Last week we defined our product idea. I am solid that it is going to be an affordable supplement targeted and specifically marketed towards service dogs but available to all pet owners using the newly discovered GDF11 protein. It is pretty recently clinically proven to markedly enhance muscle growth and memory in old mice transfused with blood from young mice with high levels of the GDF11 protein. Since most labs and researchers are focused almost entirely on what this means for human health, and with the FDA and red tape involved in that, the discoveries that could be made for humans by accelerating the research by instead targeting pets are feeling pretty limitless.
The folks at Spectra Genetics are very excited about the possibilities of making it available to the public asap, and have been throwing around the timeline estimate of a year after securing the funding they need to find the best booster and delivery method to beloved pets everywhere.
*I just thought of working horses as well...not to cater to Romney but how long is a good dressage horse's career I wonder...I could probably sell out at a Polo match.
I'm feeling very excited as well, because obviously I want my dog to enjoy a long and natural "health span" both because playing and hiking are our collective favorite activities together and also with the amount of student debt I'm about to be in, I'd really like to keep the vet bills down. (and/or make a pile of money with which to pay them)
So if this is really going to happen, and I think that it can, I'm starting to look at the competition and what the market would look like and what our optimal situation would be for market introduction. Of course that means I'm thinking about a Blue Ocean strategy, from https://hbr.org/2004/10/blue-ocean-strategy.
There is SO MUCH gray area in the supplement market, both on the human and pet end. In a recent study of a walgreens ginko balboa supplement, the stuff they were selling actually had NO GINKO in it. And, Walgreens was allegedly shocked. Supply chain problems? Sketchy walgreens vendors? Who knows... in the world of informericials and pop-up ads for acai berry this and antioxidant that, the existing market space for supplements feels SO shady. So I don't really want to compete in that market, A)because that would mean a red ocean strategy and B)I think we can do better to differentiate.
One of the things I love about Spectra Genetics is that their first notion with GDF11 was not only crowdfund it, but then open source their discoveries. They are absolutely social impact driven and especially "for science!" driven. Though, if all other labs/pharma co's are in fact focused on humans, then it behooves (horse pun haha) us to get it out there for pets as soon as we can. Why should pets and petowners have to wait for human science to go through human bureaucracy when pet science doesn't have to?
I think the most important and helpful thing I can do for Spectra Genetics is on the making competition irrelevant/creating new demand through a new public outreach strategy (pre-crowdfunding roundvtwo) and making sure from the beginning that the whole system of the company Spectra Genetics could created based on GDF11 is in pursuit of differentiation and low cost. (which based on our talks so far, it is) This science is so new there doesn't exist a GDF11 protein market for either humans or pets, so I'm pretty close to a Blue Ocean and so this strategy is right. Taking all counterpoints now...
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