Market Engineering: Building Markets That Win with Bruce Cleveland
Bruce Cleveland is returning to The Bliss Business Podcast.
When Bruce first joined us in May 2025, we explored how companies move from promising ideas to repeatable, scalable growth. This time, he returns to discuss his new book, Market Engineering: Because Markets Don’t Build Themselves, and why building a strong product is no longer enough to create lasting market leadership.
Drawing on decades of experience at Oracle, Apple, Siebel Systems, and C3.ai—as well as investments in companies including Marketo, Vlocity, Doximity, and C3.ai—Bruce explains how leaders can intentionally shape categories, positioning, messaging, stories, and thought leadership.
In Market Engineering: Building Markets That Win, we explore:
• Why successful companies engineer markets, not only products
• The five tenets of Market Engineering
• How leaders know whether a market narrative is working
• Why category and context create durable advantages in the AI era
• How startups and established enterprises can use the framework
• The highest-impact first step for teams with limited resources
🎙️ Hosted by Stephen Sakach and Tullio Siragusa
🎧 Produced by Martha Huerta
Products can be copied and features can be matched. But the company that defines the market can shape how customers understand the problem—and who they trust to solve it.
Author | Founder and CEO of Traction Gap Partners
Bruce Cleveland is the founder and CEO of Traction Gap Partners and a former technology operating executive, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur. He has held senior executive positions at Oracle, Apple, Siebel Systems and C3.ai. He has been a General Partner in two venture capital firms, and he was the founder and CEO of Ziplines Education.
His venture capital successes include companies such as Marketo, C3.ai, Vlocity, and Doximity. Many of his investments were just ideas at the time he invested – no product or revenue- and went on to become $B+ outcomes.
Cleveland is also the author of the bestseller “Traversing the Traction Gap” and “Market Engineering: Because Markets Don’t Build Themselves, prescriptive guides for startups and enterprise product teams in mature companies navigating growth challenges.
Today, Cleveland acts as a board and executive advisor to startups, enterprises, and venture firms using the Traction Gap Framework to generate “market engineering” strategies and market success.
