Chang Li

System thinking in marketing

I began my career as a wireless systems engineer, where asking why was not optional. Engineering taught me to reason from first principles, understand tradeoffs, and be precise about how complex systems behave. Over time, I became increasingly interested in a different class of decisions: how new technologies intersect with customers, how the most vital early product choices get made, and how markets interpret and adopt what a company is building.

That curiosity pulled me toward product marketing, as the intersection of product, customer, and market. I was drawn to the work of distilling simple, durable messages for complex products, especially in the earliest stages when teams are still learning what truly resonates.

Across my roles, I’ve worked closely with founders, product teams, and sales, to develop zero-to-one positioning and messaging, and to shape early brand perception. The work is iterative and grounded in reality: spending time with customers, pressure testing assumptions, and pattern matching what a product offers against real use cases and buying behavior. What I enjoy most is finding repeatability: the moment when signals stop feeling like noise and when a company can start to scale with confidence.

Clarity is a multiplier

I believe effective marketing follows from clarity. Messaging, brand, and demand generation only work when a company has a deep understanding of who it serves, why it exists, and how it is meaningfully different.

Clarity comes from fundamentals: defining the customer and their context, understanding how innovation serves real use cases, and being explicit about the forces shaping the market.

When this foundation is clear, marketing becomes a multiplier. It informs which channels matter, what stories resonate, and how a company earns trust over time. Without it, teams tend to optimize for execution and waste spend, often amplifying noise rather than building upon true signal.

The Zero-to-One GTM

In the earliest days of a founder’s journey, critical decisions are made with limited data. During this stage, the zero-to-one work of defining segmentation, positioning, and go-to-market strategy dramatically shapes a company’s trajectory.

I was drawn to Greylock for how deeply the firm supports founders, starting at the zero-to-one stage, all the way through IPO and beyond. Greylock’s unique partnership model allows us to work with entrepreneurs to get the most important foundational choices right early, reducing avoidable missteps and enabling the strongest company trajectories. Being genuinely helpful to founders as they navigate their most formative challenges is the work I find most fulfilling.