Sleuth’s Category Creation Journey: How They’re Building the ‘Salesforce for Engineering’
Category creation in B2B software isn’t just about building a new product – it’s about reimagining how an entire industry operates. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Sleuth CEO Dylan Etkin shared how they’re working to transform engineering operations the same way Salesforce transformed sales.
The Evolution from Point Solution to Platform
Sleuth’s journey began with a focused problem: deployment tracking. “It kind of struck me like a lightning bolt that deploy, which is this thing that at the time, we treated almost like as a second class citizen, was the most important thing,” Dylan recalls. But this initial focus was just the beginning of a much larger vision.
Finding the Right Category Framework
The breakthrough in Sleuth’s category creation came from aligning with DORA metrics, an emerging industry standard. “The Dora metrics have really allowed us to take the real information and glean some sense of usefulness out of them,” Dylan explains. “And so a market has grown up around that.”
This alignment with established metrics provided a framework that resonated with engineering leaders. As Dylan notes, “every engineering team I’ve ever worked with wants to do what they’re doing in a more effective and more efficient way.”
The Salesforce Parallel
Sleuth’s category creation strategy crystallized around a powerful analogy. “The analogy I like a lot right now is Salesforce for engineering,” Dylan shares. This comparison isn’t just about building a similar product – it’s about following a similar path to category creation.
Dylan elaborates: “The best sales teams back in the day before Salesforce were doing a lot of the things that Salesforce allows other teams to do… But what Salesforce did was sort of say to everybody, this is how you do it. You don’t have to be a top tier team in order to use these tools.”
Building the Category Infrastructure
Rather than trying to create everything from scratch, Sleuth is building on existing industry momentum. They connect to established tools that engineering teams already use: “we hook up into systems like GitHub, Jira, pagerduty, maybe a datadog or something, we plug into the real work that teams are doing every day after day.”
This integration-first approach makes adoption easier while still enabling Sleuth’s broader vision. As Dylan explains, “we have an automations marketplace and framework that allows you to kind of one click add these best practices that engineering teams have developed over the last 15 years.”
Evolving with the Market
A key aspect of Sleuth’s category creation strategy is staying responsive to market evolution. “Being in a market that is nascent and currently evolving, our messaging and what resounds and what customers are looking for is evolving daily,” Dylan notes. This requires constantly reassessing their approach and messaging.
The willingness to evolve extends to their core vision. Dylan shares that “Engineering has been ripe for that transformation for quite some time,” suggesting that the market is ready for a comprehensive platform that standardizes engineering effectiveness practices.
Key Lessons for Category Creation
- Align with emerging industry standards
- Build on existing workflows and tools
- Provide a clear analogy to successful categories
- Stay responsive to market evolution
- Focus on democratizing best practices
For founders looking to create new B2B software categories, Sleuth’s approach offers valuable lessons. Start with a focused problem, align with industry standards, build on existing workflows, and maintain a clear vision for industry transformation. Most importantly, remember that category creation isn’t just about building new technology – it’s about changing how an entire industry operates.
As engineering teams continue to evolve, Sleuth’s bet on becoming the system of record for engineering effectiveness could define a new category in B2B software. The question isn’t whether engineering teams need better tools for measuring and improving their effectiveness – it’s whether Sleuth can become the Salesforce-like platform that makes these practices accessible to all.
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