The Brand ROI for Startup Founders to Replace Sales Silos and Lead with Confidence - Bianca Bass

Bianca Bass: You don't have to spend tens of thousands. I like working with businesses where they don't have budget for that because it forces you to be more resourceful and creative.

Donna: At what point have you gone from, okay, I'm going to be on everyone's screens to actually, I'm going to work on their pipelines?

Bianca Bass: Well, I was really shy, so I didn't want to be in front of the camera, but I did want to write. The problem was Bianca Bast is the

Narrator: Chief Marketing Officer of Privalgo and a leading marketing strategist known for scaling fintechs and building high performing teams. Featured in Forbes and, um, invited to speak at Google, PwC and London business School, she's led brand and growth roles across major companies from TripAdvisor to Selfridges.

Bianca Bass: If we're actually doing a good job as marketing leaders, we can't stay in our, uh, we need to understand what's happening across the business. I remember at TripAdvisor going to my boss and saying, what impact are we having? How much money have they brought in? What does revenue look like? And she was very much like, hi,

Donna: everybody, welcome to a very special episode of the Engine Founder Stories. I have with me today the wonderful Bianca Bass, the CMO at Provalgo. But actually she's not the founder there. She does so much more outside of her day job and that's what we're here to talk about today. So without further ado, welcome to Founder Stories.

Bianca Bass: Bianca, thank you so much for having me.

Donna: Donna, I've been trying to track you down.

Bianca Bass: We've made it, we made it.

Donna: So I am super keen before, I suppose before we get into the fun stuff, tell us about your role at, uh, Provalgo as Chief Marketing officer.

Bianca Bass: So I've been working at FinTech for the last five years, fell into it, as you so often do, and my role there was the business had got to a stage of growth that was steady, revenue was good, they were on track that they could see that brand could be an accelerant for them. And so they brought me in as their first ever senior marketing hire. And I have been doing some very deep thinking and research and study on what the next phase of the business could be. So my role is a blend of, yes, brand and storytelling, a lot of strategy, a lot of commercial collaboration with our sales team and just being a fresh pair of eyes that they didn't have before.

Donna: Amazing. Good for them, you know, to bring somebody in with your skill set because, um, we were having a chat before the show And I, um, Obviously it's tough out there right now for most tech brands and fintech is completely immune from that. And um, I think, you know, a lot of the clients that I go into think they have a sales problem and they've not really given the top of funnel and the demand gen the love and attention that it requires. So it looks like that's where they're really focusing on. And that's why I really wanted to get you on the show today because we talked to a lot of founders. I know we have a lot of founders that listen to, that don't really understand the power of brand, brand strategy, brand positioning, getting those early stage decisions right about how you want your business to be known and who you're going to sell to. So I think they can definitely learn a lot from you today.

Bianca Bass: Well, I'm really excited to share and I think getting into um, it a little bit straight away, we need a bit of a rethink about these roles. Historically it's been marketing sales very siloed. I just think we need to kill that. We're no longer there. And the way that I view it is marketing is a heavily commercial role. Brand is a hugely commercially impactful thing. And I think long gone are the days where you'd say, well, you know, you can't really measure brand, you can't really attribute anything to it. If you're a good marketer and a good leader, of course you can. So I have really been on this journey at Provalgo and then also in my consulting work where I've thought, hold on, I don't want to have that rhetoric anymore about brand and storytelling being this creative thing that we do on the side. It's the golden thread, it's the through line in everything we do. And yes, let's attribute some metrics to it because if you look at customer lifetime value retention metrics in my world, the B2B world, where there's a very long sales cycle time to actually make a trade. In the fintech context, brand can fuel all of that. So would love to get more into it with you, but those are just some of the big themes for me at Provalgo.

Donna: Definitely. And it's so refreshing to hear that you attribute in those metrics because you're absolutely right. The reason why founders tend to be nervous of investing in brand and in marketing in general and their demand gen engine is because they find it much difficult, much more difficult to measure than they would do having, you know, a sales team where 50 calls equals 1 sales. 10 meetings equals 1 deal equals, you know, and, and that it's very, very easy for them to track. Whereas I think historically you're right, we've found it very, very difficult to attribute ROI in any way to marketing. So you, you're absolutely right. They've been a team that has just kind of been in the, in the corner making things look a certain way. And what you're doing is you're bringing them into the revenue Org as a, you know, key stakeholder and a seat at the table, which I think is really, you know, what, like you say, the future. I think that's, that's definitely where we're going. You just touched on something there that I think we're going to double click on now. So outside of your prevalgo CMO role, you are a founder, Bianca. You work for yourself, you have your own business. What are the kinds of problems that you're solving outside of the day job?

