In my mind, and having watched many high tech start-ups become high tech giants, the product is number one. Whether you’re battling a bull or bear market, at the end of the day, if your product isn’t good, no one will want to adopt it, long-term.
And that’s the name of the game. Ask most entrepreneurs and they’ll tell you they’re ultimate goal is acquisition, not to build a lifestyle brand. Most also have VCs hanging over their heads expecting big returns on their money.
What’s a start-up to do? You know you’ve got a great product, but don’t know how to bring it to market. Then there’s the exalted companies we all want to be, the YouTubes, Googles, salesforce.coms, Facebooks, etc.
Are those company anomalies? I don’t think so. Those are 4 companies in your lifetime that “broke out” and there are many more that will break out over the next 25 years, maybe even over the next year. The difference between those companies and yours is that an event happened.
In 2006, YouTube announced 100 million videos were downloaded by users, then NBC sued. YouTube broke out. Salesforce.com announced profitability during the recession of 2001. Salesforce broke out. Yahoo walked away from search, and Google re-invented the category. Google broke out. Facebook opened its platform to businesses and anyone aside from just students at colleges and universities. Facebook broke out.
Don’t look outside your window right now for an event to take you out. And, don’t look inside your coffer for the next great publicity stunt. Neither is mutually exclusive. The internal opportunities within your Company need to match the external market conditions. Sometimes you can control them, and sometimes you just can’t.
The key is to lay out which opportunities you may be able to leverage in the coming year – profitability, new product, new service, new big hire, and to tie it with what you know may or will happen soon such as new policies from the presidential administration, an upcoming report from a major analyst firm, an event taking place at a major conference, etc.
Imagine that you’ve got a successful product that allows companies to attach an online suggestion box to any and every project in production. Aside from being caught up in the gloom and doom of being interviewed about recent company layoffs or the struggling economy, you could tell a reporter how your burgeoning company is helping corporations influence their employees to make positive change.
And, remember, you can’t market a product that sucks.
