B2B Technology · Product Marketing · Go-to-Market Strategy

Supercel Solutions

Go-to-market strategy and product marketing for B2B technology companies.

I work with startups and PE-backed technology organizations across the full go-to-market function: market research, positioning, ICP definition, launch strategy, and sales enablement.

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AI · Data & Analytics · Cybersecurity · IT Operations · Cloud Infrastructure · Data Center · Telecom

The Work I Do

Every engagement starts upstream — with research, customer interviews, market segmentation, and problem definition — because the document at the end is only as strong as the thinking that preceded it. I've owned that full scope across 27 years and eight B2B technology sectors, primarily in startups and PE-backed companies where there was rarely anyone else to hand the hard parts to.

Below is what that looks like in practice, and where it has led.

Strategic Engagements

For organizations that need marketing leadership, not just marketing execution.

Who this is for

This track is for B2B technology companies — typically Series A through growth stage, or PE-backed portfolio companies — that need someone who can own the GTM function at a senior level. Not a strategist who will hand off a deck and leave. Someone who will build the framework, drive cross-functional alignment, and stay accountable to the outcome.

What this looks like

  • Go-to-market strategy for new products or revised market approaches
  • Positioning and messaging architecture — from ICP definition through competitive differentiation
  • Market research and VoC programs that inform product strategy, not just marketing copy
  • GTM Practice work for PE/VC portfolio companies: assessments, playbooks, and hands-on execution support across portfolio

What you get

A senior marketing operator who has built GTM from zero across five companies, navigated VC pressure, presented to boards, and produced frameworks that outlasted the engagement. Someone who will tell you what the data says — even when it's not convenient.

Fractional & Contract

For organizations that need the right person in the seat, right now.

Who this is for

This track is for marketing teams that need an experienced PMM — for a defined sprint, a coverage gap, or a specific project that requires a level of expertise that isn't currently on the team. If you need someone who can orient fast, work independently, and produce without a long ramp, this is the engagement model.

What this looks like

  • Fractional CMO or Head of Marketing for early-stage companies not yet ready to hire full-time
  • Contract PMM coverage for parental leave, headcount gaps, or high-priority launches
  • Project-based engagements: launch plans, messaging rewrites, competitive intelligence, sales enablement builds

What you get

Someone who has been the only marketer in the room at multiple companies and knows how to work that way without drama. Fast orientation, clear communication, and work that's built to be handed off cleanly when the engagement ends.

The Work: Case Studies

The challenge

Guardian was a new entrant in the crowded IT managed services market with a company charter, an angel investor, and no marketing infrastructure of any kind. No brand. No ICP. No positioning. No sales tools. No website. Nothing that would tell a prospective customer who Guardian was, what they did, or why it mattered that they existed at all.

The approach

Started at the beginning: defined the ICP, established corporate positioning, and built a POV that gave Guardian a differentiated voice in a market where most competitors sound identical. From that foundation, built the entire marketing program — website architecture and content, a zone defense GTM model that aligned marketing activity to specific customer segments and sales stages, a partner program framework, and a full suite of sales enablement assets. Designed the program to be self-service from the start: visitors could identify their own problem, match it to Guardian's solution, and raise their hand without a sales rep having to find them first.

The outcome

Established Guardian's inaugural customer base within nine months of launch. The angel investor recovered their principal within fifteen months — a return timeline that validated both the positioning and the GTM motion. 77% of sales-accepted leads were attributed to marketing.

The challenge

Vizient had a unique asset — the most comprehensive hospital purchasing and supplier pricing data in the country — but no software product built to put that data to work for the people who needed it most: Directors of Materials Management (DMMs) at not-for-profit hospital systems. The question wasn't whether the data was valuable. It was whether the organization could build something those buyers would actually use, and whether the market was ready for it.

The approach

Started where the product itself should have started: with the customer. Conducted market research that revealed DMMs were cobbling together pricing data across Excel spreadsheets, supplier portals, and phone calls — and still never fully confident they were getting the best price. Vizient's data could solve that problem in a way no competitor could match. Recruited a cohort of DMMs as development partners throughout the process — not for feedback at the end, but for input on business requirements, segmentation, pricing and packaging, and messaging from the beginning. The product was built with their fingerprints on it, which is why the messaging sounded like them: it was.

The outcome

Launch exceeded the bookings goal by 30%. Customer retention increased 7% year-over-year. Mid-sized facilities using the platform reduced their med-surg spend by $3–4M annually — a proof point that came directly from the development partners who shaped the product.

The challenge

A recently launched SaaS product targeting mobile network operators had failed to gain meaningful traction. The instinct inside the organization was to push harder on existing messaging. The actual problem was more fundamental: the product had been positioned to the wrong buyer, with a story that didn't map to the way mobile operators thought about their own operational problems.

