When growth stalls, a new market is only one possible answer. Your next opportunity may already be inside the product and customer base you have. Or the problem may be that buyers cannot see how your offer differs from the alternatives.
In this Designli Academy excerpt, Carlos lays out three paths for a founder to examine: expanding the current product, improving competitive alignment, and entering a new vertical or ideal customer profile. A short decision tree puts those paths in an order, so you can investigate the current business before committing resources elsewhere.
What you'll learn.
- Start by asking whether existing customers can receive and pay for more value from the current product.
- If that route is limited, ask whether you are clearly winning with your current ideal customer profile before moving to a new market.
- Unclear positioning and differentiation point toward competitive alignment; a new vertical is a separate decision with its own resource and focus risks.
Start with the value available to existing customers.
The first question is whether the business can earn more revenue from existing customers. These are people who have already responded to the offer, so the starting point is understanding how fully you are communicating and capturing the value of the current solution.
If the answer is yes, the decision tree points toward current product expansion. That means looking at the product and market you already serve before searching for a completely different direction. Carlos describes this as the easier path in terms of the decisions involved when the opportunity is genuinely there.
There is an important distinction between having a product and having explained its value well. The discussion asks founders to examine both. A customer may not yet understand everything the existing solution can do for them; that deserves investigation before you assume the market is exhausted.
Check whether you are winning with your current customers.
If more revenue from existing customers is not the answer, the next question concerns your ideal customer profile, or ICP. This is the type of customer your business is built to serve. Are you clearly winning with that group?
A clear yes can point toward a new vertical or a new customer profile. You may have an opportunity to bring the solution to another group. A no points you back toward the current market and the competitors already serving it.
Carlos cautions that expansion uses resources and budget, and can pull attention away from an existing product and customer profile that already generate monthly recurring revenue. The decision tree offers a reason to consider expansion; it does not remove the risk or establish that every new market is worth pursuing.
Examine your positioning and differentiation.
When you are not clearly winning in the current customer group, examine your position in that market. The third question asks whether positioning and differentiation are blurred. Can buyers understand your place among the available options?
If they cannot, the diagram points toward competitive alignment. Carlos describes looking at what competitors are doing, the direction of industry trends and what customers expect a company or solution to offer. That review helps you see whether your current offer fits those expectations.
Competitive alignment is a specific route in the framework, rather than a blanket instruction to enter another market. If positioning and differentiation are not blurred, the diagram sends you back to restart the exercise and investigate what else is holding the business back.
Repeat the exercise when the next plateau arrives.
This decision tree is meant to be reused. Carlos closes by noting that it can be run again as the company reaches another period of stagnation. The most useful route may change as the product, customer base and market develop.
To use the framework in a planning discussion, answer the three questions in order and write down why you chose each answer. Treat an uncertain answer as something to investigate. That is a practical way to keep an attractive idea, such as entering a new vertical, from becoming the default explanation for every slowdown.
Start with the value available in your existing product and customers. Then examine whether you are winning with that customer profile and whether your positioning is clear. Those questions give a growth discussion direction before you allocate people and budget to the next move.
