>> I looked back and realized that it's because we are targeting an incremental market.
>>If we were aiming at an existing market, it would likely be much easier.
Maybe. We have 3 products. 1 was basically "first mover computerized manual processes" (that's doing well, and we have serious market share), 1 was a niche area that we came to "early" in the cycle. Once we decided to do that "in a business way" (most everyone else in the niche was doing it as a side gig ) we dominated.
The 3rd came along much later. We had a superior product, better support, better everything. Penetration into the market has been very slow and very hard. Existing users in the space are mostly "happy enough" with what they have. Getting customers to switch is a LOT of work. After almost a decade in the space we're slowly being accepted as a legitimate option.
So new markets may be slow, but you grow as they grow, and you become hard to unseat. Old markets can be really hard to penetrate.
The grass isn't greener on the other side, the grass is greener where you water it.
>>If we were aiming at an existing market, it would likely be much easier.
Maybe. We have 3 products. 1 was basically "first mover computerized manual processes" (that's doing well, and we have serious market share), 1 was a niche area that we came to "early" in the cycle. Once we decided to do that "in a business way" (most everyone else in the niche was doing it as a side gig ) we dominated.
The 3rd came along much later. We had a superior product, better support, better everything. Penetration into the market has been very slow and very hard. Existing users in the space are mostly "happy enough" with what they have. Getting customers to switch is a LOT of work. After almost a decade in the space we're slowly being accepted as a legitimate option.
So new markets may be slow, but you grow as they grow, and you become hard to unseat. Old markets can be really hard to penetrate.
The grass isn't greener on the other side, the grass is greener where you water it.