Aligning your business to your customers' interests with HoneyBook's Oz Alon
This week on How to Win: Oz Alon, founder and CEO of HoneyBook, a client management software for small businesses. Founded in 2013, HoneyBook recently completed their Series E funding valued at $2.4B. In this episode, we discuss HoneyBook's obsession with their customers, and how they stayed ahead of competitors by aligning their product with the interests of their target audience, supporting them initially in ways that wouldn't scale. I share my thoughts on category creation, the experimenter's mindset, and why word of mouth is the most important channel for B2B marketers.
Key Points:
- How HoneyBook got its start (00:58)
- Oz explains why he views competitors as incentive for improvement (02:27)
- Why HoneyBook is shifting strategies to invest in category creation (04:31)
- My thoughts on category and subcategory creation with a quote from Guillaume Cabane (06:08)
- I explain why choosing an ideal customer and being the best at catering to their specific needs is a winning strategy (11:51)
- Oz relates what he learned from HoneyBook's failed experiments (12:45)
- I discuss the experimenter's mindset, with a quote from author Annie Duke (14:04)
- Oz maps out the four main sales channels that are productive for HoneyBook (15:59)
- I explain why word of mouth is the most important channel for B2B marketers with a quote from Metadata's Jason Widup (19:53)
- Oz explains HoneyBook's obsession with their customers, and why he feels that gives them a competitive advantage (22:00)
- My thoughts on the value of doing things that don't scale in the early days of your business, with a quote from Airbnb's Joe Gebbia (25:11)
- Oz advises founders to focus on aligning their business models with their customers' interests (29:11)
- Wrap up (30:40)
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