Chief Marketing Officer of Earnest, Avient
Search every verified Shanee Ben-zur interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Shanee Ben-Zur, Chief Marketing Officer of Earnest at Avient, has discussed her career experiences and leadership philosophy in several podcast appearances. In a December 2024 interview, Ben-Zur described a period at Crunchbase where she said she hired 15 people quickly while fundraising, and while business metrics were strong, employee satisfaction was low. She stated that she had created "a culture of fear and micromanagement" and that a number of her team members quit after a funding round closed. Ben-Zur said she brought in a coach to address the issue, and credited her CEO's faith in her with motivating her to improve. She also advised that as professionals become more senior, they should become their own problem solvers rather than relying on their boss for emotional or professional needs. In earlier appearances, Ben-Zur offered guidance on hiring and career development, stating that people should hire those who are smarter than themselves and seek managers who are good coaches rather than domain experts. She discussed changes in what venture capitalists look for in startups, noting a shift from year-over-year gross new ARR to metrics like net dollar retention and CAC payback period. Ben-Zur also commented on corporate thought leadership, saying companies are increasingly elevating individual employees as advocates because people trust a person more than a faceless entity.
“Your goal is to hire people who are smarter than you because what you want is for them to be more expansive than you.”
“Your dream should be to work for somebody who does not know anything about what you do because you don't want them to know more than you.”
“If you're a mid-level manager or hire, don't work for somebody who knows what you do; find that knowledge from peers, from professional groups.”
“Look for somebody who's a great coach who believes in you who wants to help you grow.”
“Depending on what angle you looked at me, in some vantage points I was succeeding. If you just looked at the business metrics I was succeeding; we were hitting our targets, we were growing really quickly, I was adding the team members and people were executing.”
“If you change that lens to another angle and you looked at employee satisfaction, I was failing.”
“Shortly after COVID hit, we ended up closing the funding round; it went really well, we hit all these amazing numbers but shortly after we closed the funding round a bunch of my team quit.”
“I recently joined Earnest, which is a fintech helping students get access to education and achieving their financial independence as their CMO.”
“I live every day with the assumption that today is the day I'm going to get fired and that I'm going to get found out — failure is one step behind me and so I must work extremely hard to outrun the failure monster.”
“I had created a culture of fear and micromanagement — I was the decision and reviewer on literally everything, and my team started feeling smaller because they didn't have room to breathe.”
“When I got to Crunchbase I hired aggressively — I hired like 15 people quickly while we were fundraising; on business metrics we were succeeding, but employee satisfaction was failing.”
“If you can see the world from the CEO's perspective and then convey your value from the perspective of your CEO, that is how you start to show how you're invaluable.”
“If you think people don't have psychological safety with you, having a third party is really important — bring in a coach or HR because people won't tell you the truth if they don't feel safe.”
“Your dream should be to work for somebody who does not know everything about what you do — hire people smarter than you and look for managers who are great coaches, not topical experts who will hit a wall.”
“I've changed how I present strategy: start with assumptions and get alignment, then objectives, then strategic pillars — avoid leading with a laundry list of tactics.”
Nobody deserves to be yelled at by their boss… ever. That's the situation Shanee Ben-Zur found herself in early in her career ...
Shanee Ben-Zur, CMO of Crunchbase, joins Jordan to talk about the current state of marketing for early-stage startups.
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