How Cosine Markets an AI No One's Heard of ... Yet

In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Sarah Monette, Head of Marketing at Cosine, a UK-based AI coding agent built for highly regulated industries. Sarah joined Cosine three and a half months ago after stints at NetSuite, Nexthink, and Vertice, and walked in as a generalist marketer with zero ML background — now running all marketing functions at a 30-person, five-days-a-week in-office company. The conversation covers how she's building credibility in a space dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, why in-person dinners are her highest-ROI channel in the age of AI-generated everything, and how she built a "GTM brain" that feeds her weekly strategic direction.Topics Discussed:Building trust at a deep-tech AI startup selling into defense and healthcareHow UK AI sovereignty became Cosine's category-defining narrativeLanding a UK government sovereign AI grant — and what the process actually looked likeWhy partnerships, not outbound, are the primary GTM motion for regulated enterpriseThe "Built for Engineers with Taste" campaign and the strategic value of divisive messagingRunning channel experiments across X, LinkedIn, and Reddit to find where enterprise buyers actually liveHow a developer-led head of growth uses unbranded micro-experiments to validate products before launchBuilding and operating a GTM brain: a running AI system fed weekly with news, product updates, and customer signalsUsing Cosine itself to audit the website, evaluate click paths, and rewrite marketing narrativeLessons For B2B Tech Marketers:Use Partnership-Led Trust to Break Into Regulated Enterprise When you're selling into defense or healthcare, you're not winning deals with content or cold outreach. Sarah's primary GTM motion at Cosine is building one or two deep partner relationships with consultancies or government-adjacent organizations that already hold the trust of her target accounts. Those partners then co-host dinners and facilitate warm introductions. The trust is transferred, not manufactured from scratch. The unlock was recognizing that the partner's credibility is the product in early enterprise sales.Turn a Macro Narrative Into a GTM Wedge Cosine operates at the intersection of AI sovereignty, UK national infrastructure, and regulated software engineering. When the US government restricted access to Fable 5, that geopolitical moment validated Cosine's entire positioning. Sarah didn't create that narrative — she made sure Cosine was already there when it mattered. The takeaway: identify the macro forces your product is aligned with and stay close to those conversations so you can move fast when the moment breaks.Run Divisive Campaigns on Purpose The first campaign Sarah ran at Cosine was "Built for Engineers with Taste" — messaging explicitly designed not to appeal to everyone. It was built around who the product is not for (including herself), which made it land harder with the people it was made for. As she put it: "If you're trying to please everyone, you're going to please no one." For early-stage B2B products with a narrow ICP, the cost of vague, inclusive messaging is invisibility. The cost of specific, polarizing messaging is just a smaller audience that converts at a higher rate.//Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire. Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM