The Best Marketers Don’t Become Engineers with Evan Lee

In this episode of 1 to 100, Evan Lee explains his move from Shoelace, which evolved into a growth marketing agency, to Motion. He built Motion’s marketing, sales, customer success, and support functions. Motion now has about 85 people and has raised $65 million in total capital.

AI changed Motion’s hiring priorities. The company shifted toward engineering and spent about a year and a half building internal AI infrastructure. Motion did not reduce headcount because of AI. Employees use the company’s internal product in their daily work.

Evan’s hiring approach starts with conviction in the business. Motion develops people internally and looks for candidates who are undervalued by the market but have high potential. Its interview process covers instinct, admiration, team impact, intellectual honesty, communication, storytelling, and judgment.

Evan describes Runneth as a virtual machine for each brand. It stays active, works across the team, and provides a shared source of truth. Runneth pulls in reviews, competitor information, and news to build a context engine, persona matrix, and messaging matrix.

Teams can use Runneth through Slack to create ads, generate creator briefs, review creative, and apply naming conventions. Evan says users can also store media-buying logic in the system. Motion is focusing the product on marketing.

Evan argues that marketers should build strong marketing judgment as AI makes more execution available. He describes a durable take as an opinion rooted in the brand, the customer, culture, and the market. Developing those opinions requires absorbing more information and connecting it to the work.

The conversation covers outcome-based software, AI budgets, templates, and the growing importance of strategy. Evan also explains the name Runneth and discusses how trust builds through repeated results.

Chapters 00:00 Evan and Motion 02:48 Motion’s growth and AI shift 05:33 Hiring for potential 11:03 Runneth and a computer for each brand 14:49 Brand context and work in Slack 19:24 Expert agents and templates 21:39 Outside expertise and marketing skills 26:36 Marketing judgment and durable takes 33:07 Paying for outcomes 36:25 The singularity 38:49 The name Runneth