Stable, working
product.Ready for volume shipments.
Product doesn't require lots of
field support for installation and stabilization.- Example: I recently consulted
to a company that began shipping product long before they were ready.
They had built out the sales force, launched their product and were
taking orders. Unfortunately, the product didn't live up to
expectations and the company had to ship an engineer to every site to
assist with installation and tuning. This not only constrained sales,
but also meant the company was losing money with every sale. The
company ended up contracting, letting go their sales and marketing team
until they could redesign the product for commercial deployment at
scale. This severely hurt their profitability and their credibility.
Once you have happy reference
customers. - This is critical for
credibility with investors, the media and bloggers. It provides an
excellent focus for trade articles featuring your product; It sends a
message to your prospective customers that you're a safe investment
because others have helped you harden the product (so they don't).
When you've achieved a ground-breaking technical breakthrough that
serves to stop customer buying decisions and consider your solution. Works if it’s a long sales
cycle and you’re close enough to commercialization.- Example: OctigaBay was
developing a new type of supercomputer. At the time, the world's
fastest processor-to-processor communication was on the order of 5
microseconds. PolarBlue demonstrated 2.7 microseconds at the annual
supercomputing trade show. This was the equivalent of someone coming
out of nowhere and shattering an Olympic world record, cutting the
winning time in half. The world stood up and noticed OctigaBay right
away. We became a credible new entrant in the supercomputer market
overnight and became an acquisition target right away. Even though the product was not
ready to ship for another 6 months, sales cycles often
stretched from 9-12 months, meaning that OctigaBay had become a threat
to incumbent vendor sales.
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