Oct 27, 2022 · 55m · lennys-podcast
Category creation and brand building | Barbra Gago (Pando, Miro, Greenhouse, Culture Amp)
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In this episode, marketing executive Barbra Gago shares tactical frameworks with Lenny Rachitsky on navigating B2B category creation, executing high-stakes company rebrands, and designing opinionated software products.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Lenny holds 25.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Lenny as informed peer 3.5 Guest teaching 5.5 Guest disagreement 1.2 Lenny pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is Lenny, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 19:41 Pushing back on misguided category creation efforts
Barbra firmly pushes back against the trend of startups manufacturing arbitrary categories when their products lack genuine differentiation.
Hardest push from Lenny ▶ 25:53 Lenny presses on whether category creation is truly binaryLenny challenges the black-and-white framing of either creating a category or competing in an existing one, asking if a middle-ground strategy exists.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 14:20 Barbra breaks down why Greenhouse stopped fighting the ATS categoryBarbra provides a detailed masterclass on why fighting entrenched buyer terminology failed at Greenhouse and how elevating category value was more effective.
Lenny holds their own ▶ 38:15 Lenny shares firsthand insights from the Airbnb rebrandLenny demonstrates deep practical domain knowledge by contrasting Miro's rapid sprint rebrand with Airbnb's multi-year rebranding effort.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Lenny as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Lenny pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barbra Gago's Career Background and New Venture, Pando | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Lenny opens by asking Barbra to summarize her career and introduce her thought process regarding when to create a new category versus competing in an existing one. Barbra explains her experiences with Miro and Greenhouse, distinguishing between when category creation expands a market and when market realities demand staying in an established category. | |
| Defining Product Categories and Positioning Strategy | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Lenny asks for a baseline definition of what a software category is and shares an anecdote about positioning his own podcast as number one in its category. Barbra breaks down category taxonomy on review sites like G2 and how categories map to buyer pain points and budgets. | |
| Evaluating Failed Category Creation and Elevating Existing Categories | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Barbra details Greenhouse's unsuccessful attempt to rebrand the ATS category as a recruiting optimization platform due to entrenched customer vocabulary and existing budgets. She explains how Greenhouse pivoted from category creation to elevating the perceived value of the existing ATS category. | |
| Miro’s Strategic Evolution into Visual Collaboration | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Lenny asks how Miro established the visual collaboration category when enterprise budgets didn't exist for it yet. Barbra clarifies that Miro unified fragmented use cases into an enterprise vision while continuing to optimize for tactical search intent. | |
| When to Avoid Category Creation and When to Pivot | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Lenny asks when it is a bad idea to pursue category creation. Barbra explains that established companies with little product differentiation will waste resources trying to force a category shift if customer terminology doesn't support it. | |
| Market Waves and Inflection Points Shaping Categories | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Lenny asks whether creating a category is binary or if there is a middle ground. Barbra explains using Pando as an example: capturing existing search budget in performance management while progressively shaping the market for employee progression. | |
| Sponsor: Vanta | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Following a sponsor read, Lenny transitions the conversation to rebranding and asks Barbra how to know when it is time to change a company name. Barbra describes her initial skepticism about joining RealtimeBoard due to its literal name and how she made rebranding a condition of joining. | |
| Executing a High-Stakes Rebrand Under Tight Timelines | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Barbra details the logistical complexities of executing the Miro rebrand in under five months using agile product management principles. She emphasizes the importance of cross-functional buy-in and transparent communication across all departments. | |
| Creating an Authentic Love Mark Brand | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Lenny shares insights from Airbnb's extensive rebranding process to compare notes on building an authentic brand. Barbra explains how company values directly shape visual systems and behavioral touchpoints with users. | |
| Structuring a Scalable Brand System | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Lenny prompts Barbra to break down the tangible elements of a scalable brand system beyond surface aesthetics. Barbra explains how brand systems connect typography, voice, visual identity, and company values. | |
| The Power of Building Opinionated Software | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Lenny asks what makes software truly opinionated and when founders should enforce workflows versus offering total flexibility. Barbra explains that opinionated software encodes proven best practices to eliminate systemic problems like bias in performance reviews. | |