The approach

Rather than refining what existed, went back to first principles. Launched a new research initiative designed to find the right problem rather than defend the current answer. Identified that the product's strongest value proposition was in a specific operational use case — network data analytics for the NWDAF (Network Data Analytics Function) standard — and that it resonated with a more technically specific buyer than the original messaging had assumed. Rebuilt positioning and messaging around that ICP, relaunched to the refined audience, and drove the transition across all market-facing materials.

The outcome

Achieved 68% of the annual bookings goal by mid-year following relaunch — in a deal-cycle-intensive enterprise market where mid-year results at that level are uncommon. The repositioned product was subsequently featured in the Gartner Hype Cycle, a third-party validation of the market relevance of the revised positioning.

The challenge

A venture-backed B2B SaaS company was under active investor pressure to demonstrate a credible path to scale, but hadn't yet established clear product-market fit. The organization needed to understand the market it was operating in — not as a hypothesis, but as a structured, defensible view that could anchor strategic decisions and board-level conversations.

The approach

Designed and executed a comprehensive organic growth market research initiative: competitive landscape mapping, market segmentation, buyer persona development, and opportunity sizing across the company's target verticals. The research wasn't built to confirm existing assumptions — it was built to surface the ones worth keeping and discard the ones that weren't. Delivered findings as a structured set of strategic options rather than a single recommendation, giving the board the context to make an informed directional decision rather than simply ratifying a pre-packaged conclusion.

The outcome

The organization gained a detailed, defensible view of its competitive environment and market opportunity for the first time. The research provided enough strategic clarity to present multiple viable growth paths to the board — shifting the conversation from "do we have a market?" to "which part of this market do we pursue first, and why."

The challenge

Jupiter's product suite had grown faster than the language used to describe it. Different teams used different names for the same things. Customers couldn't navigate the offering. Sales struggled to explain the full value of the portfolio in a single conversation. Recognizing that the problem required both a PMM framework and product-level decision rights, the project was initiated and the head of product was brought in early as a key stakeholder. The decisions, however, stalled there — not for lack of input, but because of conflicting priorities among major stakeholders. Progress required a different approach.

The approach

Identified that the root problem wasn't naming — it was the absence of a shared customer journey model that could anchor the entire product suite. Built a resilience journey framework that mapped the customer's progression from climate risk awareness through assessment, planning, and action — and organized Jupiter's products around where they appeared in that journey rather than around internal product architecture. To move the stalled decisions forward, assumed the relevant decision rights with full transparency — keeping the head of product copied on every step, with an open invitation to object or redirect at any time. He never did. The framework gave every department — Engineering, Science, Sales, Marketing — a shared vocabulary for talking about the work in front of them, and was presented across the full organization once complete.

The outcome

The brand architecture was formally adopted without edits — an outcome that reflects the degree to which the underlying framework had already earned cross-functional trust before the final presentation. The architecture informed Jupiter's website refresh, restructured its go-to-market motion, and — most notably — produced a durable behavioral change: teams across Engineering, Sales, and Science began asking "at which stage of the customer journey does this show up?" when evaluating their own work. A framework that centers the customer in how engineers think about what they're building doesn't happen by accident.

The challenge

Internal feedback indicated that Jupiter's product messaging didn't sound like the customer. The problem wasn't obvious from inside a single sales call — it required pattern recognition across many conversations simultaneously. Salesloft, the organization's sales engagement platform, surfaced call data one conversation at a time with no way to aggregate insights, identify recurring themes, or compare what prospects were actually saying against what the messaging claimed they cared about. The feedback loop between the customer's voice and the product's voice was essentially broken.

The approach

Built DealChorus — a custom conversation intelligence dashboard — independently, using Replit and the Salesloft API. The tool ingested call data across the full body of sales conversations, applied consistent tagging across objections, competitor mentions, pain points, and messaging responses, and surfaced verbatims in a searchable, filterable interface that made pattern recognition possible at scale. Started as a personal PMM tool for message testing; once stable and validated, extended access to Product for customer insight loops and to the head of Sales for MEDDPICC performance monitoring and rep development benchmarking.

The outcome

Closed the loop between customer voice and product messaging on a continuous basis — not just at launch, not just during a quarterly review, but as an ongoing practice. Created a shared intelligence layer that PMM, Product, and Sales were drawing from simultaneously. Established a conversation performance benchmark with direct applications to future sales training and onboarding. And demonstrated something worth naming plainly: that a PMM with a clear enough problem statement and sufficient curiosity can build the tool that doesn't yet exist rather than waiting for someone else to build it.

How I Work

Good work requires the right conditions. I've learned to be honest about what those are. Because engagements that start with a clear-eyed fit assessment produce better outcomes than ones that don't. What follows is how I approach the work, and the kinds of organizations where that approach tends to land well.

