VP Marketing at dotData, working alongside the CEO and VP of Sales on the company's go-to-market priorities.
TECHNOLOGY MARKETING EXECUTIVE · AI & SAAS GROWTH
I build the systems
that turn technology
into growth.
I help technology companies navigate market shifts, build scalable revenue engines, and turn complex products into commercial opportunities. My work spans executive strategy, go-to-market leadership, and hands-on execution—from choosing where to compete to building the organizations and systems that deliver.
WALTER PALISKA / EXECUTIVE PROFILE$10MARR built from zero
dotData · 2 years
dotData · 2 years
$11MSaaS revenue built from zero
Milestone · 3 years
Milestone · 3 years
$14M+ARR after strategic repositioning
dotData
dotData
60%+US revenue growth in 2026
dotData · shared executive-team result
dotData · shared executive-team result
EXECUTIVE SCOPE / TODAY
Accountable for the strategy.
Close to the execution.
Executive-level responsibility means making the choices that shape growth, aligning functions around them, and building a team that can deliver. My current role includes all three.
Lead marketing disciplines and the SDR function across geographies, balancing strategy with execution.
Steward marketing resources and continually refine the operating model for greater leverage.
Participate in pricing, packaging, and GTM decisions and present to the board each quarter.
Scope reflects the current dotData role as described in the executive résumé; commercial growth figures elsewhere reflect company outcomes, not individual attribution.
01 / SELECTED WORK
Business outcomes.
Not job descriptions.
Selected examples of commercial judgment and operating execution: where to compete, how to build the growth engine, and how to lead a company through change.
01 / BUILD
dotData · GO-TO-MARKET
From zero to a repeatable growth engine.
Joined as the sole marketer at zero revenue. Built the inbound, ABM, and hybrid SDR operating model; within 30 months the business generated more than $10M in pipeline per quarter. The company reached $10M ARR in two years.
$10MARR in 2 years$10M+ quarterly pipeline within 30 months
02 / REPOSITION
dotData · MARKET STRATEGY
Recognize the shift. Change the trajectory.
As GenAI redirected technology budgets, jointly drove the lending-first pivot with the CEO and VP of Sales. Validated the focus through a dedicated microsite before scaling the positioning company-wide.
60%+US revenue growth in 2026No additional sales or marketing headcount
Explore the strategic pivot ↗03 / ENABLE
dotData · BRAND & AI-ENABLED EXECUTION
Build a new brand without a traditional agency.
Led a two-person, four-week effort to develop approved lending-first brand guidelines using AI-assisted research and design, engineering collaboration, and executive feedback.
4 weeksBrand system developedNo external agency or contractors
Explore the operating model ↗04 / TRANSFORM
MILESTONE · BUSINESS MODEL
Make recurring revenue the growth story.
Helped reposition a services-led business around SaaS, built an SDR function, and connected account-based marketing to enterprise pipeline.
$11MSaaS revenue in 3 years30%+ recurring SaaS mix
Explore the SaaS transformation ↗05 / INVENT
QUARRIO · PRODUCT LEADERSHIP
Make business intelligence conversational.
Led product roadmap and GTM for an early conversational analytics platform; helped bring the first SaaS beta to market and engage enterprise early adopters.
$2MAngel funding raisedCompany outcome · SIIA NextGen Award
Explore the product story ↗CASE STUDY / STRATEGIC REPOSITIONING
Finding growth by
narrowing the market.
dotData's shift from horizontal data science to lending-first AI technology was a strategic decision driven jointly by the CEO, VP of Sales, and VP Marketing. The goal: focus on a market where the technology was essential, then prove the opportunity before committing to a broader rebrand.
60%+US revenue growth in 2026
0New sales or marketing headcount
Late 2025Lending microsite launched
Read the market shift.
As enterprise spending moved toward generative AI, horizontal predictive-analytics positioning faced increasing headwinds. Early lending wins pointed to a more durable opportunity.
Choose where to compete.
As part of the three-person executive leadership team, I helped drive the decision to concentrate on lending, working directly with our CEO and VP of Sales.
Test the thesis in market.
We launched lending.dotdata.com in late 2025 as a focused market experiment, allowing us to validate the lending strategy before changing the entire company identity.
Turn proof into positioning.
With US revenue growing more than 60% without additional commercial headcount, the next phase is a lending-first, AI-forward company-wide brand and website redesign.
FROM DECISION TO OPERATING MODEL
What actually changed.
The market decision only mattered if we changed how we sold, positioned, and supported the product.
Follow customer signals.
Quiet customers and changing renewal behavior highlighted pressure on horizontal predictive-analytics spending. Early lending customers were showing stronger staying power. We used customer conversations and sales-call analysis to refine the thesis.
Concentrate the message.
Shift from broad horizontal data science to lending outcomes and the needs of lending decision-makers, while keeping a smaller technology-enabler story.
Run a bounded market test.
Launch a lending microsite in late 2025 and evaluate traction before undertaking a costly company-wide repositioning.
Increase output, not headcount.
Rework marketing production with AI-assisted content workflows and lean cross-functional collaboration. US revenue grew more than 60% in 2026 without adding sales or marketing staff.
25×Organic uniques grown from roughly 200 to 5,000+ per month over the broader dotData tenure
4.7×Organic traffic growth over 10 months from the AI-driven content engine
20%Shorter sales cycles associated with ABM and enablement initiatives
Different measures reflect different periods and initiatives; they are not presented as causal proof that the late-2025 lending pivot alone produced every outcome. The pivot and revenue growth were shared leadership results.
