# Early marketing spend should benefit prospective customers

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/early-marketing-spend-should-benefit-prospective-customers/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Sam Blond](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-blond/) · Sam Blond is cofounder and CEO of Monaco. · Former Brex and Zenefits CRO who co-founded Monaco, the AI-native revenue engine for startups.
- Host: [Jack Altman](https://realalpha.app/people/jack-altman/) · General partner, Benchmark · Co-founded Lattice and ran it until 2023, then started his fund, Alt Capital.
- Show: Uncapped
- Episode: [Sam Blond on the Future of Sales in an AI-Native World | Ep. 54](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/), Jul 14, 2026
- Moment: 52:59 to 58:47 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/early-marketing-spend-should-benefit-prospective-customers/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3179

## Quote

> “Early on, I would try and bucket like 100% of the marketing spend actually to something that **benefits the person** that we are targeting.”
> — [Sam Blond](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-blond/) at [55:48](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3348) · Uncapped

## Takeaways

1. Reserve early budget for experiments beyond paid ads.
2. Give prospective buyers a useful experience or gift.
3. Track referrals as customer acquisition spend.

## About this segment

Sam Blond favors creative campaigns over paid ads in efficient markets, and says early spend should directly benefit prospects. He points to Monaco poker events, gifts and referrals.

From “Sam Blond on the Future of Sales in an AI-Native World | Ep. 54”, Jul 14, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[53:12](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3192) two things that i am thinking about which maybe like go back to i said maybe some marketing principles that we try and apply that i think um my guidance to any customer that i'm working with is like, you should try and apply the same logic as well. The first is, if you think about marketing spend as a category, you can sort of separate it into two buckets for the purposes of this first illustration, then we'll do it separately for the second illustration. The first is like third party advertisers. And the second is like creativity. The first is like, it's oftentimes lower friction to do. It's mostly paid online advertising. I think if we looked at maybe like series C plus technology startups, where is most of their marketing spend going? It is likely going to third party advertisers. And I surmise like at the top of that list is probably like the Google's

[54:06](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3246) Metas, LinkedIn's of the world where it's paid online advertising. Maybe they're doing some like offline out of home type stuff. This is like easy, low friction marketing spend and it is easy to do. It's not creative. Everyone is doing it. It works. It's also like the lowest ROI. It's like a fairly efficient market at this point. Yes. You want to be spending, especially at the early stage, you want to be spending more of your marketing dollars on creative campaigns that aren't going to third party advertisers that are these like, what can we do that are different than anybody else is doing? The categories here are going to be things like gifting and events. And you know, I'd even put the plane in that category. It's the things that like no one else is doing and you want to try. They oftentimes require more operational complexity than do the like

[54:59](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3299) efficient market paid advertising marketing spend where most of our marketing dollars collectively are going. So that's like maybe a principle, be creative, try new things, allocate some percentage of our spend towards that category. The second one, and I don't know that like either is more influential or important, but they're sort of related. The second one is like the vast majority of marketing dollars go to third-party advertisers that in no way benefit the person or company that we are targeting to try and acquire as a customer. So these go to, and we do this too, by the way. So these go to the billboard companies, the clear channels and out fronts of the world that we are paying to put ads up around San Francisco. These go to, as I referenced, the Googles, the Metas, the Linkedins, those sorts of things that are online

[55:51](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3351) paid advertising, very little marketing spend directly benefits the person that we are targeting to try and acquire. as a customer. Early on, I would try and bucket like 100% of the marketing spend actually to something that benefits the person that we are targeting. And if you put yourself in the shoes of a prospective customer, you are a, well, let's take Monaco as an example. You are a YC founder.

[56:17](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3377) Yep. Would you rather have Monaco or any company that is trying to acquire you as a customer spend money on like linkedin ads that follow me around that like message something to me that i sort of scroll past and then billboards and whatever else the spend is going towards yeah or would you rather have monaco send me a like poker set like heavy clay poker chip totally exactly like that i founders play poker that like we can use for our poker night as a company would you rather throw like a poker tournament um we had we give away a hundred thousand dollars Monaco Invitational, you were there. The final table gets all of it. Let's say there are a hundred people that start playing. We end with nine at the final table. Eight of the nine finalists that received wires from Monaco were Monaco customers. Would you rather have Monaco as a customer of

[57:08](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3428) Monaco or somebody who might be using Monaco? Would you rather have us throw this poker tournament that you come to, have hopefully a blast, make like a bunch of money at the final table or again, like pay Google for like the SEM, whatever stuff that's like following me around when I go to different, uh, either websites or Google searches. So, um, uh, use that as like a bit of a thought exercise, allocate your marketing dollars that would otherwise be going towards very expensive and efficient markets around this paid advertising, do things that benefit the customer directly. We take it a step further. We spend a lot of money on customer marketing. Um, and so what we want to create um is like a bit of a monaco community um through our customer base but the the like the most effective um marketing spend that we have and when i like approve this

[57:58](https://realalpha.app/v/QnkQhyOGo3k/?t=3478) going out it is like my favorite bill to approve of literally any bill that i approve at the company is the like referral it is the like customer referral where we are paying somebody two thousand dollars because they told their friend that they love monaco that friend should check us out that friend signs up yes and look if we're doing a couple grand a month um we're paying people like ten thousand dollars to send us customer it's like the the highest roi use of what is effectively a marketing spend yeah right that is a customer acquisition cost that's right yeah that's awesome so um when we uh so i mean i guess this is the like kind of air cover and then the other half i