Yesterday, Bob and I released episode 130 of the Startup Success Podcast, an interview with Timo Rein, cofounder of Pipedrive.

Timo has plenty of useful advice for startup founders, but I was most impressed by the basic premise behind his company. Every company that has a hands-on sales process – and that includes just about every company that sells software to businesses – has a sales pipeline. Pipedrive simplifies the management of that pipeline and helps you drive toward sales.

More generally, Pipedrive also shows how you enter a crowded space – you carve out a specific niche. From a certain perspective, Pipedrive is a CRM tool, but they don’t call themselves a CRM tool. CRM is REALLY crowded, so calling yourself a CRM makes it hard to stand out. Instead, Pipedrive essentially created a new category called “pipeline management.” Brilliant.

If creating a new category is a new concept to you, I recommend The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.