78: Gong CEO & Co-founder Amit Bendov- playing it safe is risky business
Starting third to market and rising to be the market leader in just a few years is rarely heard of, but that’s exactly what Gong has done. Gong is a revenue intelligence platform that gives sales and customer success teams insights on what is happening with their customers without anyone having to lift a finger. Their vision is to build the best autonomous applications in the world. By prioritizing quality, Gong has managed not only to become the best at what it does, but to stay on top, always running fast to keep making its product better than the alternatives. CEO and Founder Amit Bendov joins Scott Britton and Andrei Newman on the Built by Humans Podcast to discuss the future of autonomous applications, how to pull away from the competition, and the importance of being able to ‘zoom out’. Here are some quick takeaways: As time goes on, businesses will only continue to favor autonomous software solutions over human-curated ones. The goal is to make what was hard work effortless and more consistent. There’s no moat between you and your competitors in the SaaS world. While in competition the strong tend to get stronger, you shouldn’t assume the advantages you have will last any longer than 12 months: you have to run like crazy to stay ahead. A strong collaboration between sales and product is vital for either team to work effectively. The goal is to have a product so good even a mediocre sales team would work, and a sales team so good even a mediocre product would work. When it comes to marketing, be bold and be comfortable with polarizing decisions. Being safe with marketing is a risky choice; taking risks is your safest option. In many markets, you’ll have to make the product decision of whether to be the budget option or the expensive solution to your problem. In either case, make sure to stick to your decision: if you decide to be the best solution, don’t also feel the need to lower your prices as a competition strategy, and instead market on being worth the high cost. Job interviews are a tremendous source of information for learning about organizational design. The ability to “zoom-out” can be a great addition to your skill set as you move forward in business. Constantly challenge yourself to think bigger to find new solutions and ideas.