The 3 stages of market entry for a successful product launch
Conversation between early stage entrepreneur and investor:
- Entrepreneur: Look at my beautiful business model that goes after this $100B market for these SMBs. Looking to raise $2M. Investing in my business will provide a 30–50x return in 3 years.
- Investor: Wow, this is a big market! What is your entry strategy?
- Entrepreneur: [Product Demo, Use Case, Metrics] So, you see my product is working beautifully for these users. Now, with this $2M, I’m going to launch in 20 cities and target SMBs across the country.
- Investor: Wow, that’s going to blow through the money fast. Then, what?
- Entrepreneur: I’ll raise the next round | I would close to breaking even.
- Investor: Okay, let me get back to you.
And then they never do
[Similar discussions happen within larger organizations too, between entrepreneurial managers and CEOs]
I’ve been that entrepreneur too, thinking that I’ve got this amazing market, this great product, potentially healthy margins, this great strategy to capture this whole market, and I’m only asking for $2M. This investor has a few hundred million $s in this fund, so why would they not give me $2M.
After 2 months of soul-searching, and repeatedly checking with the investor and his team: turns out, the investor liked the product/team, believed in the market, but didn’t have conviction in the market entry strategy.
Over my multiple entrepreneurship stints, and working with large startups, and launching products from idea to scaling across millions of users, among the many things I’ve realized that there are 3 stages to a good market entry:
… continue reading on dhruvg.com, The 3 Stages of Market Entry for a Successful Product Launch
