“Gain Compliance is a young software company that has a single product line.”
In deconstructing this simple sentence, the company’s defining attributes (young, narrowly focused) may seem like disadvantages.
This would appear to be especially true in our market, as we sell to insurance companies. To illustrate how staid and slow-moving this market typically is, consider this fact: last month, we attended a trade conference that is in its 124th year of continuous operation.
And, the fundamentals of insurance – including many of the products offered – really haven’t changed over this time.
In reality, however, both attributes are indisputable strengths:
Young: August marked our third year of operation. This is at least a decade and a half newer than our competitors. The flipside to their relatively long operating history: while they have mature software offerings, their products are built on very dated software codebases. This stifles the pace that they can innovate to support better performance or new features, or, in many cases, imposes hard limits on the feasibility of improving their software at all.
There is such a thing as too young, though. Certainly, being in the idea stage, or at any point prior to establishing product-market fit, is too soon. But, it turns out that three years gets you to a sweet spot – long enough to have built a customer base and established a reputation, but still recent enough to leverage the latest technology and software design approaches.
Narrowly focused: Similarly, our competitors all have multiple, successful product lines in addition to a solution competitive to ours. Their success in other areas, again, might seem, at first glance, positive relative to Gain Compliance, an upstart company with one product.
In reality, the burn-the-ships approach creates clarity around both mission and product. There is no confusion whatsoever on prioritization: all resources, at all times, are dedicated to improving the user experience for our customers.
At the end of the day, total commitment to a single product coupled with a modern development approach is is very much a strength which resonates, even in 100+ year old industries.
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