"I'm nobody's market"

Brad Feld used this absolutely excellent term in a post yesterday.

(He also used another the other day describing today's VCs as "combat fishing" for the same prey, but that's another story. Brad's now on my favourite list of terms suppliers!)

The background is the usual conundrum any start-up have. Here's this great product or service - "and I think those chaps will use it for that!"

Followed by a heated discussion raising useful arguments like "no, I do not believe that, I think it will be used by these for this!"

If consensus is reached the product will be tweaked and packaged accordingly. PR strategies hatched and advertising created for the "target" market.

Problem is that they're usually wrong.

It's "budgeting" all over again, but now even more dangerous.

But judging by the term, Brad and his friend knows it.

If a target is set and cement poured over the process and all the money is earmarked, well then, you're basically up... murky... creek with no more paddle to go.

That's why I'm fond of "extreme business planning". Focus on the controls and speed and agility and do not think you know where the next bend is. Just be prepared to handle that bend when it arrives.

And live to see the next bend.

Driving by looking over the bonnet instead of some fictitious map.

If you asked me a while ago what thingamy's market would be I would have replied "small companies" because "they have little invested in legacy systems, they need something cheap and wholesome and they need to change their Business Model every day!"

Then a funny thing happened - big firms contacted me, and not for legacy systems replacement, nope, use it to apply some order to those every day ad hoc processes that is using e-mail and phone technology today. Fix those process cracks and capture knowledge in one swat, a real-world need here and now.
And every organisation of some size have a drawer full of such, nope, they have a full warehouse of them!

Thus I'm thrilled; a specific and real problem not easy to fix by other systems, no head-on competition with legacy systems, ability to nibble our way through the organisation process by process. Instant problem solution with much upside (fix more processes, replace whatever legacy systems later) and almost no downside (some hours spent tinkering) for the customer. Perfect.

I'm not to "tell" the "market", the market will tell me. And I'll stick to Extreme Business Planning. Go down the hill, look for the river and go with the flow as it arrives.

Less planning, more doing as it were.

Comments

[Luca]

Yeah, drawers full of processes almost impossible to be captured by ANY so-called "structured" system...
Because, as far as we know, reality is a lot nearer to chaos than to any "structure" or "paradigm" that (guess what?) will need to be "shifted" to be realistic. Does it ring any bell?

Throw away the structure and follow the ball!

Thank you, Sig.

[Arnie McKinnis]

There's a company called Bluewolf that has specialized in "planning and integrating" Salesforce.com - Basically a SI for SaaS. I read an article by the President of Bluewolf and he drives the message that it's about "departmental implementation" not "enterprise implementation". If you follow his logic, it's about making it work "out there", where the rubber meets the road, where the customers are - not back at the "hive". The question may be - where does business actually happen? and how do you support that?

[sig]

Arnie, precisely - "where does business actually happen?"

As strategy requires "a value delivered" - who but the end user could decide what is a value? None I guess.

In London these days and when going to all kind of gatherings one is bowled over by the amount of web 2.0 ideas being tried out, most probably not ever going to survive but it is in fact the market who decides.
In that case the support is hidden inside the fact that it costs close to nothing to try, if it sticks then fine, if not no disaster. Extreme business modeling - no try shall ever equal being "painted into a corner" - just do it, do it more, then do it again!

[Arnie McKinnis]

It really comes down to "risk vs reward" right now in business. There is huge risk for a melgacorp to try something out (even if there is no or limited cost) but smaller companies (even those of good size) can take advantage of a new "idea" - with the risk and cost being nothing more than a little time. If it works, then great, if not, you try the next thing.

In most businesses, MASS is a greater problem than SIZE (Sig I'm just going to let that one hang out there and see what happends!!)

[sig]

Arnie,

SAP says all their customers says "no changes, no upgrades, do not touch my core ERP system, except for once every five years (I think it was)" - and I can certainly sympathise with that.

So what to do when trying to apply something really radical? First of all let it be able to sneak in under the radar nor really replacing anything with the ability to expand from there when concept has proven itself without risk.
Then obviously, be able to mimic the old ways or structures, but still using the radical approach - like in thingamy where titles and departments can be represented by tags, and hopefully after a while nobody bothers with them any more as they're of no real use..:)

Heh Mass vs Size... lemme try: Mass implies coherence and that means strong forces to keep stuff together - while size is volume and needs only definition on the outer boundary.
The forces is the core of the problem as they take the form of rules, structures and other rigid glue - always a problem that when you want any change!