Marketing reality for a software start-up

Although the Internet bubble has collapsed since 2000, producing "killer apps" remains the objective of many new software ventures. However, no matter how alluring the business idea may seem, without some kind of marketing strategy the venture will likely have a short life or fail before it is started. Successful firms have a deep knowledge of their industry. They are familiar with the customers, markets, products and the competition. They are well acquainted with market research, competitor analysis and product positioning. This paper will illustrate the importance of market assessment from the perspective of a small software business start-up, called Maxout, launching eMaxout - a stand-alone software for hotel yield analysis. The paper aims to illustrate through Maxout how market assessment can help small software business entrepreneurs gain insights for assessing opportunities and threats in their business environment by using a simple marketing assessment framework.