Published on: October 1, 2026
Drawing on experience across B2B and B2C businesses, Karwal helps founders clarify their product story, set marketing priorities and build teams that can execute.
A founder can spend an hour explaining a product and make a convincing case for it. The trouble starts when someone else has to tell that story.
The website lists features. The agency asks for a brief. The marketer wants to know what to prioritise. Before long, the founder is back to writing copy, reviewing campaigns and deciding what everyone should do next.
Hiring help was supposed to free up time. Instead, it created another team to manage.
Mohit Karwal is building First 10 for founders at this stage. His fractional CMO practice helps businesses that need experienced marketing leadership but are not ready to bring in a full-time senior hire.
Sometimes the starting point is an unclear product story. Sometimes it is a team working hard without a shared direction. Often, the founder simply needs someone who can understand the business and take responsibility for moving marketing forward.
“A lot of founders know their product inside out, but they don’t know where to start with marketing. They need someone who can understand what they’ve built, explain why it matters, and take responsibility for the work. That’s what I want First 10 to do, so every decision doesn’t keep coming back to the founder.”
Mohit Karwal, Founder, First 10
The work that sits between a founder and a marketing team
A new hire can write content, run campaigns or manage social media. But someone still has to decide which customers matter, what the business should say to them and where the team should spend its time.
When those decisions remain unclear, the effects show up in everyday work. Campaigns change direction halfway through. A marketer is expected to cover several different roles. An agency produces what was requested, but the founder is unsure whether it is helping.
Karwal explores these situations in his LinkedIn writing, including the problem of hiring a marketer while continuing to make every marketing decision yourself.
His approach begins by asking what is actually missing. Does the business need more people to discover it? Are the wrong people enquiring? Do potential customers understand the product but see no reason to buy now?
Each answer calls for different work.
This thinking is consistent with the experience of startup marketing leaders interviewed by First Round, who emphasise understanding the company’s needs before choosing a marketing hire or applying a familiar playbook. First Round
Why fractional leadership makes sense for some founders
A company can need senior marketing judgment before it has enough work, budget or organisational complexity for a full-time CMO.
A fractional arrangement gives it access to that leadership through an ongoing, part-time engagement. Indian startups are already using the model for positioning, planning and marketing direction, as reported by The Economic Times. The Economic Times
For the founder, the useful question is what this person will take ownership of. Who will set priorities? Who will guide the agency? Who will decide whether a campaign needs more time or a different approach?
First 10 offers different starting points. A founder who is unsure what is wrong can begin with a diagnostic. A business with an existing team can bring in ongoing leadership or strategic direction.
Experience across technical products and consumer decisions
Karwal’s experience includes Data Sutram, AjnaLens and QuantInsti, alongside agency-side assignments for established brands.
At Data Sutram, he worked on product marketing, positioning and enterprise communications. The challenge was to make a broad technical platform meaningful to a buyer with a specific business problem. His published account describes sharpening that story and building credibility through content, thought leadership and events.
At AjnaLens, his responsibilities included marketing leadership, team coordination and collaboration across functions. At QuantInsti, he worked across brand, educational content, integrated campaigns and partner coordination.
Earlier, his work at PROHED included digital advertising assignments for YARA, HCL and Pearson. These roles and client assignments gave him experience with both the company setting the direction and the agency responsible for delivering against it. Career portfolio
That background informs how he approaches B2B and B2C marketing. An enterprise buyer may need help explaining a purchase to colleagues. A consumer may need reassurance that a product will deliver what its advertising promises. Both require an understanding of what makes the decision difficult.
Knowing the Indian market means looking closely at the customer
“India” is too broad to serve as a customer profile.
The way someone discovers a brand, decides whether to trust it and completes a purchase can vary by category, location, language and familiarity with the product. BCG’s research on Indian commerce shows how online and offline interactions work together throughout that journey. BCG
For a consumer business, that could mean checking whether its advertising, marketplace listings and website give customers the information they need. For a technical B2B company, it could mean making the business case understandable to people who were never part of the founder’s demo.
Consistency matters here. McKinsey’s global B2B research identifies conflicting information across teams and difficulty reaching knowledgeable support as reasons buyers switch suppliers. McKinsey
What working with First 10 looks like
The work starts with conversations: with the founder, with customers and with the people already involved in marketing.
Karwal reviews how the product is presented, how customers move towards a purchase and what the team is doing today. From there, he helps establish what deserves attention, what needs testing and what can wait.
In an ongoing engagement, that means leading marketing priorities, refining positioning, reviewing performance and coordinating teams, agencies and specialists. It can also include helping the founder decide whom to hire next.
An important part of the work is getting knowledge out of the founder’s head. Why do customers buy? Which objections keep coming up? What can the team decide without asking? Writing those answers down gives people a better chance of doing useful work independently.
The aim is straightforward: customers should be able to understand the product, and the team should know how to take it to market without waiting for the founder at every step.
Founders facing these questions can explore First 10 and book a conversation with Mohit Karwal at first10.workwithmohit.com.
