Director of Marketing · Marketing engineer · Sacramento, CA

Before I spent client money, I spent my own.

I started in tech investment banking, then bet my own money on frozen desserts: 3 companies, 2 of them acquired. For the last 13 years I've been a full-stack marketer at a Bay Area agency: paid, SEO, social, analytics. Lately the job has turned into marketing engineering: agents, apps, AI in the loop.

Ride the story → Read the writing
Marvin smiling on a blue cargo e-bike, one of his kids in a helmet on the back seat, on a street next to a park in Sacramento Off the clock
Sacramento, on the cargo bike, with a co-pilot in the back.

Stage profile, 2005 to 2026

Descent Rolling Climb Steep
2006 2009 2012 2015 2018 2021 2024 2026 Blog, 2006 2008 hits Tuttimelon opens Joins Jade Orchard Pop Up Gelato Acquired · HC AI in the loop Now
Altitude = what I had on the line. Personal scale, not a scientific one. Tap a segment to jump to that stage
Ride data

20 years in marketing, 8 of them spending my own money.

Each of these gets its own stage below. The acquisitions were Pop Up Gelato and Pop Carts, both bought by Phthalo Investments on August 31, 2018.

Ventures built
3
Tuttimelon, Pop Up Gelato, Pop Carts
Acquired
2
Phthalo Investments, 2018
Yrs in marketing
20
Since the first blog, 2006
Yrs at Jade Orchard
13
Since July 2013
Currently building
WalkSteady · DailyDen
Ride mode
The route

Finance, then founder, then the agency.

Stage 00Finance · 2005 to 2009

Numbers first.

My first job out of college in 2005 was investment banking at a boutique, research-driven tech bank, followed by operations at JPMorgan Chase. On the side, in 2006, I started a personal finance blog, The Zen Capitalist, which is where I first learned what it takes to get a stranger to read something.

Those years taught me to read a business through its numbers, and then 2008 showed me how fast those numbers can stop working. I decided I'd rather run a business than analyze one.

The Zen Capitalist, since 2006 ↗
Marvin on the floor at Tuttimelon in Modesto: the self-serve machines, the orange banquette, and the customer photo wall behind him
Modesto. The photo wall behind the machines was the customers.
The Fresno Tuttimelon mid-buildout: framing, ladders, and an unfinished counter
Fresno, mid-buildout.
Stage 01Tuttimelon · 2010 to 2015

Two storefronts and a stack of credit cards.

30+people hired and trained, and I did all of the marketing myself

At 26, 2 partners and I opened a frozen yogurt shop in the Vintage Faire Mall in Modesto, funded with savings and credit cards, then a second one at Fashion Fair in Fresno. We built a supply chain out of the Central Valley, and the Modesto Bee named us Best New Dessert Shop.

Fresno closed in 2013 and Modesto in 2015, and both times the thing that beat us was mall rent. The lease taught me more than the award did.

The full Tuttimelon story →
Stage 02Marketing for hire · 2012 to 2013

Other people's businesses, same instincts.

While the stores were still open, other people started paying me to do what I'd been doing for myself. I built a network of EDM music blogs, which taught me distribution and SEO with my own time on the line. In 2012, San Jose Options hired me as Director of Marketing, Digital.

Up to this point every dollar I'd managed was either mine or a small company's, and every result had my name on it.

SJ Options print collateral: letterhead, business card, and logo lockup SJ Options collateral, 2012. My first in-house marketing title.
Case · WODshop.com, Los Angeles

3 months in, as a consultant

Indexed. Grey is before (or the industry standard) at 100.
Traffic
+150%
Revenue
2x
Conversion vs industry
+50%
0100200250

Also: Instagram to 13K. Work covered SEO, CRO, social, and business development.

Stage 03 · SummitPop Up Gelato · 2014 to 2018

Tabletop gelato stations that pop up anywhere.

Marvin and a Pop Up Gelato co-founder behind two tabletop gelato stations at a wedding fair, 2014
A wedding fair, 2014. Engaged couples were how we got the word out.
A line of Tesla employees waiting for gelato inside the Fremont factory
Inside the Tesla factory, Fremont.
A Pop Carts ice cream cart in a holographic Supergoop wrap, parked under redwoods
Pop Carts, wrapped for Supergoop.

In January 2014, my partners and I started Pop Up Gelato in San Francisco with a simple idea: tabletop gelato stations, quick to set up anywhere. Within a couple of years we were the Bay Area's mobile gelato bar, working from Napa to Santa Cruz and down to LA and Orange County, for Google, Genentech, Stanford, SpaceX, and Tesla, where we served 12,000 employees across the Fremont plant and the Palo Alto HQ over multiple days, and got asked back.

We added gelato carts, and then I spun up Pop Carts, an ice cream cart rental business, with carts wrapped for Supergoop, Marc Jacobs, and Henry's Hard Soda. On August 31, 2018, Phthalo Investments bought both.

The full Pop Up Gelato story →
First scoop to acquisition
4yrs 7mo
Stage 04Jade Orchard · 2013 to now

The client's seat, from the other side.

I joined Jade Orchard in July 2013, 6 months before the first gelato station and with a frozen yogurt store still open in Modesto. For the next 4 years I was both: the marketer running paid media for an agency with 400+ clients, and the owner spending his own money on the other side.

Today I run paid across Google, Meta, and TikTok for schools, restaurants, and franchises. In 2017 Facebook brought me in, under NDA, to tell their ads team what breaks for media buyers. My title is Director of Marketing. The function, more every month, is marketing engineer: I build the systems the team runs on.