| Lightning Round: Recommendations, Mentors, and Insights | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Lenny runs through the rapid-fire lightning round covering favorite books, podcasts, interview questions, and industry mentors. Barbra gives concise, collaborative answers before wrapping up. |
Statements from this episode (17)
A market category is not officially real until competitors enter it
“You're not building a category until there is competition. Like it's not officially actually a category until there's more companies that do that. And that was like a big learning for me in this whole process of category creation is that it's actually okay whe…”
Startups can sell into existing categories while gradually building new ones
“If you're building a category as well, you can sometimes be selling into a category while you're still building. The appetite for a different category, which is kind of a nuance, which is all about, like, where's the budget and how do customers describe their …”
Greenhouse abandoned category creation due to fixed applicant tracking system budgets
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, like, the budget that customers had and the way that customers talked about what we did, no matter what we called it, was applicant tracking. So it didn't really make sense to continue to go against the grain of, no, we're go…”
Elevating the perceived value of an existing category can beat creating one
“Instead of spending the time and money to build a new category, we were going to spend the time and money to elevate the value of this category. So rather than changing the category to something else, which we could value at whatever it was, We were just going…”
Miro coined 'visual collaboration' to unify disparate enterprise use cases
“Visual collaboration was our way of kind of like putting a nice bow around this thing that could then be an enterprise product that solved a lot of different problems for a lot of different use cases and different types of users.”
B2B category creators must build relationships with directory sites and industry analysts
“And then the other piece is really those directory sites, which the analysts like Gartner and Forrester and all these guys, at least in B to B and enterprise, they really shape for customers what the categories are and you need to build relationships with them…”
Miro had to lobby G2 Crowd to establish the visual collaboration category
“So with the visual collaboration, for example, We weren't ranking. We weren't categorized in visual collaboration on G two crowd. And we had to meet with them and explain what it was and talk to them about the differentiation of this category versus other cate…”
Category creators must educate enterprise buyers to allocate entirely new budget lines
“When you're generating a new category, you're also needing to educate buyers that there is a category that they can now budget for and why they should allocate budget for that.”
Pando targets established performance management budgets while building a new progression category
“We're still gonna rank ourselves in directory sites, for example, or categorize ourselves as performance management and talk about performance management and sell to companies that are looking for performance management. But ultimately we want to shift everybo…”
RealtimeBoard had one million users and minimal revenue before the Miro rebrand
“At that time. I think we're a million users, maybe like a couple million in revenue. So it was very early days.”
Startups should execute corporate rebrands immediately after finding product-market fit
“I think at some point it's common for companies to do a rebrand, like once they go into scale mode before you have too many people and before you invest too much, obviously in building that brand. So I think the sooner the better, like rebrand before I even jo…”
Miro executed its complete corporate renaming and public launch in five months
“I think we kicked off the naming process in the end of October and we launched publicly at South by Southwest with a fully three-dimensional booth in March.”
Miro secured the Miro.com domain just 48 hours before its public launch
“We got our domain name changed to Miro.com. I think it was like, 48 hours before the event. Like all the material had been printed with the new URL. Like we had to just make a leap of faith.”
Airbnb's complete corporate rebrand took roughly 18 months from start to finish
“It took, I think a year and a half for them from start to finish to get to something they were really excited about, ready to launch.”
Group drafting of company value definitions is unproductive and should be avoided
“Ultimately, coming up with the definitions is not really something you can do as a group because it's just not very productive. It's better if somebody who knows how to write well can come up with the first stab of the sentences, if it's operating principles, …”
Corporate pay gaps stem from broken promotion systems, not just compensation decisions
“The reason that companies have to go and Look at compensation data and fix pay gaps is because they have systemic problems with how people are promoted and progressed in the organization. So they're recruited in a certain way, they may or may not be developed,…”
Asking candidates for their top ten accomplishments reveals their fundamental core values
“Everybody hates it, but I like asking like what someone's top 10 accomplishments are. They hate it because it's like, oh God, ugh. But it's really interesting to understand the level of quantitative versus qualitative in their accomplishments, like what they v…”