Key takeaways
- Treat it like a new business. Moving upmarket is essentially trying to capture fundamentally new customers. To succeed you need to be prepared to just learn for at least a year, have multiple failed experiments, and possibly change everything about your product and business model.
- Hire pioneers, not (stubborn) experts. Since success will be through experiments, you need a team that's excited to be creative and flexible to find the right playbook. For example, hiring a seasoned executive with a ton of contacts won't guarantee success. Rather, you'll have a better change with someone that will obsess over finding new ways to convince someone, anyone to try your product.
- Throwing everything at the problem is not focus. Just because you've dedicated all marketing, sales, product, and budget into a problem doesn't necessarily mean you're focusing on it. As previously mentioned, not everyone or every function is ready to experiment! Instead, form a team of pioneers with enough resources to experiment and learn as much as possible to build your playbook.
Personalities in the episode
Anil Kumar, VP of Go-to-Market Strategy & Operations at Carta, and helped Sift, Atlassian, and Quantcast move up-market
Summary
After helping four different companies move upmarket, Anil shares his insights for others who want to do the same.
- Moving upmarket is essentially starting a new business (01:50 - 9:30)
- To get it right, you need laser-focus and at least a year to experiment (10:00 - 19:00)
- Finding champions and changing your servicing model or customer success is key (19:20 - 26:00)
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