Bolaji Anifowose did not grow up dreaming of marketing. At 16, he was deep in science, plotting a future in engineering with metals and lab coats firmly in the picture. Today, he is a product marketing manager and go-to-market (GTM) engineer with over seven years of experience helping startups across Africa and beyond find their footing, launch products, and build what he calls compounding growth engines.
His client list reads like a who's who of African tech infrastructure: Simpu, Distrobird, Chatbase, and Tecno, among others. Across those engagements, he has led demand generation campaigns, product launches, and market expansion strategies that have moved the needle in real, measurable ways.
Anifowose describes his work in disarmingly simple terms. He says his job is to make sure people come and look. He helps companies that have built something good figure out how to tell the right people about it, in a way that makes them say "I want that." He finds the audience, shapes the message, and builds systems that repeat the process.
The engineering mindset never left him. He says he still approaches marketing the way he would approach a materials problem: test, measure, find the system underneath the noise. That instinct is central to his work in GTM engineering, a term Clay coined in 2023. A GTM engineer builds systems that generate revenue, combining AI, automation, and creative problem-solving to give a small team the firepower of a much larger one.
What does that look like in practice for a startup with a lean team and a big market to crack? That's exactly the question worth sitting with.
Originally published by TechCabal.