Educating Your Market is an Opportunity

In today’s piece, I want to confront some conventional wisdom, give my take on it, and explain why I think my process can give a better solution. But to do that, you must know a few things about the arcane world of Startups and investing. Don’t worry; it won’t be hard work -I promise!

Innovation is not as straightforward as you think…

When I first started thinking about Startups and their innovative businesses, I assumed that those with the wildest new ideas or ways of solving problems would be the most sought-after. They would get the most funding and be the most popular bet.

It seems logical that if they can come up with something revolutionary and new, and it takes off, they own the IP and will join the ranks of billion-dollar companies in no time, with many very happy investors along for the ride.

But it turns out that this is not the case.

Far from it, in fact. Investors prefer to avoid the idea of huge innovations as they are concerned about the need to educate the market on the new solution. Investors far prefer that a Startup has a standard base proven to be profitable and then adds some small innovation to that, like increased speed, decreased cost, or adding more applicability.

And yes, this does make sense in simple terms. Too big of a change will require the Startup to educate people on why this is better and how to use it for the best results. Sometimes that can be a challenge in itself. And the results may take some time to come in, which makes investors nervous.

You may be thinking of big companies that made huge innovations and did well. The truth is the stories often are not as innovative as you think.

Google

Take Google, for example. The number one search engine on the planet for two decades. You might think Google’s success was based on its amazing innovative algorithm.

Nope.

Google’s algorithm was okay, but it wasn’t anything amazing then. In fact, Google started comparatively late to the party. When they launched in 1998, they were the 23rd major search engine.

Google’s innovation was speed.

In the 90s, loading websites was a painfully slow process. It is easy for those old enough to forget; kids today would be astonished.

So Google got their engineers to do some fabulous wizardry which sped their load times up?

Nope.

They made the page blank except for the search bar. -That was their innovation!

At that time, all the other search engines made money by selling ads on their search page. Anyone going to search would have to wait until all of the ads had loaded before they searched. It might take up to a minute to load some of those pages.

Google didn’t have all the extra stuff, and so loaded quickly. Word spread. If you wanted to search for anything online, you went to Google. Then they developed their own business model with sponsored ads relevant to people’s searches, which was a service both to the customer and the business.

So investors learned from this and other examples. They prefer a business with a proven track record that can be innovated incrementally. They are nervous about big new ideas because there is no way to determine what will happen.

My Take

I understand why investors look at things this way, and if you are a Startup Founder, you need to know that this is how many investors look at things. But that doesn’t necessarily make them right.

What is the opportunity?

It is the opportunity to shape the minds and beliefs of a whole new market. If you educate them effectively, you will indoctrinate them in the benefits and use of your product. Done effectively, you can create a moat around your business. And a defensible business is a valuable business.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

Steve Irwin and Sir David Attenborough. For many of us, these people introduced us to the wonders of the natural world (I am a bit older, so Jacques Cousteau filled this role for me).

The point is that these people introduced you to something that was not initially important to you, perhaps even unknown to you, but they did so compellingly and engagingly.

Now they occupy a particular space in your mind.

If you were to see a video of them introducing something, you would be far more likely to take their message seriously than if it came from someone else.

They are connected to you deeper because they have changed your life paradigm.

You need a plan

The point is that you can create your own space in the minds of those in your market by educating them on a problem and your solution in a way that has not been communicated before.

There is one important caveat to what I am proposing. You have an opportunity IF you have a plan for educating your market. Because if you don’t have a plan, then yes, the investors are right. Your business is more likely to fail than succeed.

Having a plan doesn’t just negate the negatives. It provides a huge positive that most Startups miss out on. Because if you can effectively educate your market on your new solution in a compelling way, then you truly own those customers you educate.

The degree to which you can do this is the degree to which these customers will stay loyal and even act as advocates. This constitutes a defensive ring around these customers against your competitors to come.

If approached correctly, this can be a huge positive to the investors you are pitching to. If approached poorly, it can be really difficult to get the funding you need.

Why this is important

We live in a time when significant problems must be solved in tight timelines. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for incremental innovations to work through the markets. Today’s big problems need bold ideas, bold actions and bold Founders to push through the obstacles that slow them down and threaten to stop them altogether.

With the right strategy and execution, you can educate the investors, other stakeholders and the market on how and why your solution is important and beneficial for them and for the planet.

With the right strategy and execution, you don’t just overcome an obstacle in winning over a crowd, but they are now at your back, pushing you forward and building unstoppable momentum.

If you ever read The Song of Ice and Fire book series by George R R Martin (on which the Game of Thrones TV series was based), the truly terrifying thing about the White Walkers was that the people you lost in battle didn’t just diminish your ranks, but they built the ranks of the enemy. It quickly became an overwhelming force.

