Case 04 of 06 · Onum
Building the Product Marketing Function in a Company Acquired by CrowdStrike
At a glance
- Role
- Global Director of Product Marketing · founding PMM
- Period
- July 2024 – September 2025
- Scope
- Full PMM ownership
- Context
- Seed-to-Series A transition · real-time data pipelines
Key contribution · Built PMM from the first hire: architecture-to-value positioning, launches, RFP/ROI, and seller enablement.
Onum builds real-time data pipeline and observability technology. Germán joined as its first Product Marketing hire — negotiated during the Seed stage, onboarded after the Series A — and owned the whole PMM function. Onum was acquired by CrowdStrike in 2025, for a reported $290M.
Context
A deeply technical product, a small company moving quickly, and buyers who need to justify a new data architecture. There was no existing Product Marketing function, so every hour spent had to be chosen carefully.
Owned Remit
Whole Product Marketing ownership as founding PMM: positioning, buyer use cases, analyst relations, feature launches, RFP and ROI support, and Sales enablement.
Learning the Technology Fast
Credible positioning required understanding the architecture: hybrid and air-gapped deployment, Linux and Kubernetes, separate management and data planes, mutual TLS, multi-tenancy, and APIs and SDKs. Germán's engineering and systems background made it possible to learn this quickly and test which technical claims mattered commercially.
Prioritizing by Expected Return
With a broad remit and limited capacity, Germán chose work by its expected commercial return and deferred lower-return alternatives. His direct manager specifically highlights this habit of prioritizing by expected return.
Architecture to Buyer Value
The positioning moved from buyer problems — data ingest costs, control, and traceability — to what the platform does about them: filtering, enrichment, optimization, and routing. An observability whitepaper set out evaluation criteria and use cases across IT, OT, and IoT. Launch content connected feature changes to the daily workflows of administrators and engineers.
Supported Outcomes
- Product Marketing function established from the first hire.
- Technical overview, solution overview, whitepaper, and launch content supporting Sales conversations, RFPs, and enterprise deal support.
- Company outcome: Onum was acquired by CrowdStrike in 2025, for a reported $290M.
Corroboration
“I had the privilege of hiring Germán as Global Director of Product Marketing and having him on my team at Onum. Though we worked together for a shorter time than expected due to company restructuring, I can honestly say that he is one of the finest product marketing professionals I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Though he was brand new to the industry when I hired him, his technical acumen, positive attitude, ability to quickly build strong personal relationships, and strong sense of business urgency enabled him to learn the product and technology in record time. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly he was able to dig in and begin adding value! Germán is knowledgeable, articulate, collaborative and detail oriented. His writing skills are outstanding and he is a prolific producer of a wide range of customer- and sales-facing content. He is also an extraordinary team player who gladly shares his knowledge with the larger team to help everybody perform better.
Unlike many who are only leaders in title, Germán truly performs at the Director level, with the ability to determine what projects will produce the greatest return, and then prioritize those projects over less critical needs. And when he sees a gap, he speaks up and offers advice and guidance on how to fill those gaps – offering solutions, rather than just highlighting problems. I highly recommend Germán for any marketing leadership role!”
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