Bianca Bass: I think first and foremost, having a deep understanding of customer. There are so many assumptions and I love the startup space. So I started my career working for really large companies. Selfridges, TripAdvisor, John Lewis and I just got frustrated because I thought it's amazing to have big budgets to do amazing billboard campaigns and huge out of home efforts, but you're so far removed from the end customer. So when a client appoints me or I'm coming in and I'm helping consult, I am really trying to get the founding team to park all of their assumptions about what their customer might need, what they might want, and instead really get beyond demographics or classic segmentation and think more holistically around, okay, this is where your customer is right now. This is where they might be in two, three years. This is how we can actually speak to them in entirely new ways. We are in an era of so much noise. The content machines that are happening, fueled by AI. The fatigue that people have from our marketing efforts has never been higher. So we have to get into that hyper personalization. So for me, yes, firstly, it really is about understanding customers. Second, it's about helping realign this brand piece that we started talking about to say you don't have to spend tens of thousands. I like working with businesses where they don't have budget for that because it forces you to be more resourceful and creative. So instead, what can we do? What incredibly targeted campaign can we go after? What can we do that? Even sending something in the post that your specific customer would never expect to receive. I'm all about the unexpected. I love to surprise and delight. And I love to honestly get into a room with people that are very skeptical about what I do and show them along the way the value it can bring.

Donna: I could get you into a few rooms where people would be very skeptical about brand in general. It's actually one of the first things that I have to do with my clients is almost sell the concept of, of their business to them.

Bianca Bass: Yes, we're salespeople.

Donna: Yeah.

Bianca Bass: The idea that those of us with background go to market, marketing, brand, aren't in sales is always hilarious to me. I'm like, we have to sell internally, arguably just as much, if not more all the time.

Donna: Yeah. Yeah. So how do you kind of work on, in a, in a day? You know, how do you manage everything? You know, you're, I'm sure that you've, you're very fit, you're very healthy. You, you seem like you're a very happy person. So I'm sure you have, uh, an active life outside of work. How do you fit it all in?

Bianca Bass: So I am somebody who's been blessed with a lot of energy. I also really find that my consulting work informs my day job and vice versa. If you imagine I'm working in B2B. So we're quite industry agnostic with our client base. That means that if I'm working across different verticals and industries as a consultant, my understanding of different client profiles is so much more detailed than it would be if I was just siloed day job only and there I was. I've learned the hard way from burnout that I had when I was in my 20s and trying to be everything to everyone, that if you don't have a solid foundation for your well being, the work cannot be at, uh, the standard it needs to be. And you also have to really look after yourself. And then the rest, I think, take care takes care of itself. My health has been a journey that I've really been on. I've had alopecia, uh, from stress when I was traveling a lot with work. And it's always going back to, okay, what is the most embodied version of myself that I can be? I think especially as women building businesses, helping really scale companies. Yes. It's harder for us sometimes we have to fight to have our voices heard. We have to try and almost prove ourselves more in certain rooms. And I've learned how to do that without losing myself along the way. I think when I was trying when I was younger to emulate a different type of leader, that's where that burnout that disembodiment would come in. So the honest answer is a lot of hard earned lessons, a lot of trial and error and having some very difficult times where my health hasn't been very good.

Donna: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And do you find that you kind of naturally fall into a mentor role for kind of young women who are maybe struggling a little bit as well? Yeah. I can imagine you'd be a terrific source of help to them.

Bianca Bass: My biggest motivation in my career is extending the table. I think about this all the time. How can I, as fortunate as I've been to get into these rooms with all the difficulty that I had doing that in the first place, extend that table out for people, young women. Yes. Anybody from a, uh, background that wouldn't typically be represented. If I can help them even a little bit along the way, that makes me really happy.

Donna: Amazing. And what is your background, Bianca?

