Beyond Features: How Sleuth Shifted Their Messaging from Product to Value

The hardest pivot in B2B software isn’t changing your product – it’s changing how you talk about it. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Sleuth CEO Dylan Etkin revealed how they transformed their message from technical features to business impact.

The Feature Trap

When Sleuth launched, they focused on deployment tracking, a technical feature that grew from Dylan’s experience at Atlassian. “We started with this thing that we’re calling deployment tracking, and it’s still at the core of what we do. But it was not the value that organizations are looking for,” Dylan explains.

This initial messaging reflected their engineering roots but missed the bigger opportunity. The challenge wasn’t just tracking deployments – it was understanding and improving engineering effectiveness.

Finding the Value Layer

The breakthrough came when Sleuth realized they needed to speak to a broader organizational need. As Dylan puts it, “really, at the end of the day, we’re helping teams understand how efficient their engineering organizations are, and we’re providing them the tools in order to get better.”

This shift wasn’t just semantic – it reflected a deeper understanding of what customers actually wanted. “Every engineering team I’ve ever worked with wants to do what they’re doing in a more effective and more efficient way,” Dylan notes.

Aligning with Industry Standards

A crucial part of Sleuth’s messaging evolution was aligning with emerging industry standards, specifically DORA metrics. “The Dora metrics have really allowed us to take the real information and glean some sense of usefulness out of them,” Dylan shares. “And so a market has grown up around that.”

This alignment helped bridge the gap between technical features and business value. The four key metrics – deployment frequency, lead time, failure rate, and mean time to recovery – provided a framework for discussing engineering efficiency in business terms.

The Continuous Evolution

Sleuth’s messaging continues to evolve with the market. “Being in a market that is nascent and currently evolving, our messaging and what resounds and what customers are looking for is evolving daily,” Dylan explains.

This evolution requires constant attention. As Dylan notes, “we have to continuously remind ourselves that what was really giving us traction 18 months ago may not be actually giving us traction today, and that the conversation has evolved and the competition has evolved.”

Elevating to Platform Status

Today, Sleuth positions itself as a comprehensive platform for engineering efficiency. They’ve moved beyond individual features to paint a picture of organizational transformation, drawing parallels to other successful platforms. “The analogy I like a lot right now is Salesforce for engineering,” Dylan shares.

This comparison isn’t just about features – it’s about value. As Dylan explains, “what Salesforce did was sort of say to everybody, this is how you do it. You don’t have to be a top tier team in order to use these tools.”

Key Lessons for B2B Founders

1. Start with customer needs, not technical features
2. Align messaging with recognized industry standards
3. Continuously evolve your message as the market matures
4. Draw parallels to successful platforms in other domains
5. Focus on organizational transformation, not just tool adoption

For technical founders, Sleuth’s journey offers valuable lessons in messaging evolution. The key isn’t just building great features – it’s helping customers understand how those features drive business value. As markets mature and competition increases, the ability to elevate your message from technical capabilities to business impact becomes increasingly crucial for success.