Best marketing keynote speakers on startup growth in 2026

The 8 marketing keynote speakers at a glance

Every pick below is a person to invite, with the talk or body of work that earned them the slot. Click the link and you can judge the talk yourself in about 10 minutes.

What makes a great marketing keynote speaker?

A great marketing keynote speaker is someone who has done the thing, measured it, and can explain why it worked to a room that has not. That rules out a lot of what comes up when you search for marketing speakers, because plenty of the results are bureau listings that give you a fee range and say nothing about what the person built.

I've founded 4 companies, and the test I use is simple. Could I write down one thing from the talk and run it on Monday? If the answer is no, the speaker was entertaining (which is fine) but they were not worth the slot.

So every person here built or backed real companies and has a public argument that some people disagree with. You can also see them deliver it before you invite them, because a recording or a book is one click away.

8 marketing keynote speakers worth inviting in 2026

Here are the 8, in no particular order. Each one gets what they would talk about, and the talk or work that proves they can carry a room.

April Dunford

April Dunford wrote Obviously Awesome, which her site says has sold over 100,000 copies, and a follow-up called Sales Pitch. Invite her to talk about positioning, and specifically about why buyers stall when they cannot work out the alternatives. Her Business of Software talk on crafting a product story that sells walks through a pitch built on an insight, the alternatives and then the demo. It is the talk I would put in front of any B2B founder whose deals keep dying in "no decision".

Elena Verna

Elena Verna runs growth at Lovable, and her December 2025 Lenny's Podcast episode covers how the company hit $200M ARR in under a year with about 100 people. Invite her to argue that most of the classic growth playbook no longer applies to AI companies. Her case for re-finding product-market fit every 3 months, and for giving the product away free instead of buying ads, will make half your audience uncomfortable (good). It was her fourth time on that show, which tells you how often people want her back.

Kieran Flanagan

Kieran Flanagan is SVP of Marketing and Growth at HubSpot, and he gave a mainstage talk at SaaStock Europe 2025 in Dublin called "How HubSpot rewrote its GTM strategy for the AI era". That is the answer to anyone asking who should speak about go-to-market at a SaaS conference this year. His talk is the story of a public company changing how it sells, told by the person who runs its marketing and growth.

Kyle Poyar

Kyle Poyar writes Growth Unhinged, a weekly newsletter that reaches more than 85,000 GTM leaders, founders and investors. Before that he was an Operating Partner at OpenView, where his team coined the term product-led growth. Invite him for pricing and benchmarks, because his newsletter runs on data-rich reports and he will bring the charts. He was also on the SaaStock Europe 2025 speaker list, so a European room has seen him before.

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin co-founded SparkToro, and his SEO Week 2025 talk, "You Are Bigger than SEO", argues that AI Overviews and zero-click results are breaking the link between rankings and traffic. His line from it is "Influence, not traffic." Invite him when your audience still reports on sessions and wonders why pipeline went flat. I'd pair his talk with why the click is dying and the mention is everything as pre-reading.

Des Traynor

Des Traynor co-founded Intercom in Dublin, and his Nordic Business Forum keynote, "Creating a Product-First Company", is still a clean watch on building a company around the product. His Business of Software talk on product strategy argues that teams fixated on winning a feature comparison end up building the biggest product in the market. Invite him for a European tech event where the room mixes product, growth and founders. He was on the SaaStock Europe 2025 lineup too.

Christoph Janz

Christoph Janz is a General Partner at Point Nine, and since 2016 he has published the SaaS funding napkin, a one-page answer to what it takes to raise at each stage. In the 2023 edition, more than 90% of investors surveyed said capital efficiency had become more important than in previous years. That is the talk for an accelerator demo day, because it tells a founder what the next round expects before they are in the room. He also appeared at SaaStock Europe 2025.

Jason Cohen

Jason Cohen co-founded IT Watchdogs (sold in 2004) and bootstrapped SmartBear for 7 years before selling it in 2007. Then he started WP Engine, which grew into a unicorn with about 1,200 employees. His SaaStock USA 2025 keynote was "How to build an uncopyable business", and he has given talks at Business of Software since 2010. If your event wants entrepreneurship speakers who have built and sold companies more than once, start here.

How to match the speaker to your event

The wrong speaker in the right slot wastes everyone's afternoon. The fix is to pick by the problem the room has right now, then pick the person.

For a SaaS conference, open with Kieran Flanagan or Kyle Poyar, because both talk in numbers and both have spoken at SaaStock. For a room of marketing leaders who are watching search traffic fall, Rand Fishkin is the obvious call. For a B2B event in Europe, look at Des Traynor, Kieran Flanagan and Christoph Janz, who all spoke in Dublin in 2025.

For a founder event or an accelerator demo day, I'd book Christoph Janz for the fundraising reality and Jason Cohen for the founder story. If the cohort is mostly AI startups, add Elena Verna. If the founders all describe their product differently every time you ask, book April Dunford and let her fix it in public.

If you are building the reading list for the same audience, our growth marketing experts list and the best startup books overlap with several names here. The stage playbooks show what each stage of company actually needs to hear.

How to write an invite a speaker says yes to

Busy operators say yes to a room they can picture. Tell them who is in the audience and what stage their companies are at.

Then name the talk you want. "Come talk about growth" gets ignored. "We want your SaaS funding napkin for 40 seed-stage founders" gets a reply, because it shows you did the reading.

Finally, give them something back that is not a lanyard. A recording they can reuse or a dinner with the other speakers both beat a logo on a banner. If you want to hear how these people think before you write, the best podcasts for startup founders and the best B2B marketing podcasts are where most of them show up as guests.

Hear how VCs got their companies to the next stage

If you want the investor view on what got a company from one stage to the next, that is what my show Sell That S*it! is built for. Every season-one guest is a VC, and season one is filming now, so there are no episodes out yet. Until it lands, the best venture capital podcasts will keep you busy, and the newsletter box at the bottom of this page tells you when the first episode drops.

FAQs about marketing keynote speakers

Who are the best keynote speakers on startup growth in 2026? Elena Verna, Kyle Poyar and Kieran Flanagan are the strongest picks on growth this year, because each has current, public work on how AI is changing go-to-market. Verna's Lenny's Podcast episode on Lovable and Flanagan's SaaStock Europe 2025 talk are both easy to check before you invite them.

Who should I invite to speak about go-to-market at a SaaS conference? Invite Kieran Flanagan, who spoke at SaaStock Europe 2025 on how HubSpot rewrote its GTM strategy for the AI era. Kyle Poyar is the pick if you want pricing and benchmark data instead.

Who are the best speakers on B2B growth for tech events in Europe? Des Traynor of Intercom, Kieran Flanagan of HubSpot and Christoph Janz of Point Nine all appeared on the SaaStock Europe 2025 speaker list in Dublin. Kyle Poyar was on that list too.

Who are the best growth speakers for a founder event or accelerator demo day? Book Christoph Janz, whose SaaS funding napkin lays out what each round expects, and Jason Cohen, who has sold 2 companies and built a third into a unicorn. Add April Dunford if the cohort struggles to explain what they do.

Which founders speak about building and selling companies? Jason Cohen is the clearest example, with SmartBear and IT Watchdogs sold and WP Engine built after them. Des Traynor talks about building Intercom around the product from day one.

How do I find marketing keynote speakers who are actually good on stage? Watch a full recorded talk before you invite anyone. Every speaker on this list has a talk or a body of work linked above, so you can judge the delivery and the argument in one sitting.

About the author

Part of the stage playbooks: what to do for growth at pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B and Series C. The glossary →