Calamu’s Analyst Relations Strategy: Shaping Categories, Not Just Getting Coverage

Calamu’s Analyst Relations Strategy: Shaping Categories, Not Just Getting Coverage

Most B2B companies treat analyst relations as a marketing activity. They pitch for inclusion in reports. They angle for favorable positioning in quadrants. They measure success by mentions and coverage.

But when you’re creating a new category, analyst relations becomes something entirely different: it becomes market education at scale.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Paul Lewis, CEO and Co-Founder of Calamu, revealed how treating Gartner and other analysts as education partners rather than marketing channels helped get cyber storage recognized as an emerging category. The strategy offers a blueprint for founders who aren’t just building better products—they’re reshaping how entire markets think about problems.

The Traditional Analyst Relations Trap

Most companies approach analyst relations with the wrong objective. They want visibility, positioning, and endorsement. These are marketing goals—valuable for companies competing in existing categories but insufficient for category creators.

Paul’s approach starts with a fundamentally different premise about what analyst relations should accomplish.

“I think analyst relationships are very important and we are working with different analysts. We’re trying to educate. Right? So we’re not trying to obviously we’d love to get market, we’d love to see if we can get exposure in market, but it’s really more trying to educate because what we’re going through is a change in mindset.”

Read that carefully: “we’d love to get market…but it’s really more trying to educate.”

The distinction is critical. Coverage is a byproduct. Education is the goal. When you’re creating a category, you need analysts to understand and articulate a new way of thinking about the problem space—not just mention your company in existing frameworks.

The Mindset Shift Analysts Need to Make

Calamu isn’t asking analysts to compare their solution to existing alternatives. They’re asking analysts to recognize that the entire comparison framework needs to change.

“We’re changing from this layered security model where we’re layering on more and more security onto the infrastructure, into we don’t have to worry about that so much because we’re really now just trying to protect the data, especially if the data gets into the hands of third party or someone that shouldn’t have it,” Paul explains.

This is a fundamental reframing of the security problem:

• Old framework: How well does this solution protect infrastructure?
• New framework: How well does this solution protect data regardless of infrastructure?

Getting analysts to adopt this new framework is infinitely more valuable than getting mentioned in reports using the old framework. Because when analysts adopt new frameworks, they educate entire markets.

Why This Matters: The Multiplier Effect

When Gartner recognizes a new category, something powerful happens that goes far beyond brand awareness.

Paul notes the outcome: “We’re in a category called cyber storage. So it’s cybersecurity, but cyber storage is the way that we think about storing data in a way where we’re protecting the data itself. And it’s actually a new category. So Gartner recognizes this as a new category. Just recently, they recognize it as an emerging category.”

This recognition does three things simultaneously:

First, it legitimizes the problem. If Gartner says cyber storage is a category, suddenly protecting data at the data layer becomes a recognized market need rather than one company’s positioning.

Second, it educates buyers. Executives reading Gartner reports now encounter cyber storage as a category to consider, complete with frameworks for evaluation. Calamu doesn’t have to educate each prospect from scratch.

Third, it shapes competition. Once cyber storage exists as a category, competitors emerge. This might seem negative, but category creation requires a market, not a monopoly. Competition validates the category and accelerates buyer education.

The Education Content of the Analyst Conversation

The substance of what Calamu educates analysts about reveals how to structure these conversations effectively.

Paul identifies the core problem with existing approaches: “Instead of putting layered security on the infrastructure, and instead of trying to protect the network that holds the data, Calamu protects the data itself, regardless of what infrastructure happens to be on.”

This clear articulation does several things:

• Identifies the old approach (layered infrastructure security)
• Points out its limitation (tied to specific infrastructure)
• Presents the alternative (data-layer protection)
• Highlights the key benefit (infrastructure-agnostic)

But Paul goes further by explaining why this matters now. The conversation isn’t theoretical—it’s tied to real market shifts.

“When you go to the cloud, you’re actually putting your hands, your data into the hands of a third party. Right? So for the first time, you’re taking it out of your complete control and you have to control one of the hyperscalers, whether it be Amazon or Microsoft or Google oracle or whoever else. But you have to trust another company. And that’s scary. That’s a scary thing.”

This contextualizes why cyber storage emerges now. Cloud adoption creates a trust problem that infrastructure security can’t solve. The timing isn’t arbitrary—it’s a response to fundamental market shifts.

Positioning Around Problems the Old Category Can’t Solve

The most effective analyst education identifies problems that existing category definitions don’t address.

Paul positions cyber storage around double extortion ransomware: “We have double extortion where data is actually stolen from the network and that data is then weaponized back against the company and used against the company and threatened to be released. And that’s really where we see the biggest growing kind of pain that we’ve got around ransomware.”

Existing cybersecurity categories have answers for prevention and recovery. They don’t have answers for data theft and weaponization. This gap becomes the basis for a new category.

When educating analysts, pointing to problems existing categories can’t solve is more powerful than claiming your solution is better. It establishes why a new category needs to exist at all.

The Historical Context That Strengthens the Argument

Paul doesn’t just present cyber storage as a novel idea. He grounds it in cybersecurity’s fundamental flaw.

“I think one of the core problems that we’ve got, all of us, is that this whole cyber world started without security in mind, right? So it started all about ease of communication, and then we had to kind of interweave security after we realized we had security problems. So now the whole world is on cyber, and we have problems that are all throughout but creates opportunity all throughout.”

This historical framing accomplishes two things in analyst conversations:

First, it explains why billions in security spending hasn’t solved the problem. It’s not that existing solutions are poorly executed—they’re addressing a design flaw that was baked in from the beginning.

Second, it positions cyber storage not as competition to existing security but as addressing a different layer of the problem. This reduces resistance from incumbent vendors and makes the new category feel additive rather than disruptive.

The Discipline Required: Resisting Premature Coverage

Paul’s acknowledgment that “we’d love to get market, we’d love to see if we can get exposure in market, but it’s really more trying to educate” reveals a critical discipline in category creation.

The temptation when engaging analysts is to push for immediate coverage, mentions, and positioning. But premature coverage in the wrong framework can actually hurt category creation.

If Gartner had written about Calamu as “another data backup solution” or “enhanced infrastructure security,” it would have cemented them in existing categories and made the cyber storage conversation harder.

By prioritizing education over coverage, Calamu ensured that when they did get analyst recognition, it was in the right framework—one that helps rather than hinders their category creation efforts.

The Repeatable Analyst Relations Framework for Category Creators

Calamu’s approach distills into a repeatable strategy:

1. Treat analysts as education partners, not marketing channels
2. Focus on shifting how they think about the problem space
3. Clearly articulate the old framework vs. the new framework
4. Tie the new category to unavoidable market shifts (like cloud adoption)
5. Position around problems existing categories cannot solve
6. Provide historical context that explains why the new category emerges now
7. Resist premature coverage in favor of proper framework education

The goal isn’t getting mentioned in the next quarterly report. It’s shaping how analysts think about and categorize an entire problem space. When Gartner recognizes cyber storage as an emerging category, they’re not just acknowledging Calamu—they’re educating every enterprise buyer who reads their research.

That’s the difference between analyst relations as marketing and analyst relations as market creation. One gets you coverage. The other reshapes how an industry thinks.