How do you grow a horizontal product if you're a startup? 🤔

→ The best founders go through 3 stages ⬇️

Founders of horizontal products have a difficult challenge...

Unlike vertical-focused companies, horizontal products (by definition) are made to be used by many different TYPES of users.

So when you're starting out, it can feel not just like pushing one boulder up one hill... 🪨

It can feel like trying to push MULTIPLE boulders up MULTIPLE hills—simultaneously 🪨 🪨 🪨 🪨 🪨 🪨

The best horizontal companies we have worked with usually follow the same three stages:

1️⃣ Founder-Led Sales

Goal

↳  Get people using the product by any means necessary

→ You're trying to figure out how many of your hypotheses are true

(i.e. is this product REALLY as horizontal as you imagined?)

→ You need to prioritize any methods that will get LOTS of different types of users

2️⃣ Segmentation

Goal

↳ Group users into segments to figure out which are the best fit

→ Here you're trying to use ACTUAL DATA to inform which segments might be worth prioritizing

→ Look over the last stage and see things like (1) who was easiest to close (2) who is getting the most joy and excitement from your product (3) who is sharing the product with others most often

3️⃣ Dedicated Go-to-Market

Goal

↳ Build your first dedicated go-to-market engine around 1-3 segments

→ You've gotta start somewhere! Even if you found LOTS of happy customers in different segments, you won't be able to go after them all at once

→ Make a data-informed decision of where to put your go-to-market team and resources so that you can start gaining traction in a few segments

4️⃣ Repeat with more segments

(I.e. expand from your initial success to more success

Note*

These stages VERY LOOSELY match with fundraising stages (but there are almost too many edge cases to really be helpful).