What is your advice for startup platform category creation? Where have you seen the most success in terms of channels for this type of creation?

In my experience, category creation requires two things at the start: Point of View - which articulates your perspective on the problem(s) your target market is looking to solve [why is the problem worth solving, what are the key steps in solving the problem, what kind of tech solutions will help you to solve the problem].  Positioning - which articulates your unique value proposition for your target market The messages and stories that flow from this become the basis for your campaigns. General ...Read More

Winning your category and taking control of it can be a super powerful strategy. However, I think too many go straight to creating a new category. We should first strongly consider how we can redesign a category that exists and win by renewing how people think about the category. Category creation isn’t for everyone. It is really hard to do. While it can be powerful, it can also be really difficult to pull off, take a long time, get expensive, and become a major distraction for your team if it’s ...Read More

If you're building demand for a new category, it's ideal that there's runway for a platform and not just a handful of features. Can you start in one area that you're uniquely positioned to own and then grow to serve different sizes of customers (SMB to mid-market to enterprise) or different stages (expand from checkout to post-purchase or discovery)?  It's important to prioritize where to focus initially and where to expand. Internal prioritization is great, and don't forget to talk to customers ...Read More

Category creation is a unique messaging and positioning initiative when your startup is providing a differentiated value that doesn’t exist in the industry today. When I think about new markets like the subscription economy or SaaS platforms, these categories didn’t exist a few decades ago.  Every startup should look at existing categories and NOT try to fit into a category if that isn’t the value for customers. Often times, customer advisory boards help guide and share perspectives on the ecosy ...Read More

Creating a new category is hard, and not sure that a channel strategy is what comes first to mind when creating a new category. More often than not, category creation involves breakthrough product or a breakthrough business model. In other words, it can't be up to the marketing team to create a new category by giving them a large budget. Study "category kings" like Gong, Gainsight, Slack, Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot. One mistake I see many seasoned marketers make in their quest to create a new ...Read More