Building this overwhelming force of supporters and momentum is the opportunity in your strategy to effectively educate the market in a compelling way.

What is the strategy?

There is a strategy for this. You can’t just wing it. But it is worth putting the necessary work into it.

Unfortunately, I can’t write the strategy for you here. Not because I am being coy or teasing but simply because any strategy will be very specific to your problem, solution, and market circumstances.

I can, however, give you some specific steps to take as you begin to put your strategy together.

1. Deeply explore the current solutions and their positioning in the market’s mind. Why are they popular? Why do people believe in these solutions?

2. Take a critical look at the solution you are introducing. Why might people be resistant? Why has it yet to be tried or not succeeded before? What do people need to believe to take action with your solution?

3. Examine the desired result. What makes the result better with your solution than with another solution? What is the story you can tell around that difference? How can you improve the difference in outcome?

4. Now plan how you can execute to share this information with your market, stakeholders, and potential investors in a way that engages their curiosity, creates a buzz in the market and lifts you up, rather than you having to do the slog through sheer hustle and willpower. How will you use multiple platforms, in concert to execute this message?

   Good Luck!

Snippets is a section where I take some interesting text I have come across in the previous week and comment on it.

This week I came across a couple of things that piqued my interest.

Semantic Infiltration

Lawrence O’Donnell did a piece on his program around Semantic Infiltration, which I found fascinating. His examples were entirely political, but the concept intrigued me, and I am sure I can find some interesting uses in business and Startups.

The idea is that by carefully choosing a name for something, the use of that name becomes like a virus that infects the conversation. Lawrence’s example was the “Fox News” channel. In reality, most of the channel is opinion programming. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But by calling it “Fox News”, it builds the idea that this is a news channel, in every conversation, to the point at which it is not even questioned.

I am not here to debate politics. My point is that this is a tool you can use in your business and your communications to subtly infect how people think about you and your product or service.

The name of this newsletter could be an example. Not a great one, as I wasn’t thinking about this at the time. The Compelling Communicator suggests that what is being discussed is compelling or engaging. It also suggests that a compelling communicator can get others to take action. So the more this name is used, the more these ideas are subconsciously reinforced.

Urge surfing

I found this interesting, not because of the actual concept, but because of the name.

Urge Surfing is a psychological principle whereby the mind acclimatises to any input. The 10th bite of cake is less pleasurable than the first few. Therefore the idea is if you have an urge -such as an addiction, you can sit on the urge until it loses its intensity.

What grabbed my attention was the name. It is simple, it evokes an image in the mind, and it arouses curiosity. When you are naming things, these are great elements to think about.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

I love this quote because it cuts to the heart of my philosophy of the Compelling Communicator. You and I share one thing in common; we believe in our experience. After that, our commonalities diverge.

If we share an experience, the meaning and value we get from that experience will be different. -Sometimes slightly different, sometimes wildly different.

The problem is that we only have our own experience, and it sometimes takes a specific event to realise that other people’s experience is different from our own*. In our efforts to communicate, this usually manifests in assumptions.

Because we view the world through our filter, made up of our past experiences, we will tend to explain ourselves or communicate in a way that makes sense to us. -Which is perfectly understandable.

However, if we want to communicate effectively, we need to realise that our lens is different from the lens of our audience. If we have a lot of similar experiences, our lenses are likely similar. But the more our backgrounds differ, the more our lenses will differ.

So when creating your message, you need to think about the lens of your audience and ensure that you explain things in a way that comes into focus through their lens.

Consider the assumptions you may make in your explanation or argument, and ask yourself: What if your audience does not share those assumptions?

Ultimately, the message is that if you look at this quote every time you finish a piece of communication, it will remind you to get other input or think through how your audience may interpret what you have written.

*My realisation involved a memorable incident in the Dojo after being battered by someone who weighed probably three times more than me. But that is a story for another time…

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

Starting a collaboration on a documentary around cyber security.

Recreationally:

We just finished a side quest in D&D that has taken 4 years to complete. The main quest will be wrapped up soon after 8 years.

What I am reading:

Pathfinder 2e Core Rule Book

What I am watching:

Catching up on the TV show Barry.

Personal note:

At the time of writing, I have just finished months of work with someone seeking $19m in funding for a proven project which will make a huge impact in New Zealand. I am pleased with his pitch and eager to follow his progress.

This does mean that I now have the capacity to help one Founder or Startup. I choose who I work with carefully and prioritise Startups that solve the world’s big issues. These are often not the ones with the clearest profit potential, but they are often the ones that can benefit the most from this market education opportunity outlined above. If you think you know someone who might get value from working with me and might be a good fit, get in touch. (LinkedIn is usually best)