183: Kevin White: Building a super IC role to escape management burnout and fixing the broken promise of AI SDRs

Humans of Martech

What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Kevin White, Head of GTM Strategy at Common Room.

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:00) - In This Episode
• (02:59) - How to Design a Super IC Role for Senior Marketers
• (09:11) - How to Get Comfortable With Public Visibility as an Introverted Leader
• (10:39) - sing Empathy and Product Demos to Build Authentic GTM Strategies
• (16:52) - How to Use Pain Points to Make Personalization Work
• (19:21) - How to Use Buyer Behavior Signals to Improve Outreach Timing
• (21:36) - Leveraging GitHub Signals to Drive High-Conversion Micro Campaigns
• (24:57) - Smarter Account Prioritization With Buyer Signals
• (29:02) - Why Messaging Drives GTM More Than Signals and Plays
• (31:16) - Why Overengineered Tech Stacks Fail GTM Teams
• (35:05) - Why AI SDR Agents Need Structured Coaching to Work
• (41:43) - Why The Last Mile Of AI Marketing Still Belongs To Humans
• (43:57) - AI Sharpens the Divide Between Experts and Amateurs
• (45:46) - Why Declaring Human-Written Outreach Gets Better Responses
• (48:00) - Futureproofing Operations Skills Through Challenge Driven Learning
• (51:46) - Why Data Warehouses Are Taking Over Customer Data Platforms
• (55:32) - Finding Career Balance Through Self Reflection

Summary: Kevin rebuilt his career around the work that fuels him. After years leading teams at Segment, Retool and Common Room, he walked away from politics and board decks to create a “super IC” role focused on experiments, product evangelism, and hands‑on growth. He applies that same mindset to go‑to‑market: strip out the bloat, ditch templated outreach, and use real buyer behavior to build small, personal campaigns. He treats AI as an amplifier for skilled marketers, using it to speed research and sharpen ideas, while relying on human judgment to make the output work. Even visibility, once draining for him, became a muscle he trained through repetition. Kevin’s story is a guide for marketers who want less political fluff, more impact, and roles built around the work they actually love to do.

About Kevin

Kevin White is a seasoned go-to-market leader with over 20 years of experience driving growth for high-growth SaaS companies. He’s held senior roles at Gigya, SingleStore, HackerOne, and Twilio Segment, where he built demand generation engines and scaled marketing operations during critical growth stages.

Most recently, Kevin led marketing at Retool and advanced through multiple leadership roles at Common Room, from Head of Demand Generation to Head of Marketing, and now Head of GTM Strategy. He has also advised innovative startups like Ashby, Gretel.ai, and Deepnote, helping them refine their go-to-market strategies and accelerate adoption.

How to Design a Super IC Role for Senior Marketers

Climbing the marketing ladder feels like progress until you realize the work at the top is entirely different. Kevin spent years running teams at Retool and Common Room. He managed a dozen people, dealt with SDR team politics, prepared board updates, and handled internal marketing. Those tasks ate up his time and dulled his energy for the work that made him great in the first place. “My day-to-day was full of things I didn’t enjoy. One-on-ones, internal marketing, SDR team drama, board updates. None of it felt like what I wanted to be doing,” he said.

Kevin thrived in the early-stage chaos. He loved being the first marketer, building programs from scratch, experimenting with growth channels, and connecting directly with customers. Those environments let him create instead of coordinate. He could see the direct impact of his work and feel close to the product. As companies grew, that hands-on work disappeared. He became a coach, a manager, and a political operator. For someone who values doing over directing, that was a poor fit.

He worked with Common Room’s CEO to design a role that put him back in his zone. Now, as Head of GTM Strategy, Kevin functions as a “super IC.” He runs high-leverage growth experiments, drives product evangelism, and collaborates with a few freelancers instead of managing a team. That way he can focus on the work that delivers impact while avoiding the politics and administrative load that drained him. It is a custom role built around his strengths, and it brought back his enthusiasm for the job.

Kevin’s thinking extends beyond his role. He shared how Common Room rethought sales development. They hired an excellent manager who knows how to attract and retain elite talent. Then they paid those top performers well above the market rate. “Harry is one of our SDRs,” Kevin explained. “We pay him a good amount because he produces outsized results. That playbook works.” In Kevin’s view, companies should build alternative tracks for individual contributors and reward them based on their production, not their willingness to manage people.

Key takeaway: Create roles that match strengths instead of forcing people up a management ladder. Build paths for senior individual contributors who can deliver massive value without leading teams. Pay top performers according to their impact, not their title. If you manage teams, audit which roles could benefit from this model and where high-performers need more autonomy. If you are an individual contributor, consider what a custom role would look like that keeps you close to the work you do best.

Building Confidence With Public Visibility as an Introverted Leader

Public visibility exhausts many introverted leaders. Kevin describes finishing a full day at a conference feeling drained, running only on caffeine to get through the next one. Sharing his voice on LinkedIn or recording videos once felt unbearable. Even now, he admits to taking multiple tries before posting anything. Despite that discomfort, he continues to do it because the repetition has transformed the work from a chore into a habit.

“I was mortified at myself when I first started recording things,” Kevin said. “But I kept hearing people say how helpful it was, and that positive reinforcement made it easier.”

Kevin builds on small steps instead of waiting for confidence to appear. He creates a cycle where he pushes himself into uncomfortable situations, collects positive feedback, and uses that reinforcement to do it again. Over time, the acts that once caused him anxiety, like posting thought pieces or speaking publicly, have become regular parts of his work.

He views visibility as a skill that can be practiced. Instead of thinking in terms of strengths or weaknesses, he treats every new action as training. This perspective removes the pressure to “perform” and reframes the process as building a muscle. That makes posting online, speaking at events, and showing up in public spaces a set of learnable behaviors rather than personal traits.

You can use his approach:

Start with small, low-stakes actions like sharing short ideas on LinkedIn.
Progress to more challenging mediums such as podcasts or short recorded demos.
Save positive responses to use as reminders when your motivation dips.
Treat every effort as practice, which builds resilience and lowers fear over time.

Key takeaway: Confidence grows through repetition. Build it by starting with small visibility actions, collecting reinforcement, and gradually increasing the difficulty of your public presence. That way you can turn something that drains you into a manageable, even natural, part of your role.

Using Empathy and Demos to Build Authentic GTM Strategies

Kevin remembers the grind of stitching together spreadsheets, Zaps, and Salesforce automat...