Wow, that really resonates with me. As an enterprise play, we are definitely at risk of picking the wrong segment here. Although, our options are a little bit more limited due to the nature of our products. We're doing what you might call "Enterprise 2.0" stuff, operating at the intersection of social-networking (see: Enterprise Social Network), social-network-analysis, information retrieval and business process management... The stuff we're building really only starts to have utility in the larger companies. So we're still interviewing people, and researching and exploring to try and find the right target segment.
There's a train of thought in my mind, fueled by our first big round of Customer Discovery interviews, that we are looking at (using employee count as a rough approximation for overall company size) companies with 1000 employees or more. Maybe it really starts at 500 employees, but we're still working on that. Depending on where you draw the line between deer and elephant, we could wind up in either segment (or both).
Rabbits are definitely out for us though, at least given our current model. If things don't work going this route, we could pivot to a SaaS app that does less, and go down-market to the smaller companies. We did interview a few smaller companies earlier and saw some interest in that model, so it could be an option.
Our next step is to do a very focused Customer Discovery effort, focusing on manufacturing companies in the Southeast (mainly NC to start with, since that's where we are) with 1000 employees and up. But we'll mix in a few of the ones that are between 500 and 1000 as well, as we try to isolate the right focus.
The idea of landing an elephant or two does seem tempting, but msuster makes some good points there. We definitely don't want to get too caught up special-casing stuff for one big customer, to the point that they become our only customer, because we can't serve anybody else!
There's a train of thought in my mind, fueled by our first big round of Customer Discovery interviews, that we are looking at (using employee count as a rough approximation for overall company size) companies with 1000 employees or more. Maybe it really starts at 500 employees, but we're still working on that. Depending on where you draw the line between deer and elephant, we could wind up in either segment (or both).
Rabbits are definitely out for us though, at least given our current model. If things don't work going this route, we could pivot to a SaaS app that does less, and go down-market to the smaller companies. We did interview a few smaller companies earlier and saw some interest in that model, so it could be an option.
Our next step is to do a very focused Customer Discovery effort, focusing on manufacturing companies in the Southeast (mainly NC to start with, since that's where we are) with 1000 employees and up. But we'll mix in a few of the ones that are between 500 and 1000 as well, as we try to isolate the right focus.
The idea of landing an elephant or two does seem tempting, but msuster makes some good points there. We definitely don't want to get too caught up special-casing stuff for one big customer, to the point that they become our only customer, because we can't serve anybody else!