THE YEARS I WAS BOTHTuttimelonFor hirePop Up GelatoJade Orchard201020132016201920222026
Marvin taking a selfie at a kitchen table work session with a co-worker, laptops open Facebook visitor badge, NDA, December 14, 2017
A WFH day with one of my Pop Up Gelato co-founders. I hired him at Jade Orchard 3 years ago. Inset: the Facebook visitor badge, 2017.
Stage 05Building now · nights and weekends

2 apps, AI in the loop, and my kids as the QA team.

WalkSteady · webcam
WalkSteady calibrating: a face mesh over Marvin's face on a webcam feed, with the nose landmark tracked at Nose Y 546 Calibrating · locking onto the nose

WalkSteady Mac · in development

A Mac app that steadies your webcam while you walk on a treadmill through Zoom calls. Your head bobs with every step, and the people on the call don't see it.

walksteady.app ↗
DailyDen key art: a young girl and a fox companion on a floating island, with a quest card reading Make your bed, parent approved, plus 10 XP

DailyDen iOS · App Store soon

A chore app where kids finish real-world quests, parents approve them, and XP turns into rewards.

Ship log · GitHub, private repos included

I ship code.

The last 90 days of commits across my app and site repos, private ones included.

–Contributions
–Days shipped
–Day streak
github.com/mfontanilla-coder ↗
01 to 56 to 2021 to 5051+· Pulled from GitHub, refreshed every 6 hours
Systems

A weekday, in agents.

I'm a tech optimist, and this is where I put that to work. Before I've had coffee, three agents I built have already sorted my tasks, swept the paid accounts for problems, and written my brief. The rest run on a calendar or on request.

6:45 am · dailyTask sorterRe-sorts my Asana tasks by due date before the day starts.
7:00 am · dailyPaid media health checkSweeps Meta and Google Ads for disapprovals, spend spikes, and drift.
7:30 am · dailyMorning briefGranola, Asana, Slack, and the calendar, in one read.

Monthly

  • Client report pipelineGA4 · Meta · Google Ads → design system

Quarterly

  • Creative deck per franchiseMotion · Asana

On request

  • Ad copy from the dataMotion · Meta Ads
  • AEO and GEO page mockups
  • Social schedulingGmail → Hootsuite
The peloton

Who I've ridden with.

Tesla Google EA Sports Genentech Apple Ben & Jerry’s Stanford SpaceX Ace Handyman Services Netflix WODshop Uber CK Mondavi Waymo Salesforce Institute of Technology Oracle Blizzard Activision Birdcode UC Berkeley Kaiser Permanente Newmark Cornish & Carey Dolby Fitbit San Jose Options Intuit Supergoop Marc Jacobs National Holistic Institute Henry’s Hard Soda PopSugar Kohl Mansion

Condensed: Pop Up Gelato and Pop Carts clientsItalic: Jade Orchard brandsGreen: consulting
Off the bike computer

Away from the desk.

Marvin holding his son and daughter under a Walk. Bike. Bus. street banner that shows him riding a cargo bike with two of his kids
Under our own banner, around the corner from home.
Bikes

My family ended up on the lamp posts.

We ride everywhere as a family, enough that jibe, a Sacramento nonprofit that gets people walking, biking, and taking transit, put us on the banners for its Walk. Bike. Bus. campaign. That's me on the cargo bike, with two of my kids in the back. So we went looking for every banner we could find.

Marvin holding his baby daughter and pointing up at the banner, with his son and older daughter waving
All 3 kids
Marvin and two of his kids at a bike path crossing under the banner
Bike path
Marvin holding his daughter and his son's hand under another Walk. Bike. Bus. banner on a tree-lined street
Found another
Marvin kneeling at the front of a group of about 25 riders with road bikes and e-bikes in a tree-lined parking lot before a community ride
Marvin waving at the front of a line of riders in reflective vests and headlamps on an evening jibe ride
Evening ride, vests and headlamps on.
Community rides · with jibeNavigate Natomas

I've helped lead several of jibe's Navigate Natomas community rides. Road bikes, e-bikes, a couple of kids, and the occasional ride after dark, all rolling out together.

What I believe

The tools finally caught up to the ideas.

I'm a tech optimist. For most of my career I had more ideas than I could build, so I wrote the brief and waited on someone else to make the thing. Now I build it myself, on a weeknight, and ship it before the meeting where we'd have scoped it. That's the most fun this job has been in 20 years.

Loyalty, counted in years

  1. 13years at the same agency. I started in July 2013 and never left.
  2. 1co-founder from the gelato days, hired into Jade Orchard 3 years ago.
  3. ∞a lifelong friend who became my business partner, and stayed my friend.
  4. 14years with Kona, the family dog.
Point of view
A prompt gives you an answer. A skill gives you an outcome.From “Turning a marketing team into an AI-assisted one”
Sep 9, 2026

A weekday, in agents

My title is Director of Marketing. My function, more every month, is marketing engineer. Here's what that looks like between 6:45 am and the end of the day.

 Sep 8, 2026

I built a gelato company on nights and weekends. Then we sold it.

A gap next to the frozen custard trucks, a first event at the NEMA apartments, wedding venues from day one, Tesla's factory floor, 2 hubs with tasting rooms, a cart-rental spinoff, and a sale 4 years and 7 months after the first scoop.

 Jul 21, 2026

I bet everything on a frozen yogurt shop at 26

The marketing education that shaped how I work today. Learned the hard way, from the owner's seat, running every part of a business.

 Jul 20, 2026

Why I moved my site off Squarespace to Cloudflare Pages

I left a drag-and-drop builder for a static site on Cloudflare. Here's what I gained, what it cost, and why I'd do it again.
All posts →