in the 2020 transition both changed board roles. The organization could rearrange responsibility while retaining the people who had helped establish it.

Chang also took part in the wider industry conversation. At the 2019 B2B Marketing Exchange in Scottsdale, she led a Women in B2B panel. The agenda brought together participants from organizations including SmartBug Media, Axosoft, Bluewolf and Demandbase to discuss diversity and career paths. Company building had given her a place in a conversation about who gets to build a career.

The hours outside the office

Chang’s account of the handover contained pride, enthusiasm and some sadness. She compared sending the company onward to a child beginning an independent life. The feeling is understandable without making it a rule for every founder. She had spent years making decisions for this business. The daily arrangement was about to change.

The photograph she published with that account showed her daughters in her office, occupied with a whiteboard. Alongside the sweets and soundproof pods, it gave the transition a domestic scale. A career announcement can concern markets and management. It can also concern getting more time with two children.

Another detail from that summer is almost aggressively ordinary. Asked about useful apps, Chang recommended Instacart. Reducing the hours spent grocery shopping had helped her productivity. In an executive’s working life, apparently, a delivery of groceries could earn its place beside more elaborate systems.

The attraction of that answer is its specificity. A meeting lasts as long as it lasts. The shopping still needs doing. She had identified a task she could hand over and explained what the recovered time made possible. It belongs comfortably in a story about someone reconsidering how to spend her working day.

Her marketing advice offered a similar preference for the human and concrete. She encouraged businesses to have fun, let employees be themselves and tell true stories. In another contribution, she urged brands to help solve the customer’s immediate problem. The advice fits a business built around reaching people: give them a reason to care about what arrives.

Another use for the experience

The assignments have continued to change. Chang is listed as vice chair at Pure Incubation Ventures, whose work includes financial and operational support for technology companies and investment in real estate projects. It is a setting where experience running companies can become useful to other founders.

There is also the Pure Incubation Foundation, which she helped establish with Harrigan. Its formation records in 2022 named her president and director. Pure Bayanihan, the foundation’s flagship initiative launched that year, focuses on helping communities in the Philippines develop livelihoods and routes out of poverty. Chang serves as a director.

The initiative describes an approach built around local partnerships, business practices and learning that other nonprofits can use. Its ambition is substantial; the ambition remains a mission to work toward. For Chang’s story, the relevant change is in the application of experience. Skills accumulated in commercial organizations have found another setting.

The CEO title belongs to an earlier chapter. She became DemandScience’s chair in 2020, and a later company biography identified her as founder and vice chair. Her current investment and nonprofit roles continue the story beyond that handover. The useful question has survived each change of title: what needs her attention now?

In the early company, the answer meant changing a business model. In 2020, it meant choosing a successor and making more room for family. The later work adds founders and communities to the list. Chang’s career suggests that building something can give you further choices about your own job. Taking those choices seriously is work of its own.