Snowflake
From Startup to Market Leader
“I love the data-driven process. You know at the end, you’ll get to the best positioning for you. I would recommend ZOOM to any CMO out there.”
Reason to Reposition
Disrupting a Multi-Billion Dollar Market
Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy reveals their bold, new market-validated position, “Where Data Does More,” at the 2025 Snowflake Summit in San Francisco. (image courtesy of Snowflake)
Throughout its remarkable journey, Snowflake turned to ZOOM's data-driven positioning process four times. When CMO Denise Persson joined Snowflake in 2016, she wasted no time engaging ZOOM. Denise had hired ZOOM in her prior role as CMO of Apigee to prepare the company for a successful IPO. Her mission was clear: position an unknown startup's groundbreaking approach against entrenched incumbents.
Today, Snowflake is a market leader worth around $70 billion, as the place where data does more.
Dominating a Massive Market Category
Catch Denise Persson at SaaStr sharing her experience creating Snowflake’s category and positioning through their stages of growth.
Snowflake had a game-changing advantage from the start. Unlike its competitors, built for legacy on-premise systems with bolt-on cloud features, Snowflake was purpose-built for the cloud. After rigorous testing, two elements defined their new category. Firstly, anchoring it in the established budgeted category: Data Warehouse. We toyed with inventing new concepts and avoiding the term data warehouse, but the market needed that familiar anchor initially. Secondly, highlighting their unique approach with "Built for the Cloud." This positioning enabled Snowflake to differentiate itself from traditional incumbents with unique capabilities such as instant elasticity, secure data sharing, per-second pricing, and multi-cloud capabilities. Snowflake defined the new category "Data Warehouse Built for the Cloud" and owned it.
Fast-forward two years, Snowflake made their mark and were ready to grow to their next category: Cloud Data Warehouse. While rivals attempted to imitate Snowflake's message, it was their distinctiveness that propelled them to success. Snowflake spent the next couple of years growing with that category, shifting its focus to customers and product innovation, leading them to the largest software IPO ever, reaching a market cap of nearly $62 billion as The Data Cloud.
Today Snowflake has grown to the AI Data Cloud, worth around $70 billion.
Market Insight
A Fresh Approach
2016 was the year of Snowflake’s first positioning breakthrough that gave them the credibility to grow: Data Warehouse Built for the Cloud. By 2020, Snowflake had earned credibility to own it’s vision, launching a record-breaking IPO as The Data Cloud. Today, customers get the most value out of data and innovate faster with the easy, connected, trusted AI Data Cloud.
Data-Driven Win
2016: Data Warehouse Built for the Cloud
87% of prospects really liked or liked
Comparative Concept
2016: Data Lake and Analytics Platform
32% of prospects really liked or liked
Why anchoring with the familiar and defining with the new matters
Built for the Cloud" encompasses all the benefits of cloud computing and showcases Snowflake's fresh approach to data warehousing
This positioning allows Snowflake to define "built for the cloud" with its unique selling points: instant elasticity, secure data sharing, per-second pricing, and multi-cloud compatibility
It signifies the end of data struggles, empowering businesses to effortlessly access and share data while enabling IT to become the hero by focusing on value-added tasks
In contrast, "Data Lake and Analytics" lacks universal understanding and can vary in meaning, and it’s not a budgeted category
The team celebrating Snowflake’s massive IPO
Data-Driven Jackpot
2020: The Data Cloud
90% of customer advisory board preferred
$70B valuation at IPO
“Own that layer in the cloud. No BS, just own it. Make it the platform that companies use to drive business impact everywhere.” - CAB customer
Business Results
Snowflake CMO Denise Persson interviewed by Nasdaq