Scott Brinker
Martech analyst, advisor, and author
Scott Brinker has been writing chiefmartec, a publication about the intersection of marketing, technology, and management, since 2008. Short for “chief marketing technologist” — a hybrid of CMO and CTO topics — the site serves a global audience of thousands of marketing and technology leaders. In 2023, he summarized 15 ideas from the site’s first 15 years.
Dubbed the “godfather of martech” by Ad Age, Scott is widely regarded as a pioneer and leading authority in the field. He has curated the popular marketing technology landscape for over 15 years, defined the concept known as Martec’s Law — which has influenced everything from corporate innovation to naval warfare strategy — and was a key architect of the agile marketing movement. Recent industry reports he’s co-authored include Martech for 2026 (December 2025) and the State of Martech 2025 (May 2025).
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Scott is the author of the internationally best-selling book Hacking Marketing, about adapting agile software development concepts to the practice of marketing. He is also the co-author of the Wall Street Journal best-seller The New Automation Mindset, explaining how to harness the power of AI and automation through democratization, continuous iteration, and process-level design. He has written articles published in Ad Age, Adweek, Harvard Business Review, Information Week, and TechCrunch.
Scott co-founded the MarTech Conference in 2014 and served as its program chair through 2021. He is a popular keynote speaker, having headlined hundreds of conferences and events worldwide.
He previously served as VP of platform ecosystem at HubSpot, where he built HubSpot’s technology partner program from the ground up to more than 2,000 ISVs. Before that, he co-founded and served as president and CTO of ion interactive, a SaaS platform for interactive content that was acquired in 2017. Previously, he led the technology practice of a leading web development agency. He started as a teenage software developer, writing multiplayer games for dial-up bulletin board systems (BBS), a forerunner to the web.
Scott serves on the board of directors of Dobility, makers of the leading field research platform in international development, used by John Hopkins University, Oxfam, Stanford University, and the World Bank. He was also an advisor to OfferFit, a leader in AI decisioning applied to customer lifecycle marketing that was acquired by Braze in 2025, and Workato, a leader in AI enterprise automation.
Scott holds a B.S. in computer science from Columbia University, an S.M. in computer science from Harvard University, and an MBA from MIT.
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Available for keynotes, advisory engagements, and research collaborations.