Inside Enable’s Category Creation Playbook: 5 Lessons for B2B Founders

Inside Enable’s Category Creation Playbook: 5 Lessons for B2B Founders

Category creation in B2B software is often romanticized, but few companies succeed at it. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Enable CEO Andrew Butt shared their blueprint for turning rebate management from an overlooked business function into a critical enterprise capability. Here are five key lessons from their journey.

1. Make Category Education Your Core GTM Motion When Enable started, even major enterprises weren’t aware dedicated rebate management software existed. “A lot of these companies and some of the companies we’re working with are the world’s biggest companies and even they don’t necessarily know that this type of software exists,” Andrew explains.

Their response? “We are creating a lot of content. Best practice guidance on how to manage rebates, how to do better through effective rebate management.” This education-first approach wasn’t just marketing – it was fundamental to creating market demand.

2. Target Mainstream Adoption From Day One Unlike many category creators who focus on early adopters, Enable aimed for mainstream adoption immediately. “We’re creating something which is mainstream. You don’t have to be like a visionary or like a really early adopter,” Andrew emphasizes. This meant making their solution accessible through modern cloud principles and quick time-to-value.
3. Build Community Around Practitioners Enable recognized that creating a category required elevating the practitioners within it. “We’ve created more recently a community which is really putting rebate managers on the map and showing how they actually can have a huge strategic input into their business,” Andrew notes. This community-building effort validated the profession and created champions for the category.
4. Focus on Concrete, Quick ROI For new categories, theoretical benefits aren’t enough. Enable developed a systematic approach: “We have a process called business value assessment, where we get inputs from a prospect which they agree to. So it’s their inputs, and then we play back to them how we can give them a payback in maybe three or four months.” This focus on quantifiable results has been crucial in converting skeptics.
5. Design for Network Effects Enable’s category creation strategy leveraged natural network effects. “We started focusing entirely on distributors and then it was actually through network effect that we got into the manufacturers,” Andrew shares. This organic expansion helped them grow to over 10,000 companies while maintaining 150% year-over-year growth.

The Silicon Valley Factor Location played a crucial role in Enable’s category creation success. “Being here has helped…in terms of talent, some of the people we’ve brought on board, very skilled operators that have achieved hypergrowth before, and we wouldn’t have kind of bumped into them just in anywhere,” Andrew reflects.

The ecosystem’s understanding of category creation was equally important. As Andrew notes, “Investors here really understand, again, how to build a really big company of consequence, which does involve investment and spending money. And that’s something which isn’t really understood in other parts of the world.”

Looking Ahead Enable’s vision extends beyond creating a category – they want to define it. “Just like DocuSign is the standard for Esignature, we want to be the standard for any B2B incentive,” Andrew shares. With their rapid growth from 80 to 450 people in just two and a half years, they’re well on their way.

For B2B founders considering category creation, Enable’s experience shows that success requires more than just innovative technology. It demands a systematic approach to education, community building, and value demonstration, all while making your solution accessible to mainstream buyers from day one.