The repositioning and commercial results are shared executive-team achievements. The associated go-to-market messaging, content operations, and brand-development work demonstrate my direct execution leadership. The broader rebrand remains in progress.
See how the strategy became a brand system ↗CASE STUDY / AI-ENABLED EXECUTION
A new brand. Two people.
Four weeks. No agency.
With the lending-first strategy validated, I led the development of a new brand system with one product marketing manager—combining industry expertise, engineering input, AI-assisted design, and executive review.
2Core team members
4Weeks of development
4Design review rounds
0Agencies, designers, or contractors
HOW WE BUILT IT
Human judgment.
AI-enabled leverage.
I led the direction and visual development, while our product marketing manager brought deeper lending-domain expertise and challenged what would resonate with buyers. Our VP of Engineering helped ensure that the positioning reflected the product's capabilities and evolution.
We incorporated feedback from our CEO, VP of Engineering, and VP of Sales over four design rounds, with particularly deep technical and commercial input from engineering and sales.
Approximately 70% of my time and 50% of the product marketer's time over four weeks—about 4.8 person-weeks combined.
CHATGPT + PRODUCT MARKETING
Start with the lending buyer.
The product marketing manager used ChatGPT to support market research, applying his lending expertise to assess what buyers would value and which messages would resonate.
REAL WORK / BRAND SYSTEM
From a validated strategy to a new visual language.
The guidelines are approved and the preview is available. The public brand launch is planned for late 2026 alongside a broader company website redesign.
Explore the brand guidelines previewGuidelines approvedPublic launch planned for late 2026
FEATURED ARTIFACT / Q2 2026
Market intelligence
built for decisions.
Seven selected slides from a 28-slide executive briefing on the auto finance market. The sequence moves from macroeconomic context through lender competition and portfolio risk to operational priorities for CROs and CLOs.
Actual slides from the original report, shown in their original design. Select a slide or expand the viewer to examine the details.
7 curated slides28-slide originalExecutive audience
ADDITIONAL PROOF / BEYOND DOTDATA
Different business challenges.
The same bias for outcomes.
My experience extends from product-led innovation to enterprise SaaS growth. These examples matter because they demonstrate that the operating approach travels across companies and market cycles.
MILESTONE INTERNET · VP MARKETING · 2016—2019
Help turn a services business into a recurring-revenue company.
Milestone was an established software-and-services company building a SaaS business. The challenge was to grow subscription revenue while creating a more repeatable enterprise sales motion.
$0 → $11MSaaS revenue over three years
40%Of total pipeline from the SDR team
$3MNew enterprise ABM pipeline in Q1 2019
The operating moves
Reposition the offer. Helped shift the commercial story from services toward recurring SaaS, which grew to more than 30% of the revenue mix.
Build pipeline capacity. Developed an SDR team that generated 40% of total pipeline and sustained quota for more than six consecutive quarters.
Target enterprise accounts. Connected positioning and ABM to opportunities with customers including U.S. Bank, Marriott, Renault Mexico, and IBC Bank.
Company SaaS revenue and commercial results; individual contributions center on marketing leadership, SDR development, positioning, and ABM.
QUARRIO · VP PRODUCT MANAGEMENT · 2013—2016
Build a conversational analytics product before the LLM wave.
At a bootstrapped startup, the mandate was broader than marketing: shape the product roadmap, articulate a new way to interact with business data, and get an emerging platform into the hands of early adopters.
$2MAngel funding raised by the company
BetaFirst SaaS release launched
SIIANextGen Award recognition
The operating moves
Translate the technology. Positioned conversational business intelligence as a more approachable way to ask questions of enterprise data.
Connect product and market. Built the product roadmap and go-to-market plan, helping attract enterprise interest and early adopters including ServiceRocket, NetApp, and Uber.
Create credibility efficiently. Helped secure industry recognition without a dedicated PR budget.
Fundraising and award results are company achievements; the directly described leadership remit was product management, roadmap, positioning, and GTM.
02 / OPERATING PHILOSOPHY
Strategy is only
the beginning.
Explore the four connected decisions behind how I approach a market challenge.
READ THE SIGNALS
Find what is changing before the dashboard makes it obvious.
Listen to customers, examine buying behavior, and connect qualitative signals with commercial data. At dotData, changes in renewal patterns helped expose a market-level shift.
03 / CAREER
A career built at
technology's inflection points.
2019 — PRESENT
dotData
VP Marketing · AI/ML, go-to-market scale, lending repositioning
2016 — 2019
Milestone Internet
VP Marketing · SaaS transformation and enterprise growth
2013 — 2016
Quarrio
VP Product Management · Conversational business intelligence before the LLM era
2005 — 2012
EMANIO
VP Marketing · Business intelligence, demand generation, and product adoption
1991 — 2004
Early foundations
Teknema / Ravisent / Phoenix Technologies, Logitech, FWB Software, Mass Microsystems
04 / ABOUT
Executive judgment.
Builder's instinct.
I'm a technology marketing executive who has spent 35 years helping analytics, AI, and software companies navigate changing markets. I work directly with CEOs and sales and product leaders on strategic choices—market focus, product positioning, pricing, packaging, and go-to-market execution—and I take responsibility for building the people and systems behind those choices.
My approach combines executive-level judgment with a builder's instinct. I value specialist expertise, align teams across functions, and use technology and AI to give capable people greater leverage. The objective is not simply more marketing activity; it's sustained commercial progress.
My strongest fit is a technology business navigating a growth inflection point: bringing a new product to market, building repeatable demand, transitioning business models, or refocusing on the customers it can serve best.
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