About Alexander Rublowsky
Also known as Alex Rublowsky. Fractional CMO, commercialization leader, and creator of the 40/40 Marketing framework and the Buyer Intelligence Accelerator. I have spent nearly three decades turning technology that is ahead of its market into a commercial model that is easy to buy.
In 2001, Forbes interviewed me about one of the stranger experiments in enterprise technology: selling Sun Microsystems servers on eBay. I ran Sun's auction program, one of the first at any major manufacturer, and it sold more than $10 million in equipment, including a $155,000 enterprise storage system, on a site then best known for Beanie Babies. A quarter of the buyers were new to Sun. When ComputerWeekly asked me about it, I said dynamic pricing would become part of how everyone does business. But just a part.
I've been doing some version of that experiment ever since: taking technology that's ahead of its market and building the commercial model that makes it easy to buy.
The Through-Line
At Microsoft, I built a Good/Better/Best framework for the telesales channel that delivered 4,000 new customers and $120 million in revenue, and led the partner program that helped make Windows 7 the fastest-adopted enterprise OS. At F5 Networks, I applied the same packaging discipline to a security portfolio that customers found too complex to buy, generating more than $100 million in incremental revenue and a licensing structure F5 still uses more than a decade later.
At SAP Concur, I built the company's first global Product Marketing organization and the commercialization capability behind seven AI and cloud product launches and six new international markets. At AWS, I led product marketing for the networking and infrastructure portfolio that touches nearly every customer on the platform. And at ControlUp, I spent three years helping a beloved product-led growth company earn its place in the enterprise, growing ARR from $20 million to $75 million while marketing spend went down.
Along the way I've been a CMO twice, leading a turnaround rebrand at Buurst and rebuilding the marketing engine at Fusion Connect, a $250 million cloud communications company, where the operating model I installed delivered triple-digit growth in qualified pipeline within six months.
What I'm Doing Now
Today I run 40/40 Marketing, helping B2B software and services companies make AI adoption real: not another tool, but a new operating model for marketing teams. I also serve on the board of Northwest Quantum Nexus, where I lead marketing and business development for a multi-state coalition, including Microsoft, AWS, Boeing, and IonQ, building the region's quantum technology ecosystem. E-commerce, enterprise software, cloud, SaaS, AI, and now quantum: the technologies keep changing. The job of making them commercially real hasn't.
How I Lead
The transformation stories on this site say it better than a list of adjectives could. The short version: I look for base hits before home runs, I believe the business reveals the organization it needs if you solve real problems first, and I've learned that trust is built in person, sometimes through three days of COVID quarantine in a Tel Aviv hotel room.
Background
I hold a Master of Arts in Political Management from George Washington University and a BA in Business Administration from Rochester Institute of Technology, and completed the AI: Implications for Business Strategy program at MIT Sloan. I'm based in the greater Seattle area.
Yes, it rains too much here, but I'm getting used to it.
In the press: Forbes on Sun's eBay auction program · ComputerWeekly on dynamic pricing · MarTech Series interview · The Entrepreneur Times