“The use cases are endless”

Founders use these words to raise money from VCs and get employees excited. 

Because endless use cases = huge TAM. 

But having lots of use cases for your product is a double-edged sword. 

Why?

👉 Because each use case requires a go-to-market program to actually get customers for your product.  

The more use cases you have…

The more complex (and expensive) your sales and marketing programs will be. 

———

Here’s the 5 types of Go-to-Market — based on number of use cases.

🟢 Vertical

This is the most focused GTM strategy you could follow. 

This is route we take with FletchPMM.  

We’re out to help one specific group of people (early stage SaaS founders)…

Do one thing (re-write their homepage with a clear positioning strategy). 

And because it’s so focused, we’re able to generate word of mouth referrals — Whenever a SaaS founder is considering re-doing the positioning on their website, we usually get a call. 

🔵 Horizontal 

For horizontal → you’re getting very specific on a main use case and branching out into sub-sets of that use case. 

Take Calendly for example. 

The main use case: scheduling online meetings

The sub-use cases they have to accommodate:

→ teachers scheduling parent-teacher conferences
→ sales people booking demos
→ recruiters booking interviews with candidates

(Loom and Asana also fall into this bucket)

🟣 Vertical Solutions

For vertical solution → you’re getting very specific on an industry segment and branching out into adjacent use cases. 

Take Procore Technologies for example:

The main use case: managing construction projects

The adjacent use case they have to accommodate:

→ Handling pre-construction tasks (designs, estimates, bids)
→ Financial planning
→ Managing an onsite workforce

🟠 Horizontal Suite

This approach bundles multiple horizontal products into a single offering. 

Google and Microsoft do this very well. 

The key to this strategy is that you must have product-market fit with the individual products before you start bundling them up into a bigger offer. 

🔴 Platform

We define platforms as “raw material” products. 

You’d use them to build other things.

But the use case of “building other things” makes these products difficult to market — Because the most compelling value propositions are nested in the more specific use cases. 

Take Airtable for example.

It’s tempting to say, “You can build almost anything with it”

But the most compelling value propositions are when you get specific:

“Build a custom CRM in minutes”
“Build an HR process”
“Build a marketing campaign manager”

———

Remember, as you add use cases to your go-to-market programs, you’re introducing complexity and cost.  

And while you will have to add these use cases to become a large business…
It’s almost always better to start with a vertical GTM strategy to dominate a segment.

This early segment domination will then act as a wedge to broaden vertically or horizontally