Services:

1. Business Consulting:
Market Analysis, Product Strategy, Strategic Partnerships, Competitive Strategy

2. Financing Strategy

3. Private Equity Fundraising


Strategy is the selected path to a destination. We can't draw you a map unless you know where you want to go.

Market Analysis

Market analysis is only a tool to help sharpen the view of a possible destination. It does not substitute for your decision on where you want to go as a business. Market information can include:

  • market opportunity/sizing: how much potential money can be made
  • market share: the top players in a market and how much they each own of the market share, break downs by geographic area or vertical industries may make sense
  • market dynamics: history of market, trends in growth or decline of the overall market, trends in market share changes, influential factors like mergers, acquisitions, standards bodies etc...

Note that none of this specifies what the market focus is. This is why a majority standard market researches do not provide high value. Getting the total market size on vacation property is very different than market analysis on vacation property management software market targeted at property management companies that manage 100+ properties on average.

Product Strategy

Successful products are the ones you build to meet the needs of your target customers. Never assume you know what the customers want without talking to them face to face and watching them do what they need to with the product. Never take customer feature requests at face value, find out why. Remember that they are not the professional product managers and you cannot make everyone of them happy.

Our view is that full customer understanding is crucial to a successful strategy, as well as alignment with market needs and the company's overall goals. Market needs comes from the market analysis above, and you provide the company's goals. What we see you need to start understanding your customers:

    • target customer persona definitions
    • customer segmentation and sizing based on persona and market information
    • study to observe customer using the product to achieve specific end goals
    • customer and potentials interviews about product feedback
    • study on Why do non-customers not buy

Once you have clarity on your customers, your target market and the company's short term and long term goals, you can start formulating your product strategy:

  • decide on high level priority: ie. increase adoption/marketshare vs increase value of existing customer vs getting into new market
  • detailed gap analysis based on high level priority
  • enumerate options/ideas targeted at gaps identified
  • eliminate options/ideas not specifically targeted at a gap area
  • evaluate cost/benefit of options or options groups
  • pick a direction and GO!

Strategic Partnerships and Alliances

619,000 partners enable $13.4 billion dollars in revenue for Microsoft. Starbucks partnered with Pepsi-cola to distribute their Frappacino drinks on Pepsi's premium shelf space in the grocery stores. When Fedex bought Kinkos, all other print companies automatically partnered with UPS.

Partnerships can significantly increase your revenue, market share and be a strategic move in the market place. The crucial pieces to a good partnership are selecting a mutually beneficial partnership, get the partnership signed, managing the partnership and existing the partnership.

Selection of good potential partners seem very simple on the surface. All you need is to select a partnership where both of you make more money with the partnership than without. The best selection results from deep understanding of the potential partner: Their other products and services; their over all goals in the short and long term; their competitors and other partners. You're basically looking for anything else about the potential partner that may conflict with your proposed partnership.

Doing your homework well in the partner selection will make getting the deal signed that much easier. You need to approach the partner with specifically what will benefit them and how that makes them meet their top goals for next quarter, year, 10 years, etc... One thing about knowing who the competitors are, if this company refuses, approach a competitor.

Maintaining the partnership involves the basics of relationship management and regular checkin on the value proposition of the partnership. For relationship management, remember that once trust is broken it's very hard to reestablish. Both sides need to focus on preserving trust as a top priority. Out side of that, you need regular checkins on whether the value proposition that originated the partnership is still valid. If there has been changes, is it still a beneficial partnership based on the new value proposition.

An exiting strategy for a partnership is crucial to set in place when the partnership is formed. This can be only internal knowledge to the company and can change over time. Putting thoughts on exit strategy when you start will give much clearer signs to watch for when you do the regular value proposition checks.

Competitive Strategy

You cannot compete successfully unless you understand how your competitor competes. A recent customer wanted to know how to compete with Microsoft. Here are some of what we know about how Microsoft competes:

  • Microsoft is not invincible. Their competitive successes are well publicized but they have an equal amount of failures that no one hears about because the details never make it outside of the company. Just remember, they are a business run by people just like any other business.
  • Their competitive strength is coming from behind. They are not the innovators in a space. If you are the lead in a growing or large market that they don't already have a presence in, they will be a competitor at some point.
  • They have a general strategy when entering a new market to copy the best of the leaders in the space, and then undercut on price and overpower on reach.
  • For a new product, they generally take 3 release to get it right. The first release is focused on time to market and checklist feature comparison. The next release is almost like a service pack and many times is. It will fix major bugs and address top customer issues. The third release will be a quality driven release with a more mature set of features.
  • Their product take an average of 3 release to get it "right", but their marketing will be bang on from the start. Utlize their marketing to give validity to your market and do the reach and education that you're unable to.
  • Microsoft business units operate as independent companies. They will partner and compete with each other just like any other companies. Use that to your advantage. There is no such thing as MS the evil empire that's all coordinated amongst their business units to crush little companies they're competing with.
  • Don't copy what MSFT does to win, you can't compete with them on their strengths. Understand their weaknesses, and compete against that with your strengths.