# daniela sandu > Category Design | #AInthropology | Product Marketing Location: Emeryville, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/danielasandu Best to play coral and spawn in the ocean, or to be a kiwi and strain to make a giant egg? Build an unencumbered product and find a fit later, or build with guardrails for a category at the same time? That’s the question I keep coming back to. Over the past 15+ years, I’ve worked with founders and teams building things that either didn’t quite fit anywhere or, worse, potentially fit in too many places at once: conceptual frameworks, AI systems, financial infrastructure, emerging technologies. Most were brilliant, but their markets didn’t yet have the mindspace, language, logic structure, or rules to receive them, differentiate them, nurture them, contain them. My work sits in that gap. I busy at the intersection of product, narrative, and market adoption to help companies in early and messy stages —where discovery and system design still happen in parallel—turn nebulous ideas into categories the market can actually understand, evaluate, and buy into. Most of my work integrates category design, product marketing, and go-to-market architecture. In practice, that means translating product reality into credible narratives, aligning teams, and building the IMC systems that allow those narratives to scale across sales, partnerships, and analyst ecosystems. When needed, I roll up my sleeves and run production point hands-on, and I keep things going just as connective tissue does—between product and GTM, between internal truth and external perception, and between early signals and scalable adoption. For the past 15 years I've been close to many a primordial soup, but personally cooked in dark pool trading; Big Data; many areas in IoT; most recently, decision intelligence. Outside of tech, I build categories, too—through olfactive anthropology, research on hyperlexia, and a long-form project on Romanian Communism. Different domains, same pattern: making sense of things that don’t yet have a clear shape, connecting the dots. --- ## Work Experience ### Head of Integrated Product Marketing @ RelationalAI Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area Lead product marketing, category design, and GTM architecture for RelationalAI’s decision intelligence platform. Scope spans narrative definition, analyst alignment, partner GTM (Snowflake), and the systems required to translate product evolution into repeatable market adoption. ### Fractional GTM & Category Design Lead @ Unknown Jan 2007 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area Partner to founders and leadership teams across AI, finance, infrastructure, and nonprofit sectors—helping translate complex ideas into categories, narratives, and go-to-market systems that drive adoption. Work typically spans category design, product marketing, community building, and GTM architecture during early-stage or inflection moments where the product is ahead of the market. — Advised 7 startups from stealth through launch, shaping positioning, product narrative, and initial GTM strategy — Co-developed multiple new categories across finance, technology, academia, and the arts — Designed and executed mixed-method research (qual + quant) to inform product direction, vertical expansion, and organizational changes — Built opportunity maps, messaging frameworks, and growth programs leading to new partnerships, market entry, and internal realignment — Led cross-functional initiatives spanning product, marketing, and operations in high-ambiguity environments Engagements often functioned as an extension of founding or executive teams, bridging product truth with market adoption. ### Category Design Lead (Olfactive Anthropology & Niche Perfumery) @ a nose knows Jan 2010 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area Leading category creation for olfactive anthropology—an interdisciplinary field exploring the semiotics of smell—and advising on market development within niche perfumery. — Defined and advanced a new research category through content, public speaking, and industry engagement — Built one of the most widely referenced bodies of educational content in the field (2.5M+ reach), cited by media and industry practitioners — Advisor to brands and institutions on product evaluation, positioning, and category development — Speaker at major industry and cross-disciplinary events (Esxence, ScentXplore, Google Leadership Conference, others) — Founder of perfumerydirectory.com (in development), a global data resource for the fragrance ecosystem — Contributed to the maturation of niche perfumery markets in Eastern Europe, including Romania ### Head of Marketing & Thought Leadership for IoT @ SQLstream Jan 2012 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area Led category design, product marketing, and GTM strategy for streaming analytics in IoT and intelligent transportation systems (ITS), during an early phase of market formation. — Worked with executive and product leadership to define category positioning, corporate narrative, and product strategy across emerging verticals — Designed and operationalized GTM plans for a disruptive, real-time data platform in a volatile and resource-constrained environment — Owned end-to-end narrative development and execution across brand, content, analyst-facing materials, and demand generation — Managed brand and product integration through two acquisitions — During this period, SQLstream was recognized as a Leader in the Forrester Wave for streaming analytics Operated as the bridge between product innovation and market adoption at a time when the category itself was still forming. ### Brand Integration Lead @ Liquidnet Jan 2008 – Jan 2010 | New York, NY Contributed to category development and global positioning for dark pool trading, working closely with executive, product, and GTM teams. — Supported definition and scaling of a new market category through coordinated global programs across marketing, sales, and communications — Led a major rebranding initiative, including identity evolution and a $1.3M global campaign — Helped define and launch a new subcategory, coordinating GTM execution across regions and channels — Produced executive-level content, presentations, and industry-facing materials for major launches and events This role provided early exposure to category formation in highly regulated, complex markets. ### European Relations Lead @ Primary Capital LLC Jan 2007 – Jan 2008 | New York, NY Led category design and market development for reverse mergers and PIPE transactions across Southeast Europe. — Identified and synthesized investment opportunities across fragmented regional markets, translating them into a structured deal pipeline — Designed and executed educational campaigns, thought leadership, and events to introduce and legitimize alternative financing mechanisms in underdeveloped markets — Built localized awareness and investor engagement through targeted publicity and ecosystem development — Bridged investors, operators, and regional stakeholders to enable deal flow in a category with low initial market familiarity ## Education ### Research Methodology and Quantitative Methods University of Amsterdam ### MIT Sloan School of Management ### MA in IMC & Research Methods Emerson College ### BA in Advertising & PR University of Bucharest ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dana-sandu - Website: https://www.danasandu.com/cv - Website: http://droomboon.org/ --- Source: https://flows.cv/danielasandu JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/danielasandu/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05