Picking winners

In the past 20+ years as an analyst I’ve met with a lot upstart vendors, some memorable, some not so memorable. I’ve met with visionaries who painted big pictures, kids burning through venture funding, technologists with “shiny object syndrome,” and a few true winners. I’ve become a bit harsh about assessing whether a vendor will make it or not and if you’ve sat in a briefing with me (or any Nucleus analyst) you know you won’t get far with the canned presentation. In the first few minutes I’m looking for a crisp marketing message. Are they talking about what they do for customers, meaning they’re market focused, or how they do it, meaning they’re enamored with the technology? I’ve seen far too many clever ideas buried in convoluted marketing messages and complex pricing models. Next, I look at the solution; are they doing something that has clear value? Offering a better way to solve a problem has more value than solving a problem the potential customer doesn’t know they have. That means selling cloud based CRM as cheaper and easier to deploy is a lot more likely to be successful that selling a better disk defragmenter. Finally, I take a hard look at the management team. Is the CEO acting like a manager or a technologist? Can they orchestrate the technology, marketing, sales, and partnerships or are they already talking about potential buy-out options and hoping they won’t face those issues? To be a winning vendor takes a lot more than just a good idea.