Happy Thursday 👋

How’s everybody doing out there? Are you getting enough sleep? Drinking enough water? Eating some vegetables here and there? Nice.

Anyway—let’s get into this week’s newsletter…

Q&A 👊

How Capsule is disrupting the Video Editing category

“Tell me the origin story of Capsule and the gap that you saw in the market”

We noticed that technology had made it easy to create documents, presentations, and designs—but making videos was still too difficult for most businesses.

So we met with hundreds of teams to learn more and found out that this pain point is incredibly high. And this is despite virtually every team being tasked with producing more video.

Many have tried popular video editing tools but found them lacking in ease of use, speed, brand control, and collaboration.

To solve these issues, we made Capsule. And today we’re helping teams at HubSpot, ServiceNow, Apollo and others shorten video turnaround times from weeks to minutes, all while staying completely on brand.

“How do you differentiate Capsule from established competitors in your space?”

First, our users tell us that Capsule is the only tool they’ve tried that makes video editing fun.

I think “fun” is underrated as a differentiator because, all else being equal, people use the products they enjoy the most.

We’re also unique in that we are focused on serving enterprise teams where collaborative features like motion design systems, project sharing, and getting stakeholder feedback are critical for getting the job done.

We also invest heavily in the success of our customers where other tools simply can’t because they sell to individuals. We offer enterprise-grade services to help our customers onboard hundreds of employees to become video creators. There is a lot of work that goes into doing that, from creative services, to white glove support and education—but it’s well worth it.

“What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced while trying to disrupt the market? How have you tackled them?”

Positioning & Messaging

We’re in a crowded market. So how we position the product is the difference between getting a prospect's attention or not. We’ve had to iterate on our messaging many times in order to get it right, and it’s still a work in progress. But we’ve learned to be crystal clear about who our ICP is, what their pain points are, and the messaging that resonates with them. It’s amazing when it clicks.

One way that we've done this is through hosting intimate dinners with our customers and their peers. We’ve spent hours just listening to them speak about their pain points and then flipping that into our positioning. It’s also helped us build meaningful relationships and has been the most successful source for generating new opportunities.

Hiring

Resources are always a challenge as a startup going head-to-head with larger players. Our solution here is to have an incredibly efficient and talented team. If you get this right, you can move much more quickly, give customers what they need faster, and take unconventional, creative approaches that larger competitors never would. That is how startups disrupt incumbents.

Working with enterprise companies can sometimes be slow and difficult to get all the right stakeholders bought in, especially when you’re proposing a new workflow for how videos get made across the organization. We have an amazing Head of Sales who is great at not only identifying the right champions, but also at building relationships with them and finding ways to get these changes implemented.

“What's one insight or lesson learned that's been critical to your competitive success?”

Hyper responsiveness to customers is the root of all good things that happen to a startup. Founders can’t outsource this.

They have to hear it directly from customers: what’s working, what’s not working, and what critical pain points are not getting addressed.

It sounds so simple, but in my opinion this is what the race is all about: shortening the time between hearing a customer's problem and shipping an elegant solution.

We’ve done that over and over and I think we’re doing it faster than anyone else.

JUICY SCOOPS 🧃

What’s happening now

• 🚗 | Tesla’s losing US EV market share [more]

• 🚀 | SpaceX’s competitors are pushing back [more]

• 🛡️ | Etsy’s plan to defend against Temu and Shein [more]

• 🧵 | How Threads is holding up against X, one year later [more]

• 🕶️ | Meta Ray-Bans are getting their first real competitor [more]

• 🗒️ | The privacy-first alternative to Google Docs just launched [more]

EXAMPLES 🍊

Your weekly dose of vitamin C(ompete)

A stand-out attribute that marketers don’t talk about enough:

Self-awareness.

That’s Porsche. They’re more expensive than most other manufacturers, and they know it. But they also know that they make cars that many people dream of owning.

So, rather than just making a cheaper car, they made an ad that targeted buyers who were considering a more affordable option—or had already purchased one and were feeling buyer’s remorse.

Peachy memes 🍑

ICYMI 👀

Here are the most popular Q&As I’ve published:

• How River uses virality and product marketing to differentiate from Luma.

• How RevenueHero beats Chili Piper by being a partner, not a vendor.

• Why the Head of Compete at Asana doesn’t want your research.

Stay Healthy, my friends.

💚Andy

PS: Let's connect on Twitter or LinkedIn! Give my latest post a like? 😙👉👈