In this episode of the Full Throttle Leaders Podcast, host Michael Falato interviews Reyndert Coppelmans, a seasoned B2B SaaS marketer who most recently served as CMO of a Belgian digital identity company. Reyndert walks through his 16‑year career, from founding a SaaS startup in 2010, through head‑of‑marketing and VP roles scaling companies from $1M to $10M, to leading go‑to‑market efforts for regulated‑industry solutions focused on AML and KYC compliance. He emphasizes a consultative marketing philosophy, using maturity models to benchmark customers and equip revenue teams with selling tools. Reyndert highlights his current favorite technology—Anthropic’s Claude—leveraging custom AI skills for deep account research and personalized “account love letters.” He discusses the cultural differences between US and European GTM approaches and outlines his next career ambition: joining AI‑enabled companies that are creating new market categories and expanding internationally. Contact information (email and LinkedIn) is provided at the end.
Chapters
Hello everybody, Michael Fulato from GT and Full Throttle. We've hired a CMO at an identity company currently, and he wants to kind of just talk to us about his journey about being a CMO, working in tech, working in AI. So give us a little background, like where you're at now. I know you're in a transition stage of moving to your next company, but what have you been doing lately?
Yeah, no, thanks for having me on the podcast, Michael. It's great to be here. Yeah, so in my last role, I've been CMO at an identity company based in Belgium. Generally, I've worked in B2B SaaS companies building go-to-markets for those companies. Actually, I started out as a founder of a SaaS company back in 2010, so over 16 years ago. Failed at it really and spent the next 12 years learning to do the operating part properly. So started out as a head of marketing after that at a smaller company with revenue raises from $1 to $10 million, sort of a Series A, if you will. Then moved on to VP roles in eDiscovery in a broad and interesting, yeah, a broader dimension to marketing for me, scaling internationally. E-discovery, as you know, is a very legal process that's tied to the North American market. And yeah, so I was able to, yeah, to also roll out marketing and be responsible for that go-to-market part in the US and Canada and as well as Europe. Most recently, CMO at a digital identity company based in the Benelux with— we're targeting very Vertical for highly regulated industries like banking, insurance companies, energy and utilities with that have strong identity needs due to AML or KYC compliance.
And this is for people that don't know what AML is, or what's the other one, KYC?
Yeah, that's right.
What do those 2 things mean?
That's know your customer and anti-money laundering laws. So basically any regulations that prevent, yeah, money laundering. And the KYC is then the adjacent process to check your customer before they become a client of you at a bank, at an insurance company.
And what's your favorite lesson you've learned over the last year, whether it be tech strategy, position in life, position at home, or AI tech?
Yeah, yeah, I think so. If you look at marketing in general, I've seen a lot of fellow marketers with rather marketing tactics, if you will, that have been going around the old playbooks of building content, white papers and whatnot, setting out webinars. What I think what I do differently is that I strongly believe in a more consultative approach. So when I engage with a company, I really want to understand the product itself. So typically a software product, understand the customers really well and show that there's a better way. So it's not just about finding the right tone of the messaging, if you will, but really to help build the solution and transformation tools. And one of the approaches that I've used twice now in my previous roles is building out a maturity model, which really helps customers score where they sit on that maturity model, provide them with some benchmark data, and yeah, in that motion also help give revenue teams sort of a selling tool that they can engage enterprise buyers with.
And is there a particular piece of tech that you like right now as well?
To be really frank with you, so since we're so targeted on, yeah, like a small group of enterprise accounts, so let's say—
I'm not talking about your company right now. I'm talking about as a CMO marketing guy. Not, not, not just— let's not do the digital side. Let's just talk to more of the general audience of marketing. That's, that's what I would love to kind of hone in on your marketing brain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think the diversity of a tool like Claude, for example, that's one of my favorite tools right now. Yeah. We've built skills inside of Claude that are frankly just amazing to see, all the ranging from doing really deep account research to writing out love letters for example, so account love letters that are basically a custom narrative that we craft just for the account that we're going after. So not a generic narrative that we try to pitch to an entire vertical, if you will, but really do deep research on what is the pain point, what are the challenges of this particular company, and write a narrative around that.
Yeah, we're using Cloud Cowork a lot. I'm using it for my skills and for things I need to do and We're actually implementing Claude Cowork as part of my GTM approach to do it for people because a lot of people still need help, um, using it. They're just— because you know how to— what it is, you don't know— you gotta learn how to talk to it as well.
Yeah.
So what, what's your, what's your next step in life as far as, um, career? Like, where do you want to be? What do you want to do? If someone's hearing about your background, obviously we have your email up so you can reach out to you, but Where are you looking to go next?
Yeah, so I would say I'm more of a builder profile. So I tend to want to move to companies that are expanding into new markets, that are creating new categories, if you will, typically software or AI-based companies. So it has to have a tech component and then being responsible for the marketing side of the go-to-market, if you will. So working both in Europe and the North American market, I think that cultural difference also is something that triggers me or or that I find interesting, if you will. The way of selling or going to market in the US is slightly different from European approaches. So anything that has— that's at the intersection of those things.
And what's the best way to reach you? We have your email up. Do you want to have any other— do you want to say your LinkedIn and so forth?
Yeah, you can definitely reach out via LinkedIn. It's probably best even to reach out via email, LinkedIn, linkedin.com/in/myfirstname, Reiner.
Okay, well, thanks for being on the show. And we'll definitely keep in touch. And if I hear anything that sounds up your alley, great. I do have a roundtable starting in an hour that's for CMOs, CROs, um, leaders in marketing and sales. So you should definitely join that as well. A lot of, a lot of US companies, but also across the world as well. Well, thanks for being on.
All right, sounds good. Thanks, thanks for having me, Michael.
