Brilliant article. Something to keep in mind. I shuttered a start-up I was working on (VenueMenu) after participating in an accelerator here in Brisbane, Australia (called ilab, I highly recommend it!) for this one simple reason:
We were going into a market that was already defined, with a difference. This difference wasn't enough, and we were always going to be playing the rules of the 800lb gorillas already in place. It was a niche market, that was already over-served.
The nail in the coffin was that here in Australia, the competitors had seen exists at less that AUD$10m. Because of that, no VC's would touch us, so we couldn't get the runway we needed to launch and try to bust the market wide open.
I'm glad we decided to sink the ship before we left the port. I learnt a lot, and saved a lot of time and money.
We were going into a market that was already defined, with a difference. This difference wasn't enough, and we were always going to be playing the rules of the 800lb gorillas already in place. It was a niche market, that was already over-served.
The nail in the coffin was that here in Australia, the competitors had seen exists at less that AUD$10m. Because of that, no VC's would touch us, so we couldn't get the runway we needed to launch and try to bust the market wide open.
I'm glad we decided to sink the ship before we left the port. I learnt a lot, and saved a lot of time and money.