On Parabola’s mission to “beat the drum” for operators everywhere
Today Parabola finally gets to show off our new brand (a refreshed website, logo, messaging, and more). I can’t wait to tell you about it, but first, I want to share a little context around why this feels like such a big deal.
Years ago, I was working as a strategy consultant when I was hit with a realization: All of the problems my firm was hired to solve had solutions that were perfectly obvious to the people closest to them.
The knowledge point people — those teammates who understand how processes were built along the way and can always answer that one obscure question — could tell me exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. But when it came to actually implementing that change, their hands were tied, left without the budget, bandwidth, or technical expertise needed to make it happen.
That’s why I started Parabola. I wanted to give those knowledge point people a product where they could build the logic behind their most complex workflows and solve the problems that took up so much of their time.
But amidst these grand ambitions, we’ve struggled to make it clear what we are and who we’re for, let along the awesome things we’re up to behind the scenes. Today, we’re changing that.
“Say the thing”
After a bunch of hard work over the past few months, we finally have a brand identity I’m proud of — and more importantly, an identity that represents the huge impact customers like Uber Freight, Brooklinen, Flexport, and many more are having as they equip their teams with Parabola.
Historically our external facing presence has been more of a Rorschach test: Whatever pre-existing context you’re coming in with, you can project that onto Parabola. Ultimately, this is the challenge of building such a widely applicable tool: We could market it as a Swiss Army Knife, capable of taking on any task at hand.
But ultimately we decided that a successful outward-facing version of Parabola is actually more polarizing than it’s been, making the people who it really resonates with go, “where has this been all my life?”
In the proverbial writers’ room, we adopted a motto: “Just say the thing.” Any time we were trying to describe what we do or relying too heavily on tired SaaS jargon, one of us would prompt the group to just say the thing.
It sounds almost hilariously simple, but it was one of the most important exercises in getting clarity for our customers and prospects. The hardest line to nail was Parabola in a sentence, but I’m excited to share where we landed with you all:
Parabola is the spreadsheet alternative where you combine the data running throughout your company and create automated processes.
It’s exciting to finally bring our new brand to market, and we’re celebrating that in a few different ways.
If you think it, you can build it
Our users come up with the most innovative solutions I’ve ever seen. We recently had a cookware brand use Parabola to analyze shipping discrepancies across carriers and automate email outreach to those carriers with summarized details —something they were doing by hand 3-times per week until then. I also just heard about a CX leader using Parabola to analyze Zendesk tickets against 3PL data to produce visibility into shipping issues at his company.
They really bring to life our new motto: If you think it, you can build it.
In tandem with this new brand for Parabola — and in honor of all of the badass operators who’ve brought truly creative solutions to life — we’re hosting a webinar highlighting 5-minute case studies from seven ops leaders across ecommerce, freight, and logistics.
They’re going to tell quick-hitting stories behind some of the professional challenges they’ve faced (and the solutions they ultimately deployed) at companies like Flexport and FabFitFun.
Creating a community for knowledge point people
At Parabola, every decision we make is meant to champion and help our customers. We help equip and enable them, but ultimately we’re just a tool they use (and love). They’re the hero.
And even more strongly than we realized, the knowledge point people we work with are not just underserved by tools, they’re also lacking in community.
We recently started hosting city-specific, small-format dinners for customers and prospects, and the result has been clear: Supply chain and logistics leaders are eager to connect and talk shop with one another. I’ve attended a few, and once chatted with folks looking for best practices sourcing luxury materials without a single point of failure. Others are wondering how seriously to take customs issues resulting from international trade disputes. And some are deep in the throes of tool implementation and need to hear success stories from the other side.
We’re excited to announce the creation of The SOP Community: Standard Operating People as a space for these people to grow in their careers and networks. It’s a place to ask hard questions, get smart answers, and source tactical advice for improving both day-to-day inconveniences and long-term strategy.
The SOP Community will take place online through Slack and webinars and also through in-person dinners, happy hours, and fireside chats.
It’s a totally sales-free zone: The goal is to help people working in this space get as much value from one another as possible. More info and applications to join are open on our site, and I’d encourage leaders working in supply chain, logistics, and operations to get involved.
Looking forward
In the past, we struggled with how to walk the line of talking about the right level of specificity while still talking about the grandest future vision, but the reality is that being specific and having a point of view on how we differentiate in the world is actually how we help become a part of the biggest possible future for knowledge point people.
To successfully create that future, we’re going to be louder and in more places driving awareness. We’re here to beat the drum publicly on behalf of operators everywhere.
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