The Marketing Desk

Marketing a Product the Market Didn’t Know it Needed with Oliver Carding | Ep 06

Tyler Fleischer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 10:00:00 GMT

Unlock the strategies of crypto marketing with Oliver Carding, Head of Marketing at Tesseract. In an industry where innovation meets compliance, Oliver shares how Tesseract is revolutionizing the lending and DeFi vault market by becoming a MiCA authorized business in the EU. This is essential listening for marketers eager to understand the intersection of regulation and technology in the crypto space.

Oliver’s journey into crypto began in the early days of Bitcoin, navigating through the complexities of marketing in a rapidly evolving industry. He reveals how Tesseract's unique approach to dedicated client vaults sets them apart and why regulatory compliance is more crucial now than ever. With the recent changes in the European landscape, Oliver provides insights into how these regulations are shaping the future of finance.

Chapters:

00:44 — Paid in mining hardware: an accidental crypto origin story
06:47 — What Tesseract actually does: lending and DeFi vaults
07:31 — Why pooled vaults aren't compliant, and what a dedicated client vault is
09:41 — MiCA and CASP, explained, and what passporting unlocks
12:25 — Who Tesseract markets to
13:10 — The channel mix: PR, LinkedIn, email
14:56 — Why press matters more now than it did in the SEO-and-links era
20:55 — Case study: launching a product the market didn't know it needed
27:22 — Repositioning: from "Managed DeFi" to "Dedicated Client Vaults"
32:59 — The comparison table he learned from SaaS
37:18 — Is regulation a marketing advantage or disadvantage?
40:22 — Advice for marketers joining a regulated crypto business

Follow Oliver:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oc-marketing-manager-manchester/
Tesseract: https://tesseract.fi
Tesseract on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tesseractinvestment/

Follow Tyler:

X: https://x.com/tyler_fleischer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-fleischer/
Flowdesk: https://flowdesk.co/

Follow The Marketing Desk:

X: https://x.com/themarketingdsk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-desk-podcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingdsk

The Art of Product Marketing in AI and Crypto with Danny Carpentier Balough | Ep 05

Tyler Fleischer — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:00:00 GMT

In this episode, Tyler Fleischer interviews Danny Carpentier Balough, Director, Product Marketing and GTM Strategy at the NEAR Foundation. They discuss the foundation's vision of integrating AI and crypto, the complexities of product marketing in a fast-paced environment, and the importance of a coherent narrative that resonates with various target audiences.

Danny shares insights on the recent product launch of IronClaw, the go-to-market strategy, and how the foundation addresses the needs of consumers, enterprises, and governments. The conversation emphasizes the significance of data sovereignty and the challenges of aligning product development with market demands. In this conversation, Danny discusses the intricacies of product roadmaps, the importance of flexibility in messaging, and the evolving role of AI in marketing. He emphasizes the need for a coherent vision and the significance of testing messaging across various channels.

Danny also highlights the friction that can arise between teams and the necessity of collaboration in shaping effective marketing strategies. Looking ahead, he predicts a convergence of product management and marketing roles, driven by advancements in AI and the need for agile responses to market changes.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to NIR Foundation and Its Vision
03:02 The Role of Product Marketing in a Fast-Paced Environment
05:47 Strategic Narrative Development for Complex Products
09:03 Recent Product Launch: IronClaw and Its Go-to-Market Strategy
11:49 Target Audiences: Consumers, Enterprises, and Governments
18:07 Connecting Product Development with Market Needs
27:06 Navigating the Gap Between Vision and Product Market Fit
29:44 Navigating Product Roadmaps and Flexibility
33:16 Testing Messaging and Content Strategy
36:56 The Role of Friction in Messaging
44:10 AI's Impact on Marketing Workflows
49:11 The Future of Product Marketing Roles
53:15 Adapting to Narrative Shifts in Marketing

Follow Danny:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-carpentier-balough/
NEAR Foundation: https://www.near.org/

Follow Tyler:
X: https://x.com/tyler_fleischer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-fleischer/
Flowdesk: https://flowdesk.co/

Follow The Marketing Desk:

X: https://x.com/themarketingdsk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-desk-podcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingdsk

How to Market to Crypto Developers (Without Being Technical) with Melissa Henderson | Ep 04

Tyler Fleischer — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Melissa Henderson spent her early career as a journalist in fashion media before she entered crypto. Now she runs growth marketing at the Interledger Foundation, where she argues that being the only non-technical person in the room is a superpower, not a liability.

We get into where the crypto Twitter playbook stops working, how to create content for developers without stripping out what makes the product real, what fashion media taught her about "taste" in tech, and why she thinks marketers with a core philosophy will stand out.

