Understand the market(s)

Uncover and qualify real market needs through a rapid, systematic, fruitful insight generation process

Anchor it all clearly in market needs, or shoot in the dark

Tech ventures generally start with an intuition. The founding team witnesses a gap in the market and develop a product to address it, using new technologies. Because this intuition is often driven by developments of interest to technological innovators, rather than by an analysis of the needs of more mainstream customers, it does not always offer a solid ground for the development of a large business.

validating and refining it is a critical task that should be started early: leaving it till after the product or business model completion is often a recipe for failure. Unfortunately, refining this intuition is rarely an easy task, nor is it an exact science.

But there are ways to improve the accuracy of the results, and obtain those cost-effectively. The key is to anchor the process in clear objectives, have a plan before starting and go about it methodically, and leverage the best sources of insights.

Market insights by Growthroute

Growthroute understands that few tech ventures want to use up precious resources on something as nebulous and poorly framed as "market research". That's why we offer market insights instead. The difference is not just semantics. It takes place at 3 levels.

First, we structure our exploration around clearly-defined, mutually-agreed goals. We submit a plan to the venture that details what we will be looking for and how we plan to source it. It is all prioritized so we start with the lowest-hanging fruits and work our way towards more expensive inputs. We do it all in quick iterations, this way there are market insights to work with at all stages.

Second, we develop a systematic plan to complete our analysis in the shortest amount of time.

Third, we seek to deliver outputs actionable at multiple levels simultaneously. For instance, analysis to prioritize public markets by geography surfaced municipal prospect lists which we then pre-filled a CRM system with, offering an immediately useful output. In a different assignment, we identified a list of key potential partners and built a plan to go after them. We also developed a list of keywords for online sources that could be re-used in a Google Ad campaign.

Because Market researchers don't cut it anymore

Market research is one of those activities that traditional consultants love to put forward to justify long hours of largely unproductive work. Because their research plan is often sketchy, there are few concrete results justifying the expenditure at the end of the exercise. Growthroute changes that equation.

Anchor it all clearly in market needs, or shoot in the dark

Capability analysis : Secondary sources: We have exclusive access to over 40 subscription sources. That is more than even the best innovation hubs offer. Primary sources: Interviews with customers, prospects and partners. Non-consumers Direct sources: Revenue analysis