Hi Rajaraman! This is a wonderful question. I’ll start by saying that the reason Wildbit turned 20 is because we have multiple products. If we only had Beanstalk, it would have plateaued and our options would have really pushed us to sell. Having different products in different markets is a superpower to building a long-term, sustainable business.
I think you see this more in non-tech companies. In tech we call these pivots, and we see them often as company missions shift (I’m thinking of Mailchimp here: They went from email marketing to all marketing for small businesses). But in non-tech it’s not unusual to have multiple product lines to mitigate risks, especially risks we can’t control. Market shifts are just one example.
I agree with you on the importance of really, deeply, understanding your customer and your market. For us that has never felt like a heavy lift because it’s built into how we work. We have a brilliant customer-facing team who are attuned to what customers are saying and feeling. They share all those details with the product teams. We also tend to dogfood and use our own products, so we become our own customers. We also don’t have a traditional sales team. We only do pre-sales conversations to help support potential customers. And the biggest difference on our team is that “sales” lives in Product. Rian, our Head of Product, takes most sales calls. Our customers appreciate that, and it’s a competitive advantage.
With a product agnostic approach, we’re not focused on a single market, persona, or industry. Instead, we look at how the products can support our broader Wildbit goals. Then we give as much autonomy as possible to the folks who are doing the work, and trust them to get it right. As an example, our DMARC Digests product took off pretty quickly and is managed by two folks on our team who share most of the work. Between the two of them, they are also doing marketing, customer research, design, and development to figure out what’s next.
It’s not too different than the four of you starting out. You don’t need a huge team to understand different markets. You need to create space for small teams to have the autonomy and trust to understand what to build next. As I write this, I’m thinking about this HBR article on how Apple is organized for innovation. We do things in a similar way, with teams that can go deep on problems, with the authority to make decisions.