If you have a product that could potentially appeal to everyone, how do you pick which customers to go after first? In this episode of Founder Office Hours with investors Chris Dixon and Josh Kopelman, Dispatch.io founder Jesse Lamb asks whether his file-sharing service should focus first on early adopters, consumers, or small businesses.
Kopelman predicts, “You are going to reach them all the same way. A big believer in the “consumerization of the enterprise,”, he says, “I am not sure you would do anything fundamentally different if you are going after a small business or a consumer.”
But you have to start somewhere. Dixon suggests to “find the people with the greatest pain” like designers who have to send big files to clients, or perhaps partner with an established service that Dispatch.io is building on top of to gain initial distribution.
Whatever approach Dispatch.io chooses, Kopelman says “sell an application rather than a platform.”
Dispatch.io helps people share files across services, whether they are using Dropbox, Google Docs, or something else. The company was a runner-up at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in New Yrok City earlier this year.
Watch the previous Founder Office Hours episodes with Schedit and Profitably, and other Founder Stories here. Dispatch.io’s original 90-second Hackathon demo is below.