Summary

Vahagn Sarksyan, VP of Marketing at Krisp, discussed the company's journey in creating the "noise cancellation" product category. He explained that when KRISP first launched, there was no existing market demand, forcing them to educate consumers about the problem of background noise and its impact on professionalism. [07:41] Vahagn Sarksyan detailed their strategy of using rapid, live-market testing with different personas to find their initial audience. [10:44] He also spoke about the pros and cons of being a first mover, the organic and unplanned shift from a B2C to a B2B model sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how KRISP now employs different marketing motions (sales-led for B2B, product-led for consumers) for its distinct business lines. [19:17] He concluded by sharing his personal career transition from a full-stack developer to a marketing leader. [26:06]

Key Points

  • KRISP's primary initial marketing challenge was that no one was searching for a "noise cancellation" solution because the market for it did not exist. [04:06]
  • Their strategy focused on educating the market about the problem of background noise and its negative effect on productivity and professional perception.
  • Instead of formal market research, the company used rapid experimentation, running live ad campaigns targeted at different personas like gamers and teachers to identify their core audience. [10:44]
  • KRISP actively worked with platforms like G2 to formally establish "noise cancellation" as a new product category, initially positioning themselves as the only player. [12:44]
  • Vahagn Sarksyan argued that first-mover advantage is a double-edged sword; it is very expensive to build a category, and the main sustainable advantage is the PR and brand story of being the pioneer. [14:09]
  • The company's significant B2B business line, focused on call centres, was not planned but emerged organically when a large call centre approached them during the COVID-19 pandemic. [19:49]
  • He asserted that a great product is the foundation of modern marketing, whose role is to amplify the product's value, especially as the industry shifts focus from acquisition to retention. [17:29]
  • KRISP utilises distinct marketing strategies for its different business lines: a sales-led motion for its B2B enterprise clients and a product-led motion for its consumer-facing AI Meeting Assistant. [22:14]

 

Podcast Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Kiran Kapur (00:01):
Hello and welcome. This week we are in B2B marketing and particularly in creating product categories.

Vahagn Sarksyan (00:08):
When we had the product ready, the main problem that we had at the marketing side was that actually no one was searching for it. No one in the market knew that there's a product like KRISP that offers a solution or a problem causing risk cancellation.

Kiran Kapur (00:24):
I'm delighted to welcome Vahagn Sarksyan, who is Vice President of Marketing at KRISP. Vahagn, before we start, where are you geographically?

Vahagn Sarksyan (00:34):
Yeah, currently based in Armenia, Capital Yerevan. And as you can also guess from my name, I'm Armenian, so most of the Armenian last names end in 'yan', like Kardashian for example. Yeah.

Kiran Kapur (00:49):
That's a very good example to give.

Vahagn Sarksyan (00:51):
Everyone knows them.

Kiran Kapur (00:52):
We are going to talk a little bit about KRISP and how KRISP created a product category. So could you just start with describing what KRISP does?

Vahagn Sarksyan (01:03):
Sure. So right now KRISP has actually three business lines. So we are serving three different type of customers, but all of the products that we offer are categorised as voice AI. So that's the main category that we have actually pioneered with other companies. And the three business lines that we currently have, the first one is our enterprise or call centres business. In that front, we are offering products like AI accent conversion and translation, AI noise cancellation and so on. And those products are specifically designed for large call centres and enterprises. So that's one business line that we currently have. The second business line is our STK or licencing product. And in that front, we offer KRISP as a technology or STK, that can be used by other companies. Discord for example, is probably the most well-known brand among customers, and Discord uses increased noise cancellation inside their product.

