The short version: No. Plenty of companies have succeeded without creating a category. But sometimes, it is necessary. Below, Rick Schultz, CMO at Databricks, explains how they created one.
Rick Schultz’s team thought they were creating a category for years with the term “unified data analytics.” But when they stumbled upon a pithier portmanteu—data lakehouse—things took off. Suddenly, buyers got it. Though some reacted negatively. Some critics thought it silly.
Two years later, one of those initial critics wrote a book with that title—Building the Data Lakehouse. “When we first posted, everybody slammed us,” recalls Rick. “But we stuck with it.” A few years in, Databricks’ customers were clamoring to say they’d pioneered it.
“I don’t think you have to create a category,” says Rick. “ There’s many companies who’ve been wildly successful who have won their markets without really creating a category … but we did, and there were some lessons along the way.
Watch: Rick on creating a category
Many startups would benefit from focusing less on creating a category and more on defining their personas. If you are targeting everybody you are targeting nobody, and you’ll have greater success if you simplify that thrill just a few types of individual. In Databrick’s early days they just had two primary personas and two secondary. It wasn’t until they were hundreds of millions in revenue that they started branching out to other personas.
Watch: Rick explains Databrick’s early personas
If you don’t have good, proven messaging for your personas, pause and spend a quarter on that. All else will follow the success of that messaging. Once you have messaging that works, don’t change it. It takes years to sink into the market.
Watch: Rick on taking a quarter for messaging