Your Business Plan is Wrong!

OK, one more for today, since I've been meaning to discuss adapting to market realities for a while. I read a bunch of VC blogs because I continue to be fascinated by that game, and how VCs have needed to adapt their models to play into the market realities.

Having been an entrepreneur a number of times, I can tell you that this post from Josh Kopelman (here) is right on the money. You plan is wrong. Period. Whether it's your business plan, product plan, marketing plan or sales plan. It's wrong. It may be very wrong or just need some fine tuning, but no one that I've met is Carnac, so you better be flexible.

I can only tell you that is exactly the case for me at Security Incite. My first ideas were around building sales tools for security VARs. I had direct experience that the VARs I dealt with weren't very good at marketing and I knew I could help them. So I started doing some research and realized it was going to be a hard road. There is little perceived value in marketing for VARs, so they wouldn't be very interested in paying a premium for tools from me.

I could have continued down the road I was on because maybe my early research was flawed. That is always a possibility and many a hard-headed entrepreneur found success even when everyone else told them they were crazy. But this wasn't really a disruptive idea, so I figured the market was telling me something. Basically I didn't feel so passionately right about my idea that I was willing to bet the ranch that everyone I spoke to was wrong.

So I went to Plan B (I always have a Plan B), which was to build a subscription research business in security. That became Security Incite. I always loved research and believed there was a seam in the market to provide actionable advice to mid-sized businesses struggling with information security issues. To date, I haven't made much progress on the subscription business because I realized pretty quickly that I was an unknown quantity in research. Some folks remembered me, but not enough and it was a little presumptuous to ask for money before establishing your chops as someone that could add value. I also didn't have the marketing budget to build a name for myself fast, nor did I think that was the right approach to build sustainable value. So I recalibrated and focused 2006 on building up my audience and creating a "brand" of what kind of research I wanted to do.

That's how The Daily Incite came about. Basically when I took the NetworkWorld writing gig, I wanted to have some type of offer for folks that came to visit my site. I was hopeful that would drive a lot of traffic. Unfortunately I was wrong, but that's a story for another day. So I wrote the Buying Security Products eBook as that offer. But that didn't give me any stickiness, so I figured I would do a daily newsletter as well, which would give me the opportunity to be visible with my readership almost every day. I couldn't be happier with the reception that TDI has gotten in the market.

But based on many of the relationships I developed over the year, it became apparent to me that there was still something missing. The end users I talk to enjoyed my daily ranting, but it wasn't necessarily helping them do their job. They weren't making progress because their issues were more fundamental than just staying on top of what is going on in the business. So I concocted The Pragmatic CSO process as a way to help. Based on the early feedback I've gotten just from the announcement, I know I've hit a nerve.

So that is really the point. The best laid plans are just that. Plans. It's only when you get out there and do stuff that you figure out what the market really needs. And you'll be wrong. I know I was. But that's all part of the process. If you can adapt and be flexible, and you listen to the market - success can be yours.