Category creation and product-led differentiation with Drift's David Cancel
This week in How to Win: David Cancel is the CEO and Founder of Drift. Drift created the category of conversational marketing and has gone on to dominate the space, with over $120 million in revenue, and around 700 staff. We talk about category creation, the death of product-based differentiation, and how to create mental availability at low cost by thinking outside the box.
Key Points:
- David talks about category creation and conversational marketing (01:05)
- I give my thoughts on category creation and category design, with a quote from Chris Lochhead (03:50)
- David talks about the downsides of category creation, and Drift's success was a bet (4:50)
- I give my thoughts on the pitfalls of category creation, with a clip from Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta (07:40)
- David discusses the cost of category creation, and how Drift had to look for low-cost, high-reward ways to build mental availability (09:45)
- I give my thoughts on the surround sound effect, with a quote from Alex Birkett (15:10)
- I give my tops tips on generating mental availability, with a clip from Les Binet on the 60/40 rule(17:10)
- David gives his thoughts on commoditization and competition emerging in the category (20:25)
- David talks about the cycle of technology in SaaS (21:55)
- David discusses the death of product-based differentiation (23:30)
- I give my thoughts on product-led growth as a transient competitive advantage (24:15)
- David discusses Drift's failure to create a 'revenue acceleration' category (24:55)
- I give my thoughts on Drift's learnings and strategic narrative, with a clip from Andy Raskin (26:30)
- David gives his thoughts where the market is going next (27:50)
- David talks about how SaaS has to pivot to become customer-centric, not business-centric (29:20)
- David discusses their next milestones and the value of teams and the human component (30:10)
- Wrap Up (31:00)
