Builder, operator, storyteller.
I'm Cole Stark, a growth leader based in San Francisco. For the last four years I've been the Head of Growth at two developer-facing startups. Before that I ran paid and organic programs for B2B tech companies at an agency.
I'm currently open to a full-time Head of Growth role. In the meantime, Stark Visibility is where I do the same work for startups that need a senior owner for growth before the full-time hire.
Builder
I build the systems growth runs on: reporting stacks, content engines, programmatic page pipelines, tracking that's actually correct. If it can be automated without getting worse, I automate it.
Operator
I've owned the weekly signup number at two companies. I know what it feels like when the chart goes the wrong way on a Monday, and what to do on Tuesday.
Storyteller
Positioning, launch narratives, landing-page copy, the Product Hunt post at 12:01 a.m. The technical side of growth doesn't work if nobody wants to click.
Where I've done this.
Stark Visibility — Founder & Principal
2026–present · also 2021–2022
Growth consultancy for AI and SaaS startups: fractional Head of Growth, project sprints, advisory. Recent work includes a new SEO/GEO-optimized website with a full Google Ads overhaul for a solo therapy practice, and SEO/GEO and paid media engagements for B2B software companies.
Quadratic — Head of Growth
2024–2026 · AI spreadsheet for data and engineering teams
Owned the weekly signup number across organic, paid, creator, and launches.
- — Grew the user base to roughly 300,000 and cut blended CAC 60% quarter over quarter
- — Built the organic engine: 7,000+ organic signups a month, 1M+ monthly search impressions, content scaled from ~10 to 50–100 human-reviewed posts a month
- — Shipped a ~100-step programmatic pipeline that turns product data into use-case landing pages (SQL to Sanity)
- — Built the growth reporting system: Mixpanel and Postgres joined with GA4, Search Console, CRM, and ad platforms in one weekly view
- — Ran launch campaigns for Agent Sync and MCP releases, a competitor-shutdown response campaign, and a creator program that beat paid search on cost per paying customer
Pieces for Developers — Head of Growth
2022–2024 · Developer productivity suite
Joined after a Stark Visibility consulting engagement. Led a five-person team.
- — Active users +1,700%
- — Three Product Hunt launches, +460% installs
- — Organic traffic +200%, organic conversions +930%
- — Led a full website redesign and migration
Stark Visibility — Founder
2021–2022
B2B SEO and paid media for tech startups. Pieces was a client: +268% organic impressions and +187% more #1 rankings in the first quarter. Then they hired me.
Firebrand Communications — Account Supervisor, Digital Marketing
2019–2022 · B2B tech PR and marketing agency
Ran paid search, paid social, and SEO across a portfolio of technology clients. Cut Google Ads CPC 75% and lifted conversion rates 90%.
Systems, not just campaigns.
The campaigns are the visible part. These are the things underneath that kept working after I moved on.
- A growth reporting stack that joins product events (Mixpanel, Postgres) with GA4, Search Console, CRM, and ad spend, so one dashboard answers "what produced the customer?"
- A human-reviewed content engine that took a startup from ~10 to 50–100 posts a month using AI in the loop, with a person on the hook for every piece
- A programmatic landing-page pipeline: about 100 steps from a SQL query to a published, schema-marked use-case page
- Conversion tracking implementations across GTM, GA4, Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn, including custom listeners for embedded booking tools and single-page-app forms
- Launch playbooks for Product Hunt (three times), feature releases, and the day a competitor shuts down
- A social-listening agent that surfaces relevant Reddit and X conversations for the team to join
- Websites: a full redesign and migration at Pieces, and new site builds with structured data, tracking, and GEO considerations in place from the first commit
A few things I believe.
- 1
Own a number, weekly. If nobody can say what the number was last week and why, there's no growth function, just activity.
- 2
Measure before you scale. Spending more on a channel you can't attribute is how startups set money on fire politely.
- 3
Organic and paid compound. Search ads teach you what converts; SEO makes it free. Creators lift branded search; paid catches it. Run them together.
- 4
AI in the loop, human on the hook. Automation for volume and speed. A person accountable for whether it's any good.
- 5
The website is the first demo. Every landing page is the product in words. Treat it like product.
- 6
Agencies are tools, not owners. Useful in the right hands. Someone inside still has to own the outcome.
Tools I work in.
Google Ads · Meta Ads · TikTok Ads · YouTube · LinkedIn Campaign Manager · X Ads · GA4 · Google Tag Manager · Google Search Console · Screaming Frog · Ahrefs · Semrush · Mixpanel · Postgres / SQL · Quadratic (AI spreadsheet) · AirOps · n8n · Zapier · Sanity · HubSpot · Framer · Webflow · GitHub
Off the clock
When I'm not working, I'm playing chess, shooting film, or planning the next trip somewhere with good trains.
Education: Miami University. B.S. in Business (Marketing) and B.C.A. in Emerging Technology in Business.