Marketing Advice for Small Tech Companies: What is the difference between a risk and a chance?

Determining what is an acceptable risk versus a speculative chance is a challenge. Over time, this becomes intuitive for most tech company execs. In the meantime, following are a few questions to mull over:

1. What aren’t my competitors doing this already?

2. Am I justifiably ahead of the curve or is there a flaw in the idea?

3. Am I evaluating the right numbers?

4. Am I in love with the opportunity so much that I am glazing over the viability?

The first question is particularly important and one that won’t require much insight to answer. Reasons that competitors are not doing it, but it may work for your organization include:

1. You have a unique skill set.

2. Success requires a strong industry reputation that you have, but your competitors do not.

3. You have uncovered a niche market, done the homework, and are confident there is a need.

4. You have access to channel partners that competitors do not…

5. You have a patent.

Learning from the failures of competitors can be very valuable. When a competitor takes a risk and fails, it’s unlikely that the same competitor is going to take the same risk again. This opens the door for you with a ready-made product/service that may just need a little tweaking. If you can figure out what went wrong and a way to remedy it, you can create a more marketable version with very little risk.