7 Go-to-Market Lessons From a Veteran Category Creator’s Playbook

Building a new market category requires more than just a novel product – it demands a strategic approach to customer development, content, and market education. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Eric Olden, CEO and Founder of Strata Identity, shared insights from creating three successful categories in the identity management space.

1. Start with Problems, Not Solutions The foundation of successful category creation lies in deep customer development. Eric spent nearly a year interviewing potential customers before writing any code for Strata. “Get your hypothesis as vetted and validated as you can and document it,” he explains. “Through those notes of customer development, that’s when you can start to find what you’re going to build, the solution to the problem.”
2. Master the “Dirty Dozen” Approach Rather than trying to please everyone, Eric advocates for focusing on a small group of early adopters – what he calls the “dirty dozen.” “Really make sure that you get the first twelve customers right… The reason it’s dirty is that you’re dealing with customers that are really unclear about what they want because they’ve never seen this before.” The goal isn’t to satisfy all twelve, but to find the six to eight who “have the same problem and they’re all happy with the same solution.”
3. Build Content Around Customer Problems When launching identity orchestration as a category, Eric discovered that “no one was going into Google and searching for identity orchestration. What they were doing is they were searching for their problem.” This insight led to a content strategy focused on addressing specific customer challenges rather than promoting category terminology.
4. Invest Heavily in Analyst Relations Despite common skepticism about analyst relations, Eric considers it crucial: “Analysts and the media relations, I think are one of the most under invested in things that I think founders should look at prioritizing.” He advises making it one of your “top three” marketing priorities.
5. Focus on Substance Over Sizzle Having survived the .com crash, Eric learned to prioritize real business value over hype. “Let’s focus on substance as opposed to sizzle and hype,” he shares, noting how this lesson applies to today’s AI boom: “People are now just saying whatever the business problem may be, and they’re going to throw some AI onto it, as if that somehow makes it a good thing, and it doesn’t.”
6. Contract Your Message While Expanding Your Product For 2024, Eric emphasizes the importance of focused messaging: “The product expands, but our message contracts. And so I like to think about it as market the vision and sell the product.” This approach helps companies “attach to a budget they have to solving that problem.”
7. Build for the Long Term Content marketing success requires patience and consistency. As Eric notes about Strata’s SEO strategy: “One of the most popular pieces of content is something I wrote back in 2020.” This long-term investment in problem-focused content has helped establish Strata’s category leadership without relying on paid advertising.

These lessons reflect a deeper truth about category creation: it’s not about quick wins or marketing gimmicks, but about solving substantial problems and effectively communicating that solution to the market. For founders looking to create new categories, Eric’s experience suggests that success comes from rigorous customer development, targeted content creation, and unwavering focus on solving real problems.

The key is maintaining balance between vision and execution. While you need to paint a picture of the category’s potential, you must also deliver concrete value that customers can budget for today. As Eric puts it, you need to “really orient your go to market message around a very concrete, tangible set of value propositions, solving very tactical things.”

For B2B tech founders embarking on category creation journeys, these lessons provide a roadmap for avoiding common pitfalls and building sustainable market leadership. The path isn’t easy – but with the right approach to customer development, content, and market education, it’s certainly achievable.