Launching Sway for Startups
Since leaving my role as an industry analyst at Gartner, I’ve spoke with dozens of early stage startup founders and the conversation always turns to one thing: How do I work with analysts?
For many, this means they want to know how they can get into a Magic Quadrant or Wave. Founders of seed stage or Series A companies underestimate the amount of investment it takes to achieve that level of industry recognition. Landing a coveted dot is the culmination of years of work developing relationships, conducting countless briefings, and lining up calls between targeted analysts and customers.
Fixating on a single document from a single analyst firm is a mistake, but one that founders can be forgiven for making. Magic Quadrants and Waves are influential and visible documents, but they’re not the only thing analysts do. Analysts have the ear of the enterprise software buyer. As such, they have far more influence than most founders realize.
My goal with this new Medium publication is to demystify the industry analyst market and give founders advice on how they can engage with analysts. Some of the questions I’ll be answering in the coming weeks and months include:
- What do industry analysts do, anyway?
- Why should startups care about analysts?
- What are the different types of analyst firms?
- How can startups work with analysts?
- What does an analyst relations strategy look like?
If there’s something you’d like to see covered, please reach out. If you’re a Medium subscriber, you can find the first article here.
