Tech-enabled businesses don’t really push into the market; they respond to pulls. This is a pretty important distinction in startups and funding because most advisors, investors, and even founders seem to neglect the considerations of being one or the other.

Tech-enabled businesses are where execution, efficiency, and time to market are more important because you likely have many competitors, can be replicated, and must know the market and trends so as to uncover a new business model for a known problem. For such founders, KPIs and ROI should be key words and areas of focus.

The high tech company understandably has more unanswered and unanswerable questions, demanding more tests, trials, research, and patience. While understanding the market is just as critical, rather than being focused on the model, you’re first focused on what works and what will be sustainably adopted in the market. For such founders, partnerships, market share, and competitive advantages can be the more important.

Tech-enabled companies aren’t building the internet, mobile devices or social media platforms; they’re using those technologies, but High Tech companies build the hardware, software, algorithms and those platforms.

Knowing that you are one or the other makes all the difference in appreciating the skillsets, priorities, and capital investments most meaningful to the limited time and resources you have to bring to bear.High tech startups are companies that have to invent something just to exist. Apple, Tesla, Google are classical examples.

Airbnb, Salesforce and virtually any business that has a basic website for digital marketing purposes and more, are all Tech-Enabled Businesses.