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The “Ladder Strategy”: How Smart Market Entry Can Accelerate Tech Innovation

In the tech world, founders are often told to “go big or go home.” But when your ultimate market is highly regulated, resource-intensive, and slow to adopt change, charging straight ahead can be like punching a hole in a concrete wall.

There’s another way. Instead of exhausting resources trying to break through, you can build a ladder — entering a faster-moving adjacent market first, gaining traction, data, and credibility before climbing over to the bigger opportunity.

This is exactly how IMPRIMED is approaching precision medicine for cancer treatment. Their endgame is human oncology — but they started with pet cancer care. And their market entry strategy offers a blueprint SaaS and tech founders can borrow.

Case Study: IMPRIMED’s Strategic Market Entry

Founder: Sungwon Lim, PhD in protein therapeutics, decade-long background in cancer drug development. Vision: Personalized cancer treatment for every patient, using AI + functional testing to match the right drug to the right individual. Challenge: Human oncology market = 10–15 year development cycles, heavy regulation, massive capital requirements.

Solution: Start with veterinary oncology.

  • Large patient base: 12M cats and dogs diagnosed with cancer annually in the US.

  • Lower regulatory barriers: No need for years-long FDA approvals for diagnostic services.

  • Faster iteration: Direct collaboration with veterinarians and pet owners yields quick feedback loops.

  • Data advantage: Every treatment provides valuable live data to train IMPRIMED’s AI models — data that can later be applied to human oncology.

By focusing on pet cancer first, IMPRIMED is saving lives now while building the platform, datasets, and credibility needed for the eventual human application.

The Ladder Strategy for SaaS & Tech Companies

IMPRIMED’s approach is a textbook example of how founders can strategically sequence markets:

  1. Identify Your “Wall” What makes your ultimate target market slow, expensive, or high-risk to enter? In SaaS, this could be entrenched enterprise software, regulated industries, or global compliance hurdles.

  2. Find a Lower-Barrier Entry Market Look for a segment that shares core problems with your end market but has:

    • Faster adoption cycles

    • Fewer regulatory roadblocks

    • A willingness to experiment

  3. Build Your Ladder

    • Solve real problems in the adjacent market.

    • Gather data, refine your tech, and prove your model.

    • Establish brand credibility and case studies.

  4. Climb Over Once your product, team, and brand are validated, leverage your assets (data, testimonials, operational processes) to expand into the more challenging market.

Why This Works

  • Risk Reduction: You avoid burning through capital in long regulatory or procurement cycles.

  • Revenue Now: The early market funds ongoing development.

  • Better Product–Market Fit: You arrive in the ultimate market with a refined product, not a hypothesis.

  • Credibility Transfer: Case studies and data from your initial market can ease trust barriers in the larger one.

Consulting Takeaway

For SaaS & tech founders, the lesson is clear:

The fastest way to your dream market might be sideways.

Whether you’re targeting healthcare, enterprise finance, or government contracts, consider if there’s a “pet cancer” equivalent — a parallel market where you can move fast, build assets, and then expand.

Just like IMPRIMED, you may find that the ladder beats the hammer every time.