Chapters:

00:00 — Intro
01:00 — From fashion journalism to crypto systems builder
02:53 — What the Interledger Foundation actually solves
05:31 — The crypto Twitter playbook, and where it stops working
12:30 — Developer marketing: telling technical stories that land
20:48 — What fashion media taught her about “taste” in tech
25:59 — Marketing ops and the "marketing plumber"
30:22 — How AI rebuilt her reporting and deck workflow
37:16 — "Philosophy is going to eat crypto, AI, and software"
39:49 — Advice for newcomers: gamify everything
41:51 — Closing

Follow Melissa:

X: https://x.com/futurebymelissa
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-a-henderson/
Substack: https://futurebymelissa.substack.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/futurebymelissa
Interledger Foundation: https://interledger.org
Violet Verse: https://violetverse.io

Follow Tyler:

X: https://x.com/tyler_fleischer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-fleischer/
Flowdesk: https://flowdesk.co/

Follow The Marketing Desk:

X: https://x.com/themarketingdsk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-desk-podcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingdsk

Spray, Pray, and Justify: Performance Marketing in Digital Assets with Jake Langer | Ep 03

Tyler Fleischer — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Running performance marketing motions in the digital asset industry means advertising under platform restrictions, building attribution models on broken data, and still walking into a leadership meeting with an ROI number.

Jake Langer has been doing exactly that throughout his career, and now as a marketing consultant at the NEAR Foundation. In this episode, he gets into all of it.

We cover the real state of paid media in digital assets: which channels actually work, the spray-and-pray reality of crypto audience targeting, and how to make the ROI argument when the attribution data doesn't tell the full story.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to NEAR Foundation
01:15 The Vision of NEAR
01:47 The Journey to Performance Marketing
03:29 Performance Marketing at NEAR
06:41 Navigating Platform Restrictions
09:16 Challenges in Paid Advertising
11:26 Justifying Marketing Spend
15:09 Attribution Challenges in Crypto
19:56 The Future of Performance Marketing
22:19 Undervalued Marketing Channels
28:03 Value of In-Person Events
31:51 The Attribution Model

Follow Jake:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakelanger/

Follow Tyler:
https://x.com/tyler_fleischer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-fleischer/

Follow The Marketing Desk:
https://x.com/themarketingdsk
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-desk-podcast
https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingdsk

How to Market Stablecoin Infrastructure with Jay Kurahashi-Sofue | Ep 02

Tyler Fleischer — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:00:00 GMT

How do you market stablecoin infrastructure when the exciting applications are built on top of it? Jay Kurahashi-Sofue, CMO at Eco, has been figuring that out for the past two years.

Eco is the stablecoin network making money programmable across every major blockchain. Jay joined as CMO in June 2024, and has been building the marketing function ever since. Before Eco, Jay spent four years leading marketing at Ava Labs, growing Avalanche into one of the most recognized L1 brands in crypto.

In this episode, we get into the tactical, unglamorous reality of marketing stablecoin infrastructure: how you build channels when you're a lean team, how you measure what's working without an analytics team, and how you tell a compelling story when your product is the layer underneath the application people get excited about.

We cover:

What Jay walked into when he joined Eco (a consumer fintech app and a Venmo-style wallet, now pivoted to pure B2B infrastructure)
The plate-spinning approach to building a marketing function channel by channel
Why the stablecoin narrative tailwind is real, and why it's also a distraction if you're not careful
Eco's positioning play for agentic payments before the market finds product market fit
The AI-powered SEO workflow Jay built in Claude that generates, publishes, and ranks content on page one, without an engineering team

Chapters:

00:00 — Intro
00:15 — What Eco does and why programmable money matters
04:15 — Jay's path: Ogilvy, Aeroswap, Avalanche, Eco
09:54 — What he found under the hood at Eco in 2024
14:19 — Day-to-day: running marketing as a team of three
19:49 — How to build measurement without an analytics team
25:52 — Who Eco actually markets to
28:48 — The stablecoin narrative: tailwind and trap
35:10 — Positioning infrastructure inside a consumer narrative
40:03 — Agentic payments: marketing a category before it exists
43:47 — The AI workflows Jay would miss if they disappeared tomorrow
47:50 — Advice for marketers new to digital assets

--

Follow Jay:
https://x.com/jayks
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayksofue/
https://eco.com

Follow Tyler:
https://x.com/tyler_fleischer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-fleischer

Follow The Marketing Desk:
https://x.com/themarketingdsk
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-desk-podcast

Why the Quietest Brand in the Room Wins | Jordan Achilli | Ep 01

Tyler Fleischer — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 08:00:00 GMT

In the inaugural episode of The Marketing Desk, I sit down with Jordan Achilli, VP of Brand Design at Forge, a private securities marketplace recently acquired by Charles Schwab.

We talk about what it actually takes to build a brand that earns trust in digital assets.

Jordan has been building brands in this space for years, from Bloomberg, to The Tie, to Forge, and his take cuts through the noise: in an industry where everyone is yelling, the quietest brand in the room wins.

We get into the full process of building a brand from scratch, why rushing it is one of the most common and costly mistakes in crypto, and why trust — not awareness, not engagement — is the only brand metric that actually matters in financial services.

We also dig into the difference between building for institutional vs. retail audiences, whether founders should be the face of their company, and what the Forge-Schwab acquisition looks like from the inside of a brand team.

If you're a marketer, founder, or designer building in digital assets, this one's for you.

Topics covered:

How to build a brand from scratch in crypto
The biggest brand mistakes in digital assets
How to build trust as a brand in financial services
Institutional vs. retail brand building
Personal brands vs. company brands
What happens to your brand during an acquisition

Follow Jordan:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanachilli

Follow Tyler:
https://x.com/tyler_fleischer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-fleischer

Follow The Marketing Desk:
https://x.com/themarketingdsk
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-desk-podcast