I talk to a lot of security vendors. Often, they are compelled to tell me why they are the "first" company to perform function x. I find it fascinating that they haven’t clued into how analysts, press and enterprises respond to this kind of assertion.
Here is my advice to vendors who want to be "first":
- You probably aren’t first at this stage in the game.
- If you are first, you don’t need to say it, we will know it.
- If you aren’t first, and your only differentiation is that you think you are, there is nothing left to hang your hat on.
- It is immediately distracting to someone like me – I start thinking about who might have really been first and stop listening to what you are saying.
- Things are even worse if you start suggesting that you were the first – then it just sounds like you are living in the past.
Don’t be first. Be best… at something. It doesn’t even have to be a product function – it could just as easily be customer service or price. Good luck.
Is First to Market a Liability?
In looking at a recent post by Pete Lindstrom about On Being First to market
How about a ROI story?
I would like to extend your comments about being First…
First or latest doesn’t really matter, what matters is simple – do you have a compelling story about the value of your product? Don’t tell me your first or best, show me the value and demonstrate (data?) to me how the idea can be sold to others.
What about non-security vendors that claim to be the first to introduce security features and functionality into their products? Is this legitimate to claim?
Mike Rothman’s comments in his trackback were additional good comments on being first. What has not been mentioned is that if you are truly innovative, and first, you can be greeted with skepticism and outright disbelief, and no one is requesting proposals for a technology that they do not know about, or do not believe, can possibly exist.
So how do you push the rock up that hill if you are a garage start-up? Does every breakthrough have to come from a large company? I am beginning to think that the money requirement to enter the market is too much for many small start-ups, and if so, we could be losing some good ideas.
@Steve -
It’s not a matter of legitimacy as much as it is something people will come up with themselves. If your message is clear and interesting, they can figure out whether you are first or not. So it is the capability that really matters. Like I tell my LL baseball team – if you play well, the winning takes care of itself.
@Trustifier -
Truly innovative is a rare breed and something for which I am constantly on the prowl. Truly innovative and useful is even rarer. Many companies fall over in simply describing their value proposition (hint: it is NOT “we flip this bit to protect against evasion and mimicry”).
I don’t think it is necessarily difficult to succeed, it is simply important to pick the right target market – one that you can support. Almost no breakthrough comes from a large company (at least in the security market). There are lots of ways to promote grassroots ideas at conferences and through the security “social network”. Whatever we say about the security space, it is still a fairly small community full of people who will hear you out and provide some feedback.