Ask IH: What would be key indicators to enter a specific (local) market?

Hello @Colchack.

I typically look at:

1. Market Growth, but also the underlying trends and factors driving growth.

2. Barriers to entry: legal, regulatory, compliance, etc

3. Competition: what advantages they have, weaknesses, gaps I can place myself in, economic moats, approx market penetration, revenue if any of them are public, aggression to new players (do they drop their prices to run new players out of town), keywords

4. Distribution channels: difficulty to reach and service the audience, cost and efficacy of channels

5. Audience/s: sizes, which groups have the biggest purse and actively spending on products, CAC, LTV, unit economics, sales cycle duration, easy wins (un-serviced / unhappy audience segments), audience receptivity to new players, goal, vision

6. Products: what's in the market, product differentiation, technological sophistication, desire / need for a new product, base features / benefits, minimum product requirements (although I will also look at how I can jump ahead, or come at it at a tangent, and what it will take to do so), price points, value metric

7. Capital: requirements to get up and running, monthly expenditure, runway

8. Marketing: brand positioning, requirements for cultural fit, most viable channels and audience/s

9. Partners and Stakeholders: who's in bed with someone else, who I can reach out to, potential for ecosystem formation, etc

10. Problem: pain points, degree of pain points, factors, root causes, correlation of pain with feature to alleviate and bring forth required benefit, desired benefits and required feature to bring this about, etc

11. Me: strengths, weaknesses, what's in my hand, what I need in my hand, what I can do, etc.

Cheers, Ace.