Escaping the Build Trap

Chapter 25. Marquetly: The Product-Led Company

It took a few more years for Marquetly to completely escape the build trap. Many of its people had been working with an output mentality for a very long time. These people didn’t initially believe in this new way of working, but, as full results began trickling in over the next few years, it was difficult to argue with the numbers. Marquetly was able to achieve its strategic intents, growing its revenue in the enterprise and individual markets, which resulted in it being acquired for a very large sum of money by a larger educational company.

The company continued to prioritize its strategy on a rolling basis until it reached its goals. The artificial time bounds of yearly budgeting and strategy creation disappeared. Instead, the company took an investment-minded approach, budgeting each year for growth strategies, while funding initiatives that the product teams validated through experimentation and research. Marquetly ended up killing a lot of its ideas early on. That allowed it to focus on what really mattered to achieve its goal.

Marquetly was successful because it had a leader who understood that change started with him. Chris knew that, if he did not adopt the outcome-oriented mindset, the customer centricity, and the comfort with uncertainty, no one else in his organization would. “How can I possibly expect the rest of my organization to change, if I am not willing to?” he told me early on.

Even though it was difficult for him ...