Want to know the strategy behind $1B+ categories - like VRBO and HomeAway? What does it take to build a company when the market you're entering doesn't even exist yet?

Melissa Fortenberry has spent her career answering that question.

She helped grow HomeAway and VRBO from the early days of the vacation rental category, later became Chief Product Officer at RVshare, and is now the founder and CEO of HeatSense, a wearable technology company helping teams proactively manage heat strain in athletes.

But this conversation isn't really about technology.

It's about understanding your customer, finding the real problem worth solving, and building trust when you're creating a completely new category.

Melissa shares the lessons she's learned from growing companies, defining new markets, and learning what actually drives customer satisfaction. She explains why education is one of the most powerful tools when you're creating a category, how partnerships can help you reach an audience faster, and why founders need to stay focused on the one thing their customers actually care about.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why validating a painful problem should come before building a company.
• How HomeAway and VRBO used education and partnerships to help create the vacation rental category.
• Why finding channel partners can be more effective than trying to reach every customer one by one.
• How to build trust with partners by creating long-term relationships and bringing them into the process.
• Why understanding the core driver of customer satisfaction matters more than constantly adding new features.
• How Melissa learned that homeowner satisfaction was directly tied to how much money they made through the platform.
• Why founders should always look for a clear path to revenue and understand their unit economics.
• How HeatSense evolved from a consumer-focused product into a team solution for college football programs.
• Why personal relationships and founder-led outreach are critical when entering a new market.
• Why creating a new category means educating customers before you can sell to them.

Link and Resources

Connect with Melissa Fortenberry

Website: https://heatsense.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-turner-fortenberry-139b39

=============================

🔥 PRACTICE THE DEAL BEFORE IT'S REAL.

→ Build a smarter sales team every week. Practice the deal before it’s real with FireCoach.ai.

Learn more: https://firecoach.ai/

=============================