| I started a business, with three cofounders, right out of college. The year was 1980, and we had all just graduated from MIT. Here are some things I wish we had known: () A market is defined by people's understanding of the function of a product. () Most markets are winner-take-all. Sometimes two or three products can coexist in the same space for some reason, but usually not. () So to be successful, you should seek to define a market niche you can own. You get to pick what that is, but of course you don't know until you try whether it's large enough to sustain your business. () Also, you will need to communicate the definition of your niche to the market. This may be easy or hard. If you're in a crowded space, for example, or if (as happened to us) the space started out fairly open but then better-funded competitors showed up, you may need to redefine your niche as a specific smaller part of what is hopefully now a larger market. This is called "product differentiation". () The better you understand the needs of your target market, the better you will be able to understand the potential functions for which your product can be used. This will help you in both choosing a niche and in communicating your definition of that niche to the market. I could go on, but I think that's a decent summary of the basics. Of course, there's a lot more to marketing if you really get into it (chasm phenomena etc.), but I think if we had just understood that much, we might have been a lot more successful. |