Category creation and brand building

Barbra Gago is a B2B SaaS marketing leader who helped build Miro's global brand and visual collaboration category, and previously led go-to-market at Greenhouse and CultureAmp; she is now building Pando, an employee progression platform. The conversation covers when to create a new product category versus winning an existing one, the mechanics of category creation, rebranding, building brand and values, and designing opinionated software.

01Key learnings

• Create a new category only when the scope is big enough to matter and you can see signals like emerging budget lines or buyer language; otherwise, win within the existing category.
• Abandon category creation quickly if customers keep calling you by the existing category name, as Greenhouse learned with applicant tracking, and invest instead in elevating that category.
• A category is only real once competitors and analysts validate it, so welcome new entrants who adopt your category label as proof it exists.
• Build a category by listening to how customers describe their pain points, then pair PR and thought leadership with relationships with analysts and directories like G2 that shape how buyers classify products.
• Rebrand early, after product-market fit but before scale, and keep visual nods to the original brand so loyal early customers feel respected.
• Run a rebrand like a product sprint with clear owners and transparent steps, since naming, legal, domains, and collateral all have to move together.
• Make brand an extension of company values and people, so every customer touchpoint expresses the brand without needing to train each interaction.
• Keep company values short and memorable; overly long value lists are hard to remember and fail to shape behavior.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.