

Harvesting: Seeking Markets with the Best/Easiest Returns - cwan
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/harvesting.html

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utsmokingaces
I cannot believe why so many people are so enamored with Seth Goldin's grossly
glorified common sense.

    
    
        * Word spreads. 
    

No shit. Word of mouth, that is really important.

    
    
       * Needs are similar. 
    

Wow you need to pick a market with multiple customers. Brilliant!!!

    
    
        * Budgets exist.
    

Make sure your Customers have money! Don't know if you guys know this, if your
customers don't have money, they cannot pay you!

    
    
         * Barriers exist.

Who has not heard of barriers to entry? Well IMHO, barrier to entry from the
technology standpoint is not that important. There are many programmer than
can make twitter, youtube, wordpress clones...etc. Execution is more crucial

~~~
anigbrowl
Once you've established yourself as a genius of some sort, you get to go all
Zen, and write columns like 'Remember to tie your shoelaces because if you
don't, you might trip - now, what are your business's shoelaces?' The more
glaringly obvious your insights, the more you'll be lauded as someone who
cares about 'the little guy' instead of some high-falutin' elitist.
Journalists love this stuff because 'guru' articles write themselves...

 _In person, Godin is a chameleon, alternating between monkish calm and bursts
of hyper-creativity. He looks at my voice recorder with amusement. 'Do you
ever listen back to more than the first 15 minutes?' he asks, eyes a-twinkle.
No, I sheepishly admit. [...]

As I leave, I feel a gentle hand on my arm. 'Your shoelace is untied,' says
Godin. I look down and he's right: it is. I kneel to re-tie it, an almost
automatic act; but as I stand up, a wave of realization bursts over me: _ this
_is the lesson he's been trying to communicate for the last hour. And it's one
that I'll never find in my voice recorder._

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matth2
I'd love to see a blog post that focuses on the 'barriers exist' point. Maybe
some case studies.

I guess there are a range of levels of barriers to entry, and any example of
high barrier to entry I can think of implies you've already done a lot of work
yourself. Very often, this might be because of a previous job / study gave you
some specific valuable domain knowledge, and / or contacts (eg google).

Other times not. For example, the sydney harbour bridge climb - there high
barriers to entry here, they have a monpoly! but to get that monopoly they had
to put in a lot of hard work convincing the relevant authorities to let them
do it.

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rels25
Lame post -- was waiting for some examples of markets that have great word of
mouth, and yet came up totally empty.

