The new market vs. new product decision is a product strategy question, not a growth question. It needs to be anchored in where you have a right to win — not in where the opportunity looks biggest on a spreadsheet.

What I talked about was PermissionTV - a case study in what happens when you take a new product into a new market simultaneously. I do not recommend it.

New product into a new market: PermissionTV

This decision is best treated as a two-way door where possible: run a time-boxed bet in the new market or with the new product, instrument the right metrics, and make the call based on evidence rather than conviction.

The problem with this approach is that it doubles your sales cycle. You have to educate the buyer about the category before you can make the case for your product within it. Every sales conversation starts from scratch. There is no shorthand. Clients like Fox and MGM understood what they wanted eventually. Getting them there took time the company did not have.

PermissionTV eventually rebranded to VisibleGains and wound down. The product was real and the problem was real. The go-to-market approach of trying to create a category while also building a customer base was too slow for the capital constraints of an early-stage company.

The marketplace growth framework applies here: a new market is not just a demand problem, it is a liquidity problem. Do you have the supply to serve the new market, or will you be launching a marketplace that cannot clear?

The lesson I took from that experience, and from watching EditMe find its footing, is that an existing market with unsatisfied demand is a much better starting position than a new market where you have to create the demand from scratch. At EditMe, online wikis were a category that existed. Buyers understood what they were. The question was which product in the category served specific segments best. That is a sales conversation you can have quickly.

My answer to the MIT audience that night: be very honest about whether the market you think is new actually has latent demand you can access, or whether you are going to have to create the demand. Creating demand is expensive and slow. Most early-stage companies cannot afford it.

If you are entering a new market, find the buyers who already know they have the problem you are solving. If you cannot find them, you may not have a market yet - you may have an idea that needs more validation before it becomes a product.
The most expensive mistake in go-to-market is trying to create a category and sell into it simultaneously. Pick one. Create the category or sell into an existing one. Not both at once.

If you are working through a go-to-market decision and want to pressure-test it, book a call.