The Right Timing For Startup: Too Early is Harder To Survive

People who start building a startup are worried that they might not make it at the right time. It’s a fear of a red ocean full of competitors.

Honestly, is there a problem? Do you think that if today there is enough space on a market it will change in a year or two? Saturation does not happen so quickly even in niches. The one exception - is the hype around shiny things.

So if you are “late” you just will meet some challenges of competition but you can use a lot of well-known strategies and methods to succeed. Moreover, the late means that the market is ready, there is demand and people understand the value you offer.

The trick is getting in there too early. You've got to be ready to change the way people do things, change business processes, and get them to try new products. You've got to deal with product building and a long sales cycle. Most of the marketing activities will be focused on product value explanation. It's a very long game. You've got to build a new market niche by educating clients and building trust, not only for your company but also for the essential solution.

I've been through the process of launching SaaS for construction companies. When I looked into the market, I found some similar products and was happy that the companies were not big but already had customers. I figured it was time to launch and go to market with a bit of a niche focus and some differentiation. However, as we built the prototype and started selling, we realized there was a huge gap between the tools the company was using to manage construction and what we were offering. It was an adoption challenge that affected everyone involved, from owners to managers to field workers.

The most successful case we had was about 4 months of integration just because the owner of the company was familiar with the software and wanted to innovate and improve process efficiency. That's too hard for a 5-person bootstrapped startup. A few years later, market players got used to using SaaS for various business tasks and were ready to integrate something similar for the construction field. But we didn't have that time.

So do not be afraid of being late, be careful to be early. It requires a larger margin of safety.

Here is the simple cheatsheet for a launch timing: