Drift's David Cancel on "whoever gets closer to the customer wins"

Written by Patrick Campbell | Oct 12, 2020 2:00:19 PM

"Whoever gets closer to the customer wins." That phrase first uttered by brilliant marketer and storyteller Bernadette Jiwa could not be truer today. If you think about some of the major shifts that have happened in the past couple of decades, we can see this notion pretty clearly with Airbnb taking down hotel chains, Ubers beating out cabs, Netflix getting physically closer than Blockbuster, and the list goes on...

On this episode of Protect the Hustle, we talk to Drift CEO David Cancel about getting as close as possible to the customer, the broken system of purchasing software, and questioning if you can truly brute force change in a market. David used his skills from building the precursor to Facebook, Threadless, and modern blogging to help HubSpot and Drift reach hypergrowth through product.

 

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Topics covered in this episode:
      • The experience of purchasing software has drastically changed: it's broken

      • Timing is everything especially if the market catches up

      • How to handle fierce competition

      • Can you brute force change in a market?

      • Gutting HubSpot's product team and rebuilding 90% of the software

      • Discovering customer centricity and getting as close as possible

      • Going from persona to focusing on the end user customer experience

 

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This is a ProfitWell Recur Studios production—the first media network dedicated entirely to the SaaS and subscription space.