![Animation of a waving checkered flag](https://trends.vc/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/3-81c4ca11b016.gif)
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๐ Why It Matters
- Time is wasted trying to create new markets.
- Non-venture businesses may be placed on venture paths and ruined.
- Some choose glory over freedom without realizing the consequences.
๐ Problem
Time, money and energy are often wasted trying to create new markets.
๐ก Solution
Index into an existing market instead of trying to create one.
๐ Players
Podcast Hosting Services
- Transistor
- Castos
- Podbean
- Simplecast
- Anchor
- (๐ Pro โ)
- Captivate
- Resonate
- Buzzsprout
- Spreaker
- SoundCloud
- Blubrry
- Libsyn
- bCast
- Megaphone
- RedCircle
- and many moreโฆ
Community Platforms
- Edition
- Disciple
- Mighty Networks
- PeerBoard
- Playgroup
- (๐ Pro โ)
- Discord
- Podia
- Kajabi
- Crowded
- Forumbee
- Tribe
- Geneva
- Telegram
- Discourse
- Hivebrite
- Circle
- Spectrum
- Flarum
- Zapnito
- Habitate
- Vanilla
- and many moreโฆ
Calendar Booking
- SavvyCal
- Calendly
- x.ai
- Doodle
- Rally
- (๐ Pro โ)
- Woven
- Meetingbird
- Setmore
- YouCanBook.me
- SimplyBook.me
- ScheduleOnce
- Picktime
- and many moreโฆ
CRMs
- Less Annoying CRM
- Salesforce
- ActiveCampaign
- Zoho
- Pipedrive
- (๐ Pro โ)
- Zendesk
- Nimble
- HubSpot
- Freshworks
- Copper
- Keap
- Monday
- Nutshell
- Scoro
- Close
- Podio
- and many more…
Form Builders
- Tally
- Typeform
- SurveyMonkey
- Airtable
- Google Forms
- (๐ Pro โ)
- SurveyPlanet
- JotForm
- Formstack
- Paperform
- QuestionScout
- Cognito Forms
- Survio
- and many moreโฆ
๐ฎ Predictions
- Technical moats will become irrelevant. Code is being commoditized.
- Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses will increase. APIs, productized services, fractional roles and no-code lower transaction costs. Leading to smaller firms.
- Acquisitions will become more common. Buying product-market fit saves time. You can pay for success ($3,000 MRR) instead of attempts (3,000 failed experiments).
- (๐ Pro) Winner-take-most markets, as we know them, will change. Decentralization lowers switching costs. SushiSwap is a warning shot to incumbents.
- (๐ Pro) More SaaS companies will be built with no-code. InvestorFuse reached $50k/mo using Podio and Zapier. SendPilot.co runs on Bubble.
โ๏ธ Opportunities
- Buy instead of build. Save time and reduce market risk. See Micro Private Equity.
- Stack risk reduction plays. Presell into fragmented markets. This will expose weak distribution and messaging. Itโs better to find out sooner than later.
- Build Proprietary Distribution
- Blogs (FYI)
- Films (Mailchimp)
- Courses (Webflow)
- Conferences (Moz)
- Newsletters (Close)
- Communities (Spiffy)
- Podcasts (ConvertKit)
- Growth Tools (Ahrefs)
- (๐ Pro) Lower customer switching costs. ConvertKitโs concierge service helps you switch from competitors. This combats embedding effects.
- (๐ Pro) Build a productized service first. Craig Hewitt built Podcast Motor before Castos. The former led to insights and relationships useful in the latter.
- (๐ Pro) Use lifetime deals to enter crowded markets. See SendFox and Nichesss. Feature parity and lifetime deals may be enough to threaten subscription-based competitors.
- (๐ Pro) Build an ecosystem around your product. MailerLite has experts. Integromat has a partner program. These lead others to โinvestโ in your platform.
- (๐ Pro) Leverage othersโ audiences with an affiliate program. Transistor.fm and ConvertKit offer recurring commissions.
- (๐ Pro) Prioritize markets with embedding effects and expansion revenue. This unlocks negative churn. See Zapier, Integromat and Automate.io.
- (๐ Pro) Use G2โs categories to find out which market to index into. There are hundreds.
๐ Key Lessons
- Be a fast follower to a fragmented market. See emerging markets:
- AI-Generated Copy
- Sheet-To-Site Apps
- Automation Platforms
- Fragmented markets are won or lost on distribution.
- Run towards competition. Ask how to capture demand. Not whether it exists.
- (๐ Pro) You can be marginally better and succeed in fragmented markets. You can be 3x better and lose to incumbents in winner-take-most markets.
- (๐ Pro) Taking market risk without network effects leads to the worst of both worlds. Youโll blaze the trail and split the prize.
- (๐ Pro) โThis has never been done before!โ โ โI have an idea!โ โ โI need you to sign an NDA.โ These are anti-patterns.
- (๐ Pro) Zero to one is a myth. We stand on the shoulders of giants. VRBO preceded Airbnb but the latter has liquidity.
๐ Haters
โScrew all of this. I want to build a unicorn.โ
Just know what youโre getting into.
โThis is a race to the bottom.โ
Thereโs still a game being played. Itโs in distribution. Code is being commoditized.
โIt takes just as much to go big as it takes to go small.โ
That may apply to energy expended. The expected returns are different. Dentists have higher expected returns than rockstars.
โYouโre thinking small.โ
It comes down to taste. I prefer freedom over glory. Choose your own adventure. Consciously.
โFreedom and glory arenโt mutually exclusive.โ
They arenโt. But they often conflict. Thatโs why it matters.
โItโs immoral to copy.โ
Whoever you copy, copied someone else.
๐ Links
- Micro-SaaS โข Most Micro-SaaS companies live in fragmented markets.
- No-Code โข No-Code lowers barriers to entry. Code is being commoditized. Trust is not.
- Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses โข Transactions costs are dropping. Firms are getting smaller.
- (๐ Pro) Micro Private Equity โข Buy product-market fit if you can.
- (๐ Pro) Nobody Starts Out Original โข โCopying is how we learn.โ – Kirby Ferguson and Edmund Amoye on everything being derivative.
- (๐ Pro) Trends and Opportunities for Building a SaaS โข Rob Walling and Courtland Allen on competitor risk, market risk and customer risk.
- (๐ Pro) Media House is the New Marketing Strategy โข Build proprietary distribution.
- (๐ Pro) Audience-First Products โข An audience leads to optionality.
- (๐ Pro) Micro-Marketplaces โข A look at fragmented marketplaces.
- (๐ Pro) Presales โข Reduce market risk by preselling into fragmented markets.
- (๐ Pro) Bootstrap Funds โข A relatively new route for bootstrappers.
- (๐ Pro) DeFi โข Winner-take-most markets are being disrupted. Lower switching costs act as a check on power.
๐ Thanks
Thanks to Rob Walling (TinySeed), Courtland Allen (Indie Hackers), Jeremy Abraham (Spiffy), Stewart Townsend (Channel as a Service), Tyler King (Less Annoying CRM), Logan Johnson, Natwar Maheshwari (Mailchimp), Sibi Murugesan (Earnest Capital), Paul Martin (Lyrico), Lu Doan (DocuDeer), Kenneth Dreyer and Daniel Wulf (Wurst Circle). We had a great time jamming on this report.
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