Last week, I was catching up with an entrepreneur who used a term that really stood out to me. While speaking of his new venture and the opportunity ahead, he said, “The big unlock was a change in industry regulation.” He explained how this change in industry regulations made his new tech venture not only viable but also presented a huge opportunity. This conversation made me ponder other “unlocks” that led to new opportunities and ventures ultimately becoming winners.
Thinking about Pardot, our “big unlock” was the shift from offline to online for B2B buyers. Before, B2B marketers were mostly engaged in marketing tactics around trade shows, direct mail pieces, magazine ads, and other forms of traditional media. As the world went online, led by consumers, business buyers naturally started to spend more time on the internet for their business purchasing decisions. Thus, the shift from offline to online was the big unlock for Pardot, providing email marketing, landing pages, CRM integration, drip programs, and everything else connected to running online marketing campaigns.
Considering Salesloft in a similar vein, more and more companies were shifting to inside sales, with a heavier emphasis on internet-led motions around email, social media, phone calls with conversational intelligence, and Zoom meetings to sell their products. The shift away from field sales, where sales reps meet with prospects face-to-face, to internet-led selling, where the sales reps were primarily working from home or from the office, and needed a new platform, created a huge opportunity for more tools and systems to help ensure and maximize the productivity of those efforts.
Continuing down that same vein, there’s a local startup in town called FinQuery, previously called LeaseQuery. A big change in the accounting standards required companies to better account for all of their leases and long-term liabilities they had signed up for in a way that was more transparent and more reflective of the actual costs to the business. FinQuery built software and services to help solve this problem, which became required because of the industry changes.
Entrepreneurs would do well to think about the “big unlock” that makes their new venture possible. The “big unlock” makes it so that now is the time to build this next company. Sometimes it’s only a modest change that makes a startup work, but the vast majority of the time, there’s some big trend, innovation, or societal shift that creates an unlock for a wave of new startups. Find the unlock and walk through the door.
David Cummings on Startups 
The unlock you mention, drove a huge number of SAAS companies as well as a corresponding secondary effect SAAS Companies.
One huge unlock underway now is all the political issues between China and the west. This is driving re-shoring or near-shoring, complete supply chain restructuring and the corresponding secondary effect SAAS companies that will follow this first motion.
Most VC’s seem to be slow to recognize this and the renewed opportunities for hybrid hardware/SAAS companies.
Will SAAS only VC’s be left behind in this next wave as hardware and physically related companies take advantage of this current unlock
As a tech lawyer, I couldn’t agree more with the need to keep a close eye on ever-evolving legal and regulatory requirements that will unlock (sometimes very quickly) new markets. For example, despite the fact that “ESG” is now something of a dirty word in certain quarters, I believe that this train has already left the station, at least when it comes to potential investors and underwriters, and reporting requirements around sustainability, governance and the like are here to stay.