As noted in my previous post, our initial start up objective for NextUp was relatively simple. We wanted to build a company that could deliver recruiting services to the Reliability Engineering & Predictive Maintenance industry. We have lots of experience providing services to companies in the space so we understood the needs of both the professionals and the companies that hire them. It was natural for us to pursue this market.
Because of that background we knew that the industry had a supply/demand problem when it came to talent management. RE/PdM professionals are very technically skilled and they have a unique experience/skill set so its not a labor force that can be quickly scaled. The industry is growing rapidly, resulting in a situation where the demand was far outpacing the supply of talented people.
This is not a small industry but it was clear that this was a very neglected market. In doing our market research, we were not surprised to find that there were very few recruiters who specialized in finding these professionals. The depth of the neglect was surprising because there are so many firms and websites dedicated to the engineering and maintenance profession. That was then it occurred to us that we had likely found something truly difficult to find these days – an uncontested market. What made it so, and therefore made the industry unique is that is a niche within a niche, or what we have come to call a “micro niche”.
Once we came to understand the micro-niche, we quickly realized that there were hundreds, if not thousands of these to take advantage of. We also learned if we could build a defined profile of a desirable micro-niche and a delivery model that could be quickly replicated and mass customized we would be able to deliver services to any micro-niche we wanted.
Building a business model that is going to be replicated and scaled requires a different approach than one that is a single instance. By assessing the market and stepping back to look at the big picture, we quickly realized we had an opportunity that was far larger than what we envisioned. Whether or not we end up pursuing other micro-niches, it was clear to us that we needed to build our model to allow for the possibility.
Looking beyond ourselves, allowed us to think critically and ultimately create a business model that we believe will be much more successful.
Tags: Start Up Lessons
