Atravessando o abismo: marketing e vendas em startups de software

Abstract

This study sought to investigate how the software startups uses strategies, practices, and marketing tools and how these corroborates to "cross the chasm" mentioned by Moore (2002). The author states that the abyss consists of a gap between the early adopters of technology and the pragmatic consumers, which are also called Early Majority and Late Majority, and are the most lucrative slices of the market. The research was based on the theories of the Customer Development Model of Blank (2013); Theory of Inno vation Adoption of Rogers (1995); Theory of the Abyss of Moore (2002) and also on the principles of the Contemporary Marketing Practices (CMP) by Boone and Kurtz (2013). As a methodological approach, it was used the Multiple Case Study, with qualitative character, where interviews were realized using semi-structured scripts applied to marketing and sale managers of startups that develops software’s. The selected startups were from the ecosystem San Pedro Valley in the city of Belo Horizonte, of the startup ecosystem of Itajubá, and of the city of Varginha, both of them situated in the state of Minas Gerais. First of all, there was found the concepts of marketing and sales strategies, practices and tools that would be used to compare the empirical results with the actual literature. It was found that the major part of the interviewed managers did know about the theoretical concepts. Although, some of the organizations showed to utilize the theory and other did not. It was found that the majority of the interviewed startups still using the traditional product development model, instead of the customer development model of Blank (2013). It was identified the most used strategies, practices and tools of marketing and sales. At the end of the study is showed a suggestion of practical application of strategies, practices and tools of marketing for three different startup profiles. It was concluded that even with the visible preference in the utilization of digital media marketing practices, the most traditional ways of marketing and sells still shows as fundamental practices for the technology startups.