How to test a new market in 90 days

Hi Everyone,

Bain looked at nearly 200 moves into adjacent markets and found that only about one in five paid off.

The companies that did best had one thing in common: customers were already pulling them into the new space. They had proof that customers adjacent to their core market wanted something from them before they put serious money, people, and leadership time behind the move.

Today, we’ll look at how to spot a real expansion opportunity and how to test it for 90 days before you commit real resources.

Where successful expansion comes from

The usual approach to new markets starts with market sizing, competitor research, and a strategy offsite. Bain’s research suggests a better first question: what are customers already asking us for?

More than 80% of the strongest expansion moves resulted from the answer to this question. They were built from a close read of what existing or nearby customers were already asking for.

A few signals to pay attention to:

• Customers keep asking for the same feature, integration, or use case.
• Inbound leads are coming from a customer group you don’t actively target.
• Trial signups are showing up from an industry you haven’t sold into before.
• Existing customers are using your product in a way you didn’t plan for.
• Your sales team keeps hearing the same “could you also help us with…” request.

The key is to keep the shift small. Same product, slightly different customer. Or same customer, slightly different product.

The more variables you add, the riskier it gets. A new product for existing customers is one thing. A new product, new customer, new channel, and new geography is much harder to pull off.

How CrowdStrike grew 36% by following its customers

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company. Its main product, Falcon, helps companies protect laptops, servers, and other devices from attacks.

From that base, CrowdStrike added related products for problems its customers already had, including identity protection, cloud security, and threat intelligence.

That’s what made the expansion work.

CrowdStrike could sell more to customers who already trusted the company, understood the product, and had a security need.

Revenue grew from $2.24B in 2023 to $3.06B in 2024, with much of that growth coming from customers adopting more Falcon modules.

Smaller companies should take the same lesson. A new market is easier to test when it starts with demand you can already see

The 90-day expansion test

If you’ve spotted a real customer need, run a small test before you commit.

1. Keep the test narrow: Same product to an adjacent segment, or adjacent product to the same customers. Don't change both at once.
2. Start with 3–10 pilot customers: Enough to learn from, small enough to walk away from.
3. Set a budget limit: Fund the test for 90 days. Don’t approve the full expansion yet. The point is to learn whether this deserves more money, more people, and more leadership attention.
4. Set explicit gates: By day 30, check the basics. Who is interested? What are they trying to do? What problem are they asking you to solve? By day 60, look for usage and commitment. Are people using it, paying attention, coming back, or moving to the next step? By day 90, look at the economics. What did it cost to win these customers? How much support did they need? Would the margins still work if you kept going?
5. Write the kill criteria before you start: If metrics aren't met, the experiment ends. It doesn't get more funding.

This is how you avoid the hidden cost of expansion – management time, team focus, product distraction, and a slow drift away from the core business.

Try this today

Pull your inbound leads from the last quarter. Flag any that came from outside your usual customer profile.

Then group them by segment, industry, company type, or use case.

If you see five or more from the same customer group, take a closer look. You may not have a new market yet, but you do have a signal worth testing.

From there, you can run a small 90-day test before you spend real money on market research, hiring, product build, or a full sales push.

Go deeper

👉 Bain: Adjacency Moves Require Discipline — The research behind the customer demand point, plus a useful way to think about where expansion goes wrong.

👉 Strategy+Business: The Dangers of Adjacencies — A good piece on the hidden cost of moving into nearby markets, especially the management distraction they create.

👉 Andrew Chen: The Adjacent User Theory — A simple way to think about customers who are close to your current audience, but different in one or two important ways.

👉 Umbrex: Adjacency Expansion Matrix — Useful if you’re comparing a few possible expansion options and need a simple way to rank them.

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow, we’re covering a simple exec brief for senior leaders joining competitive deals.

P.S. What would you need to see before putting serious resources behind a new market?