Expanso · Customer Discovery Case Study Found Expanso's first buyer and an events-led outbound playbook.
- Industry
- Data & Analytics
- Funding Stage
- Seed
- Engagement
- Customer Discovery
Expanso builds a managed control plane, on its open-source Bacalhau engine, that filters, governs, and routes data where it is created, on devices and sites, rather than after it is centralized. Led by founder and CEO David Aronchick, Expanso engaged JJELLYFISH to find its ideal customer, test its core go-to-market assumptions, and start an outbound sales motion into U.S. enterprises.
The Challenge
Expanso's platform applies wherever data is generated across distributed sites, devices, and assets, which left the team with a high level of uncertainty about who to sell to first. They did not know which industries, titles, or problems would open conversations, and enterprise data leaders are hard to reach cold. Three assumptions needed testing: that this market struggles to keep pipelines running, to collect data from distributed sites, and to add context to its data.
The Solution
Over thirteen weeks, JJELLYFISH built an ICP of U.S. enterprises with 500+ employees and distributed data, split it into four cohorts across five industries, and ran outbound on LinkedIn, phone, and email. The program delivered 11 customer discovery interviews against a goal of 10, nine of them in energy and utilities, including Southern Company, Eversource, CPS Energy, UGI, and Southwest Power Pool.
The Results
The biggest unlock was how Expanso entered the conversation. Invitations to named event speakers and attendees were accepted at 38.3%, against 10.5% for a standard cold list on identical messaging, and a third of the people who replied became interested contacts.
Discovery was just as decisive. Pipeline reliability was invalidated and distributed collection came back mixed, while adding context to data was validated by all nine respondents who could speak to it. Expanso left with a sharper message, a clear map of who feels the pain versus who funds it, and an events-led outbound playbook.
David Aronchick, CEO & Co-FounderWorking with JJELLYFISH was incredible. Our ICP is tough to crack and through rapid messaging/channel experiments, we were able to secure several meetings across a range of prospects.
