Morrie the Toupee Salesman

Following up on my previous massively popular piece on bootstrapping, I’d like to outline what I see as the next logical step. In general programmers should feel comfortable with business planning – since it’s mostly the same design process, albeit with different tools, goals, language… The overall approach is familiar – invest a little time now to avoid obvious mistakes and save a lot of time later.

To a lot of people “marketing” means selling, here I mean it more in the sense of “direction.” The classic approach is SWOT analysis. The acronym is about as complex as the idea gets, it’s just basic common sense.

You’ve already decided where you want to go to (see massively popular piece referenced above). So now…

• Figure out where you are (that’s Strengths and Weaknesses).
• Figure out how you can get closer to where you want to go (that’s Opportunities).
• Figure out what might stop you from getting closer to where you want to go (that’s Threats).

Most people already have this in their head, but it’s important to spend a few hours putting it down on paper. Also you should make a spreadsheet and put all the competitors you can find in it. Then spend a half an hour on each. While assessing them, remember that the success of competitors has both positive and negative aspects for your Little Room. Assessing their competitive situation often sheds a lot of light on your own situation. A dynamic market, with several (but not hundreds) of companies, of varying sizes, and different stages of growth, is good. One dominated by a single company is bad. If the single company is Google, or General Electric, or to stretch things just a little, Digg, that’s really bad. In fact, you probably want to go back to step 1.

Ideally, you spend a few hours before diving into your great idea, and come out of it with a good sense of the “competitive landscape” that you’re about to start digging into. Even better if you have identified a direction – how and where you’re going to gouge out a large enough space in that landscape for your very own. Next step is finding a shovel. Ideally a big one, with engines and stuff.