Impact go-to-market

Introduction

What is it and how does it align with traditional venture building?

Finding a route to market is a critical step of any venture’s journey. Once a startup has established a viable solution to a problem, the next challenge is finding a willing payer. Founders are encouraged to follow the largest, stickiest and highest paying customer group. With impact in mind, an additional criterion comes into play: choosing a payer with a direct or indirect interest in the impact outcomes achieved (whether they’re the end-user or not).

How does it drive impact?

Establishing a payer that cares about impact ensures that the company can grow impact and sales in a sustainable and aligned manner. This minimises the risk to impact over time (e.g. through mission drift).

How does it drive commercial value?

Alternative payment methods can often unlock value to business models which wouldn’t have been viable otherwise (e.g. financing has unlocked a huge number of products for previously underserved customers). Being creative about payers can also unlock similar benefits e.g. Second Nature is leveraging the NHS to drive scale alongside its B2C model.

In practice

What does good look like?

Finding an aligned payer comes down to two questions:

1. Which customer groups are interested in paying for the impact outcomes achieved. This includes:

   1. End users where they have high willingness/ability to pay

   2. Governments (e.g. the UK's NHS)

   3. B2B2C models like employers or schools

2. Which customer groups are interested in paying for the activities which generate the outcomes achieved. This only works where impact is 'locked' in some way to those activities. Where it's not, there is the potential to drift away from impact as customers care predominantly about the activities rather than the outcomes. BSC has recently written a blog that unpacks this further using real world examples.

It is useful to brainstorm which potential customers could fit into these groups and being creative about how to access them.

Some examples:

1. See BSC blog on innovative revenue models that enable impact scaling pathways