Back in the day, when I was an undergrad solving basic mechanical engineering problems, there was a standard footnote to the problems being presented:

“Assume no friction”

At the time, it was a welcome footnote because it greatly simplified the academic problem at hand, and allowed me to ignore the inconvenient real-world complexities that would otherwise make the problem much more difficult to solve.

I remember climbing a mountain once with my engineering buddies and yelling “assume no friction!”, and all of us laughing in a way that only engineering nerds would.

I think of “assume no friction” in the context of founding Form.io back in the (far more recent) day. Among the many business strategy decisions we were making at the beginning of Form.io was a strategic go-to-market decision:

“Go Deep? Or Go Wide?”

It could seem like we were making a simple choice between two reasonably equal options: either go deep in one industry vertical or go wide across many verticals; or similarly, go deep in one geographic market or go wide across multiple geographic markets; or even more audaciously, go wide on both.

Many founders would be eager to make that decision with ease. They would say: “I’m going wide on industry verticals AND going wide on geographic markets, in order to maximize my total addressable market”.

But run that great idea by any institutional investor, and you’ll get a very different and buzz-killing view.  Why? Because despite the fact that many software dev tools companies have pulled this off, they don’t blindly trust the assumptions that are embedded within your pitch deck, and also, because they have seen a lot of other “Go Wide” business plans fail before.

Why is that true? Well, it’s because in the real world you can’t “Assume no friction” especially if you “Go Wide”. It goes like this:

Investor: “So, you’re going to…

Sell to a global market?
Friction: Building sales organizations in multiple territories all around the world.

Sell to multiple verticals?
Friction: Developing the vertical-specific subject matter expertise and organizational market presence to even be a credible option in each one.

Produce a dominant competitive product for each of these customer/market segments?
Friction: Building and maintaining  many different versions of your platform to address differing requirements for each vertical and region.

Be compliant with varying data security requirements?
Friction: Addressing demanding sector and geographic specific data security requirements.

Provide superior implementation and ongoing support to your customers?
Friction: Establishing support resources in multiple regions, time zones, and languages around the world.

The punchline?  In the real world you can’t “assume no friction” if you “go wide” in the “Go Deep or Go Wide” decision — unless you have something very special in your hands.

BTW, Form.io did just exactly that.