"Etta is the consummate professional and an excellent communicator with outstanding interpersonal skills. She is the complete package. I can confidently recommend her as a product marketing leader and would not hesitate to work with her again in the future."

Stephen Collins Principal Consultant, 1024tm

My Approach

These are the things that are consistently true about how I operate, whether the engagement is a three-month sprint or a multi-year strategic relationship.

I start with questions, not answers. The part of this work I find most energizing is the upstream research — the customer interviews, the competitive landscape, the gap between what an organization believes about its market and what the data actually shows. That's where the interesting problems live. The prescription comes after the diagnosis, and the diagnosis is where I want to spend time.

The deliverable is evidence of the thinking. A positioning framework, a launch plan, a messaging architecture — these are the end of a process, not the beginning of one. If the upstream work wasn't done, the document isn't worth much, regardless of how well it's written. I do the upstream work, and I find it genuinely fun.

Direct communication, without agenda. I say what I see — if the product hasn't found its market, if the messaging doesn't sound like the customer, if a proposed direction isn't supported by the evidence. Clarity is more useful than comfort, and getting to the right answer faster is better for everyone.

Your decision rights are yours. I form strong views and share them plainly. I also know where my standing ends. Decisions that belong to the CEO, the head of product, or the board belong to them — my job is to give those decision-makers the clearest possible picture of the options, not to make the choice for them.

Built to be handed off. Every framework, system, and program I build is designed with the assumption that someone else will own it after I'm gone. Documentation, internal alignment, and knowledge transfer aren't afterthoughts — they're part of the deliverable.

A Bit About Fit

I screen engagements the same way good organizations screen candidates — honestly, and before anyone wastes time. Here's where I've consistently done my best work, and where I haven't.

Where this works well

The conditions that produce the best outcomes:

  • B2B technology organizations with a software offering that has documented market validation — not pre-revenue, not pre-customer, but ready to grow
  • Organizations willing to test new ideas, measure what happens, and adjust based on what they learn
  • Leadership that makes data-driven decisions and is willing to invest in the discovery work that produces that data: win/loss analysis, market research, competitive intelligence, customer sentiment
  • Teams made up of people who are kind and ethical, hold themselves accountable, and genuinely want to win

What makes an engagement exceptional rather than just good:

  • Organizations navigating transition — M&A, a new product category, a market shift that requires rethinking the GTM motion
  • Leadership teams that are honest about what's working and what isn't
  • Diverse environments where I'm not the only person in the room who looks like me

Where this doesn't work

Patterns from real engagements where the fit was wrong.

  • Organizations that chase short-term results at the expense of strategy
  • Organizations that don't allocate any budget for product marketing — that's a red flag
  • Cultures that tolerate or reward hubris — regardless of how it presents

About Supercel

A supercell storm forming over the central Texas plains

I grew up in central Texas — deep in the current heart of Tornado Alley. Severe weather spanned an entire season — and I was never afraid of it. What I felt when a storm was coming was closer to awe.

There's a particular kind of cloud — a supercell — that forms when the atmosphere is seriously out of balance: pressure differentials, temperature gradients, wind shear. It's massive and unmistakable and strangely beautiful. I used to watch them roll in and feel completely calm. The air had that quality it gets before a storm — heavy, electric, still. I was curious about what was happening, not afraid of it.

I've thought about why that was, and I think it comes down to this: fear loses most of its power when you understand what's causing it. The storm wasn't random. It was the atmosphere doing what atmospheres do when they get out of balance — building toward a reset. The disruption was the point. After the storm, everything was clearer.

That's what Supercel is named for. The thing that reads the imbalance in the environment, builds toward a necessary disruption, and restores equilibrium on the other side. A company that can't articulate its differentiated value is out of balance. A product that hasn't found its market is out of balance. A GTM motion that generates activity but not revenue is out of balance. The work I do is the diagnostic — finding where the pressure is building, naming it clearly, and helping organizations move through the disruption toward something more stable.

Calmness in the face of an impending storm is what happens when curiosity is stronger than fear.

Etta Jones

I'm based in Dallas. I work with B2B technology organizations — primarily startups and PE-backed companies — in strategic and fractional capacities. I'm not the right fit for every engagement, and I'll tell you honestly if I think I'm not. But if you're trying to figure out what you are, who you're for, and how to say it in a way that actually moves people — that's the conversation I'd like to have.

Let's talk.

If you're working through a go-to-market challenge, considering a strategic or fractional engagement, or just want to think out loud about what you're building — I'm genuinely interested in the conversation.

I respond to every inquiry, usually within one business day.

ejones@supercelsolutions.com LinkedIn