I had one of my weekly entrepreneur lunches yesterday with a gentleman who took his first technology company public in 1995 and is currently in the process of building his second company, while remaining chairman of his original venture. We had a great conversation about our respective businesses and current challenges.
One of the comments he made stood out to me — he was battling being in a marketplace no man’s land. The idea is that they are still struggling to find their place in a new market that is rapidly evolving. After we left, I spent a few minutes thinking about how to determine if a company is in marketplace no man’s land. Here’s what I came up with, based on my experience:
- The length of the sales cycle for your goods or services fluctuates wildly on a regular basis (e.g. one deal takes a week while the next one takes six months)
- The positioning of your product in the market is hard to articulate
- The last three sales have been to very different companies, and it is tough to find overlapping need
- The leads being generated aren’t consistent or predictable
Part of what I’ve described can come from an immature market while part can come from the difficulty of finding a place in an existing market. Positioning is a critical part of success and comes with significant trial and error. If you find your product in marketplace no mans land, I would suggest spending more time talking with customers and letting them guide you. Customer input is invaluable.
David Cummings on Startups 
Hey David,
I’ve been following your feed ever since “Demo Day.” This post got me wondering: could this be due to a product being developed without a clear need of a well-defined customer in mind first?
It seems that sometimes an entrepreneur will develop a product that he thinks is “neato” and then struggle to find a need it can address. Academics seem to do this a lot.
Thanks Justin. I agree that not having a customer in mind is definitely an issue for many entrepreneurs. In this case, the entrepreneur has a market and $2 million in recurring revenue already, so there’s plenty of customers.
David,
As I read your post, I couldn’t help think of a quote I believe came from Geoffrey Moore, “when in doubt, cross the chasm.” In other words, pick a beachhead segment and focus like crazy on delivering value to this market. It’s tough to have the discipline to do this in a rapidly evolving marketplace, but worth strong consideration.