Follow the build in real time
I post about growth, AI and the farm most days of the week. Follow me on LinkedIn →
B2B growth · Building with AI in public · Author
Engineering intelligent growth.
I've spent 15+ years running growth at Workday, Autodesk, InVision, Smartsheet and startups, plus several businesses of my own, and the best growth engine I've built came from outside the standard B2B playbook. I love testing emerging channels and creative formats, and I judge every test on qualified pipeline. In Growth, Engineered I show you what I tried and what I'd do differently.
Get Growth, Engineered, free on Substack
Or subscribe on Substack →Edition one is out now. Unsubscribe in one click. Read the first edition →
As featured in
Hi, I'm Sophia
Fifteen years in growth, still learning in public.
I know paid media from years of running it. AI is what I'm learning right now, so I test workflows in my own projects, and I share what I can, including what broke.
I didn't start in tech. I got into real estate and lending in 2006, while I was in grad school, then built a frozen yogurt shop and sold it after it hit seven figures. Being a small business owner is still the biggest reason I think about growth the way I do. Until it's your money paying for the ads and your payroll to cover on Friday, you don't fully get what a lead is worth.
15+
Years in paid media and growth12M+
Users of the AutoCAD 360 mobile app I helped launch at Autodesk$1M+
In sales at the frozen yogurt shop I co-founded, before I sold it2
Books on Asian food and farming, published by Chelsea Green and distributed by Penguin Random HouseWhere I've done the work
Growth, Engineered by Sophia Eng
Fifteen years of lessons, one at a time.
What I'm learning building B2B growth with AI, paid media and the signals that predict revenue. Each edition takes one lesson from 15+ years of running growth, or something I'm still figuring out about AI and go-to-market, and turns it into something you can use with your own pipeline.
Free on Substack. Edition one is out now. No sold email addresses, and you can unsubscribe in one click.
- 01The takeaways
Three to five points up top.
- 02The story and the research
One lesson, with the numbers behind it.
- 03One original chart
The idea, drawn so you can share it.
- 04My rules and a checklist
What I'd do, ready to use this week.
- 05Three news items
What changed, with my one-line take on each.
On stage and teaching
A few rooms I've stood in
How buying has changed
The traditional B2B playbook was written for a different buyer.
It assumes someone fills out a form, takes a sales call and learns about you from your team. Today's B2B buyers behave a lot more like B2C buyers: 94% of B2B buying groups rank their preferred vendors before first contact, and they buy from that early favorite 77% of the time, so much of the decision gets made before anyone talks to sales. I learned B2C first, running my own businesses, then spent 15+ years in B2B. That's why I challenge the traditional B2B playbook, and why I love testing emerging channels and creative formats from both worlds and judging them on qualified pipeline.
Source: 6sense 2025 Buyer Experience Report.
How I think
Growth is a systems problem.
A form fill isn't the finish line. The ad platform needs to learn which leads became pipeline, sales needs to know which accounts deserve a call today, and someone has to own the handoffs in between. Those handoffs are where I keep testing AI, and they're what I write about.
Paid acquisition
Experience across Google, LinkedIn, Meta, X and OpenAI ads, judged by pipeline instead of cost per lead.
Signal engineering
Clean first-party data and offline conversions, so every ad platform learns from what sales closes instead of who fills out a form.
AI-native GTM
Enrichment, automation and AI tools where they save hours, with a person on every judgment call.
Learning in public
The AI workflows I'm building, shared with the prompts I used and what I'd change.
Experimentation
Emerging channels and new creative formats, tested one hypothesis at a time, written down before launch and recorded win or lose.
GTM engineering
Enrichment, CRM and automation connected, so targeting, routing and follow-up run without anyone copying data between tools.
What I'm building and learning
Recent notes and experiments
Work with me
Bring this to your stage, or your product.
Your audience leaves with something to change on Monday
Talks on AI-native go-to-market and connecting ad spend to revenue, built from 15+ years of running growth and what I'm testing now. I've spoken at Google, GrowthHackers Conference and SaaStock, and taught growth at CXL alongside Sean Ellis.
Content your buyers will finish
Your buyers scroll past ads. They stop for someone they trust using your product on a real growth problem and telling them what happened. I make that kind of content with a short list of AI, GTM and ad-tech brands.
What people say
What it's like to work with me
"Sophia is one of the most driven and down to earth people I've met in growth."
"I was fortunate to meet Sophia, an incredibly intelligent and strategic growth marketer."
"Sophia recognized in rapid fashion where the marketing challenges were."
"Sophia … is very results-driven, but at the same time carries authenticity."
Artificial Intelligence × Ancestral Intelligence
The newest tools at work, the oldest habits at home.
On weekdays I'm testing what AI can take off a growth team's plate. On weekends my kids and I milk our cows and turn the milk into yogurt and butter, with kitchen skills they learned from their grandmother, on our farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. AI gives me speed. The land keeps asking me whether something will still be working in ten years, and I want both kinds of intelligence on any team I'm part of.
Growth is more than what I do. It's how I live.
Learn it in five minutes, not fifteen years.
One lesson in each edition from the campaigns, companies and businesses I've run, and from what I'm still learning. Free on Substack.