Turning an Idea into a Reality - Part 1: Deep Market Knowledge
Series: No Playbook, No Problem
Summary:
Turning a validated idea into a viable product requires more than passion. It requires customer research, rapid prototyping, clear ROI, and most importantly a nimble entrepreneurial team. This blog has 3 parts to make it easier to follow and essentially outline how I landed on my playbook.
Have you heard the expression “Ideas are worthless, execution is what matters?”. I was reflecting on my experiences and I have to say I agree. Ideas come easy, and even building pitch decks to communicate them is easy. The hard part is turning a 10-minute pitch that lights up the room into a product that works for customers, for business, and for the market.
The Lane Risk idea generated early buzz and showed a potential to be a SaaS platform. But momentum alone doesn’t get a product built, especially inside a big company with no dedicated development team, product infrastructure and only a sliver of budget.
To make it real, we needed more than a story - we needed evidence and a compelling vision that would show to the leadership team a potential of becoming its own digital revenue stream and scale for years.
Three Essentials to Start With
Deep Market Knowledge. For me it meant learning the broader supply chain landscape outside of core cold chain market. That included transportation and logistics, last mile, supplier management, order management, and even warehouse management. Supply Chain is an interconnected ecosystem, and if you don’t understand how the pieces connect together, you won’t be able to navigate it.
Customer Understanding. I needed to gain a deep understanding of how my target customers operate, what alternatives they use, who are buyers, and who actually logs in each day into the system. I needed a deep understanding of their challenges. Insights from customer discovery sessions fuel all my ideas.
An Entrepreneurial team. The team of doers who could challenge the status quo and thrive in ambiguity. Being an “entrepreneur” means being able to learn from failures, pivot, and iterate a lot. It’s not easy, it’s stressful, and success is not guaranteed, so you have to enjoy the journey. It’s like hiking: if you're only in it for the summit view, a cloudy day disappoints you. But if you enjoy the journey, even with steep climbs and setbacks, every step is worthwhile.
Let’s start with Market Research: Where Does This Fit?
There are many ways to define market size, classic TAM, SAM, SOM framework works just fine. One resource that really helped me think through this from multiple angles is A Guide to Market Size Calculations and Confidence by Jerry Schall. It often takes several iterations before you land on a definition that feels right.
When I dove into market research, I was seeking answers to a few foundational questions:
How big is the market?
How big is the potential opportunity?
Who are our competitors, and how do they win?
What is our right to win in this market? How would we win and differentiate?
We began with our internal team of subject matter experts to understand the intricate details of our core market. We also partnered with an external consulting firm to flesh out potential opportunities backed by broader market data. Yet the real challenge was narrowing things down to the niche opportunity size and that’s more like slicing through a layered cake than a single clean cut.
Research conducted by consultants, with input from internal market experts, provided us with a wide range of potential opportunities. But to nail it down more precisely, I also needed to understand the competitive landscape. I like to call it “the lay of the land”.
The Lay of the Land: What Market is Up to?
I started by looking at our core market competitors, and many of them were continuing to heavily focus on IoT, Visibility and Cold Chain management. Rightfully so, as that’s their core business. But for my purpose, that was too narrow.
So l looked outward.
Back in 2019-2020, many of today’s supply chain unicorns were just beginning to find product-market fit. It’s humbling to see how far the transportation and logistics segment has come in the past 7 years. For instance, Project44 was positioning itself as a data aggregator and visibility provider [1], while FourKites was capturing market share with best-in-class predictive ETAs [2]. These companies now are leaders in the market, each valued at over $2B [3,4].
Still, I had to go further.
I explored players in supply chain risk management and came across fascinating companies like Resilinc, Everstream, Altana, and others. These companies focused more on the upstream supply chain with focus on supplier risk mitigation.
That research was getting me closer to my goal. The opportunity was coming into focus. There it was a perfect niche at the intersection of Transportation Visibility, Supply Chain Disruptions and Cold Chain risk to product quality.
That overlap of the fragile convergence of all three was our sweet spot and the opportunity was up for grabs.
Takeaways: No Playbook, No Problem
Understanding the market and competitive landscape is a critical step. It helps clarify where you stand today and where you want to be with a new product or as an organization.
It also helps understand the broader ecosystem you’re operating in, and how the value you deliver fits into the larger supply chain. After all, it is a chain.
And finally, mapping the lay of the land gives you visibility into potential partners. Those who can help you deliver more value and accelerate your impact.
Next Up: From Pitch Deck to Product: Turning an Idea into a Reality - Part 2: Customer Discovery and the foundation of the Early Adopter program
Afterword
I'm writing about my experience bringing a new product line to market. There are a few important aspects that may not be immediately clear:
This opportunity was years in the making. There were plenty of stop-and-go moments where I had to pause and focus on other priorities.
I also wasn’t doing this alone. I was working with an incredible team that I built and grew over time. If it weren’t for them, this opportunity might never have made it to market. I LOVE YOU ALL! It was an unforgettable experience.
Sources:
https://www.project44.com/resources/project44-advanced-visibility-platform/
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/project44-concludes-blockbuster-fy-2023-with-51-yoy-growth-in-total-gaap-revenue-and-2-7-billion-valuation-301793832.html
https://www.fourkites.com/press/fourkites-secures-100m-series-d-funding/