Databricks

Ambitious CEO Maps Course from Open Source to One of the Most Valuable Private Companies

 
Databricks_042221_Ali_Ghodsi_236.jpg
 
ZOOM’s data-driven process has helped us validate and go to market confidently as we create the data lakehouse category.
— Ali Ghodsi, CEO, Databricks
 

Reason to Reposition

Commercializing Open Source, Disrupting a Multi-Billion Dollar Market

Ali Ghodsi, Databricks’ Co-founder & CEO, has leveraged ZOOM’s data-driven process twice to validate his bet on the company's future positioning. In 2017, it unified data science, engineering, and business. In 2020, it disrupted the market by combining data lakes and warehouses. Our challenge was to find the words that simply get across this new and powerful concept.

 

Defining a Breakthrough with Simple Differentiation

The breakthrough category: Lakehouse. Databricks owns and defines this category as "One simple platform to unify all your data, analytics, and AI workloads." It solves major pains like fragmented data architectures and silos, driving time and cost savings, increased productivity, and accelerated innovation. This differentiation aligned the company and guided their roadmap.

Hear how Databricks' CMO Rick Schultz grew the brand through early investment and positioning stamina.

 

Business Results

  • Aligned the entire company around their positioning including sales pitches, product roadmap and company strategy

  • Grew to one of the largest private, venture-backed US companies at $43 billion

  • $1.6 billion ARR

 

Market Insights

Simplicity Speaks Volumes

Data-Driven Win

One simple platform to unify all your data, analytics and AI workloads

82% of customers & prospects really liked or liked

“Something that’s easy to use would be great because we have so many different places where logs need to be checked. It would save a lot of time and make our process less painful.” - Prospect

 

Why Simplicity Matters

  • The winner focuses on the important points of unifying; it’s is simple, specific and sets expectations for functionality and use cases

  • The losing concept requires explanation and sounds complex

 

Learn about Ali’s calculated risks in our Positioning Leader Spotlight!

Previous
Previous

Pandio

Next
Next

Snowflake