Being First to the Party
I just got off the phone with my friend Benjamin, who is based in the UK. He’s going to launch a next generation Social Media platform in January. By next generation, I mean something different, that hasn’t been done before. MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and Friendster are all different flavors of Carvel ice cream.
This would be more like Maison Du Chocolat edible body paint - different and infinitely more interesting.
One of the things we talked about was launch strategy, the question of whether to hit one market first, or to pursue a simultaneous launch strategy in key markets so that you don’t wake up six months after you launch in the US and find out that someone in China has re-engineered your solution and beat you to the Chinese market.
That conversation reminded me of a table Scott Monty, head of Global Digital Communications for Ford, posted in his blog:
MySpace & Facebook certainly weren’t the first to the party in the US. They’re now numbers one and two respectively. However, the top players took their time expanding into foreign markets, and were sometimes eclipsed by local upstarts or more globally minded players.
The question is whether you focus on one or two markets first, or hit key markets such as China, Korea and Brazil right from the start, which, for a start-up, requires more capital.
Peter Cervieri is co-founder of and Director of Business Development for ScribeMedia.Org. His fetish is collecting business cards.
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