Discovering Your Marketplace

I want to offer steps you can apply to develop a good understanding of the market opportunity you are pursuing as you build your business plan to launch the venture. This analysis divides into four areas: Founder, Customer, Industry, and Startup Ecosystem. As discussed in previous posts, the first area deals with the founding team's … Continue reading Discovering Your Marketplace

Classify Your Startup to Optimize Market Research

My initial idea for this post was to write about the steps required to conduct a practical analysis of the relevant industry or sector that helps the founder examine the external environment in which the team will operate. The more I researched industry analysis methods, the more I realized how challenging it could be for … Continue reading Classify Your Startup to Optimize Market Research

Deep Dive into Your Competitors (Part Two)

In this post, we continue to look at how startup and early venture founders can best understand the competitive landscape that they plan to enter soon. In the last post, I described how to identify organizations that provide your target customers with direct or indirect solutions. Once identified, you begin to conduct an in-depth analysis of … Continue reading Deep Dive into Your Competitors (Part Two)

Deep Dive into Your Competitors (Part One)

This post reviews the tools you can use to conduct a deeper look at your competition. It takes several steps to understand your competition better and how they position themselves in the marketplace. The first step is to identify your direct and indirect competitors. The following step is to conduct an in-depth review of each … Continue reading Deep Dive into Your Competitors (Part One)

Identify Competitive Solutions to Your Customers’ Problems

Studying your competition is an ongoing pursuit in the entrepreneurial context. It is not something you do sporadically. Throughout the venture realization process, you identify and monitor all major and emerging competitors. You determine their strengths and weaknesses and consider how they will react to every one of your strategic moves. What some call competitive … Continue reading Identify Competitive Solutions to Your Customers’ Problems

Estimating Your Market Size

An integral part of determining the attractiveness of a new venture opportunity is looking at your market's size. Throughout the venture realization process, you will have multiple opportunities to better assess the number of potential customers you have in any given marketplace. You will fine-tune your understanding of who your customer is and how many … Continue reading Estimating Your Market Size