(02:07):
And the third business line that we have is actually the KRISP AI meeting assistant, which started as a noise cancellation feature back in 2019. And at the time, we were just working on designing a feature which we thought that can be useful for remote workers. Were working from different locations, and the problem with background noise, and that's how KRISP started. So we started with noise cancellation, and after that COVID happened. So when COVID started, people started to work from home basically. And there were lots of background noise problem, because they were babies crying, construction going on, lots of background noises. And at the time, we had actually lots of customers, lots of enterprises and also individuals who started leverage KRISP when working remotely. But we didn't stop there. So we always thought that one day the technology giants, we start to offer noise cancellation built in, and that actually happened. So starting 2020, we started to add different type of features to this package that we call AI Meeting Assistant. So even though it started with just a noise cancellation feature, now it includes different sorts of AI features and products like AI transcription, meeting notes, live translation, accent conversion, so on. And this is the package that we call as AI Meeting Assistant.

Kiran Kapur (03:43):
And certainly your website you can play, and I have done, with listening to somebody speaking, and then removing the noise from the background. You've got some great dogs barking and babies crying, and all the things that happen when you are working from another environment, and you can click on and see what happens when the noise-cancelling happens. So what I'm intrigued by is you came up with noise cancellation. So we've got a technology that had to be created, then you've got to market it, and then you've got to make certain that people understand what it is you are marketing. So how did you go through those processes?

Vahagn Sarksyan (04:24):
Yeah, actually it was quite difficult. So KRISP has two co-founders and the idea for building this noise cancellation feature for gaming when they were just friends. So one of them were based in United States. The other co-founder Arthur, was based in Armenia, and they were having these Zoom calls together. And since there were kind of a thousand differences between the two countries, they were talking from different locations like cafes, maybe coworking spaces and so on. And they always had this background noise problem. So they started to think about this problem and also potentially offering a solution. And that's how the idea basically started. That's what was the starting point. But building something is very different from marketing it. When we had the product ready, the main problem that we had at the marketing side was that actually no one was searching for it. No one in the market knew that there's a product like KRISP that offers a solution or a problem cause noise cancellation.

(05:35):
So we started with educating people about the problem, the problem of noise cancellation. And that was a very new challenge for me personally because in my previous companies I always worked in industries that were actually established industries so people knew about the problem, the solutions and so on. And in those type of markets, the main goal of marketing is to just differentiate among other products and position yourself as the best possible solution. But in the specific market that we built, actually, we started with educating people about the problem. And in general, there's this analogy that I really like. And if you think about the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there are usually problems at the lower stages of the pyramid. As humans, you're very good in identifying those problems, let's say, survival, shelter and so on. But as we go up in the pyramid, problems like self-actualisation, productivity and so on, we are not that good in spotting those problems.

(06:51):
So we need some education in order to understand the problem and then to learn about the potential solution. Interestingly, most of the SaaS tools operate in those higher stages of the Maslow pyramid. So we started with basically talking about productivity at work, how to improve your performance at work, how to have better Zoom calls, those type of narratives that was related to work productivity, career growth and so on. And also when we were talking about those problems, we were also offering KRISP as a potential solution that can help people to become more productive, to perform better at work and so on. But it was not easy because yeah, we had to first educate people about the problem, then explain why this problem is important, because there are so many problems in life, but not all of them are important and not all of them require solutions. So that was the second step for explaining that background noise can make you look unprofessional, or it can impact the perception of your colleagues and so on. And then we were positioning KRISP as the one and only solution in the market that was addressing that problem. So this was the old story.

Kiran Kapur (08:19):
Interesting. So I mean, I thought it was lovely when you said right at the beginning, nobody was searching for how do I get rid of noise? And this is always one of the issues, isn't it, that people may know there's a problem, but they may not even realise there's a solution, so they don't think to look for the solution. So you said you had to educate people. What did you actually do?

Vahagn Sarksyan (08:41):
Yeah, great question. So we started to profile people, actually. And since all of the workers at KRISP of the employees were also tech-savvy people, our first perception was that background noise can be a real issue for tech-savvy people because they're working from different places, different locations and so on. So we created some personas on how we want to target, and at first there were actually six, seven different personas that we felt that KRISP can be helpful for. And it included people from a gaming industry, gamers to teachers who are working from home at the time, and also prosumers or people who are working in tech industry. And we started to test, so we were running different campaigns, targeting gamers for example, and then teachers and then consumers. And then we were comparing the results to see this message that we offer or the product that we offer, how much resonates with each of these audiences.

