Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I love hiking and have no problem with narrow switchback trails next to – say – a 2,000 ft. sheer drop. But, for some reason, when confronted with a steep slope, I get nervous and usually end up doing my best imitation of a crab to get up the incline. Then once I reach the top, I’ll hang half off the edge to get a good photo. Go figure. Weird variation on fear of heights. Which brings me to start-ups and Bruce Fryer’s excellent graphic in his post, Marketing Arson: The Quantum Factor.

As Bruce notes in his post:

I had an interesting discussion with one of my colleagues about projecting market size. We talked about taking market share from other vendors and substitution and all those other things you get in textbooks and expensive seminars. I’d rather blow the doors off and create a whole new set of users. Now this does relate to textbook economics. There is this theory of pricing bands. If you fall outside of them, no one buys. But there is the other side to that. If you create a whole new value proposition, orders of magnitude from the existing one, you will attract a lot more of a different type of user. But this is not gradual. At some point, it just happens. Think of Skype when you could call anyone’s telephone for 2 cents a minute. Especially international. All of a sudden another million user piled on. And I bet the big telcos didn’t lose any business at the beginning.

But how to get there? There are no easy answers. But many times you hear “But that’s the way everyone does it.”

Yep. And, that’s where so many start-ups fail. They want to be different. They want to “be a verb.” They want to be a trail blazer. But then they look at the steep vertical incline and get scared. I don’t recommend crab walking up, but you shouldn’t be afraid to at least make the attempt. The view at the top is stunning.

If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so. It may take a bit to show up since I hate making people type in little letters (I can’t read most of them myself) – so I moderate all comments. Feel free to disagree – debate is healthy. However, I don’t allow anonymous comments (If you can say it, you should own it) and I’ve blacklisted the worst obscenities, including the “f” word, as part of the troll wall.

Related Posts:
Start-Up Suicide: “Just Fine” Competitive Positioning
Start-Up Success: People Before Plan
Start-Up Success: Look Stupid. Be Silly!
Start-Up Suicide: Free Business Plan Help.
Start-Up Suicide: Mine is Bigger than Yours.

Tags: marketing entrepreneur, marketing troubleshooting, entrepreneur sanity check