Bianca Bass: So my background, I am, um, British, Brazilian. I have a Brazilian mum, British dad, state school educated, grew up on the south coast. Really didn't expect to have the life that I've had, but I wanted to be a journalist. That was where I started. I was always really such a curious child. I'd make my own magazines and then I came to London, um, for uni and was doing all these internships, working all the hours I worked at Selfridges selling shoes that I'd run and I'd hand in a university assignment that I'd run and do another internship. So very, very, very full on in the beginning, but driven by this insatiable kind of curiosity and just seeing how far I could push things. You know, I'm the first woman in my female lineage to have opportunities and to be able to do these things. So it's a big deal for me and I take that really seriously to say, wow, how amazing that I get to come in. And I almost call it a bit of an invisibility cloak because I'm someone that people will hear me and they'll have certain assumptions about, like what my background is. And I love that because I think, okay, you have like a preconceived idea of who I am and where I come from. You're actually totally wrong. Like, my vantage point on things is so different and I'm really proud of having a working class background. Yeah, yeah.

Donna: So tell us just, uh, what are those assumptions? What would, what would people, uh, assume if they meet you for the first time?

Bianca Bass: I've just had so many conversations with people where they've asked me, so where did you go to school. And of course I'll say like my completely random state school and they're like, oh, uh, I don't know it.

Donna: And I think.

Bianca Bass: And it took me a couple of years to the fact that, oh, they're asking because they think that I'm like pedigree boarding school educated and I'm completely not. But I think when I came to London, there was so much that I didn't understand about the way that the world worked. Class, privilege. I was really just not in that space at all. And because I'm very close to my Brazilian background, I was kind of outside of that in a way. And now. Yeah, I've learned a lot. And I think we're really fortunate that especially in like the last five years, the conversation about these things has come up. When I started my career, we didn't talk about gender bias, really, we didn't talk about class differences. Um, we didn't have representation very often. And it's exciting to me to get onto the board of a company, age 29, and come from a mixed race background and just have this unconventional path. It's a big source of motivation for me.

Donna: It's very inspirational and I'm sure it will be to many people that listen as well. Thank you. This kind of, ah, fake it till you make it, I suppose, kind of Persona is just absolutely fascinating. But I think it's probably something that is just naturally in you. And you mentioned that kind of, um, thirst for knowledge and curiosity. I think if you would have gone down the media route, I could absolutely see you, you in.

Narrator: Really.

Bianca Bass: Yeah.

Donna: Because I think the way that you present yourself, you could imagine that you, you know, when you meet somebody who's famous.

Bianca Bass: Yes.

Donna: And they have something about them.

Narrator: Yeah.

Donna: That you didn't realize when they were on the tv, but when you meet them in person, you're ah, now I understand why you can't put your finger on it. But yes, I completely get what you mean. See that in you. I can kind of see why you, why you were going down. So, so ah, at what point have you gone from okay, I'm gonna be, you know, on everyone's screens to actually, I'm going to work on their pipelines. How did that work?

Bianca Bass: I was really shy, so I didn't want to be in front of the camera. But I did want to write, I did want to be in magazines. The problem was I didn't have any money. So I was graduating in the last big 2008 recession. I didn't have the funds to live in London to stay in that industry. The starting salaries are ah, so low and the jobs were really scarce back then. The media industry was changing so much and I just thought I can't afford to do this. So I remember somebody saying to me, well, have you heard of copywriting? And I honestly thought it was a legal profession thing. I was like, what, what does that even mean? Copyright law? What are you talking about? But actually they helped me a lot because then I realized I can use my writing skills as a copywriter in these big companies. And that's when I got my first job. I mentioned briefly got very frustrated because I had been in these large organizations and I desperately wanted to know the business impact that I was making. So I remember at TripAdvisor going to my boss who was an amazing woman and saying, what impact are ah, we having as a small copywriting team that I was leading? I just want to know about our email marketing campaigns. How much money have they brought in? What does revenue look like? And she was very much like, oh, you don't need to worry about that. That's for our CRM team. You just focus on what you're doing. And I just wasn't satisfied with that.

Donna: That's amazing.

Bianca Bass: That is not going to cut it for me. I could just have a lovely, comfortable career continuing these large organizations, getting my, you know, little annual pay rise. But I thought, no, I will die of boredom here. And I really wanted to understand business. I've always been quite entrepreneurial so I thought I could go and do an mba, but why would I do that when I could actually get hands on experience in startup? So that's when I left big corporate and I never looked back.

