Threading the Three Needles of a New Product

Have you seen the video of the guy in the Wingsuit threading the needle in a rock wall at around 160KM/Hour?  Watch it. It underscores the point that there is a subtle difference between wingsuit glory and being a stain on a rock wall in the Swiss Alps.

New product introduction at a start-up is kinda like that wingsuit maneuver.  Careful planning, in-flight adjustments followed by moments of self-doubt and shear panic. 

As a fledgling company without established customers, channels and brand, you have the combination that makes start-ups so hard and yet so rewarding at the same time. You see being at an established company you can lean on your stabilizing ballast of revenue, customers, a ramped channel or direct field with established customer relationships.  Introducing a new product into an existing channel presents its own challenges but nothing is as daunting as a new product into a new channel.

This is why new product intro at a start-up is like threading three needles at once. The right message at the right time to the right person.

Subjects that are top of mind and selfishly make a person’s career prosper. In other words, technology that will make them successful individuals in their organization.

You’re asking them to change what they are currently doing, how they allocate their budget and how they train their people. 

Tech people brand themselves as “Certified Professionals” in vendor proprietary technology whether its VMWare, SAP, Microsoft or Oracle, this personal branding is strongly tied to technologists as a badge of achievement and often advancement.

But in introducing a new product, you’re mission is to disrupt this and replace it with branding people as innovators, forward thinkers, visionaries.  Sophisticated orgs are often bifurcated between run-time environments and next-gen platforms each with different groups managing them.  Bifurcated teams introduces politics and turf.

The smart start-up customer org must be highly aware of all of these dynamics, navigate the org, and tune the message and the audience.  Find the innovators and the run-rate teams.  Tailor your message on the fly.  Careful planning, slight in flight adjustments and guts to hit that hole-shot and avoid being a stain on a wall.