How to category carve in B2B commerce | Jake Hookom, EVP of Product (Perforce) | LaunchPod

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May 6th, 2025

38 mins 32 secs

Season 1

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About this Episode

Today, we’re talking with Jake Hookom, EVP of Product at Perforce.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

  • How Jake’s focus on "category carving" at Four51 helped them soar above the sea of headless commerce tools and into a successful exit
  • Why most PMs are wrong to measure success on features shipped - it’s about solving user problems throughout the entire customer journey
  • And, how Sitecore’s enormous practitioner community provided market awareness and a means to drive product adoption beyond anything they could do alone disrupts the world

Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobhookom/
Perforce: https://www.perforce.com/

Resources

Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney: https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780062407610/play-bigger/

Chapters

00:00 Intro
01:17 Joining 451 During COVID
02:24 First 90 Days Strategy
04:21 Defining a New Category
08:07 Focusing on B2B Market
10:16 Product as a Spectrum
15:59 Importance of Compliance
19:37 Success and Acquisition
20:17 Joining the Java Champions Community
21:22 The Acquisition by Sitecore
22:29 Focusing on B2B Product Sales
24:16 Building a Practitioner Community at Sitecore
25:40 Leveraging Community Feedback
30:00 The Role of Product in Solving Problems
33:52 Engaging and Growing the Community
39:27 Outro

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