Donna: It's such an interesting part of our brains, isn't it? Where like you rightly said, the matrix reference, the kind of red pill, blue pill thing, the blue pill is absolutely staying in a big company, no offense, to become like, I'm sure that there's plenty of people who have amazing careers and feel very, very fulfilled by it, but certain people just cannot let it go and they just seek out that red pill. And that red pill is very much, you know, startup, scrappy, risk, uh, you know, littered everywhere. And we just edge towards it, we just veer towards it as though, you know, so, so attractive. So I think, do you, do you think that's actually anything to do with how entrepreneurial people are, ah, wired or do you think it's something that's learned through school or your background?

Bianca Bass: I'm curious about this for you as well, I'd love to hear. For me, I think that I'm somebody who needs a lot of input. I need a lot of novelty. I need things. Maybe it is about risk. Risk is a good way of putting it. I need a lot of energy around me. I derive all my energy from people, and I derive all my energy from things happening. If things are moving too slowly, it's just my nature. I get frustrated. And for a long time I thought that was a character flaw. And then I realized, no, I'm not asking for too much. I'm just asking the wrong people and I'm asking the wrong companies. So now I look for companies and clients where there is that match and, um, that synergy and just appetite and hunger to do things. And I've realized that there's so much talk about, well, what psychologically drives us in that way. If you need a lot of input is that, are you hyperactive? Adhd. And of course, some people legitimately are. But for me, I think that I just know where I thrive and where I don't. And it's such a great place to be because I did struggle with it when I was younger. And I'd think, why am I so restless? Why do I need? But it just wasn't enough for me. And I had that, uh, at school. Yeah, I was not a good student at all. I was so bored. I was academically, like, quite strong. But I couldn't follow through with it because it was just the way it was being delivered and the lack of, I guess, kind of cause and effect. Like, I didn't know. Well, what's all this leading to? I didn't see the point. If I can't see my impact, I start switching off.

Donna: That's the thing for you, isn't it? That's what I'm getting from this, is that you need to know how everything that you do is impacting down the line. And that's a real something.

Bianca Bass: Is that similar for you? I'd love to know.

Donna: I do. I know exactly what you mean. I don't like. I like being useful.

Bianca Bass: Me too.

Donna: And I don't like wasting time. No, me neither. I m. Have a real hatred over. Of time wasted. Yeah. Sometimes means I'm a little bit late. Um, so I apologize to anyone.

Bianca Bass: I have that problem, too.

Donna: It's never a lot late. But it does mean that I do see. And I know this divides the room every single time. So I'm sorry to you amazing early people out there. Yeah. Um, but for me, being early is wasting 10 minutes that you could have been doing something else. So, um, that's. I think, for me is I need to know that I am. Um, Everything that we're doing from, you know, time I wake up in the morning to when I go to bed at night is actually having some sort of effect. So I think it is the same thing. But it's really interesting that you mentioned the word flaw, because I certainly know that they. Well, I'll just mention people won't like the fact that I don't like being early.

Bianca Bass: Yep.

Donna: They'll see that as a flaw. I know in my personality, I've had that too, which is fine. But you mentioned that you'd seen some people, had seen the way that you were, and your curiosity as a flaw, or you thought it might be a flaw. Surely that's because you've been in some way berated for that in the past, or somebody's actually put you down or made you feel like, I don't know, maybe just a bit of a pain in the bum because you're constantly asking questions.

Bianca Bass: Is that definitely.

Donna: Is that what made you feel like that?

Bianca Bass: Yeah, I can think about specific times where that's happened. I think that whenever you're kind of told to stay in your lane, stay siloed. Just focus on what you're doing. If we're actually doing a good job as marketing leaders, founders, professionals, we can't stay in, uh, our lane. We need to understand what's happening across the business. So that's my belief system. I think when I look at what makes me successful and the best founders that I've worked with, what makes them successful, they're in everything. They're curious about everything. So the more that I've stepped into being who I am, I'm kind of happy for it to be a deterrent for the wrong people. I'm happy to say, okay, I don't like everyone, so why do I need everyone to like me? It's okay. And, uh, instead, the more yourself you are, the more you're going to attract the right opportunities. And I'm no longer afraid of that.

Donna: Great.

Bianca Bass: When I was younger, I used to think, oh, I've got to try, you know, be a bit of a chameleon in this environment. I don't do that anymore. Instead, I use a very consistent voice. People know what they're getting when they meet me, and if it's right for them, we're gonna work together beautifully. And if it's not better to find out sooner, it's a great tip for

Donna: Anyone that's really trying to fit in because they think that's what's going to push them forward, be yourself. And you're not going to be everybody's cup of tea.

