We’ve been hammering pretty hard here at Kipsu for the last year, and I wanted to take the opportunity to stick my head above the water to talk about an aspect of our company-building approach that is critically important to us and our success.
I’m often asked what makes Kipsu different than other technology companies. As a nine year old company with a substantial market share lead and relatively sizable engineering capacity, I could talk your ear off about our broad set of product capabilities. Or I could tell you how our first mover advantage led us to key early customer wins that contributed substantially to our product decisions and credentialed our business as the market leader. Those are important and essential to our successes, but the differentiator most responsible for our success is in something far more nuanced and less evident at the surface: how we approach our relationships with our customers — as long term trusted business partners — what we call “customer partners.”
Our deep partnering approach isn’t for every company or every market. Lots of models exist out there that can succeed under the right conditions but in our specific segment, our high touch engagement model is the defining feature of our competitive advantage. I felt strongly about writing about this topic because I believe that the technology press undervalues this approach to business. Bloggers and journalists love to talk about exits and big capital raises but rarely do you see the article that says “XYZ big company relies on ABC little company as a key partner.” Maybe it’s because it’s not easy information to come by (there isn’t an SEC reg D filing for “vendor love”) or maybe journalists don’t have the patience to tell this story but whatever the reason, in our experience, this is an area that customers care deeply about that is rarely discussed broadly in the marketplace.
