Small-TAM tech companies that build software for mid-size clients in traditional industries fill a big and underserved niche, have a counterintuitive competitive moat, and have a more sustainable mechanism for growing big if they want to.
> Small-TAM tech companies that build software for mid-size clients in traditional industries fill a big and underserved niche, have a counterintuitive competitive moat, and have a more sustainable mechanism for growing big if they want to.
Most clients in the small-tam situation tend to be non tech and expect a turnkey (or near turnkey) solution.
This means the industry-specific solution very quickly becomes a company-specific implementation.
I suspect the counterintuitive thing is to lean into the beast of acting like a services vendor and implement these turn key solutions for the first 3-5 clients of the same industry even if these turnkey solutions are not scalable.
Then after those 3-5 successful implementations, figure out if there are any common abstractions and then pull them out.
If it's possible these common abstractions can be client facing, then great, you can slowly transition to be a product company with some self-serve features.
If these common abstractions are only useful for developers, then sadly you will still be like a services company except that now you are far more efficient than the first 3-5 times you did this.
By the way, if you have a tip jar, I will gladly pay something to incentivise you to write the follow up on this.
we should discuss when i'm back in sg (from early dec) — the common abstractions/mechanisms approach is one way, i think there are other ways too. (the incubator approach can be designed to facilitate those other ways and speed things up + reduce misidentification)
> Small-TAM tech companies that build software for mid-size clients in traditional industries fill a big and underserved niche, have a counterintuitive competitive moat, and have a more sustainable mechanism for growing big if they want to.
Most clients in the small-tam situation tend to be non tech and expect a turnkey (or near turnkey) solution.
This means the industry-specific solution very quickly becomes a company-specific implementation.
I suspect the counterintuitive thing is to lean into the beast of acting like a services vendor and implement these turn key solutions for the first 3-5 clients of the same industry even if these turnkey solutions are not scalable.
Then after those 3-5 successful implementations, figure out if there are any common abstractions and then pull them out.
If it's possible these common abstractions can be client facing, then great, you can slowly transition to be a product company with some self-serve features.
If these common abstractions are only useful for developers, then sadly you will still be like a services company except that now you are far more efficient than the first 3-5 times you did this.
By the way, if you have a tip jar, I will gladly pay something to incentivise you to write the follow up on this.
we should discuss when i'm back in sg (from early dec) — the common abstractions/mechanisms approach is one way, i think there are other ways too. (the incubator approach can be designed to facilitate those other ways and speed things up + reduce misidentification)
> we should discuss when i'm back in sg (from early dec)
I'm in SG till 10th then I'm in SG from 16th to 29th.
I'll pm you my contact number