Robert Tomkinson

CMO - Fractional or Full-time

at Self

I’m Robert Tomkinson, a senior operating executive with 20+ years of experience building, scaling, and integrating consumer and marketplace businesses across venture-backed, PE-backed, and public-company environments. My background includes leadership roles at companies such as eBay, EA, Yelp, TouchTunes, Ingenio, Puls, and CoPilot. I’ve served in CMO and VP-level roles, partnering closely with founders and CEOs, and helping teams navigate key inflection points including brand and product launches, go-to-market resets, monetization expansion, fundraising, and M&A integration. A significant part of my career has been hands-on operating work at moments of complexity: diagnosing and aligning product, marketing, data, and finance around growth priorities; clarifying positioning and customer value propositions; and turning strategy into execution. I bring a strong analytical foundation from earlier consulting and VC investing experience, combined with practical leadership experience building, reorganizing, and leveling up teams, partners, and vendors; operating at scale; navigating exogenous shocks; and presenting to Boards and investors. I enjoy working directly with founders as a sounding board and thought partner, particularly around marketing and adjacent disciplines when the path forward isn’t obvious. My style is pragmatic and operator-first: helping teams focus on what actually moves the business, avoid over-engineering solutions, and make confident decisions under uncertainty to drive results.
California
AI & Data Science, Consumer FinTech, DTC (Direct-to-Consumer), Media & Entertainment, Social Media & Community Platforms
#Board#Leadership#Mergers/Acquisitions#TransformationA/B TestingASOAttribution and AnalyticsB2BB2CBrand partnerships and monetizationBrand Positioningbusiness developmentCRMCROCustomer AcquisitionCustomer RetentionExecutive LeadershipFinancial modeling and strategyGo-To-Market (GTM) StrategyMarketing StrategyPerformance MarketingPRProduct MarketingSEMSEOSMB marketingSocial Media Advertising

Articles by Robert Tomkinson

Sales Discovery & Qualification for Startups Richard Harris

Unblocking Startup Growth: Best Practices for Sales Discovery & Qualification with Richard Harris

Startups are in a constant race against time and resources, navigating complex sales environments with lean teams and limited margins for error. In a recent session from the Mucker Growth...

LinkedIn Playbook for Startups and Founders

The LinkedIn Playbook: How Startup Founders Can Stand Out & Scale

This LinkedIn Playbook is based on insights from a recent one-time Mucker Growth Session webinar featuring LinkedIn growth experts Alec Paul (Founder of SalesBrand) and Kyle Williams (Founder of Brickstack)....

DeepSeek vs OpenAI Comparison Breakdown and What It Means For Your Tech Startup With Dan Cleary

DeepSeek vs OpenAI: Comparison Breakdown and What It Means For Your Tech Startup With Dan Cleary

In this recent webinar of our Mucker Growth Series, we discussed the evolving AI landscape with Dan Cleary, founder of PromptHub. He provided an in-depth breakdown of DeepSeek vs. OpenAI,...

Webinar Building Product Without Using Code - AI-powered product development

Building Product Without Knowing Code With Adam New Waterson

In a deep dive into AI-driven product development, Adam New-Waterson, a former CMO turned Chief Product Officer and now solopreneur, shared how non-technical founders can harness the power of AI...

Blog How to build and automated sales engine from ColdIQ

How To Build An Automated Sales Outreach Engine For Startups with ColdIQ

Many B2B startups (and even larger organizations) are unable to be successful with their outbound sales strategy because they take a lazy, “batch-and-blast” approach. In a recent Mucker Growth Series...

Navigating AI Sales Tools webinar with Blue Bowen from G2

Navigating the AI Sales Tools Landscape To Grow Your Startup With Blue Bowen

We had the privilege of hosting, Eugene “Blue” Bowen, Research Principal from G2, one of the leading software marketplaces and review sites that cover a broad range of B2B solutions....

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