Tech start-ups: why vision, execution and team are much cooler than likes
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Marketing speaks with Gil Levonai, CMO at Zerto, about what makes tech start-ups cool.
After working as an engineer and product manager, Gil Levonai was hired to manage Zerto’s product and marketing teams. As the company – which provides business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for virtual infrastructure and the cloud – grew, he shifted to a full-time marketing role.
His engineering background, deep product knowledge and strong interface with engineers makes him an ideal CMO for the B2B company, allowing him to understand the target customer and market fit.
Marketing spoke with Levonai about what makes a cool B2B start-up, and what advice he has for those considering starting or investing in start-ups.
Marketing: Have developments in technology, and a universal uptake in the workforce’s proficiency in computing and digital made it easier or harder for a tech start-up to stand out from the crowd?
Gil Levonai: The tech space is fast-moving, it changes all the time and is a place where gorillas of today are gone in a few years. This creates great opportunities for startups to grow and to build market presence in just a few years’ time.
It’s amazing to be at a startup that is changing the way IT departments do things, and seeing the product become a standard for disaster recovery in IT departments across the globe.
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Related: Five NZ tech start-ups to keep an eye on »
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M: Zerto recently made it onto Business Insider UK’s list of ‘cool’ enterprise start-ups that will boom in 2017. What makes Zerto cool, and what’s in store for 2017?
GL: Zerto is uniquely poised to take advantage of enterprise tech moving from in-house IT to hybrid and public clouds. More and more companies are moving infrastructure to clouds and looking for products that can easily help them get there. Zerto offers companies the ability to move even critical business applications into the cloud, all the while keeping their data in the cloud protected.
It’s a solution that has that ‘right-place, right-time, right-product’ fit with what was initially an unmet market need.
M: What advice would you have for people looking to start or invest in start-ups, tech and otherwise?
GL: My advice would be to look beyond the hype – find the right team, right company, right products that solve real customer pain points, not just what’s cool these days. In the B2B world, what’s ‘cool’ is about vision, execution and team and not about whatever has the most likes today.
Another piece of advice to B2B marketers would be to remember you are always talking to a person – there is an actual person on the other side, so make sure your message is simple and relevant to what they care about.
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Image copyright: wavebreakmediamicro / 123RF Stock Photo
