Two Paths for Tech-Enabled Services | by Tim Dingman | Medium

Since writing my other blog posts (1, 2 — read these first) about tech-enabled services (TES), I’ve gotten a lot of requests for advice from other TES founders. Usually they’re either at the idea stage or approaching an early funding round. In both cases, I’ve noticed a similar issue, but usually by the latter point it’s much harder to remedy. Hopefully you’re reading this early in your TES journey. TES is still a foreign concept to many founders and investors. The default startup is either SaaS or hardware/physical goods. They both work well with big up-front investments in fixed costs, later producing something scalable for relatively little or no variable costs — the core insight of the venture-backed paradigm. TES isn’t yet a distinct corner of thought, so it blends in with the SaaS and hardware startups. Unfortunately, the founders and investors who swim in the waters of the venture-backed paradigm unconsciously apply the same assumptions and heuristics to TES, which produces much

Since writing my other blog posts (1, 2 — read these first) about tech-enabled services (TES), I’ve gotten a lot of requests for advice from other TES founders. Usually they’re either at the idea stage or approaching an early funding round. In both cases, I’ve noticed a similar issue, but usually by the latter point it’s much harder to remedy. Hopefully you’re reading this early in your TES journey. TES is still a foreign concept to many founders and investors. The default startup is either SaaS or hardware/physical goods. They both work well with big up-front investments in fixed costs, later