In working with my fair share of startups, I’ve landed on this fairly interesting analogy that some folks seem to like so I’m sharing this with the broader world.
Start Ups are a lot like flare guns. Aimed right they get the light seriously high enough to get everybody’s attention. This attention causes lots of customers to show up but also lots of ‘competitors’ to go ‘gee, we should do X’ and then they get on it. So, the good news is that everybody loves you, the bad news becomes everybody wakes up and wants your piece of your pie. Google has lived a long time fending off Microsoft, now here comes Bing which finally got on the beach and appears to be digging in for the fight. Twitter got up there and so far nobody has knocked them off (yet).
I point this out because it impacts a few things as you grow.
Getting a hit on Techcrunch, presenting at Demo, having the bloggers go wild, seeing a TweetFeast on your behalf; all of these things could arguably be labeled as “firing the flare” with varying degrees of height, light, notice, etc. It can be a head fake of success. Since you will be yesterdays news in about a split second, what happens after? When do you press on the gas? Spend marketing money?
If you assume somebody says, we can do that or you wake up the competition saying, throw a zillion dollars at it, etc, what’s your plan?
My council to you is spend the cycles planning out the successful firing of that flare. What’s happens if people do like it? This SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis will be a great tool for you and your team. It also lays out to your board and investors that you are thinking about the landscape, planning, and money spending within a well thought out context.
A SWOT diagram is a one page document which can help everybody focus.
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