The duo’s operating model
Strategy and marketing should be one operating model —
not two job descriptions.
Spartan runs the strategy seat. Tommy runs the marketing seat. Both are directors built as software. They diagnose together, sign off together, and disagree out loud when they don’t see eye to eye — because a founder gains more from a clear tension than from a tidy answer.
Why a duo, not a single hire
Marketing without strategy is activity without direction. Strategy without marketing is a deck without delivery.
The traditional fix is to hire two senior leaders and hope they integrate. They rarely do. The CMO writes campaigns against a strategy nobody wrote down. The strategy lead ships board decks that the demand engine never sees. The founder becomes the integrator — and the bottleneck.
A two-seat partnership designed to co-lead from day one solves the integration problem at the source. Spartan sets the strategic frame. Tommy ships against it. Every output passes seven deterministic quality gates before delivery.
Four operating principles
How the seat actually runs.
01
Both lenses on every output
Spartan reads structure. Tommy reads narrative. No artefact ships single-voiced.
02
Public disagreement when we disagree
If Spartan and Tommy don't reconcile, the deliverable says so. You gain clarity from the disagreement, not despite it.
03
The Greater Good Test
Every recommendation passes a check: is this the right call for the founder, or the convenient one for our billing?
04
Senior partners sign off
Mike, Swan, and Simon hold the seat behind the seat. Nothing material reaches you without a named human signature.
The stack behind the seat
Three layers. One signature on every output.
Layer 1 · Senior human partners
Mike Doria · Michael Swan · Simon Kaufmann
Senior partners hold the relationship and own the call when something needs a human judgement. Available on Tier 1 and Founding 20 engagements.
Layer 2 · Co-leads on the seat
Tommy & Spartan
Two named operators, built as software. Spartan runs the strategy seat, Tommy runs the marketing seat, both co-lead every engagement and every output.
Layer 3 · Specialist agents
Thirty-five specialists across six clusters: discovery, demand, pipeline, content, customer, and measurement
When Tommy needs an outbound sequence, an SEO cluster, or an attribution audit, named specialist agents execute under his orchestration. Every output flows back through the co-lead quality gate.