Entrepreneurs - Taken By Surprise; Depth Of The Market

Continuing my series on asking some of the entrepreneurs I work with about the biggest thing that took them by surprise, or something they underestimated, Matthew Wensing, CEO of Riskpulse, has been building a business that uses weather and risk data to optimize supply chain efficiency and cost.

Matthew talks about how understanding your market is much more complicated than we initially think:

“One thing that was surprising is the depth of a market. Meaning, you choose to focus on a niche thinking it's small and then realize that it's an entire industry. Then you focus again and realize the same thing. Which means there's much more to learn than you realize ... at least 5x-10x more.

For example, supply chain is huge, so you might pick transportation, then transportation is huge so you pick temperature sensitive transportation, then you realize there's pharma and food and others.

Then you realize there are entire companies that just make the boxes that ship pharma products, and some of them are suited for air travel versus ocean versus rail versus truck. Endless specialization.”

Matthew is spot on! More importantly he hits on the crucial point that you can never know too much about the market you are serving, about the customers you are serving.

Add to that, you will have product pivots, and you will find that your product resonates better with certain customers than with others (which customers will pay for your products) – so, how well you know your market and its customers is hugely important; and with every pivot, with every narrower focus, comes an absolute necessity to understand the target market deeper.

Entrepreneurs usually start their businesses with a rudimentary to,at best, a good knowledge of their market and customers. What is certain is that the landscape and the products of the business will evolve; therefore the customer and market focus evolves. Sometimes drastically.

Make customer and market understanding a core competency, and avoid some of the surprise!