Jonathan Greene

Marketing leader, builder, writer.
Currently CMO at Scratch.

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Twenty-five years building brands at the intersection of technology, culture, and audience.

From pioneering digital capabilities at agencies in the late '90s, through global brand innovation at R/GA, into the startup ecosystem at Techstars, to leading marketing for one of the largest creative platforms in the world. I've led teams of 5 and teams of 75. Built things from nothing and reinvented things that were everything.

Today I'm CMO at Scratch — the foundation behind the world's most popular coding platform for kids. 160 million registered users. 70+ languages. 465,000 projects shared every day. My job is to make sure the world knows what this thing is and why it matters.

Hamilton College, BA Comparative Literature, 1995. The liberal arts → technology marketing arc wasn't planned, but it's the truest line through everything I've done.

Road in winter

What I'm focused on right now.

Scratch

Rebuilding the marketing function from the ground up — brand positioning, email infrastructure, Meta advertising, revenue strategy, board-level reporting. Small team, enormous platform.

Work Related

A daily editorial digest at workrelated.cc — technology, culture, and the things between. Published every morning.

Adjacent

A trend intelligence site at adjacent.media — tracking signals across AI, commerce, culture, and connected ecosystems. Daily briefs and deep-dive reports on what's emerging and why it matters.

Cycling

Roads north of the city. Gravel in the Hudson Valley. The bike is where the thinking happens.

Updated March 2026

Bridge in winter

This site started as a blog in 2008 and ran through 2015 — commentary on technology, culture, the agency world, and whatever else was on my mind. The posts are all still here at their original URLs.

Greatest Hits

Nokia N95 or Apple iPhone?

Six months after the iPhone launch, a hands-on comparison of the two devices that defined the smartphone era. Creation vs. consumption, carrier lock-in, the open/closed platform debate.

iPad Offers a Clean Slate

Same-day analysis of the iPad reveal. Not a shrunken laptop — an evolved phone. Written before the press consensus formed.

All the News That's Fit for Whatever You Want and Wherever You Are

The newspaper industry's forced reinvention into hyper-local, multi-platform, user-generated news. Anticipates the full arc of local news disruption.

Our Ambient Glanceable Future Is Arriving Now

Connects smartwatches, wearables, and ambient computing into a thesis that described the Apple Watch paradigm before Apple announced it.

The Future of Payments and Loyalty Is Here Now

A field report from Disney World's MagicBand rollout, written the week Apple Pay launched. Frictionless payments work when the whole experience is owned end-to-end.

Defending Liberal Arts

The rare personal essay. A Comparative Literature degree, critical thinking, synthesis — the real professional skills that compound over a career.

Web Video War is Facebook's to Lose

The prediction that Facebook wins because social graph beats platform quality was early and correct.

MCX Highlights Merchant Ignorance

A takedown of the retailer consortium trying to block Apple Pay. MCX collapsed within two years.

Browse the full archive →