Reposition Your Platform Like an EventBrite PMM

Platform repositioning is messy. You’re changing how the market understands you, how customers experience value, and how your internal teams talk about the product. It’s rarely a clean “new story” moment, rather usually a series of decisions that have to hold up in the real world.

In this episode, I sat down with Jameelah Calhoun, VP of Market Strategy at Forter and a product marketing leader known for blending commercial rigour with deep customer empathy. Over the past 15 years, she has helped build and scale new businesses, reimagine legacy products, and guide companies like Eventbrite and Audible into their next chapter of growth. If you have ever had to reposition a platform under pressure, Jameelah has lived it.

Repositioning Eventbrite During COVID

Jameelah unpacked what repositioning looked like at Eventbrite during COVID, when the events industry changed overnight. Eventbrite needed to expand beyond being seen as a ticketing tool and be understood as a broader suite of marketing resources for event organisers. That meant changing the narrative, but also making sure the product experience and packaging supported that narrative.

Her approach was grounded. Start with the data you already have, get clear on segments, then focus on the highest leverage problems before you start building.

Rediscovering the Path Forward

When I asked Jameelah about her process, she started with existing research and performance data. The goal was to spot where product market fit was soft, where the go-to-market story was not landing, and where customers were hitting friction.

She also called out segmentation as non-negotiable. Frequent hosts and occasional event creators behave differently and need different value cues. If you lump them together, you end up with messaging that feels “fine” to everyone and compelling to no one.

Prioritizing Smart Solutions

Jameelah’s first major task was identifying the highest leverage problem. Where is the biggest opportunity, or the biggest revenue leak, in the journey? That focus shaped everything that followed.

Eventbrite looked across the full customer journey and made targeted changes, including reducing friction in sign-up, revisiting packaging strategy, and clarifying the path to value so customers could understand what they were getting and why it mattered. The outcome was meaningful business impact, including a 40 percent increase in average revenue per customer in just two months.

Building a Culture of Collaboration and Trust

A recurring theme in our chat was internal trust. Jameelah described her partnership model with product and engineering as a three-legged stool. Each leg matters. If one is missing, the whole thing wobbles.

Repositioning requires tight collaboration, not handoffs. The more consistently you engage stakeholders, share what you are learning, and connect decisions back to impact, the easier it is to move quickly without creating internal chaos.

Moving Forward With Insight-Driven Decisions

After identifying the big issues through data and segmentation, the next step was validation. Jameelah talked about running lightweight experiments and focus groups so the team could iterate quickly without committing heavy resources too early.

She also emphasised building an experimentation roadmap. Outline the key business questions. Design tests to answer them. Prioritize by potential impact. This keeps the work focused and makes it easier to explain decisions to leadership.

Messaging Critique: Calendly

To close out the episode, we shifted into the messaging critique, and Calendly is a great one because almost everyone has used it. Their core value is crystal clear. They repeat “scheduling” relentlessly, from “Easy Scheduling Ahead” to positioning themselves as the number one scheduling tool. For first-time users, that repetition works. It removes confusion and gets straight to the job-to-be-done.

The trade-off is that it can undersell what Calendly has become. For more sophisticated buyers, Calendly is not just scheduling. It is integrations, payments, workflow automation, and operational leverage. If the homepage leans too hard on basic scheduling, it risks feeling smaller than the product actually is.

The opportunity is a positioning lift. Keep the clarity, but elevate the promise earlier. Calendly is not just a tool that finds a time. It is a system that protects your time, reduces admin, and keeps work moving without the back-and-forth.

Big thanks to Jameelah Calhoun for the wisdom and the real talk. If you’re navigating a repositioning right now, this episode is packed with practical ways to stay focused, build trust internally, and tie narrative shifts to measurable outcomes.

LINKS:

Messaging Critique: Calendly 

Connect with Jameelah:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameelah-calhoun/ 

Podcast:  https://www.unpopulardecisions.com/ 


Connect with Elle:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle3izabeth/ 

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