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In the high-stakes world of B2B SaaS, the difference between a niche tool and a platform giant often lies in how the market defines you. Are you an "online whiteboard," or are you the leader in "visual collaboration"? This distinction drives valuation, adoption, and ultimately, category dominance.
Barbara Gago, the former CMO of Miro and marketing leader at Greenhouse and Culture Amp, has navigated these waters multiple times. She helped transform RealtimeBoard into Miro, creating a new software category in the process, and is currently redefining performance management with Pando. Her approach treats brand building not as a cosmetic exercise, but as a fundamental component of product strategy and market positioning.
Key Takeaways
- Category creation is a high-risk, high-reward strategy: It requires validating a new market segment with analysts and educating buyers who may not yet have a budget line item for your solution.
- Don't force a category if the market resists: If customers and competitors consistently use established terminology (like ATS), it is often more effective to elevate the value of that existing category rather than inventing a new one.
- Rebranding requires an agile product mindset: Treating a rebrand like a product launch—with sprints, owners, and user feedback—ensures a transition that retains brand equity while expanding the company’s vision.
- Opinionated software drives better outcomes: Building best practices and "rules" into software is essential when the existing manual processes are fundamentally broken or biased.
The Strategic Calculus of Category Creation
The allure of creating a new category is strong for founders. Being the first mover and defining the terms of engagement suggests a path to market dominance. However, Gago suggests that the decision to create a category versus winning an existing one boils down to budget, language, and market scope.
When to Create a New Category
Category creation becomes necessary when existing labels are too small to contain the company's vision. At Miro, the team faced a choice: compete in the "online whiteboard" space or define something broader.
"With Miro, the platform that it is, there is so much possibility... I used to joke that it was like the ever-extending Universe. There's just so much to do there that 'online whiteboard' was really small."
By defining the category as "Visual Collaboration," Miro moved from a utility tool for designers to an enterprise-grade solution relevant to every department. This shift required a bottom-up approach: listening to how diverse users—from product managers to HR—described their pain points, and then packaging those disparate needs into a cohesive narrative that industry analysts like Gartner could validate.
When to Abandon Category Creation
Conversely, attempting to rename a well-understood market can burn resources with little return. At Greenhouse, the team initially tried to distance the product from the "Applicant Tracking System" (ATS) label, which carried negative connotations of clunky, transactional software. They attempted to position themselves as a "Recruiting Optimization Platform."
Despite the strategic positioning, buyers continued to use the term ATS. The budget line item was for an ATS. The search volume was for an ATS. In this scenario, the winning strategy was not to change the name, but to redefine the expectations for the existing category.
The lesson is clear: If the market understands the problem and has the budget, win the category. If the market fundamentally misunderstands the potential of the solution, create a new one.
Executing a Rebrand at Scale
Rebranding is often dismissed as a visual refresh, but it is fundamentally an exercise in signaling maturity and ambition. For Miro, the transition from "RealtimeBoard" was essential because the original name was too literal and functional to support a global enterprise vision.
The "Rebrand as Product" Methodology
Successfully rebranding a scaling company requires operational rigor. Gago recommends treating the rebrand with the same discipline as software development. This involves running the project with agile sprints, assigning clear owners to different workstreams (legal, digital, physical assets), and maintaining transparency with the broader organization.
However, navigating the emotional attachment of early adopters is critical. A rebrand risks alienating the users who loved the product in its early days. Miro navigated this by carrying forward the "soul" of the original brand.
"That yellow Post-it became the new 'M' that we used... This was a way to kind of nod to the early base of customers and keep something that was pretty standard and pretty core to the initial sort of brand."
Building a Brand System, Not Just a Logo
A durable brand must be systemic. It needs to encompass voice, tone, visual language, and values. Gago emphasizes that a brand becomes powerful when it is interchangeable with the company's culture. At Miro, the visual identity was directly derived from company values. The logo's characters were designed to represent "agility" and "collaboration," creating a visual system that allowed people from different languages to understand the brand's intent without words.
The Rise of Opinionated Software
In B2B SaaS, flexibility is often touted as the ultimate feature. However, there is a growing counter-movement toward "opinionated software"—platforms that enforce specific workflows or methodologies. This approach is particularly valuable when the status quo process is flawed.
Codifying Best Practices
Opinionated software does not just facilitate a task; it teaches the user how to perform the task better. Atlassian did this for agile development, and Greenhouse did it for structured hiring. The software acts as a guardrail, ensuring that users adhere to best practices that drive better outcomes.
At Pando, Gago is applying this philosophy to employee progression. The traditional performance review process is often riddled with recency bias and subjectivity. By building software that is "opinionated" about transparency and accountability, the platform forces organizations to adopt fairer, more effective management practices.
Balancing Flexibility and Guidance
The challenge with opinionated software lies in the balance. If a tool is too rigid, it becomes unusable for unique edge cases. If it is too flexible, it fails to solve the systemic problems it was designed to address. The goal is to anchor the software in values. If the value is "reducing bias," the software must restrict the ability to make subjective, undocumented promotion decisions.
Conclusion
Whether it is defining a new market category, overhauling a brand identity, or enforcing a specific workflow through software, the common thread is intentionality. Successful companies do not let the market define them; they actively shape how they are perceived and how their customers work.
As Gago’s experience demonstrates, this requires a deep understanding of customer psychology—knowing when to listen to their existing language and when to push them toward a new, more expansive vision. Ultimately, brand and category creation are not just marketing tactics; they are the strategic engines that allow products to scale from tools into platforms.
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