TMCVocabulary
How to Target an Early Adopter Market
By Paul Hodges
Lessons Learned
Many startups focused on high speed Ethernet long before the pertinent standards were complete or the market development scenario clarified. As a result, some, including our Company, entered at the wrong level of integration. In our case we entered as a chip company instead of a sub-system or board vendor. We started the Company with a high volume, semiconductor, oriented mindset, but could not get traction without offering a complete solution to a target early adopting segment with a compelling cost reduction motivation to transition to the new technology. For the Company, the transition to a board/solution supplier was painful and only possible because we had invested in the basic hardware and software building blocks in order to provide chip evaluation boards.
