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Chris Brablc, a New York native turned Bostonian, is Generac’s Senior Director of Marketing. With his extensive background in the startup scene and killer marketing wisdom, Chris rises to the occasion when it comes to solving interesting challenges with the Generac Team!
Q.) What brought you to Generac?
A.) I met Amos, co-founder of Generac 4-5 years ago at a mutual friend’s party during Porchfest in Somerville, MA. That friend also happened to be a co-founder of Generac. They had been talking about Generac, and how they started building the first devices and then we actually got to talking about marketing and what they could be doing! Amos and I kept in touch over the years since, and when I was at a point in my life where I was looking for something new, we got in touch because they were looking for someone to take over marketing.
Q.) What’s your professional background?
A.) After college, I worked in the life insurance industry in a professional development program. After a few years doing that in New York, I came back to Boston and got into the start-up scene. I first started working with an HR technology company called Smash Fly Technologies. We were bootstrapped for a number of years then ultimately worked our way up into taking two rounds of funding. The company is still going! I worked there for 8 years, and I was employee #3 back in the day.
It kind of gave me a crash course in the different stages of start-up companies, and marketing to emerging product categories. At Smash Fly we went from teaching the market how to do recruitment marketing, to being an established player in the product category of recruit marketing platforms, to then having a ton of competitors.
Q.) In your opinion, what’s the best thing about Generac?
A.) To me, there are two things:
1.) It’s really an environment of solving complex challenges and taking ownership to actually do them. In general, we are a company that gives ownership to every employee. That’s important to me because then it feels like there’s trust.
2.) I just enjoy the people and forming relationships across departments. Being able to talk to the Product team about what they’re working on, and talking to the Sales and Customer Success teams is great. It’s nice to have that transparency to solve challenges together versus being siloed in your own department.
Getting to know Chris
Q: What are 2 things no one knows about you?
A: I was a pretty big competitive bowler at one time. In high school, I carried an over 200 average, and I was pretty good for our region, but I haven’t picked up a bowling ball since.
And I’m big into sci-fi and adventure books. Usually, when my headphones are in I’m listening to books, from non-fiction businesses to sci-fi adventures like The Expanse.
Q: Do you have an office nickname?
A.) In the office, I’m known as Coach. This is because I coach a high school girls basketball team, and there’s more than one Chris who works here.