(09:53):
And then based on the feedback that we were receiving from those audiences, we ended up with just one or two segments at the time. We realised that tech workers or remote workers, better sake are the first target for us. And then it was teachers, because we realised that there are lots of teachers in the world that work from home, work from different places, and they care about their professionalism, they want to be perceived as professionals. And we ended up with those two segments at the beginning. But yeah, it was all about testing, testing with different audiences, and we ended up with two.

Kiran Kapur (10:35):
So when you were testing your ideas, were you using market research techniques, or were you just literally going out with a marketing campaign and seeing what landed?

Vahagn Sarksyan (10:44):
No, we were just going out. We were testing, we were not doing any academic research at the time. So let's say for example, we were creating an audience on YouTube targeting gamers, and we were running some ads. Hey gamers, you are kind of streaming from home, and there's this background noise problem. It's annoying for the people that you're playing the games with, so you can use KRISP to cancel the background noise. And then we were running a similar test on a different audience, like creating a segment on YouTube, on Facebook, on Google ads for teachers, let's say. And then we're running some specific campaigns for teachers like, Hey, teachers, you're working from home. You need to be perceived as professionals. The image is important, so you need to cancel background noise when you talk to students. So we are running these different, I would say rapid experimentations with different audiences. So it was no clear research in the background, it was just pure beta testing.

Kiran Kapur (11:51):
Which live research isn't it? I mean I'm sure my marketing research guests would say something different, but I mean you're basically live testing, see what happens and whether it works or not. Okay. So you said that you are out there, you've got your personas, you're testing them, we worked out which ones are going to work for you. Then you said, oh, and then we had to position ourselves as the one and only solution. How did you do that? You've literally got them, got them to realise that there is a problem and there is a solution, but now you need them to come to you as the solution. How did you do that bit?

Vahagn Sarksyan (12:26):
In our case, it was actually an easy request. We were the only solution in the market.

Kiran Kapur (12:31):
Okay, that's helpful.

Vahagn Sarksyan (12:32):
Yeah, in 2019 we were the only solution, later there were lots of different products that were offering the same solution, noise cancellation, but at the time, it was just KRISP. So if they were searching for noise cancellation or similar keywords, KRISP was at the first place on Google. And also one other thing that we did, and I think it was very helpful in establishing kind of a place as the market leader, was that we started to work with different platforms like G2 to basically build this new product category called noise cancellation. Because let's say on G2 we were trying to add KRISP in the listings, but there were no relevant category that we could add KRISP into. There were, let's say communication tools or meeting tools and so on, but KRISP was none of them. So we worked closely with platforms like G2 to create this new category. Cause I called noise cancellation, and we were the only player in that category when it started. And now I think probably there are 20, 30 different products in just the noise cancellation category. But we started with building those categories. And then since we also had our first fundraise event in 2021, there were lots of PR coverages that we're talking about KRISP as the first company that is offering this AI noise cancellation solution. And that's how it all started.

Kiran Kapur (14:09):
I want to come back on the first mover advantage and the advantage of being the market leader. I think there is a huge advantage there, but how does it just feel as an entrepreneur and in an entrepreneurial organisation when you've had the marketplace yourself, you've done all the work in creating this as a category, and you've been and persuaded people and you've told them a problem and you've had a solution, and then some other person comes in with the solution. How does that feel?

Vahagn Sarksyan (14:34):
Well, yeah, you say advantage, but it's also a disadvantage, I would say to some extent, because building a product category is very expensive, because as I mentioned, you first have to define the problem, then communicate that problem and so on. And sometimes the first movers spend a lot of money and resources on building that category, educating people about the problem, and then someone else comes and takes the market share. And I think that also happened to some extent, KRISP, because we built those categories. For example, we built this new category on G2, which took a few months, I would say six, seven months to have this communication to convince them that we need this new category and so on. And then there are lots of other players that were easily being ranked in those categories. But I think it's an advantage if you can basically use that in your product positioning, and be able to position yourself as the player that actually started this category. So I think by itself, it's not an advantage. It can be an advantage if you turn that into a great story, a beautiful narrative, and then communicate that to your potential audience. And that's what we actually try to do.

