Christopher Ryan

CMOs have a shorter tenure than any other C-Suite position—and that’s especially true in tech companies like Avionté. Everybody is smart and marketing looks easy. Shooting down someone’s pet idea is like telling them their baby is ugly. 

When it’s the CEO’s idea, however, there is a whole new level of risk. To be fair, Rishabh was a charismatic executive with strong communication skills, but even he had his moments. 

I remember an intense discussion where Rishabh wanted to give our Insights Analytics product a new name—“Liquid Gold”—because the data was more valuable than gold for running your business. I mumbled something and said I’d have Kathy M. look into it. 

I had the pleasure of writing a Teams Message back to Rishabh a couple days later…

“… I wanted to give you a heads-up that "Liquid Gold" is not a name we should be using for our data products. We did some research. Googling "liquid gold" shows that it is slang for a variety of street drugs, can also refer to breast milk, and is also associated with furniture polish. We would be setting ourselves up for an involuntarily appearance on the Jon Oliver show.”

Rishabh never brought up Liquid Gold again, but we didn’t speak for a couple days.