Essay

Five expansion strategies from your beachhead market

Jeroen Coelen · Doctor Market Fit (Jeroen Coelen) Free Intermediate

Once you have decided it is time to move, this essay is the clearest short read on which direction to move in. Coelen lays out five concrete expansion paths (adjacent need, new vertical, up or down the value chain, new geography, new demographic) so you can see that expansion is not one decision but a choice between shapes. His honest line is the useful one: the market, not your preference, tells you which path actually works, so you test a few small before you commit.

  • Expansion has distinct shapes (adjacent product, new vertical, value chain, location, demographic), and your original value proposition quietly rules some of them out
  • Run small experiments into two or three candidate segments before committing, rather than betting the company on one guess
  • Signals you are ready: repeatable wins and references in the first niche, plus inbound pull from a neighbouring segment you were not chasing
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The question it answers

  1. My beachhead worked and now I'm stuck there. How do I know it's time to expand to the next segment, and which one?

Read with it

  1. Moore's beachhead idea is the definitive case for winning one narrow segment before you touch the broader market, which is... Geoffrey A. Moore Book · ~240 pages Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers Geoffrey A. Moore
  2. This is an operator being honest about the exact trap in your question: you win your first segment, then find the second one is... The SaaS Podcast (SaaS Club) Podcast Vertical SaaS: 80 Doctors to 1,000 Customers (Zak Holdsworth, Hint Health) Omer Khan (host), with Zak Holdsworth
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