S3E18: Inside Denim with Charlie Turri, Tim Laehn & Gregory Bailey

Denim Rivet

Welcome to the final Denim Rivet episode of Season 3! To close out this season, Denim’s CTO Charlie Turri provides insight on some of the things Denim is focused on. He also shares his experience transitioning from leading IT at a big insurance company to joining a tech startup. Following that conversation, Tim Laehn, Denim’s director of marketing, sits down with Gregory to talk about a similar transition he made when he joined Denim eight months ago. You’ll also catch a glimpse of what Denim Rivet will be producing over the summer, and what’s in store when the show returns for Season 4 in September.

Charlie Turri

What got Charlie most excited about working at Denim was the small, dedicated group of people on the Denim team. In fact, the quote underneath Charlie’s bio on the Denim website reads: “A small group of thoughtful, committed people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead.

Denim’s culture could be summed up like this: "What you’re doing matters right now.” This is something that larger companies can struggle to instill in their employees, which was part of the allure of Denim that caught Charlie’s attention. Denim can take a higher velocity of change, implementation, and innovation. In fact, the company has to in order to accomplish its mission to reimagine marketing and distribution for financial services companies.

Charlie will be helping Denim take the wealth of data the company has amassed and use it to directly impact customers. Whether that’s the right audience to target, the right campaign, even the right time of day — Denim is working hard to translate that data into actions for its customers.

Tim Laehn

About eight months ago, Tim left a great job at a fairly large financial services organization to become Denim’s new director of marketing. He didn’t jump onboard the Denim team and abandon his old position without any thought; it was a big move he considered for a while. But while Time likes comfort, he realizes that when you are comfortable you’re not growing. The opportunity at Denim was one that wouldn’t be around forever, and it was a chance for him to learn new things and grow in an exciting environment.

Tim has summed up some of this thoughts on the risk he took in his article Corporate to Startup: 6 Months In.

At the beginning of the year Denim, sat down to put together a Marketing Playbook. This playbook highlights five initiatives Denim has set out to move forward on in 2018. The speed in which the team has been able to implement these initiatives, again, highlights what makes intimate teams in startups so effective. The team understands the strategy will evolve and the plan will have to adapt. However, the main goal of leveraging owned, earned, and paid media to grow and nurture Denim’s community is at the center of the playbook. The team has worked hard to position Denim as a thought leader in the insurtech and fintech space, and will be continuing to put out webinars, videos, audio books and more great content.

Watch for some Denim Rivet best hits episodes over the summer, and we look forward to launching Season 4 in September!

Links:

Charlie Turri

Tim Laehn

The Lean Startup

Dealers of Lightning