AndrewZapo
I position frontier tech before there's a market to position it in.
I do product marketing at the intersection of AI, blockchain and disruptive technology, from zero to one, which is the stage where positioning decides what comes after: whether the company gets funded, whether the product finds its first traction, whether those first customers turn into predictable growth, whether reliable partners show up, and whether anyone ends up loyal to the brand.
Every product I work on is the first of its kind, with no clear rules, no framework, no established market, and more unknown variables than coordinates. It is the kind of product where the playbooks don't apply and nobody quite knows where to start, and where even technically gifted people don't catch the founder's pitch on the first pass.
Positioning
That chaos is where I come in, to bring order and clarity: to find the dots that already belong together and connect them into one picture, to demystify marketing, and to build positioning that is rational and understandable while still being inspiring and ambitious. When it's done, your product finally faces its customer the right way round.
Evidence
I do this with maximum empathy for your customers and with hard data rather than opinions. I'm a classical marketer by training, and working on KFC, L'Oréal, Samsung, Budweiser and the City of Toronto taught me scrupulous research and a lasting respect for facts. I know how to get the data, how to measure it and how to pull it together, including the data your competitors can't find or can't measure, and then how to turn it into messaging and branding with taste you can see and evidence you can check.
Product
Being an early adopter by temperament, I work hand in hand with the bright and ambitious technical leaders who are building frontier tech, stay at the edge where the development actually happens, and go deep enough into the technology to understand how it works rather than merely how to describe it.
Track record
Over my career I've run go-to-market, product and marketing launches, product marketing and, when the founders asked, the business itself. Among the products:
- Crunch, a machine learning platform with 13,000 data scientists worldwide and clients including the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
- ChronoLLM, the first point-in-time LLM, built without lookahead bias for quantitative research
- Propy, the industry leader in AI and blockchain real estate automation
- Cointraffic, one of the largest advertising platforms in blockchain, where I scaled and launched its news distribution
- Blockgeeks, one of the first blockchain education projects, co-founded by Dmitry Buterin (Vitalik's father) and partnered with Steve Wozniak's Woz U, where the founders brought me in to run the business, operations, product and monetization included
- Panther Protocol, an institutional privacy DeFi protocol, which I launched from zero
- HoneyQuote, a home insurance AI platform for the toughest coastal markets in the US
- Neon EVM, the first EVM network built on Solana, which I took through launch
- MoreMarkets, a DeFi yield abstraction platform for XRP holders
- Satoshi, tokenized fractional bitcoin that takes Bitcoin from macro asset back to a retail-ready measure of value, down to the smallest transaction
For case studies, write to zapoandrew@gmail.com.
Execution
My management culture was raised in the creative but institutional environments of the top marketing agencies in Europe and Canada, and it shows in how closely I track the specific metrics, statistics and numbers that reflect reality rather than a slide deck. From the first brief through the execution of the strategy to the review of the KPIs, I watch the numbers, and three principles run everything I manage and evaluate.
Execution
OKRs and goal-setting. At any given moment, tasks, goals and priorities are formalized and made transparent to every partner. At the start of each cycle I make sure that everyone involved, the marketing team and the people executing alike, understands what we are trying to achieve, and at the end of it I make sure that the goals were hit, that the results are clear to the team, and that the next steps are mapped out with the previous cycle's learnings built in.
Execution
Funnel-based metrics. Every marketing and product metric I build sits on the conversion funnel, and I know how to measure the abstract ones, from brand awareness and the overall rhythm of a specific market, through engagement with the brand, down to the actual conversions at the end. The analytical picture is deep but accessible and logical, and it gets measured regularly, so that the team always keeps its finger on the pulse.
Execution
Actionable simplicity. Simplicity is the ultimate complexity. Smart people often get lost in details and rabbit holes and end up in analysis paralysis, and it is easy to get stuck beautifying things and processes that don't matter, or building features that customers will never use. Strategy presumes actionable simplicity on top and a deep ocean of facts, data and experience underneath, and holding that balance is not easy, which is why it is most of the job.
Not just a functionary
I'm not merely a precise executor, and for me marketing is not just a way to bring customers to a business and generate profit; it is a way to understand society, what it reaches for as it develops and how it is built underneath. Everything I do rests on the conviction that technology should serve society, make it more open and more trusting, and make it easier for people to deal with one another.
Not just a functionary
I'm convinced that we are standing at the threshold of a new industrial revolution, and I see my part in it as serving the ethical use of technology and making that technology accessible, understandable and human.
If any of that resonates with you, follow me on X or get in touch.