Jeanne DeWitt Grosser
On Marketing Against The Grain
“From a marketing perspective, anytime we're shipping content, we ship a markdown version in LLMs.txt as well as a human readable version… we've actually changed the way that we develop product… anything you do needs to be exposed in the CLI and an MCP, the dashboard for those of us who are still looking at it. Basically, you're not ready to ship until you're available both to a human and to an agent.”
Marketing Against The Grain · Media & Creator Economy · November 2026
Context
Kieran Flanagan asked whether Vercel's marketing team looks different now that most demand comes from agents recommending the product. Vercel's COO says the team treats agents as first-class users, in content and in product development.
Transcript
…good at that thing, but it's picking someone else. And then you can sort of figure out why it does that and then go back and figure out, okay, here's some of the stuff on that landing page or the pricing page that we need to clarify so that the agent can better understand the value of our offering.
…them. I'm trying to get them into my marketing funnel and then pass them over to sales. But now I'm like, well, I just have to make these agents recommend me. And it's a very different type. I don't know if your marketing team looks different because of that than what you've seen in the past.
Yeah, I mean, partially because of what Vercell is, and I think partially because of how the market has moved, our marketing team is more technical, I would say, than your average marketing team. And one of the things I think that Vercel Uses effectively, both on the product side and also marketing, is truly to build for agents as a first-class citizen, I guess. So from a marketing perspective, anytime we're shipping content, we ship a markdown version in LLMs.txt as well as a human readable version. And so, you know, that's just become a default of like, you've got to do both. Similarly, we've actually changed the way that we develop product. And so we think about it as capability-driven product development. So instead of being like, okay, I'm going to make this thing available on a dashboard, well, that's great. But now only the humans can use that. Right. And so we think deeply about everything you do. It needs to be exposed in the CLI and an MCP, you know, the dashboard for those of us who are still looking at it, et cetera. But, you know, basically, you're not ready to ship until you're available both to a human and to an agent.
Yeah. So your marketing team is more technical, which makes a ton of sense because if you're going to have agents as a first-class buyer, you're going to have to do a bunch more kind of technical type of things. And does it change the way you think about sales? Because 70% or more are coming to the…
So there are some ways, but I would say mostly no. So, you know, Vercel Uses to high-growth startups and Fortune 500 companies. And so when they arrive, a startup will still engage with because often they've gotten started with some aspect of Vercell, but they're not what we call wall-to-wall…
Yeah. Yeah. I think this is one of like always the gotchas with PLG. So I've spent so much of my career kind of doing advisory for PLG companies. And it all sounds great. And then you're kind of doing the PLG, then you do the light touch sales assist and then you go upmarket and go to enterprise.…
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