Bianca Bass: No. And as women, let's not be afraid of that.

Donna: Definitely. And I think it is women that actually are, ah, more guilty. We are doing that as well. But I also think that's because I very rarely hear any men being told to stay in their lane or to not ask too many questions or to not be so inquisitive. So it is one of those things that I think, unfortunately is something that we endure more throughout our careers as well. So if anyone's listening, any kind of younger women that are looking to get into entrepreneurship or do anything and someone tells them to stay in their lane, they're probably in the wrong.

Bianca Bass: You're in the wrong place. Get out.

Donna: Get the hell out of there. Yeah, exactly. What an amazing place for us to start to wrap up our wonderful chat, which has gone so quickly, by the way. I could talk to you for hours. I'd love to have you back on because we've not unpicked like a tenth of what I'd like to talk to you about. But what I. I can't let you go without telling everybody or letting everybody know what's next for you.

Narrator: Yep.

Donna: Whether that be professionally, personally, what is the plan?

Bianca Bass: So I am really interested in how our industry and what we do is evolving. There's so much fear mongering around AI and are we going to be replaced? What does that look like? I'm excited by that because I love change. So for me, I just really want anybody listening to this to embrace that as much as possible. I want to be an ambassador for these tools. I want to look at go to market in a much more exciting way because we have more access to different things. And I think in 2026 and beyond, I'm really looking at that brand and commercial alignment piece and that measurability. My greatest piece of advice for anybody in this industry, building a business, whether you're a founder, whether you're leading a team, is becoming completely obsessive of, uh, course about your metrics. But in this era, leaning on creativity more than you ever have, because we are at a point of saturation, there is too much content out there. So we have to think outside of the box. We have to be more inventive. I love a challenge and that for me is what I'm really looking forward to.

Donna: Oh, that will be a challenge. But I think it is something that is an amazing piece of advice. I love the advice about sending things in the post that is absolutely golden. We almost need to go full circle and allow AI and the digital age that we're in now to embrace the human. And it's almost kind of going back to like you say, sending things to the post, turning up, going out for lunch with people, all the things that we used to do way back when, you know, we would always, if we wanted to close a deal, we would, we would take somebody for lunch. And I'm really looking forward to getting back there as somebody that's still in go to market now because sales were so much more fun, so much more fun. We weren't before kind of sequencing and that stuff still needs to happen. We still need to do the volume play. But I think as you say, AI is really exciting because it's going to allow us to re. Emerge from the background again and reprioritize.

Bianca Bass: And I think that we uh, know that performance marketing has got so much more expensive. Yes, we know that. And I've seen that shift when I was building inbound funnels two, three years ago versus now. It's a completely different game. So now when I look at it, I think, right, I'm not advising clients to start spending tens of thousands on Google advertising or meta ads or LinkedIn ads. Instead I'm saying where can you start incredibly specifically and what ideas can you bring to it that don't have to cost you very much? Get your proof of concept and scale from there. So yes to things through the post, yes to really targeted events, emails from a CEO that are genuinely emails the CEO has written that aren't just firing out from your, you know, it makes such a difference. People can feel it. So I'm interested in kind of all of the intelligence that you can feel and all of the ways that we can measure that and just put brand back on the map in a completely new, smarter way.

Donna: Bianca, ah, are you looking for new clients at the moment? Are you happy for people to reach out to you for a chat and maybe have a bit of a discovery call, maybe tell you about their business and what they're building?

Bianca Bass: Absolutely. I get a lot of energy and joy from advising founders who have got their business to a certain point and are now thinking, I know we need to get out there more. I don't know what that looks like and want somebody who's honest and isn't going to try and sell them the dream. But instead I have a playbook I'm very clear on what can work and m what can't and I'm very frugal with it as well. So all that skepticism around spend I get it and I'm here to help address it.

Donna: It's really refreshing as well and um, I think that um, it's been a short chat but I think if um, founders want, want to carry on the conversation with you they should absolutely reach out. If nothing else they'll feel completely uplifted from having half an hour with you because I definitely have definitely going to go into my day now with a bit of a spring in my step. Um, you just have that effect on people. But um, it's been so lovely to have you on the show and I'd love to have you back sometimes time Bianca it would be fantastic.

Bianca Bass: Yes, would love to come back. We've got way more to talk about. Thank you Donna.

Donna: Absolutely. Thank you.