Jared Fuller

To operationally scale into new markets, most successful strategies include a nearbound or partner strategy. This means readying partnership functions to recruit, manage, and nurture partnerships for building, marketing, selling, and serving with partners who have more experience in the new market, whether that be in territory or vertical. The most common mistake I see companies make is when they silo this partnership function from each department, vs. overlaying it into each department. Each team should have specific partner targets and partner plays to run with partners in their new territories with the partner team as the orchestrator working closely with operations.

Market research can be a fluff term lacking specific tactical steps. I've come to find the following the best reasons for expanding into new markets successfully through the lense of these questions: - Is there inbound demand from these new markets? Meaning prospective customers want/need your solution but you lack capabilities to serve them? Or is it just you who wants to expand there? - Can you build target account lists in these new markets of companies you know match your ICP? -- If so, WHO do these companies already trust? Who are the vendors, agencies, or consultants that you can partner with to better build for, reach into, and serve that market successfully. Your market research should have specific accounts and partners.

I've learned that culture is a very misunderstood word in startups and businesses and have come to believe in the following definition. Culture is merely: - What you promote - What you tolderate - And the cadences and rituals of the business that enforce them. As Ben Horowitz said, "what you do is who you are." Culture is not an enumerated list of beliefs. It is how the business promotes and rejects actions that happen daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. When defining culture fit don't simply point to your values, point out how, specifically, the rhythm of the business works to enforce those beliefs.

I've been both an entrepreneur and a recruited executive. And for the times it's worked out for me, one thing has had to be true: I had to have, as Paul Graham called it, "an earned secret." Entrepreneurs should have a fiery passion for a specific problem set, maket segment, persona or industry vertical. If you are trying to attract entrepreneurs into your organization, remember not all entrepreneurial experience is equal. Focus on finding the entrepreneurs who have earned secrets in your market not just entrepreneurs for the sake of it. An entrepreneur with no industry experience can be a trap easy to fall into. If they don't feel the pain of a specific shifting industry tacitly, you're far less likely to win together.

Trust comes from helping customers reach their promised land. But, paradoxically, customers today increasingly only trust those who've been to the places they want to go. Let's say your customer is a CIO. How many employees in your company have ever been a CIO? Exactly. So how do you get the right feedback from customers and build, market, sell, and serve them with excellence? One of the best ways to prioritize seeking and acting on customer feedback is by "surrounding," customers with the voices they already trust using partnerships. Instead of only targeting them with outbound, or attracting with inbound, surround customers with those who've been to the places your customers want to go. Learn from and go-to-market with partners.

It would be hard to argue that the rate of change in today's technology landscape requires a slower approach. Being nimble and responsive to shifts in markets and buyer behavior is critical. With the acceleration in the rate of change comes new challenges for businesses. They not only need to be more responsive to customer demands, but they also need to be able to change, themselves, in how the company builds, markets, sells, services, or operates internally. Maintain "strong opinions loosely held," and be willing to be wrong while holding strong to your convictions. Remember, the market always wins. Your strategy absent being tied to market pulse has no intrinsic value. As Alfred Korzybski said, "the map is not the territory."