Trust Is The Ultimate Differentiator In The Age Of AI with Dave Steer

AI is accelerating everything. But acceleration without trust just amplifies risk.

In this episode of Future of Marketing, hosts Ethan Smith and Mada Seghete talk with Dave Steer, CMO of Webflow, to explore why trust is becoming the defining advantage for companies navigating the AI era.

Drawing from two decades of experience across platforms like eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Twitter, and Cloudflare including helping lead Cloudflare through its IPO, Dave introduces a simple but powerful framework: (Reliability + Credibility + Approachability) ÷ Self-Interest. In a world where AI can generate anything, trust determines what customers actually believe.

The conversation digs into why the average CMO tenure is just 18 months, and how attribution theater, not incremental ROI, is quietly eroding marketing’s credibility inside companies. Dave argues that marketing teams must tie their work to real, dollar-based impact measured against a single north star metric, or risk being seen as cost centers rather than growth drivers.

This episode is a candid blueprint for marketing leaders who want to prove value to the CFO, build durable trust with customers, and evolve their teams before the market forces them to.

What You'll Learn:

The Trust Equation: (Reliability + Credibility + Approachability) ÷ Self-Interest and why it determines whether customers buy
Why most CMOs struggle to prove value and how to shift from attribution theater to incremental ROI
How to evaluate a CMO role using the Three-Part Fit Test: people, bones (TAM), and personal narrative
Why positioning requires choosing a lane you can own even when the market shifts weekly
The three phases of AI adoption: assistant, agentic workflows, and the future go-to-market engineer
How creativity becomes a competitive moat in an AI-saturated, attention-fragmented world
Why authentic customer stories outperform polished testimonials
Practical ways to protect deep work and strategic thinking in an always-on environment

About the Hosts:

Mada Seghete is the CEO and co-founder of Upside, a next-gen revenue intelligence platform for B2B leaders. Previously co-founded and was CMO of Branch, helping scale to $100M+ revenue. Cornell Engineering graduate with Masters and MBA from Stanford. Partner at XFactor Ventures investing in women founders and organizes yearly retreats for 100+ women founders.

Ethan Smith is the Founder and CEO of Graphite Growth, a premium Vertical AI Growth Agency that helps companies like Webflow, Notion, MasterClass, and Captions drive sustainable revenue growth via SEO, content, and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Ethan is also an adjunct professor at IE Business School.

About the Guest

Dave Steer is the Chief Marketing Officer at Webflow and an experienced marketing leader with cross-category expertise spanning B2C, B2B, and developer marketing. He has held senior leadership roles at some of the world’s most iconic technology companies, including Facebook, Twitter, eBay, PayPal, and Cloudflare, where he helped scale the company through its IPO.

Dave specializes in product and solutions marketing, brand strategy, and go-to-market execution, leading large global teams through periods of hyper-growth and market transformation.

Learn more about how Webflow helps marketing teams create, manage, and optimize personalized web experiences that drive real results.