Hi there -
Here is this week’s “1 principle, 2 strategies, and 3 actionable tactics” for running lean…
1 Universal Principle
“Achieve escape velocity with a single growth rocket.”
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The Market ring is the third and final ring to close in your journey to Product/Market Fit. This is where you transition from business model validation to growth by finding and doubling down on your primary growth rocket.
In case you missed my earlier posts on closing the Founder and the Customer Rings, it would help to review them first for context.
2 Underlying Strategies at Play
I. Know when to flip focus from product to channel.
Business model validation was about validating your core value hypotheses, which required 80% of your focus on the product and 20% on the channel.
Once done, you must flip your focus to avoid falling into the product development build trap. This is where you keep building more advanced features for your early adopters and risk alienating the larger follow-on early majority customer segment.
The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
- Voltaire
II. Work on finding a single growth rocket.
While pursuing multiple growth channels in parallel can be tempting, the Pareto 80/20 principle also applies here.
You stand to drive the greatest impact by focusing your efforts on identifying and optimizing a single growth channel at a time.
Getting to escape velocity requires your full attention.
3 Actionable Tactics
I. Market/Channel Fit
Start by recognizing that not every growth channel can be applied to your product. Go back to your business model design blueprint and shortlist possible candidates.
Then, run these candidates against your current metrics to identify your top 2-3 most promising options.
II. Channel/Product Fit
Getting a channel to work will almost always require additional product investment to fit the channel (not the other way around).
Examples:
- Building user-generated content loops for programmatic SEO.
- 1:1 personalization for Account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns.
- Incentive loops for referral campaigns.
Use small and fast experiments to test for channel/product fit and further shortlist your top options to one primary growth rocket.
III. Product/Market Fit
Double-down on your primary growth rocket and stay the course until you clear gravitational pull. This is the time to reassess your business model goals and chart a new course 🚀
That's all for today. See you next week.
Ash
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P.S.
