Justin Gerrard

About Justin Gerrard

Hey, I’m Justin. I’m a former founder and early-stage marketing leader with 15+ years of experience scaling consumer startups, including three exits across gaming and dating. Now I partner with early-stage, venture-backed founders as a Fractional CMO to design the GTM architecture that clarifies: who they’re building for, sequences the right growth bets, and sets the company up to scale without one-off tactics. Here are some of the companies I built and helped scale: Bae (Co-founder/CMO) ↳ Co-founded a dating app, and grew it to 300k users, which led to an acqui-hire by if(we). The Meet Group (Director of Marketing) ↳ Transformed a dating app called MeetMe into a live-streaming platform, driving $55M in incremental revenue. if(we) was acquired by the publicly traded The Meet Group. Twitch (Director of Performance Marketing) ↳ Built and led Twitch’s performance marketing function, managing an eight-figure budget to drive expansion into new gaming-adjacent categories. Backyard (Head of Marketing) ↳ Executed a viral TikTok UGC strategy for a gaming-based live video chat platform, acquiring 6M users with an $8k/month budget, leading to an acquisition by Discord. Discord (Product Marketing Lead) ↳ Ran ASO (App Store Optimization), developed the paid ads creative strategy, and launched the Activities gaming product as the PMM lead, boosting user acquisition, revenue, and engagement. I work with early-stage, venture-backed founders across the full Growth and GTM surface area, including: → Audience definition and GTM strategy → Scalable acquisition systems (paid, creators, UGC, ASO, campus) → Early marketing team design and hiring from my 200+ fractional operator network I enjoy sharing weekly tech trends on LinkedIn and co-host the Rush Hour Podcast with Tien-Wei Huang, where we break down the biggest tech stories through a Silicon Valley lens (links to episodes on my site)! If any of the above resonates, let’s connect. DMs are always open!

Experience

1. Podcast Host

   Rush Hour Podcast

   Dec 2024 — Present · San Francisco, CA, US

   The Rush Hour Podcast brings you real-world insights on tech, career growth, and the rollercoaster of the industry from two seasoned pros, TW and Justin, with over 30 years of combined experience. With backgrounds at companies like Microsoft, Twitch, Discord, Zynga, and eBay, they’ve seen it all: from IPOs and acquisitions to hyper-growth, pivots, and setbacks.TW and Justin break down complex topics in an easy-to-understand way for non-tech practitioners and enthusiasts. Join them for trending news and honest conversations about the highs, lows, and lessons learned in Silicon Valley.

Education

• Harvard University

  AB

• The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

  *MBA Candidate

• The Lawrenceville School

  Junior Olympic Fencer and Captain of the Lawrenceville Fencing and Track Teams