Early-stage Trajectories: How Marker Seven Enables Success

John Clauss — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 18:00:00 +0000

Early-stage Trajectories: How Marker Seven Enables Success John Clauss Fri, 04/03/2020 - 14:00

An exciting facet of Marker Seven’s service offerings is our ability to improve clients’ businesses holistically, not just from a product perspective. This is especially true for our early-stage clients who need guidance defining what market(s) to target – and how to engage them. Marker Seven’s internal business acumen, coupled with our close-knit relationships in the venture community, give us a unique ability to grow startups in ways that other agencies simply can’t.

Recently we’ve taken on two clients in the CPG (consumer packaged goods) space that initially asked us to build digital products. But after our preliminary deep-dive conversations we recognized there were fundamental challenges products alone couldn’t solve. Namely, the monumental task of developing successful go-to-market strategies.

Both clients had growth trajectories typical of many startups: great products in retail outlets with consumer traction ramping up at an exciting pace. But scaling distribution was impossible given their modest funding and staffing levels. Our clients were caught in a classic growth trap: they weren’t big enough to attract the investment they needed to expand, yet were too small to fund growth on their own. It’s a serious problem that many companies of great promise never recover from.

In each case, we paused our product work and changed focus. Our first step was to bring in vetted, hand-selected members of the venture community to workshop the challenges faced by our clients. We’re not just talking MBAs, but former C-level leaders of major corporations who we’ve cultivated strong relationships with over the years. It’s truly a master-class in business for anyone fortunate enough to engage with them.

The results for both clients were substantial. We determined that while consumers loved their products, each company actually offered a higher value to other businesses than consumers. The shift from B2C to B2B with a focus on white-labeling was a game-changer because it allowed for highly-targeted sales engagements, streamlined distribution, bespoke products, and IP development. Virtually eliminated were the major costs of advertising, expensive packaging, in-store promotions, consumer care, and large sales teams. Perhaps most importantly, it allowed the leadership of each company to focus on what they truly loved – making amazing products.

Today, each company is gaining significant traction in terms of steady revenue and outside funding. Investment firms, angels, and high-net-worth individuals are seeing the growth of these businesses, getting excited, and getting involved. Now there’s forward momentum where, before, there were seemingly insurmountable roadblocks.

At Marker Seven, our goal is to foster great businesses and the people building them. If your business is facing similar challenges to the ones above, simply drop us a line. There’s no doubt we have a lot to discuss.

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Ventures

Accelerating Great Companies

John Clauss — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 01:00:00 +0000

Accelerating Great Companies John Clauss Mon, 12/16/2019 - 20:00

At Marker Seven, we’re privileged to work with companies of all sizes across a nearly infinite variety of vertical markets. But as a company with a strong entrepreneurial drive, we have a special affinity working with early-stage startups.

Don’t get us wrong, we love working with the big guys, too. Robust product suites, user research, refined processes, established brand guidelines, and clearly defined strategic goals – it’s amazing to work with clients who’ve got a lot to work with.

But early-stage start-ups have none of those things. What they do have is an entirely unique suite of nascent challenges – ones that we thrive on solving.

In our experience, startups typically have just two tangible assets: a visionary founder and a minimum viable product (MVP). The challenge is solving everything else, not the least of which are nebulous business models, rough pitch decks, and lack of connections to the right funding sources.

If these issues aren’t figured out quickly, game-changing ideas that can have global impact may never see the light of day. Fortunately, Marker Seven can help with all of that.

One of our recent success stories is Sylvatex, a start-up with a vision to reduce fossil fuel consumption – and global emissions – via its novel chemistry. The company developed a process for producing an inexpensive, organic, renewable, bio-additive for diesel that reduces particulate matter by 40%, and also promises to reduce global emissions by 12% per the Paris Climate Accord. But it doesn’t stop there: the technology also holds great promise to make production of electric vehicle fuel cells more efficient and thus cheaper. Truly game-changing technology for such small company. But after years of fundraising and pitching with moderate success, the company was running out of avenues to move forward and was at risk of fading away like so many startups do.

When we engaged with Sylvatex, Marker Seven’s first step was to partner with a highly experience advisor from our curated network of leaders in the business accelerator and VC communities. After some quick discovery, it was clear the business needed a more tightly focused business model and new avenues to connect with investors. After spending several intensive weeks crafting a new approach, the major deliverables were compelling:

Streamlined business model
Solidification of multiple revenue streams
Explanation of proprietary chemistry in layman’s terms
Go-to-market strategy
Identification of appropriate funding amount
Development of compelling pitch deck
Presentation coaching

The results of our work are twofold for Sylvatex. It now has:

A laser-focused, highly compelling business case for investors
An entirely new platform and approach to how it communicates its authentic story

At Marker Seven, we love any business challenge. But when we have the opportunity to breathe life into a great idea and a clear a new path forward, it’s especially rewarding.

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Ventures