Launch Plan Guide
General thoughts
- The ultimate goal with this guide is to set your expansion up for success.
- This is done in three distinct stages:
- Deciding whether the expansion makes sense or not. This will hinge on the market’s dynamics that you are expanding to and whether your product is ready or not. It’s critical to conduct desk-research and research via talking to potential customers, talent, and partners to understand these two items.
- If the expansion does make sense, you must over-prepare to set your launch up for success. You should understand your expansion strategy, which will touch on marketing, operations and prepping a launch person/team, and the financial implications of the launch with particular focus on the necessary amount of funding for the launch.
- The final step is launching. Although this is guaranteed to be the most stressful part, the more prepared you are, the less stressful it will be. Importantly, you will not be successful by dipping a toe in the water although you can start with a soft launch and plan for a big launch later. Expect things to go wrong and move quickly to remedy them.
- Good luck with the launch and please reach out if Cove can be of assistance.
Steps
- Market Research
- Goal: Research market in order to better understand dynamics.
- Key elements:
- Market size and growth
- Focus on the market’s size, growth and profitability.
- Value chain comparison
- Where does the market add value?
- Competitor research & positioning
- Existing competitors, their strengths/weaknesses and the given opportunities/threats as a result.
- Customer research
- Identify target customer segments, understand their needs and preferences, and tailor offerings accordingly.
- Market size and growth
- Assess Product
- Goal: Understand if you have product-market fit in new market and, if not, what’s necessary to achieve it
- Key elements:
- Understand what’s necessary to adapt the products/services, marketing materials, and branding to the new market.
- Can you land and retain customers in the new market?
- Try to target the smallest customer segment possible and expand from there.
- Expansion Strategy
- Goal: Develop strategy to make sure expansion is successful
- Key elements:
- Marketing plan
- Develop a comprehensive marketing and promotion strategy to raise awareness of the company and target key customer segments.
- Location recommendation
- Pick the location where you will put a stake in the ground.
- Key considerations for location are where customers, talent and partners are located, quality of life, and commuting to and from.
- Regulation
- Understand the regulatory environment and what you need to be in compliance.
- Legal
- Understand if you need to set-up an entity, get visas, your intellectual property and americanize any existing contracts.
- Financial
- Do you need a bank account, accounting/bookkeeping, funding?
- Human resources
- Understand hiring, compensation, benefits, headhunters.
- Pre- and post-launch timetable
- Understand the timeline before and after launch.
- Prep launch team
- Having existing team members help with the launch materially increases the likelihood of success.
- Target individuals, senior & junior, with a commercial orientation, that may move over a six month timeframe.
- Marketing plan
- Financial Forecast
- Goal: Understand the revenue and costs associated with the expansion and if funding is necessary
- Key elements:
- Initial costs
- Market research and analysis
- Estimate the cost of hiring a market research firm or conducting surveys: $5k - $10k
- Legal and administrative expenses
- Legal consultation fees: estimate $2k - $5k
- Initial setup for US operations might cost $10k.
- A basic SaaS setup could be as little as $3-5k:
- Subsidiary set up $1-2k
- Employment contracts $0.5-1k
- Stock option plan $2-4k
- Americanize commercial contracts $1-7k
- Trademark filing $1-3k
- Patent filing $8-20k
- Data Privacy – variable; a simple SaaS set up could be $1k, but something bespoke in a regulated sector (e.g. digital health) could go up to $50k
- Office set-up
- Furniture, equipment, and supplies: estimate $5k - $10k
- Staffing
- Recruitment and hiring expenses: estimate $2k - $5k per position
- Technology, distribution and logistics
- Software and systems: estimate $2k - $5k
- Regulatory compliance
- Cost is depending on your type of business
- Miscellaneous expenses
- Travel and entertainment expenses: estimate $5k - $10k
- Market research and analysis
- Revenue forecast
- We advise forecasting revenue via top-down (market sizing) and bottom-up (sales volume and pricing) analysis.
- Cost structure
- Outline recurring costs such as marketing, payroll, distribution, manufacturing/production, and administrative overheads.
- Profitability analysis
- Focus on unit economics and breakeven analysis
- Cash flow analysis
- Understand the cash outlay to fund expansion based on the foregoing
- Initial costs
- Implementation
- Goal: Set your launch up for success
- Key elements:
- Establish an entity and set in motion any legal and/or regulatory items
- Entity set-up can take 2-3 months.
- Visas can take up to 6 months and could result in no.
- Raise funding if necessary
- Fundraising can take 2-3 months.
- Office, distribution and supply chain set-up
- The time to complete this depends on your particular circumstances. You might need office space or establish suppliers.
- Localize products/services, marketing materials, and branding
- The time to complete this also depends on your particular circumstances.
- Launch marketing and promotions
- If you need minimal localization, you could go for a soft launch, learning and optimizing in iterations.
- If you need a lot of localisation, it could be worth spending dedicated time beta testing, leading up to a big launch.
- Set-up customer support
- Set up dedicated customer support systems concurrent with market launch.
- Be ready to improvise
- Expect things to go wrong and move quick to remedy issues
- Establish an entity and set in motion any legal and/or regulatory items