I want to start by giving thanks to the ultimate Creator, who has blessed me abundantly with relationships and opportunities that have profoundly shaped my life and career. Through His Son, He has given every aspect of my life an eternal perspective—yes, even enterprise software. All glory to God for the opportunity to write this story.

Thank you to my beautiful and encouraging wife Brittany, who always told me that I was a good writer (will let the court of public opinion now decide if she’s right). I wrote Category Creation over a two-and-a-half-month window of time that happened to overlap with (a) months eight to ten of our young daughter’s life, (b) preparation and presentation of Brittany’s master’s thesis, and (c) planning a 5,500+ person conference at Moscone Center. We were constantly stressed, usually sleep deprived, and each working independently toward our dreams. Brittany sacrificed the most—ensuring that she never skipped a beat as an incredible and intentional mother while successfully defending her thesis. She’s my superhero, and I’m thankful every day that she agreed to be on this crazy journey called life with me.

I am so grateful for my lovely daughter Cienna Brielle, whose hallway smiles and occasional office distractions fueled my motivation to get the book published and make her proud of her daddy. My wish for her is to reach her fullest potential in every aspect of life, and that through my efforts both at work and at home, I can play my small part in creating a more inclusive world where she has the same opportunities to pursue her dreams and passions that I have had in my life.

I want to thank my entire family for their encouragement and patience during the long nights and weekends of writing—especially my beautiful mom Rita, Brittany’s parents Mark and Cindy, my dad Mike, Karin and Kailyn, my uncle Rody, Bill and Carole, Tiffany and Justin, Brian, Melissa and Eric, and everyone else. While I tried my best to be present with the family during this intense season of life, I know that I often fell short. Thank you for loving me anyway.

There would be no Category Creation without Nick Mehta, who took a chance on a 26-year-old punk from Los Angeles to build Gainsight with from the ground up. The ideas that inspired the plays now memorialized in this book did not come in isolation, but through inspiring brainstorms with Nick and others. Not every idea worked (perhaps we’ll reserve those for the sequel), but many did, and together, we were able to inspire an entire community to win in business while being human first. Nick is well respected across the industry for his values-based and people-centric leadership, but not much (yet) is written on the tailwind he creates for his team to chase big ideas. His encouragement and sponsorship made this book a reality, and I can only hope to make him proud by reflecting even a glimmer of his greatness at Gainsight and beyond.

A huge thank you to the entire Gainsight marketing team for letting me tell your story—especially in the months building to the biggest (and most complex) Pulse conference we’ve ever done. You are the co-authors of this book, the category creators behind Customer Success, who have forever changed how companies market, sell, and serve their customers in the business-to-human (B2H) world. A special thank you to my direct reports, who carried a lot of the workload while I moonlit on this project, including Lauren Olerich, Lauren Sommers, Mike Berger, Mike Manheimer, and Scott Salkin. You’ve put up with a lot of crazy ideas from me over the years, but you are the imagineers who made those dreams come to life. #OneTeam

Thank you to the incredible team at Wiley for giving this first-time author the opportunity to publish a book into the mainstream business audience—especially Richard Narramore, Victoria Anllo, and Vicki Adang. In an increasingly digital world, category creation best practices may be discovered decentralized and scattered in blog posts and videos across the Internet. With your support, now entrepreneurs and executives across the world can learn from our mistakes and create sustainable value in the global economy by inventing new markets of products and services of their own.

A huge thank you to those who contributed their voices to Category Creation by writing pages of the playbook—you are category creators who inspire me, and I’m humbled that you were willing to take time out of your busy schedule to be a part of this. I especially want to thank Brian Halligan and Andrew Mahon at HubSpot—I salute you with a Wayne’s World, “I am not worthy!” bow for writing the foreword. The HubSpot story of creating the Inbound Marketing category inspired a lot of what we built at Gainsight, and having your endorsement on the playbook is a lifetime achievement for me. I also want to thank Maria Pergolino, Mark Organ, and Mike Fauscette for their contributions. I’ve learned so much from each of you over the years, and the opportunity to turn the mic to you is an honor that I’ll cherish forever. There were several other innovators I referenced throughout the book who have inspired a lot of my thinking over the years—especially Dan Rogers, David Gerhardt, Jason Lemkin, John Rex, Kaley Klemp, Keith Krach, Marc Benioff, and Max Altschuler.

The intent behind writing Category Creation was never to sell more licenses of Gainsight software—if so, we probably would have written something that targeted the Customer Success audience rather than entrepreneurs, GTM executives, and marketers. This book was written as a passion project, pouring out of the hearts and minds of the innovators named here who have learned an enormous amount about this emerging business practice and want to pay it forward to those who come next. So thank you to YOU, the reader, for supporting this movement and pursuing original ideas and the road less traveled to will them into reality. Stay hungry, stay foolish. Mamba out.