6 Critical GTM Lessons from Moesif’s Category Creation Journey

When your competitors include Datadog, New Relic, and major cloud vendors, you either pivot or perish. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Moesif founder Derric Gilling shared how his company transformed from a distributed tracing solution into a category-defining API analytics platform. Here are the key GTM lessons from their journey.

1. Know When to Abandon a Crowded Market

The hardest decisions often yield the greatest rewards. Despite initial traction in distributed tracing, Moesif recognized the writing on the wall. “We quickly recognized that everyone from Datadog and New Relic to the cloud vendors are going to go after this space,” Derric explains. This led to a pivotal decision in 2019 to pursue “more of a blue ocean, a market that we could grow into and become a new category.”

2. Time Your Market Entry with Shifting Executive Priorities

Moesif’s pivot coincided with a fundamental shift in how businesses viewed APIs. “API products are no longer just something that a developer is talking about in the background,” Derric notes. “When we talk about microservices now, you hear about founders and C suite and executives talking about an API based product strategy.” This observation reveals the importance of aligning your category creation efforts with emerging executive priorities.

3. Build Methodically, Not Hastily

Rather than racing to market with every feature, Moesif took a deliberate approach to product development. “Don’t boil an ocean,” Derric emphasizes. Even with a clear vision for monetization features, they exercised patience: “We purposely delayed this because we want to ensure our analytics has robust that integrity and governance features before it’s used for billing purposes.”

4. Position Between Existing Categories

Instead of creating a completely isolated category, Moesif strategically positioned themselves between established markets. “We almost sit between two different worlds,” Derric explains. “On one side we see traditional web and mobile analytics players… On the other side of the business, we see a lot of API Gateway or Management players.” This positioning enabled powerful partnerships that created what Derric calls “a one plus one equals three relationship.”

5. Lead with Education in Category Creation

Creating a new category requires more than just building a product – it demands market education. “When you’re creating a new category, it’s really important to really hone in on your customer persona, because you need to explain your solution really well and educate them,” Derric shares. This focus on education helped Moesif establish credibility and drive adoption.

6. Design for Cross-Functional Expansion

Moesif’s GTM strategy cleverly leverages product-led growth for organizational expansion. “We might start with the product, but then we can expand into the engineering use case, into success and support use cases, to sales, to marketing and so on,” Derric reveals. This approach allows them to demonstrate value in one department before expanding across the organization.

Looking ahead, Moesif’s vision extends beyond their current category. “We definitely want to be the number one growth and experience platform for any API business out there,” Derric shares, drawing parallels to HubSpot’s successful modular growth model.

These lessons from Moesif’s journey highlight a crucial truth about category creation: success comes not from being first to market, but from being first to deeply understand and methodically execute against emerging market needs. For founders navigating their own category creation efforts, these insights provide a valuable roadmap for strategic decision-making and market execution.