The beachhead trap

Sports is the perfect beachhead market. Until it isn't.

When we started Perch, the vision was broader than sports. General fitness, home gyms, consumer, that was always the destination.

The attached photo is from one of our early investor decks. We told ourselves that story, we told others. We were taught it, start with a beachhead, prove it works, then expand. "Professional sports teams give you the validation needed to go consumer."

What nobody tells you is how hard it is to actually get there.

Here's the truth: the beachhead that gets you off the ground can quietly become the thing that holds you in place.

Maybe better founders solve this earlier. I'm not sure. But we struggled.

COVID forced our hand. We tried to go consumer while also serving elite teams. Maybe you were one of the 50-something people who bought a Perch for your home gym. 😅 Those customers were, on average, unsatisfied. The product wasn't reliable enough for the wildly different environments people set it up in. It wasn't portable. The data didn't mean anything to someone without a coach. We didn't have PMF — and getting there would have meant dismantling what made Perch great for the coaches and athletes who actually loved it.

Once you have real customers, everything bends toward serving them. Your sales team, product strategy, branding, operations, all of it orients toward that initial market. It's inertia. Entering a new market requires user interviews, deep discovery, and regular meetings with people who maybe aren't paying you yet. When you're early, that's the founder's job. When you're later stage, it's suddenly unclear whose job it is.

If the inertia is pointed even slightly in the wrong direction of your future market, it can be nearly impossible to overcome. Lots of money, people, and time may be the only things strong enough.

The beachhead is supposed to be the launchpad. Sometimes it's the cage. Sometimes it's exactly where you're supposed to be.

Those TAMs on the slide above are real. We believed in them. But the best decision we ever made was to stop hedging. We doubled down on the coaches and athletes who actually loved the product. Growth accelerated. We became profitable. We became a market leader. We made the world a stronger place.