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I’ve launched startups since 1996, now advise & invest as well as run my own. I see products all the time that are compelling & do a better job solving a probl

I’ve launched startups since 1996, now advise & invest as well as run my own. I see products all the time that are compelling & do a better job solving a problem than any other problem in the space. Doesn’t matter. Sales & marketing is the hardest it has ever been. I’ve stopped looking for product opportunities. Now I look for distribution. Peter Thiel’s advice in “Zero to One” is avoid competition, find a monopoly before it becomes one. Another strategy is find an existing monopoly with an underserved need or want.

lulznews 3y ago
I totally agree but haven’t figured out how to crack this yet. >I’ve stopped looking for product opportunities. Now I look for distribution. Can you elaborate?
- bruce511 3y ago
  Not the op, but this gels with my story. When I started out, computers were rare, and software was rare. We were in thd business of "computerizing" companies. We often supplied hardware with software. We found our space and grew as the space grew. Contrast to 10 years ago where we saw a market with poor software, and entered that. Most businesses in the space had a product, albeit an inferior one. Progress capturing that market has been slow though, people don't like change. If I was to do another product now, I'd focus a lot more on the willingness and ability, for the market to adopt new things. Being better (a fair bit better) is not enough. It's a lot harder now to get traction, to build trust, to convince people to change.
- sirspacey 3y ago
  Without exception, the founders with the best outcomes in my network have a co-founder who has been in the industry for decades, has personal relationships with the leadership of the category leaders, and got a meeting with them for the startup in one phone call. The startup becomes a design partner to the #2 or #3 in the space, proves out the model, and raises tons of capital. Almost all the money in any industry flows through one company. Almost all the money that doesn’t flow through them flows through #2 and so on. The power law is real in markets. So distribution means doing business with a customer who has already captured the market distribution and solving a problem for them. Study Proctor & Gamble, they pioneered the model of being a monopoly that provides services to their suppliers. The biggest problem the category leader has in any market is that their market isn’t getting bigger & their supply chain isn’t getting more efficient to the degree that it could. They know why, they just don’t have solutions.

lulznews 3y ago

I totally agree but haven’t figured out how to crack this yet. >I’ve stopped looking for product opportunities. Now I look for distribution. Can you elaborate?

bruce511 3y ago
Not the op, but this gels with my story. When I started out, computers were rare, and software was rare. We were in thd business of "computerizing" companies. We often supplied hardware with software. We found our space and grew as the space grew. Contrast to 10 years ago where we saw a market with poor software, and entered that. Most businesses in the space had a product, albeit an inferior one. Progress capturing that market has been slow though, people don't like change. If I was to do another product now, I'd focus a lot more on the willingness and ability, for the market to adopt new things. Being better (a fair bit better) is not enough. It's a lot harder now to get traction, to build trust, to convince people to change.
sirspacey 3y ago
Without exception, the founders with the best outcomes in my network have a co-founder who has been in the industry for decades, has personal relationships with the leadership of the category leaders, and got a meeting with them for the startup in one phone call. The startup becomes a design partner to the #2 or #3 in the space, proves out the model, and raises tons of capital. Almost all the money in any industry flows through one company. Almost all the money that doesn’t flow through them flows through #2 and so on. The power law is real in markets. So distribution means doing business with a customer who has already captured the market distribution and solving a problem for them. Study Proctor & Gamble, they pioneered the model of being a monopoly that provides services to their suppliers. The biggest problem the category leader has in any market is that their market isn’t getting bigger & their supply chain isn’t getting more efficient to the degree that it could. They know why, they just don’t have solutions.