Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the Goldilocks Zone is unstable.
Every vendor in the Goldilocks Zone faces constant pressure to move in both directions.
Pressure Toward “Too Hot” (Greed)
- Investors want margin expansion
- Sales teams want aggressive renewal terms
- Product teams want to deepen moats
- The instinct: Extract once you can
Fear of “Too Cold” (Commoditization)
- AI keeps raising the commodity floor
- Competitors offer “escape paths”
- Feature differentiation erodes monthly
- The instinct: Embed deeper
The Discipline of Staying Centered
Vendors who maintain Goldilocks positioning over decades share common traits:
- Leadership understands sustainable extraction requires sustainable value creation
- Pricing decisions made with 5-year horizons, not quarterly targets
- Customer success measured on customer outcomes, not retention mechanics
- Product roadmaps prioritize “why customers want to stay” over “why customers can’t leave”
The Uncomfortable Truth
Every vendor in the Goldilocks Zone faces constant pressure to drift toward extraction.
Sustainable extraction requires sustainable value creation.
Stay centered. Create more than you capture. The discipline is the moat.
This is part of a comprehensive analysis. Read the full analysis on The Business Engineer.
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