David Karel

Founder, Message & Motion || B2B Positioning & GTM || 3x Successful Exits as CMO

Palo Alto, California, United States

About

Marketing executive with 3 successful exits. Builder of categories, teams, and repeatable B2B GTM engines that scale pipeline and ARR across SMB and enterprise, and VC-backed and later-stage SaaS. I’ve led marketing teams from first hire to teams of 30+, with a playbook that wins in the field: ICP-precision, messaging rigor, customer storytelling, performance marketing, and exceptionally tight partnerships with sales. People-first leader who develops standout talent (multiple direct reports advanced to VP Marketing). AI-forward operator as both a leader and a builder. I operationalized AI across my last marketing org – a grassroots program that deployed a dozen+ use cases spanning SDR outreach, sales enablement, campaign development, and market intelligence. Personally, I'm building connected AI systems for marketing leaders: a messaging blueprint generator trained on my own positioning methodology, now extended into website copy, sales decks, and campaign design — where a single strategic input cascades into downstream execution.

Experience

  • Founder & Principal at Message & Motion
    May 2026 - Present · 2 mos

    Helping B2B startups and scale-ups sharpen their positioning, clarify their story, and activate it across the moments where buyers meet their brand and sales teams need it most.

  • Advisor at Fencer
    Apr 2026 - Present · 3 mos

  • Chief Marketing Officer at ClearGov
    Feb 2025 - Mar 2026 · 1 yr 2 mos

    Led the marketing effort; helped position the company for acquisition by Lead Edge Capital in January 2026. Managed a team of 13 marketers and the SDR team for this leader in budget cycle management software used by 1700+ local governments and school districts across the U.S. Drove adoption of AI to increase productivity, scale, and quality across messaging, content, competitive intelligence, analytics, sales enablement, data enrichment and prospect outreach activities.

  • Chief Marketing Officer at Crunchtime
    Jun 2022 - Feb 2025 · 2 yrs 9 mos

    Led global marketing at Crunchtime (Battery Ventures PE-owned), restaurant ops management software (vertical SaaS) serving 850+ brands / 150K+ locations / 100+ countries. Built and led a team of 18 marketers; marketing programs contributed ~60% of pipeline for the company's sales-led motion across midmarket, commercial, and enterprise segments. Helped scale the company beyond $100M ARR, strengthening category leadership and pipeline velocity.

  • Zenput (4 yrs 4 mos)
    • Chief Marketing Officer
      Nov 2018 - Jun 2022 · 3 yrs 8 mos

      Helped lead company through acquisition by Crunchtime (June 2022). Built and scaled the marketing function and GTM engine -- and credibly established the "Restaurant Operations Execution" category (vertical SaaS), driving 8x ARR growth. Recruited and led a team of 12 responsible for awareness, differentiation, and pipeline generation for midmarket through enterprise.

    • Interim CMO
      Mar 2018 - Nov 2018 · 9 mos