Ben Lai

I have a passion for building and mentoring high-performing teams, having led and built groups from the ground up at Mural and Dropbox. My experience ranges from leading product marketing and growth teams in tech to managing project analysts and financial controllers in banking. I can guide you on hiring for skill and potential, fostering a collaborative culture, and structuring your team for success.

Having successfully navigated a major career shift from finance to tech, I offer unique and practical guidance on career development. I can help you deconstruct the process of a major transition: identifying and framing your transferable skills, building a new network, and positioning your experience for a completely different industry. My experience building teams and charting a non-traditional path can help you build a strategic roadmap for your own long-term growth.

I have extensive experience developing and executing GTM strategies that create market impact from large corporations to small start-ups. From launching brand-new products to driving adoption across complex, product-led (PLG) and sales-led (SLG) motions from initial positioning to global adoption plans and sales enablement.

My leadership style is built on a unique foundation of financial acumen from my time in M&A and marketing expertise from leading teams at top tech companies. This allows me to provide strategic counsel that is both market-aware and financially sound. I can help you develop an authentic leadership style and leverage your own unique background as a key strength.

I’ve led multiple complex pricing and packaging initiatives that directly impacted the bottom line. At Mural and Dropbox, I overhauled entire pricing models for both enterprise and self-serve online plans to drive specific outcomes like user adoption and revenue growth, leading to improvements in overall revenue and retention. I can help you analyze the market, model different scenarios, and roll out pricing changes effectively.

I have led the end-to-end launch process for major, high-profile products like Instagram Shop, Dropbox Capture, and Dropbox Dash. My experience covers the entire lifecycle, from defining pre-alpha launch standards to coordinating complex cross-functional efforts and executing multi-channel campaigns that maximize market impact.

I specialize in the journey from zero to one. At Dropbox, I incubated and grew six different product lines from early beta concepts into validated, revenue-generating businesses. I can help you navigate the ambiguity of a new venture, using market research and customer feedback loops to find true product-market fit and a scalable growth model.

I’ve led the full spectrum of product marketing, from core messaging and positioning to strategic functions like competitive intelligence and sales enablement. At Dropbox, I oversaw these functions to drive adoption across a base of 30 million active users. I can help you move beyond just feature marketing to tell compelling stories that resonate with customers and build lasting brand value.

For documentation, mainly for internal communication across product, sales and marketing channels. It's been mainly a repository for content and source of truth for internal employees - from a marketing side: positioning, messaging and persona research, competitor analysis, pricing and packaging findings and potential enablement materials.

Started using Figma with Product Design, but has now been a staple tool to use not just for product design, but also for branding, creative and other marketing assets

Digital whiteboarding and user for workflow visualization for marketing plans and full funnel analysis from TOF to conversion tactics for personas/ICPs

Digital whiteboarding and user for workflow visualization for marketing plans and full funnel analysis from TOF to conversion tactics for personas/ICPs

Utilized GPT for getting from 0-50%, especially when it comes to content execution and basic asset creation. By utilizing this, it gets the job done quicker without waiting for back-and-forth. AI has allowed me to do more with less resources.