Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristina Kennedy.
Hi Kristina, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My dad owned a pool repair business, my mom ran music and play classes for parents and kids, and my brother owns a real estate appraisal company. You’d think that made me destined to start my own company, but it did the opposite. I watched how hard they worked and how much pressure they carried, and I told myself, “I will never do that.” I’d earn a paycheck, and someone else could worry about making payroll.
So I spent the first decade of my career in marketing at fast-growing consumer-tech startups like Zipcar, Gazelle, BigCommerce and Abine. I learned as much as I could, as fast as I could, and I rarely stayed anywhere more than about three years. (I love a steep learning curve.)
Then in 2012, I started business school at MIT Sloan. That’s when I started thinking about building an agency. I did my undergrad at Notre Dame, and so I like to make the analogy that you might not be a football fan when you arrive at Notre Dame, but you’re very likely to be one by the time you leave. With MIT, you might not be an entrepreneur on day one, but something changes by the time you’re walking across that stage.
Thirteen years later, Kickstand has grown from its original roots as a high-growth, high-tech PR firm into a hold co that manages Kickstand Communications and its digital services arm. We work with some of the most exciting tech brands in the world through their highest periods of growth, establishing categories and category leaders.
Along the way, my role has continued to evolve. I’ve gone from PR pro to communications strategist, digital marketer, operations leader, and now, CEO.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Not even close. Entrepreneurship is, by definition, an exercise in repeated failure. Clients turn down your proposals. Employees leave. Ideas flop. Competitors win. Every founder hears “no” far more often than “yes.”
Earlier this year, I bought out my co-founder and took full ownership of Kickstand. When a partnership is no longer sustainable, the options for a business are all challenging roads. Leading up to it, I knew I wanted to convert the challenges into opportunities to put more of what we earned back into growth: better tools, deeper expertise, bigger bets. I knew that was impossible under the current structure, so I tried to shift my focus to creating those outcomes for the business and the team rather than the challenges of the deal.
Since the deal closed, things have moved fast. We kept every client and our entire senior team. We reorganized the agency around the industries we know best, each led by a specialist, and within 100 days that change had built up $3 million in new business opportunities. Our cybersecurity practice doubled in six months, and we’re headed for double-digit growth. We have also begun focusing on strategic M&A and are actively managing a $10M pipeline of opportunities.
I’m most excited about where we’re headed. The way people find information is changing faster than at any point in my career. Buyers increasingly ask AI tools for answers instead of searching or reading the trades, and that puts the credibility PR builds at the center of how companies get found. We want to be the firm that helps tech companies win there, and the place where top PR and digital marketing talent comes to build their careers.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
At Kickstand, we’re unique in that we specifically focus on high-growth tech companies that are changing the way we live, work, and play.
The growth stage is a pressure cooker. It is the most intensity a team, brand, and product will likely ever go through. The reason is because the runway to prove out success is relatively short. Limited investments will be made, limited talent exists, and new competition is coming from every direction. A few products will prove out value. Most will not. At the end of the day, there will be winners, but there will be more losers.
When I think about our team’s expertise in this stage, I’ve been saying this extreme analogy.
Let’s say you find yourself in need of a hitman. I’m not asking why. Let’s just assume you have your reasons. But certainly those reasons are big, urgent, maybe a matter of life and death. Now, when you go out to hire this hitman, you almost certainly aren’t hiring one that’s never murdered anyone before. You’re definitely hiring the person that’s proven to be quite capable of the whole murdering thing.
Extreme, yes. But growth stage is quite literally life for a brand or death of it. Not all will survive. Brands cannot afford to hire teams that have done it once or a few times. What it takes to win is a team that’s done it over and over. They’ve seen product pivots; they’ve seen ICP’s change and expand; they’ve gone up market, international, changed leadership teams, had down rounds, and up rounds. They know what’s likely to happen before it happens; they can pivot on a dime and work at an uncommon pace. We call it unparalleled proactivity – and it really is the Kickstand DNA.
Founded out of MIT, we back this with a completely different approach. Everything is about how we move data and intelligence upfront to form hypotheses, keep data flowing throughout, and rapidly keep good programming in and get bad programming out. The outcome is more results, better and faster. We call it “the science of PR” because it’s a methodology that’s been proven to build categories and category leaders for more than a decade of technology innovation.
What I’m proudest of, though, is the agency itself. Much of the culture and benefits were born out of past experiences- I wanted to build a company where people truly felt empowered to excel in both their careers and their personal lives. Our benefits have been praised in places like Forbes, Digiday, and Scary Mommy, and we’ve won a Stevie Award for equal pay and been named a Top Agency Workplace by PRovoke Media. Keeping our whole senior team through an ownership change says more about our culture than any award could.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
It should always feel hard. As soon as it stops feeling hard, it’s time to put yourself in a new room.
I grew up a competitive gymnast and was a diver in college, and I was almost comically good at finishing just outside the cutoff. If seven gymnasts advanced, I was eighth. If the top eight divers made finals, I was ninth. I was even waitlisted at both my college and my business school. For years I thought those near misses just built a thick skin.
My oldest son taught me what they really meant. He started competitive tennis at seven, and he lost constantly. We assumed he just wasn’t very good. Then we learned that in tennis, if you’re playing at the right level, that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen. Even great players lose about half their matches, because they keep playing people at the edge of their ability.
Building a business feels the same. You’ll lose proposals, miss opportunities, and hear “no” far more than “yes.” If you’re never coming in second, you’re probably not aiming high enough. When things start feeling too comfortable, it’s time to move up a court.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://meetkickstand.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/3545671
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@meetkickstand
