Dave Gerhardt

Current role: Exit Five

Dave Gerhardt is the founder of Exit Five, a private community for B2B marketers. The site bills it as the number one private community for B2B marketers, under the tagline of what is actually working in B2B marketing right now. It reports a newsletter of more than 40,000 subscribers published twice a week and a paid community of more than 7,000 B2B marketers. Those numbers are the company's own and have not been independently audited.^[1]

Around the community, Exit Five runs a podcast, live events, a CMO Council for senior marketing leaders, an experts network, a job board and sponsorship products. Its site lists a Drive 2026 event and a Marketing Leadership Retreat scheduled for March 1 to 3, 2027 in Scottsdale, Arizona.^[1]

Drift: from marketing manager to Chief Brand Officer

Gerhardt started at Drift in 2015 as a senior marketing manager and rose to Vice President of Marketing. A professional profile credits him with growing revenue from zero to eight figures during that time, helping to popularize the conversational marketing category and launching the company's Hypergrowth conference. These are self-reported achievements rather than audited results.^[3][2]

He left Drift in 2019 to become chief marketing officer of Privy, a role he held for just under two years, and then returned to Drift as Chief Brand Officer. Drift's reported valuation of $1 billion is tied to that later period.^[3][2]

Earlier career

Before Drift his experience included marketing and account-management roles at Constant Contact and Privy, and he produced The Growth Show podcast at HubSpot. He holds a bachelor's degree in marketing from Wagner College, earned in 2009.^[2]

Building an audience into a business

He is also the author of a book titled Founder Brand, and his professional profile describes Exit Five as a community with a podcast and newsletter. His own career, from brand-builder at Drift to running a media and community company, shows the shift from employee to owner of an audience.^[2][1]

Views on messaging and brand

Podcast conversations list his recurring themes: nailing a company's messaging, building a founder brand with its pros and cons, niching down to drive growth, and shifting from a yes mindset to a no mindset.^[3]

Why he matters

Gerhardt represents a path in which a B2B marketing operator turns working knowledge into a subscription community. Exit Five's reported newsletter and community scale, and its programs for senior marketing leaders, show how far that model has grown.^[1][2]

On The Executive List

Dave Gerhardt is ranked No. 49 on The Executive List (October 2026) in the Chief Marketing Officers discipline. The ranking reflects The Executive Review's own editorial Trending Score; it is not an outside award, and placement on the list is never sold. View the October 2026 edition.