As I'm writing this, I recently learned that my first boss, David Baker, passed away.
The news hit me hard — not just because we hadn’t reconnected in a few years, but because I missed a kind message he sent me in my LinkedIn inbox a while back. I get flooded with spammy DMs and rarely check them.
David was the kind of boss you remember forever. He gave me my first real opportunity in marketing, and the lessons I learned from him shaped so much of my career.
When I met David, he had already lost his voice due to oral cancer and chemotherapy that destroyed his throat and vocal cords. He couldn’t speak, but that didn’t stop him. David had an incredible amount of energy and charisma, and he still managed to communicate through a kind of breathless speech.
The first time I met him was when I interviewed for a junior marketing intern position at Cordial, a startup he cofounded. In the application process, I was asked to write a letter about what marketing meant to me. I carefully crafted every word, and when we sat down for the interview, he told me it was one of the best things he'd read in a long time. The rest of the interview felt more like an inspiring conversation than anything else. He hired me on the spot.
The position was advertised at something like $20 an hour. I was thrilled with that. At the time, I was making around $800 a month working 30 hours a week at my last job. When David asked if I was happy with the rate, I quickly and enthusiastically said yes. Then he surprised me. “Well, I’m going to pay you more,” he said. “I want to pay you $25 an hour — but you have to ask me for it in two months.”
It wasn’t just about the money. David wanted to teach me something bigger: the self-confidence to ask for more, to ask for what I think I’m worth, and even to ask for more than I think I’m worth. “You might be surprised what someone is willing to pay you,” he said. It was one of the most generous lessons I’ve ever received, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
A few weeks into the job, things were going well, and I could tell that David liked me. He asked if I knew anyone else like me who might be interested in joining as an intern. I thought carefully about who I could confidently recommend and ended up introducing my friend Drake. Drake interviewed, got the job, and ended up working at Cordial for over six years.
As an intern, the first marketing hire, and employee #11, David often gave me projects with little instruction and let me figure things out on my own. One painfully unforgettable instance was when he asked me to organize a photoshoot for the founders to get updated headshots and team photos for our about page. “See what you can figure out and loop me in when you have questions.”
I didn’t give the photographer any guidance, didn’t help the founders coordinate what to wear, didn’t arrange transportation, and didn’t even attend the photoshoot to oversee it. The result was predictably chaotic: one founder wore a bright t-shirt, another a suit, another business casual, and another a plain t-shirt. The photographer had no idea what we were trying to accomplish, and neither did the founders. I dropped the ball completely.
When they came back, David pulled me into a room. “Hey, I just want to let you know the photoshoot didn’t go well, and you should have been there,” he said. He wasn’t angry or upset though. “I sort of knew this would happen, but I wanted to give you an opportunity to handle it yourself. Here’s what I would do differently.” He walked me through everything step by step.
It was one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever received, not about organizing a photoshoot, but about taking ownership.
When I started as a part-time intern, I was still finishing my last semester of college. I told David from the beginning that my goal was to earn a full-time position after graduation. I think he respected me for being upfront about my ambitions, and when I graduated that May, we sat down, and he offered me a job.
It was a dream come true. I was so paranoid about landing my first “big-boy” job and not letting anyone down. David gave me that opportunity, in an industry I grew to love: tech and B2B SaaS.
But he didn’t stop there. When I told him I could start the next day, he stopped me. “You have your whole life ahead of you to work full-time. Take some time off.” Then, he gave me $2,000 and told me to take a trip with a friend to celebrate graduating.
Me and my best friend Jeremy spent five days in Seattle, exploring, decompressing, and celebrating — an experience I never would’ve had without David’s thoughtfulness and generosity.
David wasn’t just a great mentor — he was brilliant. He was always ahead of the curve, with ideas that seemed like glimpses of the future.
Back in 2017, he told me, “If I were you, I’d be investing heavily into social media. Social is the future of B2B marketing.” At the time, I couldn’t even grasp the magnitude of what he was saying. Today, trends like building in public, founder-led marketing, and B2B influencers make it seem obvious.
He also believed deeply in the inevitability of AI. He would randomly pull me into a room and start scribbling on the whiteboard to teach me about technology and marketing. Quite a few were about how AI would transform marketing: how it would change the way we create content, understand consumer behavior, and target ads and emails.
David taught me how to think like a marketer and carry myself with confidence. I'll never take the investment he made in me for granted.
Rest in peace.
