#351 - Nick Wassenberg, Cludo on customer-driven growth strategy

A story about transforming a horizontal solution into targeted value propositions

This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to build sustainable growth by deeply understanding customer needs over chasing broad market opportunities. My guest is Nick Wassenberg, CEO of Cludo.

Nick is a marketing veteran turned CEO with an entrepreneurial mindset shaped by working closely with founders. Previously, as employee #12 at Fulcrum, he experienced rapid-growth dynamics firsthand. His diverse background spans manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, and global consulting – driven by an insatiable curiosity to understand how different businesses work. In June 2023, he became the CEO at Cludo. Their mission: To get website visitors of critical organizations the most relevant, timely, and trusted answers.

And this inspired me, and hence I invited Nick to my podcast. We explore his strategic decisions in his first 90 days. He shares how he's transforming Cludo's approach from serving everyone to deliberately focusing on specific customer segments where they can deliver the most value. Last but not least, he shares his insights on how understanding the hidden patterns in customer behavior shapes both product development and go-to-market strategy.

Here's one of his quotes: “If I were going to start from the beginning, I wouldn't say 'let's have 27 different industry categories.' We would pick one and build a product that was amazing for them, and then pick another, and then broaden out from there. That's an easy mistake - your eyes get pretty big, especially in a solution set like ours. Some amount of it is universal and universally applicable - but you still have to close the niche down and find your way that way.”

By listening to this podcast you will learn the following:

The importance of aligning your solution with your customer's top priorities rather than trying to elevate the priority of your specific solution

Where he's investing his marketing budget to solve the current challenges of trying to make outbound work in complex B2B sales

The strategic advantage of focusing on input metrics that drive outcomes rather than just measuring outputs

The importance of building strengths in areas outside your comfort zone to drive business growth

For more information about the guest from this week:

Nick Wassenberg Website: cludo.com

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