6 Go-to-Market Lessons from BrightHire’s Category Creation Journey
Creating a new software category is a bold strategy that most startups avoid. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, BrightHire CEO Ben Sesser revealed how his company is successfully pioneering the “interview intelligence” category, offering valuable lessons for founders considering a similar path.
- Build for Tomorrow’s Reality, Not Today’s Limitations
The decision to create a new category should be grounded in a clear vision of the future. As Ben explains, when looking at advances in AI and technology, his team asked themselves: “Did we believe that five years from now all of that would exist but hiring would still be pen and paper notes and people’s memories? That was not a feature that we felt reasonable.”
This forward-looking perspective helped BrightHire identify a transformation that was inevitable, not just possible. Rather than trying to fit into existing categories, they positioned themselves at the forefront of this change.
- Customer Success Trumps Marketing in Category Creation
While many founders focus on marketing to establish a new category, Ben emphasizes a different priority: “No amount of marketing is going to create a category. What’s going to create a category is extremely happy customers telling their peers how great something is, and more people adopting it such that it hits a tipping point and goes to that sort of classic adoption curve.”
- Rethink Traditional Sales Conversations
Category creation demands a different sales approach. Instead of feature-benefit conversations, BrightHire focuses on deeper discovery: “If we are bringing a slightly different, newer version of something that people are already using today with existing budget, we would be having much more of a features, functionality, and pricing conversation… But for us, there’s a lot more discovery and then there’s a lot more conversation that we have where we’re connecting the value our product delivers back to pain.”
- Invest in Community Without Immediate ROI
BrightHire’s creation of their Shine community demonstrates the importance of long-term thinking. As Ben notes: “We don’t use it for commercial purposes. We don’t advertise and talk about BrightHire in there. It’s really a separate space for the Ta professional.” This approach builds trust and credibility in ways that traditional marketing cannot.
- Study Successful Category Creators
Rather than starting from scratch, BrightHire studied companies like Gainsight that successfully created categories before them. Ben highlights their approach: “They built a really strong community in customer success, which was kind of nascent at the time. They did a tremendous amount of education and content development around best practices to codify what great looks like in customer success and create thought leadership.”
- Connect Your Category to Core Business Outcomes
BrightHire anchors their category creation efforts in fundamental business priorities. As Ben explains: “If your team is the most important grief for your success. And hiring is how you build your team. Then hiring is among the most important activities that you do as a business.” This connection to core business outcomes helps justify the investment required for category adoption.
The journey of category creation isn’t for everyone. As Ben acknowledges, “Category creation is definitely always a challenge, even if the rewards are great. You’re educating the market on a new, better way to work. So it takes a lot of time and it’s always a work in progress.”
For founders considering this path, these lessons offer a framework for thinking beyond traditional category creation playbooks. Success requires more than marketing – it demands a long-term commitment to customer success, community building, and market education. As Ben puts it, you’re not just creating a category, you’re “bringing something new into the world.”
Twitter
facebook
linkedin