123: Building, Bootstrapping, and Doing It Your Way - with Ruta Sudmantaite of Lava Metrics and Emma Davies of Thesmia AI

Ruta Sudmantaite and Emma Davies have built their careers across marketing, consulting, and now tech entrepreneurship. After meeting as teammates at a B2B SaaS company, they went on to become fractional CMOs, podcast co-hosts of Blame It On Marketing, and founders of their own startups - Lava Metrics, a marketing analytics platform, and Thesmia AI, a low-cost AI assistant for HR teams.

In this episode, we talk about building while bootstrapping, the realities of fractional consulting, what it’s like to start companies with your friends (and partners), and how they bring kindness, candor, and community into every room they enter.

Here’s what we cover:

• How Ruta and Emma went from coworkers to fractional CMOs and co-founders
• The differences between starting a consulting practice and a tech company
• Why they believe “two heads are better than one” in fractional work
• Building products without outside funding - patience, scrappiness, and first customers
• How to disagree kindly, give feedback, and earn trust with in-house teams
• Why executive presence doesn’t have to look like a suit or a script
• Creating community through honesty: confessions walls, career couches, and real talk
• The power of female allies, industry besties, and personal boards of directors
• And yes, Ruta’s side business selling sourdough starter - and what it taught her about SEO

Key Links:

Guests:

Ruta Sudmantaite: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rutasudmantaite/

Emma Davies: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmadavies1989/

Host: Jane Serra: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra/

Thesmia AI: https://www.thesmia.ai/

Lava Metrics: https://lavametrics.com/

Blame it on Marketing Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3X0IiwUIupVa4tCNg8AMpR?si=5d01dceb2c6d4c86

Ruta's Epic UK Sourdough co: https://getsourdough.co.uk/

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