Gain has been hard at work on product development since our inception in 2016.
With a product-focused culture, we have prioritized customer experience first and foremost with a very deliberate approach with regards to market evaluation and feature design. By way of example: in the first six months of our existence, we did not write a single line of software code.
Instead, we did our homework. We did copious research in varying forms, but primarily centered on direct industry contact such as through one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and even embedding ourselves with financial reporting teams through their filing processes.
In the building phase, we worked with pilot customers closely and collaboratively. Then, as now, our customers were a primary source of guidance with a goal of achieving product-market fit.
So, as we enter our fifth year, a fair question is: how’d we do?
The simple answer is: quite well.
By all SaaS measures (growth, churn, net revenue retention, capital efficiency, LTV/CAC ratio, etc.), Gain’s performance is excellent.
Looking at it from a different (and non-technical) perspective, our progress maps to the fundamentals of software marketing and sales as well. In Geoffrey Moore’s excellent book, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, the author rightly identifies that initial market fit and customer growth are, by no means, the end of the story:
Moore presents the classic adoption bell curve where a new product finds success serially with innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard customer types, but then adds an important twist: there is a gap, described as “the big scary chasm,” before mass adoption by the “early majority.”
For a variety of reasons, it’s not altogether uncommon to find initial traction with an innovative approach or product, but then stall before finding success with the broader market.
Fortunately, Gain has crossed this gap. Handling hundreds of filings each quarter for a growing list of customers domiciled in 47 different states, we have demonstrated product-market fit not with just the niche segments of “innovators” and “early adopters,” but the broader market as well.
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