Kiran Kapur (15:57):
So in your view, the mover advantage is either a very short window of time that you've got it, you've got the market to yourself, and I think we are all finding those periods of time get shorter and shorter and shorter.

Vahagn Sarksyan (16:08):
Exactly, yeah.

Kiran Kapur (16:09):
Or it's just the PR thing of being able to say that you were the first and therefore there's a story around it. But in your view, is that the only two real advantages to being the first mover?

Vahagn Sarksyan (16:20):
Yeah, I think yes. I think yes. And sometimes, if you're the only player in the market, you need to ask the question to yourself that is this the right market? Why there is no other player in this market? So yeah, I think those two are the main advantages.

Kiran Kapur (16:35):
I think that's a great question actually, because I always think competition is good because that means other people are in the marketplace doing the marketing and persuading people that they need a product. And then all I've got to do is try and persuade them to take mine. So I think you are right. If you are the only one in that marketplace, maybe that can be quite a lonely place to be.

Vahagn Sarksyan (16:55):
Exactly, yeah. We are living in a world that there are so many smart people, so many smart entrepreneurs, and if there's a product category that is only yourself and your product, then something is wrong probably.

Kiran Kapur (17:09):
It's a really interesting point. So you talk a lot about marketing is the amplification of product value, and that's something that I've seen on your LinkedIn articles and also heard you speak about. So what do you mean by that?

Vahagn Sarksyan (17:25):
Yeah, great question. I'm a marketing person. I'm a marketing guy, but I firmly believe that nowadays product is much more important and it's a much more important factor in defining the success of a company or product, or a startup. And the reason is that nowadays it's much easier to communicate as a company. It's much easier to create content, create PR pieces, like do SEO and in general to do marketing, I would say. But it's much more difficult as well to also stand out as a product, because it's easy to enter a new market with these tools. It's easy to build a prototype, but it's much more difficult to be kind of different from all these other products that exist in the market. I think from that perspective, product is the most important asset at each business has. If the product is good, it's much easier for the marketing to just amplify the value to communicate with different potential users.

(18:35):
But if the product is not good, marketing itself cannot do anything because I would say maybe 15, 20 years ago, acquisition was a very important kind of topic for businesses. So all the products, SaaS businesses were just thinking about acquiring new customers. But nowadays, if you listen to different felt leaders, different famous marketers, everyone is talking about retention. And in order to have retention, you have to have a great product. That's why I believe having a great product is just the foundation. You need to have the product, and the marketing needs to communicate that to the potential market.

Kiran Kapur (19:17):
I think again, that's a very good point. One of the things I wanted to ask, is when you talked about where you started back in 2019, what you were talking about was a very B2C marketplace. We were going to teachers, we were going to gamers, but when you talked about what KRISP does now, you talked about call centres. So somewhere along the line, you've switched from B2C to B2B. When did that happen and why? What caused that shift?

Vahagn Sarksyan (19:43):
It actually happened in early 2020, and we were not planning for that. It just happened. I think the first enterprise, a B2B customer that we had was a big call centre in India. And during the COVID times, lots of agents that they were having in the call centres, they started to work from home, and there was this noise problem obviously. So yeah, they came to us as a company and they purchased a few thousand licences for noise cancellation. And it was a point that we realised that call centres can be a great target market and target audience for KRISP because even the ones that are not working remotely, they have massive background noise problem, because usually there are lots of call centre agents in a very tiny space. So there's this crosstalking background noise and so on. And it was the beginning of this new business line that was focused on enterprises and call centres. And as we started to work with call centres, we realised that there are other problems also that we can solve as a voice AI company, and let's say accent conversion for example. It was another problem that we realised most of those offshore call centres have, and we actually came up with a solution for that. So to sum up, it was early 2020, and we learned from the market. So those enterprises came to us and we started to treat them as a different business now.

