Why Channel99 Isn’t Creating a New Category (And What They’re Doing Instead)

Category creation has become the default playbook for B2B startups. LinkedIn is filled with advice about creating new categories, and venture capitalists often push founders to carve out entirely new market spaces. But after pioneering the Account-Based Marketing (ABM) category with Demandbase, Chris Golec is taking a different approach with Channel99. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, he explained why.

The Real Cost of Category Creation

Having built the ABM category from scratch, Chris knows firsthand the challenges involved. “It’s really painful and hard to create a new category,” he explains. “It takes a lot of time and a lot of patience and a lot of investment.” This isn’t just about marketing budget—it’s about the opportunity cost of educating the market instead of solving immediate problems.

The ABM journey at Demandbase illustrates this challenge. As Chris notes, “ABM was a lot more a little bit more of a head scratcher for people when we first rolled it out.” Even with a clear value proposition, getting the market to understand and adopt a new category framework takes significant time and resources.

When Easy Understanding Trumps Category Creation

Channel99’s approach is deliberately different. Rather than creating a new category, they’re positioning themselves within the broader framework of B2B performance marketing. As Chris explains, “I can tell you from at least my early customer interactions, everybody gets what we’re doing. They know the problems we’re solving.”

This immediate understanding is valuable, especially when addressing fundamental business challenges. Channel99 aims to help companies understand “what’s working, what’s not, and what is the rest of the industry doing? Am I average? Am I above average? Am I best in class?” These are questions every B2B marketer already asks—no category education required.

Transforming Instead of Creating

Instead of creating a new category, Channel99 is transforming how companies think about marketing measurement. Chris describes their mission as bringing “the real source of truth to B2B marketing. Much like Adobe has done in the B2C world. But in B2B there is not a single platform for managing and measuring all your vendors and channels.”

This approach—improving how companies operate within existing categories—can be more powerful than creating new ones. It’s about solving recognized problems in new ways rather than convincing people they have problems they didn’t know about.

The Dark Funnel Opportunity

A perfect example of this strategy is Channel99’s approach to the “dark funnel” problem. Rather than creating a new category around this challenge, they’re addressing it within existing frameworks. As Chris explains, “Most of the traffic that comes to a B2B website is from sources or channels that are unknown. Meaning it falls into this bucket just called Direct where people kind of just typed in the URL.”

The solution doesn’t require a new category—it requires better technology within existing measurement frameworks. “We’re going to be introducing a technology that solves for that in the not too distant future,” Chris notes. “And I think it is the thing that people will just really gravitate to because it’s such a huge signal that has been largely ignored up until today in the B2B world.”

The Future of Category Strategy

Channel99’s approach suggests a different path for B2B companies. Instead of always striving to create new categories, companies might find more success by transforming existing ones. As Chris puts it, “Maybe it’s kind of transforming some, but there’s not a new acronym coming. I just don’t know that it’s needed.”

This strategy aligns with how B2B buyers actually make decisions. They don’t necessarily want new categories—they want better solutions to recognized problems. By focusing on transformation rather than creation, companies can reduce market education costs while still delivering revolutionary value.

The lesson? Sometimes the best strategy isn’t to create a new category, but to fundamentally improve how existing categories work. In B2B marketing, where complexity already abounds, simplicity and clarity might be the most disruptive approach of all.