A business does not become successful overnight. Having the right connections, partners and tools are crucial pieces to growing a business. Sheryl Schultz is a prime example of someone who created a successful company by pulling together these threads. Now, she’s helping other entrepreneurs achieve their dreams through CabinetM, a marketing technology management platform with an online database of over 15,000 software tools to help marketing teams thrive.
In the beginning
Schultz began her entrepreneurial career working primarily with telecommunications startups. After more than a decade of working for others, she formed her own firm, SRS Associates, serving as a board advisor and hands-on consultant to many top telecommunications startups. At SRS, she helped launch dozens of companies—20 of whom engaged her from inception to successful exit strategies, IPOs and acquisitions.
She then connected with Anita Brearton, an experienced marketing executive, who became her long-time collaborator and business partner. “Everyone should be lucky enough to find a business partner that complements them the way Anita and I complement one another,” says Schultz. “Find somebody who sees things in a different light. Having differing opinions will make the company stronger.”
With complementary skills and overlapping interests, they led the Boston chapter of Golden Seeds, one of the first angel groups specifically targeting women-founded and led companies. To date, the organization has invested more than $165 million in women-founded companies, with more than 225 companies receiving funding.
“I’ve really considered it a privilege to have been able to invest in such unbelievable businesses and I think they will do great, but it takes time,” said Schultz. While Golden Seeds is focused on funding female entrepreneurs, Schultz points out, “It’s not just women, it’s women and men who want to support women who support Golden Seeds.”
CabinetM: Using marketing tools effectively
At a startup she was running, Brearton saw first-hand how difficult it was for her top-notch digital marketers to find and implement new marketing tools. As Schultz spent more and more time with MarTech startups, she saw how hard it was for them to reach customers. Marketers and customers needed one another, but they weren’t connecting in an efficient and productive way. “It was those insights that served as the original spark for CabinetM,” said Schultz.
She and Brearton first founded the startup in 2014. Now, today’s marketing world is more complicated and challenging than ever before. For businesses to succeed, they must have a well-defined marketing strategy. They must maximize marketing effectiveness to compete at the highest levels. With more than 25 percent of marketing budgets devoted to technology, teams need simple ways to track details and generate reports on demand.
As co-founders, Schultz and Brearton set their first goal to identify and catalog the different tools available to marketers. They did this by simplifying a company’s marketing technology (Martech) stack, and by helping sales and marketing teams manage the technology they have and identify the tools they would need in a rapidly ever-transforming digital marketing environment.
Today, the company has the industry’s most comprehensive marketing tools and the largest set of marketing stack data because hundreds of marketing stacks have been built and managed on the platform.
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