Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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Intro

Working at a fast-paced startup helps you learn fast. This happens due to a quick feedback loop, and you can experiment and place quick bets to see what clicks. Over the last 2 years, we have taken several strategic decisions, some of which have resulted in big wins, and some are lessons to learn from.

Disclaimer:

This post is being written after we made all the decisions in the past. We can always connect the dots looking backwards. Some of the decisions may seem obvious and at times completely wrong, but we can only say that in retrospect. Given said that, I hope this post helps you understand and evaluate strategic decision making.

Context:

We are based out of Singapore and have a product-market fit. Our market is of HNIs (high net worth individuals), and we are doing wealth management for them. We manage and advise them on their money. Our product is an investment platform where the users can invest their money. They can invest in simple financial products like ETFs or invest in advanced and riskier financial products like futures and options.

Current product summary

Framework to evaluate

We will analyze the strategic market expansion decisions at two levels.

Level 1: This is the top-level approach or Macro evaluation. Here we will try to evaluate decisions based on one or more of the following questions from the book Profit from the core

1. How much does this strengthen, protect, and reinforce the core ?
2. What are the chances of becoming a leader in the new segment or business ?
3. Could this move have a defensible benefit against present and future competitors ?
4. Does this investment position the core business for a stronger set of adjacency moves ?
5. Can we be certain of superbly executing implementation ?

Level 2: At level 2, we will look at the shared capabilities that we have for a move. We will also look at the market attractiveness. Shared capabilities are the skills and capabilities needed to succeed at the new decision. These can be operational, Technological, Design, IP, Content, Network effects etc. E.g. when Groww expanded from Mutual Funds to Stocks, they already had the skills and knowledge of investment products and technology to build the stock product. We can see that there was a significant overlap in the capabilities. However, if Groww wanted to start a payment's solution, they would have to rebuild their capabilities from scratch as they don't have any existing technology or domain expertise to support the payments vertical.

Analysis