Furqan Khan

Fractional CMO | I launch and run GTM for mid-sized tech and SaaS companies | Leading marketing for SSI EMEA’s AWS Partner GTM | 27 years, 250+ brands

[Furqan Khan @99perceptions]

I'm firing myself as CMO.

Not today. But soon.

27 years in advertising and marketing.
The last 8 years running GTM, on and off.
Different companies. Same week, every week.
Plan. Brief. Chase. Report. Repeat.
Most of my week goes into making sure things happened.
Very little goes into deciding what should happen.

Now I'm building the thing that replaces me.

A CMO that never sleeps.
With a team under it that does the work end to end.
Research. Website. SEO. Leads. Email. Content. Ads. Meetings. CRM. The numbers.
Not dashboards that tell me what went wrong.
Work that's already done when I wake up.

I approve the plan on Sunday.
It runs the week.
I step in only when it matters.

It's messy right now.
Half of it is on a whiteboard.
The other half breaks in new ways every night.
I get it if that sounds crazy.

But I'm going to build it and show it here.
Every win. Every broken agent. Every stupid mistake.

Because here's what keeps me up.
If a machine can run the work,
what's left for the person who used to run it?

I think the answer is taste.
I'm about to find out.

Follow @99perceptions to see the build.

[Furqan Khan @99perceptions]

@IronRedSandHive absolutely... The messy middle is where the lessons usually are. Template makers edit it out. I mean, why would they give away their wins that easily in a free template... something to hold on to for a paid course too. Ha!

Just curious... anything flopped recently before it worked for you?

[Furqan Khan @99perceptions]

My fellow founders,

Every LinkedIn playbook was written after IT WORKED.

The ugly attempts got cut. Nobody publishes those.
So you get the dry-cleaned version.
Without the mess that taught them.

And there you sit.
Trying to say something about your own product.

Should it sound like a big company or like me?
Tell the messy story, or list the features?
Post it, or wait until it's perfect?

When I talk about mine, I still find myself in this spot.
I get you.

I am not saying not to consider those playbooks.
They can save you time and show you things you would probably miss.
But their steps belonged to their founders' journey, their market, and their year.

You are scared of looking stupid in front of customers and investors.
I get it. I sometimes do too.
But when your bad post will be forgotten by Thursday, then why the heck not try something raw, funny, original, or even stupid?

A disclaimer here: Don't do anything to harm anyone, do anything illegal, or violate the platforms' policies. Being original doesn't mean you will become an outlaw or lose the sense of decency and etiquette. That will be really stupid!

So take this to your CMO, or whoever runs your marketing, and tell them:
Our next four posts about the product will each try something different.
- One messy story.
- One thing only we believe.
- One post before it feels ready.
- One in my own words with nobody polishing it.
We judge them later.

After that you will know how your audience reacts when you sound like you.
No playbook can tell you that.

You don't need a template for your product stories to rank on social media.

Sometimes when things are blurry on the surface, giving your product stories an opportunity to be disliked can make all the difference.

[Furqan Khan @99perceptions]

@builtbyaidan That is absolutely true @builtbyaidan . My point is exactly that you have to give your posts an opportunity to fail to surface what is more likely to work.

[Furqan Khan @99perceptions]

Every senior hire gets one perfect excuse in their first weeks. Mine was: "I just signed up. I will not be blamed if anything goes wrong."

April 2025. A 30-year-old US-based tech firm hired me as a fractional CMO just three weeks before its product launch at Abu Dhabi Global Health Week. The product was a B2B software platform built specifically for healthcare, with a solid track record in the US market.

The odds:

Regional entity only two months old.
First product launch in the region.
The team was one person: the EMEA lead.
3 weeks to set up everything from the ground up.
Zero local team for execution.
I couldn't fly over to Abu Dhabi.

My excuse was completely plausible for any seasoned exec in my position. But it is also a perfect formula for a failed launch and a lost opportunity.

And the EMEA lead had known me for 15+ years. He recommended me for the job. So I had two responsibilities: deliver a successful launch and prove my friend picked me on merit.

What I did instead:

I quickly built a short-term GTM strategy and got approval from the EMEA lead.
Assembled a list of key roles I needed on the ground.
Asked the EMEA lead to connect me with local PR agencies and vendors, since he was based there.
Worked with the company IT team to set up a temporary landing page with regional messaging and a lead-capture form.
Hired a small, capable local team by searching LinkedIn and local listings.
Wore the hats I couldn't find the heads for.

Results:

The EMEA lead invited the AWS regional team to visit the booth. AWS signed up as a regional marketing and delivery partner within a week after the event.
The event generated 70+ leads. Among them was a large regional hospital chain that closed for a 6-month pilot.
The company chairman flew in from the US to attend the launch and was delighted by the setup. A cherry on top!

If you are hiring someone to take your product into a new region, ask them one thing:

"Tell me about a time you had a perfect excuse. What did you do?"

If the answer is about who let them down, keep looking.

[Hark @hark_labs]

Introducing Hark Handoff

It is verifiably the best model ever built for using the internet.

It can order food, book flights, shop, deeply research, you name it - better and more affordably than frontier models.

[Furqan Khan @99perceptions]

@hark_labs Signed up and anxiouly waiting to try @hark_labs

[Furqan Khan @99perceptions]

@SproutGKeenan Ok tahnks :)

[Furqan Khan @99perceptions]

Thanks Keenan. Am Interested in learning more about tracking leads. Do you have any case studies to share?
@SproutGKeenan @SproutSocial