Like other applications, ambitious multipurpose web platforms must start by solving a specific market problem, and find their ways into the heart of a passionate community of early adopters.
Those are the challenges I took on at the request of an intriguing multi-million stealth startup’s founders.
Work completed
- Implementation of the Pragmatic Marketing framework and wiki documentation of analysis and recommendations
- Identification of key product benefits
- Creation of user personas and use scenarios
- Applications development roadmap and launch plan
- Competitive landscape review
- Product positioning recommendations
- Market adoption metrics and targets
- Revenue model, including operational cost projections
- Branding
- Direct responsibility over 2 consultants for SEO and product strategy
- Development of deep industry linkages by participation in key forums
Key contributions
- Alerting management to the risk of trying to “be everything to everyone” and offering concrete steps to alleviate that risk
- Anchoring the company’s launch strategy into clear use-case scenarios
- Increasing focus of development efforts by creating a prioritized feature development roadmap based on market needs
- Achieving rapid, extensive visibility in the industry’s main forums as a company representative. My participation as a permanent member in the respected Semantic Web Gang monthly podcast and write-ups on my dedicated blog Semantics Incorporated (whose posts are now merged into GrowthTimes) opened up exclusive access to the main industry participants.
- Further helped positioned the company as a viable investment target through the actions above. The company raised a new financing round during the year of our collaboration.
