Companies often start with one strategy (land grab or lighthouse) and transition to the other as they mature and verticalize.

27:04your customer. Go find someone and show them like here's you know I have an earned secret. This earned secret is that AI can help your business or technology can help your business in this way and you know work with us on that front. >> I I I I'll also say that you know every every small company wants to become a big company. I don't know too many very

27:20large successful companies that at some point in time haven't deployed both strategies. You might start off with land grab but then you mature and you have a lighthouse strategy or you start with lighthouse and then you get big enough that you can go broad you know into land grab. So I think for founders when I get this question early on do what makes the most sense for your

27:39business right now. What does that mean? Go out and talk to customers. Find out where the early earliest and easiest sales are and pursue that strategy. It doesn't mean you're completely you know punting on the other one. It just means come back to it. And in in both of the last companies that I worked for both Meraki and Samsara we started with land grab but as soon as we matured and

27:58started getting up in enterprise then what do you do? Well you verticalize and all of the sudden like great who are the top five you know transportation companies who are the top five warehousing companies who are the top five you know public sector and then you want to go take those down and so you can morph into a land grab strategy. You just want to do what's most efficient

28:17and most effective for the stage of the company you're at. >> Talk Can you talk a little bit about like one of those like key markets that you unlocked with like you went from land grab early to you know lighthouse in a given market? Like what did you how did you set up that team um or like was it just you were the founders that was going in this new market and then like

28:35you know maybe a little bit about some of those deals that you closed. I'm just curious how this played out with the sequencing. >> Well I I think I you know at both Meraki and um Samsara you know the the sort of earliest example of of uh lighthouse was when we verticalized. And in both those instances, it was basically in like public sector. At Meraki, we were going

28:56after like school districts because that was sort of low-hanging fruit. And you know, if you're if you if anybody anybody's ever sold to school districts, like they all talk to each other. They all know each other. You want to find the biggest school districts in each state. And if you can take that down, every school district underneath them what did that one buy? Great. All of a

29:13sudden the social proof is there. Now, why why use a lighthouse strategy in say school districts or in Sam's case when we went into public sector when you start selling to cities and counties and states, you know, why shift? Because the sales motion is fundamentally different. Like the sales cycles are different, the way you sell, the decision-makers are different, the way they procure is different. And so, asking the same sales