Vertical Market Development
I validate the message before I spend a dollar on it
The current motion generates ~$700K/month in pipeline and closes 18% of it. To move that number — and to enter $15K-ticket verticals with confidence — I run a discovery-first loop: learn what already won, test it in the market with my own hands, and only scale spend behind messages that have already proven they work.
Underlying beliefs
What has to be true for this plan to work
Every move on this page rests on six assumptions about the product, the buyer, and the math. If these hold, the strategy follows. Here they are, stated plainly so they can be tested.
Boardable is at product-market fit
At least 40% of surveyed customers say they would be "very disappointed" if they could no longer use Boardable — the Sean Ellis bar for PMF. That means the job is not to fix the product; it is to put a proven product in front of more of the right buyers.
PMF ≥ 40% “very disappointed”New-vertical boards are 3× larger
A K-12, community college, or credit union board seats staff and trustees together, averaging ~42 users per customer against ~14 in the legacy nonprofit base. More seats means more value delivered and a materially higher ticket.
42 vs 14 users per customerThe admin is the buyer — and can say yes
In these verticals the board administrator owns the purchase and can approve a contract under $20K/year without dragging it through a committee or procurement fight. A ~$15K ticket sits deliberately inside that self-approval ceiling.
Approves < $20K/yr aloneThe buyer outlasts the objectors
Board members rotate and grumble about change; the admin stays. Because the durable buyer is the admin — not the trustees — complaints from an individual board member rarely translate into churn. We market to the person who renews.
Admin tenure ≫ board tenureRetention climbs from 85% to 90%
Larger, stickier institutional deals anchored to a durable admin buyer lift gross retention across these verticals from ~85% to ~90% — and the same customer interviews that sharpen the message also feed onboarding and churn work.
85% → 90% retention$16M ARR in 36 months, 40% from new verticals
The target is $16M/year within three years, with 40% — about $6.4M — coming from the new verticals. At a ~$15K average sale, that is roughly 426 new-vertical customers. A reachable number if the message is validated before the spend scales.
426 customers × ~$15KThe Loop
Five stages, in order — learning first, spending last
Each stage produces something the next stage needs. Nobody writes an ad until a real prospect has reacted to the words on a live call.
Debrief the sales reps on deals we already won
Before writing a single new message, I sit with the current reps and take apart every closed-won deal in the target verticals. What was the trigger? Who signed? What objection almost killed it? What sentence made it click? The reps are holding the real playbook in their heads — my first job is to write it down.
Interview won customers about what actually persuaded them
Reps know why they think they won. The customer knows why they actually bought. I run short interviews with won accounts in each vertical and pay for their time — a gift card, a donation to their institution, early access. I am listening for the exact words they used to justify the purchase internally, and who they had to convince.
Cold outreach the verticals directly to book meetings
With language pulled straight from stages 1 and 2, I run direct cold email and LinkedIn outreach into the vertical to book meetings. This is deliberately manual and small at first — the goal is not volume, it is to see which framing earns a reply. Each vertical gets its own angle, because a credit union board and a community college board do not share a fear.
Sit in on the new-prospect calls and test the messaging live
I join the discovery calls with net-new prospects and test the messaging that came out of the interviews in real time. What makes them lean in? What lands flat? This is the tightest feedback loop there is — I hear the objection form on the prospect’s face and I can adjust the next call the same afternoon. Marketing copy earns its place by surviving a live call, not a brainstorm.
Only then, put paid spend behind what already works
Once a message has proven itself in outreach and on live calls, I put money behind it — SEM and in-market bitstream/IP-matched display targeted at the vertical, using the framing that already earned replies and meetings. Spend follows evidence, never precedes it. This is how the 18% inbound close rate has a shot at climbing toward 40%: we stop paying to broadcast guesses.
Why this order
Evidence before spend, not the reverse
What I do
- Mine closed-won deals for the language that actually closed them
- Pay customers for honest interviews about why they really bought
- Test message angles with my own cold outreach before scaling
- Sit on live prospect calls and adjust messaging the same day
- Turn on paid spend only behind messages that already earn meetings
What I avoid
- Writing campaigns from a whiteboard instead of from won deals
- Guessing at the buyer’s language instead of recording it
- Buying ads to broadcast an unproven message at scale
- Optimizing volume when the real problem is conversion
- Committing to a channel before a prospect has reacted to it
A deliberate omission
Cooperative purchasing / no-RFP contracts: only if a state forces it
First 90 days
How the loop plays out on a calendar
Rep debriefs on every won deal in the target verticals; write the win patterns down.
Paid customer interviews; capture buyer language verbatim and the internal champion path.
Hand-run cold email + LinkedIn outreach per vertical; measure which angle earns replies.
Sit in on live prospect calls; test and refine messaging in real time.
Turn on SEM + bitstream/IP-matched display behind the messages that already work.