Kiran Kapur (21:23):
What I'm really loving about this is, and it's so much how marketing happens, is that you start, you try, you change, you try, and then a new customer line comes in and you go, oh, hang on, there's a new marketplace, and this is what being an entrepreneur is all about. And I think sometimes in marketing we teach so much marketing planning and marketing strategy, which you still have to do, but you still have to also be quite agile within the marketplace.

Vahagn Sarksyan (21:46):
Yeah, that's correct. I think we need to just listen to the market. You need to watch carefully, and if you have a good product, if you have a good offering, definitely very big people that will be interested and they will come to you. So yeah, that's very important.

Kiran Kapur (22:02):
I think my other interest is what marketing you do now. So when you are marketing, are you now very much the B2B route? In which case, what sort of marketing do you do within that space?

Vahagn Sarksyan (22:14):
In each of those business lines that I mentioned, we have different strategies. For B2B specifically, we are, I would say, more kind of sales-led motion. So the main function that we have is sales and marketing helping the sales team to generate those high-quality leads, to nurture them and then to convert them into customers. So if we think about these different growth motions that exist in the market, marketing-led, product-led, sales-led, and so on, our B2B marketing is very much based on this sales-led motion. So marketing is assisting the sales-led in our sales team in order to generate those leads and then convert them, which is different from, let's say, our Meeting Assistant business line. So for the Meeting Assistant business line, we have this product-led motion when we are trying to offer the best product in the market, and the marketing team's goal is to acquire consumers, acquire users that are better matched to our target personas, so they can get the best value out of the product.

(23:29):
So it's a different motion from what we have on the B2B side, and the channels are also different. If I can talk about channels. On our consumer side and the Meeting Assistant business side, we are very much dependent on the digital channels, let's say SEO is one of the main channels that we have. We are also doing lots of digital advertisement, very targeted one on Google, on Reddit recently and also on other platforms. So those are the main channels that we have. On the enterprise side, it's a bit different because there are lots of industry events in the world, and they still play a crucial role in B2B marketing. So we are trying to attend sponsor and get featured in those events and generate high-quality leads, and then nurture them as a marketing team in order to create high-potential leads and convert them by passing to the sales team. So we have a kind of different motion on the B2B side.

Kiran Kapur (24:34):
Thank you. That was very, very clear. And it's great to hear what a company is actually doing within the marketing and the marketing execution. So before I let you go, I do always ask my guests how they got to where they currently are. So did you start out planning to work in marketing? Was that the original plan?

Vahagn Sarksyan (24:54):
Actually not. So I started as a full-stack developer, and it happened by chance. So my dad was a software engineer, and there were lots of books in our house about QBasic, Visual Basic, that early programming languages. And I was reading them. I got interested in programming in general, so I started with THP and then JavaScript and then Java and so on. Yeah, I turned into a full-stack developer and back in 2008 or 9, we had a tiny startup. So we were trying to create something similar to WordPress or Joomla at that time. And we actually had a few customers that were using the CMS, and right after building their website, they were asking questions about marketing, let's say. They were asking how I can rank on Google, why I'm not seeing my website when I'm searching for my product. And it was very interesting for me. So I started to think about those questions. I started to basically learn about SEO, Google Ads and so on. I got very much interested in marketing. So in a few years I had this switch from being a developer to a digital marketer and then into marketing leadership roles.

Kiran Kapur (26:24):
Most of us, you ended up not quite where you originally started, but marketing found you I think is probably the answer to that. Thank you very much indeed for your time, your expertise and your insight into a really fascinating area of marketing about creating a product category, and explaining to people that they have a problem and you have a solution to it, which I think is an under-discussed area of marketing. So thank you very much indeed.

Vahagn Sarksyan (26:49):
Thank you too, I enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for having me.