What is the DNA driving your organization?
There is the "hammer looking for nails" start-up. In this one, the founders have a great idea and march ahead to build a product. They then look for the customers who fit the hammer or the product they built. As far as I can see, this represents the vast majority of start-ups at early stages, is led by technologists and the customer's pain is often an afterthought.
There is the sales driven approach where a company is completely focused on a set of customers that they have a relationship with and will build, in essence, anything that the customer needs. This is not the most common case in the start-up world but can be found with founders who come from the sales organization or when the head of sales is extremely powerful in the organization. These companies have the risk of ending-up as a services company while corporate strategy is more often that not the afterthought.
Then comes the marketing driven organization with the well planned strategy assessing the specific pains and needs of customers in a given market segment followed by building the "best fit" product delivering the solution to the pain. This approach is very challenging to master as you must build the product as if you were completely technology-driven, serve the customer as if you were completely sales-driven and at the same time make sure you do not get really attached to either.
While this debate has literally been around forever, it is eye-opening to observe how many companies out there are building cool technology and not really understanding the path to a sustainable scalable business addressing customer pains.
Which of the following best categorizes the company you work for?
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