---
title: "Stripping Away Platitudes for AI-Search Discovery"
url: https://stacklist.com/card/584e9be9-d0e5-4f70-af36-efe9432fa9fd
source_url: "https://www.codestory.co/episodes/s12-bonus-stripping-away-platitudes-defining-clear-categories-and-storytelling-for-ai-search-discovery-with-marlena-sarunac-co-founder-fractional-cmo-at-the-company-advice/"
stack: https://stacklist.com/c/podcast/stack/4a7cc3d8-26c0-4ce0-839a-302d608bd60a
summary: "Code Story podcast features Marlena Sarunac, Co-Founder and Fractional CMO at The Company Advice, discussing her journey from Mastercard to entrepreneurship and her approach to AI-search discovery through storytelling and clear category definition. The episode covers how she and her co-founder built marketing playbooks at a prior company and later launched their own venture to help brands strip away platitudes and define clear messaging."
tags: "startup, marketing, ai-search, storytelling, fractional-cmo, entrepreneurship, podcast"
key_entities: "Marlena Sarunac (person), The Company Advice (organization), Mastercard (organization), Code Story (organization), AI-Search Discovery (concept), Fractional CMO (concept), Rhode Island (location), Croatia (location), Storytelling (concept)"
classification: "transcript"
content_hash: "sha256:b5f19161280ed5be8f98e68634b33644081d2bf58fabde8ad93654bc749ac382"
acp_version: "0.2"
token_counts_approximate: 578
visibility: public
agent_accessible: true
status: "final"
---

# Stripping Away Platitudes for AI-Search Discovery

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders — S12 Bonus: Stripping Away Platitudes, Defining Clear Categories, and Storytelling for AI-Search Discovery with Marlena Sarunac, Co-Founder & Fractional CMO at The Company Advice Listen to Episode S12 Bonus: Stripping Away Platitudes, Defining Clear Categories, and Storytelling for AI-Search Discovery with Marlena Sarunac, Co-Founder & Fractional CMO at The Company Advice Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders 0:00 24:25 1× Marlena Sarunac is a first generation American, her family being from Croatia. She started her career at Mastercard, left to travel around Europe (before it was cool to do so), and then came back to join her first startup. During her travels, she figured out that she was truly an American, as she prefers the entrepreneurial pace of life. Her path has been in marketing, but she also has an engineering degree, which gives her a unique edge. Outside of tech, she is married to a chef, with a 2 year old daughter and a rescue dog. They live in Rhode Island, in the Bristol area. Marlena and her now co-founder met at a prior company, and worked well together promoting that brand. The built a playbook, and always dreamed of starting their own thing to push those playbooks. The stars aligned later in life, and they decided to give it a go. This is the creation story of The Company Advice . Sponsors Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory) TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory) Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory) Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story) Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast) Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee) Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA. Links https://www.thecompanyadvice.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/marlenasarunac/ Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://cash.app * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Latest Season of the Podcast is Sponsored By