After launching Wasabi Technologies, a successful cloud storage company, founder and CEO David Friend was ready to scale the venture rapidly. The company had focused primarily on direct sales, but an opportunity to pivot toward channel sales was on the horizon. Wasabi’s major competitors like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all sold their cloud storage products through multiple channels, and Friend feared that direct sales could never provide the momentum Wasabi Technologies needed to compete. However, making this pivot would mean changing its sales, marketing, and staffing strategies dramatically, and effectively veering the company away from its already successful course.
Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Lou Shipley joins Brian Kenny to discuss the case, “Wasabi Technologies” and the questions Friend wrestled with: Was channel sales the right play for the burgeoning cloud storage provider? If so, how should it best be implemented? They also explore ideas connected to Shipley’s new book, Unlikely Entrepreneurs.
