Hi! My name is Tyler Vawser. I create connections with people and growth in companies. Outside of work, I'm a husband, dad of four, a writer, a reader, and a friend. Right now, I spend my working hours as CMO at Fox Den Capital, a Little Rock-based private investment firm with a portfolio spanning software, healthcare, hospitality, and logistics.
Nearly all of my best moments and memories involve meeting someone unexpected. For that reason, I believe in creating moments when serendipity has a higher probability.
I host dinner parties. I do podcast interviews. I speak at conferences. I send emails to people I admire. I ask questions I don't know the answer to. I think the best things in life are more likely to find you when you're out in the open.
What I do
At Fox Den Capital, I work across a portfolio of companies at different stages, in different markets, with different challenges. The common thread is figuring out how growth happens: where demand comes from, what a brand actually earns in a market, and what it takes to build something people choose over the alternatives.
Before Fox Den, I spent eight years at Apptegy, a K-12 communications platform. I joined in 2018 and led marketing as the company grew from a few hundred school districts to more than 5,250. I was also a key part of growing the team from around 60 people to more than 300, working to build a culture that was both thoughtful and high-performing. During that stretch, our team helped build and grow SchoolCEO: a magazine, podcast, conference, and community for school leaders. It became one of the most meaningful things I've been part of professionally, a bet that reaching superintendents through ideas worth their attention would build something more durable than any ad campaign. It was a team effort in every sense, and I'm proud of what that group accomplished together.
What I believe
Intelligence, fame, money, and title don't create happiness. I want the people around me to be aware, creative, and thankful. I've found that's a better filter for relationships and decisions than almost anything else.
My version of happiness is being calm and having a challenge. I've spent a lot of my career chasing the second part and underinvesting in the first.
If I have one big regret, it's not hiking the Continental Divide Trail after college. 3,100 miles from Mexico to Canada. I've read enough about it to know I want to do it someday. I'm honest enough with myself to know that "someday" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Career
Fox Den Capital, CMO, 2026–present
Working across a portfolio of companies in software, healthcare, hospitality, and logistics. Focused on building marketing functions, finding growth, and connecting brand strategy to business outcomes at each company.
Apptegy, VP Head of Marketing (and VP of People Operations), 2018–2026
Led marketing through growth from ~400 to 5,250+ school districts. Helped grow the team from ~60 to 300+ people. Part of the team that built SchoolCEO, a print magazine reaching 25,000+ school leaders, a podcast, an annual conference, and more.
Marketing Consulting, Startups (on and off over the years)
Worked with early-stage founders on go-to-market strategy, brand positioning, and building the early marketing function. Mostly B2B and e-commerce companies figuring out how to grow.
Sticker Mule, VP Head of Marketing, 2015–2016
Built the first dedicated marketing team at one of the internet's most well-known custom printing companies. Focused on email, content, and growth for a product people genuinely loved.
The King's College, Chief of Staff, 2010–2014
Worked directly with senior leadership at a small liberal arts college in New York City. First real job out of school. Threw myself into it completely and learned more than I expected to.
How I think about brand and marketing
Most B2B companies treat brand as a visibility problem. Get in front of the right people at the right time with the right message. That's demand capture, and it works up to a point. The problem is that in most markets, the vast majority of your buyers aren't shopping. They're not comparing options. They're not ready. And no amount of targeting precision changes that.
What actually moves markets is demand creation: showing up consistently, with something worth a person's attention, long before they're in-market. The brand is not your website, your press releases, or what shows up in a Google Alert. It's what exists in the eyes and ears of your audience, in private conversations, in the texts people send each other, in whether someone recommends you or warns people away. You can't buy that. You build it over time, by doing things that are hard to scale and impossible to fake.
Rory Sutherland calls this psycho-logic: the idea that human decisions are governed less by logic than by perception, context, and the path of least resistance. The best product doesn't always win. The most trusted, most familiar, most socially safe choice does. Marketers who ignore this optimize for the wrong things.
The practical conclusion I've arrived at: the thing that looks unsophisticated is often the sophisticated strategy. High volume, high touch, relentlessly present, even when it's inefficient. Creating demand instead of just capturing it. Doing things your competitors won't do because they seem too hard or too weird. Efficiency is a great servant and a terrible master. The moment your systems start driving your strategy instead of supporting it, you've handed over the keys.
How I got here
I started my career in New York. I worked at The King's College starting in 2010, my first real job out of school, and I threw myself into it completely. 80–100 hour weeks as Chief of Staff. It was the kind of experience that teaches you what you're capable of, which is a polite way of saying it was exhausting and formative in equal measure.
From there I found my way into the startup world, largely through Noah Kagan and the OkDork community, which shaped a lot of how I think about marketing, growth, and showing up for an audience. Along the way I consulted for a handful of startups, mostly early-stage, mostly figuring out how to grow. In 2015 I built the first marketing team at Sticker Mule. In 2016 I moved to Little Rock, and Apptegy came shortly after.
Before New York, I spent significant time living internationally during my teen years, including a year in Japan in Seki, Gifu-ken, plus several summers. It's the experience I'd point to if someone asked what shaped how I think about difference, discomfort, and curiosity. Learning to navigate a place where nothing is familiar is a useful thing to do before you're old enough to talk yourself out of it.
I think serendipity is underrated as a strategy. You still have to do the work. But showing up, staying curious, and saying yes to things that don't obviously fit. That's generated more meaningful outcomes for me than any strategic plan I've ever written.
Personally
I live in Little Rock with my wife and four kids. I mountain bike when I can. I'm more introverted than my job suggests.
I keep a curated list of the books, tools, and things I return to most. You can find it on my favorites page.
If you'd like to connect, pick a time to meet.
Copy/paste bio:
Tyler Vawser is the CMO at Fox Den Capital, a Little Rock-based private investment firm with a portfolio spanning software, healthcare, hospitality, and logistics. Before Fox Den, Tyler spent eight years at Apptegy, where he led marketing as the company grew from a few hundred school districts to more than 5,250, and helped grow the team from around 60 to more than 300 people. He was part of the team that built SchoolCEO, a magazine, podcast, conference, and community for K-12 leaders. He is an avid reader and writer, and a consultant to early-stage startups. Tyler previously built the first marketing team at Sticker Mule.
This is the most I've written about myself publicly.
