~ Sales Technology Thought Map ~ Categories and market dynamics in the world of software are always developing and evolving with continuous fluidity. As an investor in the space, adhering to Warren Buffet’s famous adage of “investing in what you know” definitionally requires keeping a real-time pulse on the ebbs and flows of the space. This is hard to do in software land. The space is massive (hundreds of billions in annual spend). It’s incredibly dynamic, transforming at the speed of innovation. Its reach is pervasive, influencing almost every element of how businesses and consumers operate today. At PeakSpan, we firmly believe in Buffet’s ethos, and believe that “knowing” a category means cultivating an understanding that extends far below the surface level. Asserting expertise in our view requires intense focus and experience-informed specialization, built up over a long period of time. Because the software universe is so massive, and change happens perpetually, knowing the entire universe at a level of depth required to claim expertise is simply not credible. We embrace this axiom, which underpins a central pillar of our philosophy as investors. Narrowing the aperture enables every element of a more confined picture to be understood and appreciated with significantly more clarity. We deliberately limit the number of sub-segments or themes that Partners at our firm can focus on to three or less. I’m humbled to lead PeakSpan’s Sales Tech practice and have had the privilege of living in, investing behind and working shoulder to shoulder as a thought partner to some truly exceptional entrepreneurs and monster businesses over the last decade. My mission is to become as steeped as humanly possible in the happenings of the space to garner a sense for the current zeitgeist in market and drive experience-informed impact as an investment partner. I spend a massive amount of time synthesizing a perspective on what is happening, which influences are most impactful and how it all might come together to shape the landscape. The output of those discussions directs our focus as investors towards the things we believe are or will become strategic over the coming quarters and years. These can be specific sub-segments, business models or even changes in behavior or workflow that effect how selling or buying is approached. Compartmentalizing these views is challenging, but we’ve pushed ourselves to do just that in order to share our thoughts and views on the space. We’ve abstracted our perspectives up into a handful of overarching areas of focus which we will share with you all over the coming weeks in a five-part series, with each installment exploring one of these overarching themes– and the sub-themes comprising it – in a summary dissertation-like format, with indicative vendors mapped under each. To be clear, the resulting “thought map” is not a comprehensive nor exhaustive map of the category but is rather meant to provide insight into some of the exciting trends we are seeing in the space. The vendors mapped herein represent emerging innovative businesses we think are driving change in the space, and we have excluded incumbent providers despite some of them having functionality that might play into a given theme. The first part of our thought map examines a foundational competency in the world of sales – value proposition articulation. “Okay, we’ve got this amazing solution to share with the world… now, how do we convey its amazingness?”