The Cadana Market Maturity Test: How to Know If Your Market Is Ready for Venture Scale

The Cadana Market Maturity Test: How to Know If Your Market Is Ready for Venture Scale

You can build a perfect product for a market that doesn’t exist yet. Albert Owusu-Asare, CEO and Co-Founder of Cadana, learned this lesson the expensive way. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Albert shared how Cadana’s first product failed not because of poor execution or weak product-market fit signals, but because the market simply wasn’t mature enough to support venture-scale growth. A year of development, countless customer conversations, and dwindling resources later, Albert had to admit the brutal truth: they’d built for a future that was still years away. Here’s the framework he developed to evaluate market maturity before committing resources.

The First Product: Building Infrastructure Before Builders Existed

Cadana’s origin story began with what seemed like obvious logic. Africa’s tech ecosystem was growing, developers were building software, and they needed infrastructure to distribute products globally. The thesis was sound, the opportunity seemed massive, and the team executed well.

“We were building infrastructure for software companies in Africa to be able to distribute their products to the rest of the world,” Albert explains. They built the product, launched it, and started selling. Then reality hit.

“We spent about a year trying to sell that product, and we just couldn’t find enough people who wanted to buy it,” Albert admits. This wasn’t a positioning problem or a sales execution issue. The fundamental challenge was deeper. “The market just wasn’t mature enough for it to be a venture scale business in that category.”

This is the trap many founders fall into: confusing market trajectory with market reality. Yes, Africa’s developer ecosystem was growing. Yes, more software companies would need global distribution infrastructure eventually. But “eventually” doesn’t pay today’s bills or hit venture milestones.

Signal 1: The Customer Count Problem

The first signal Albert missed was customer density. In an immature market, you can find early adopters—companies that recognize the problem and are willing to try solutions. But venture-scale businesses need hundreds or thousands of customers, not dozens.

After a year of active selling, Cadana couldn’t find enough customers to create momentum. They had some interest, but not enough to build a sustainable business. The issue wasn’t that zero companies had the problem—it was that too few companies had evolved to the point where they recognized the problem and would pay to solve it.

The framework that emerged: In a mature market, qualified customers are abundant and accessible. You might struggle to win them from competitors, but you can easily find them. In an immature market, finding qualified customers itself becomes the challenge.

The test: If after 6-12 months of focused selling, you’re still struggling to identify qualified prospects at scale, you’re likely in an immature market. The bottleneck isn’t conversion—it’s customer existence.

Signal 2: The Sophistication Gap

Market maturity isn’t just about customer count—it’s about operational sophistication. Cadana’s first product required customers to have reached a certain level of business maturity: they needed to be thinking about global distribution, had infrastructure requirements worth paying for, and possessed the operational sophistication to implement B2B software.

Many African software companies hadn’t reached that stage yet. They were still figuring out local distribution, basic business operations, or even product-market fit for their own products. The idea of investing in global distribution infrastructure was premature.

The framework: Mature markets have customers who’ve evolved past basic problems and are ready to solve complex, infrastructure-level challenges. Immature markets are dominated by customers still solving foundational problems.

The test: Are potential customers asking about your solution category unprompted? In mature markets, customers are actively searching for solutions before you reach them. In immature markets, you’re explaining why the category matters, not just why your product wins.

Signal 3: The Competitive Vacuum

Counterintuitively, the absence of competition can signal market immaturity, not opportunity. When Cadana started building developer distribution infrastructure for Africa, they faced little direct competition. This felt like an advantage—they could own the category.

But the lack of competition also meant no other company had validated that enough customers existed with budgets to support venture-scale businesses in this category. The competitive vacuum reflected market immaturity, not whitespace opportunity.

The framework: In mature markets, competition validates that customer demand exists at scale. In immature markets, the absence of competition often means insufficient customers, not just insufficient solutions.

The test: If you’re the first or only company building in a category, deeply question whether that’s because you’re visionary or because the market isn’t ready. True whitespace opportunities are rare—most of the time, lack of competition signals lack of customers.

Signal 4: The Time Horizon Problem

Perhaps the most important signal Albert learned to recognize was time horizon mismatch. The African developer ecosystem would eventually mature enough to support infrastructure businesses like Cadana’s first product. But “eventually” meant three to five years, not 12-18 months.

Venture-backed companies need to hit growth milestones on specific timelines. If market maturation will take longer than your runway allows, market timing kills you regardless of product quality.

“The market just wasn’t mature enough for it to be a venture scale business in that category,” Albert explains. This is the key distinction: it wasn’t that the market would never mature—it was that maturation timelines didn’t align with venture requirements.

The framework: Market maturity isn’t binary—it’s a timeline question. The market might mature eventually, but if that timeline exceeds your runway or patience, it’s effectively immature for your purposes.

The test: Can you reach venture-scale milestones (hundreds of customers, millions in ARR) within 2-3 years given current market conditions? If market maturation is a prerequisite for hitting milestones, you’re building too early.

The Second Product: Learning to Test for Maturity

After killing the first product, Albert applied these lessons to Cadana’s second iteration in payments infrastructure. This market was more mature—businesses were processing payments, competitors existed, and customers understood the category.

But Albert discovered that market maturity alone wasn’t sufficient. “We went into the payments infrastructure space because we realized that, okay, a lot of people have problems accepting payments,” he says. The market was mature, but the specific problem wasn’t painful enough.

This taught Albert that market maturity and problem intensity are separate variables. You need both. A mature market with weak pain points won’t support venture growth any better than an immature market with intense pain points.

The Third Product: Getting Both Variables Right

Cadana’s successful third iteration—focusing on post-payment operations—finally aligned both variables. The market was mature: businesses were processing high volumes of payments and facing operational complexity. And the pain was intense: “That’s where businesses were actually losing the most money, and that’s where they actually needed the most help,” Albert explains.

This combination enabled rapid growth. “We currently work with over 400 businesses across 26 African countries,” Albert shares. The platform now processes over $400 million in transaction volume annually—numbers that would have been impossible in an immature market.

The Complete Framework: Evaluating Market Maturity

Albert’s experience distills into a five-part framework for evaluating market maturity before committing resources:

First, customer density: Can you easily identify hundreds of potential customers who match your ICP? If finding qualified prospects is the constraint, the market isn’t ready.

Second, operational sophistication: Have potential customers evolved past foundational problems to infrastructure-level challenges? If you’re explaining why the category matters, it’s too early.

Third, competitive validation: Do competitors exist who’ve validated customer demand at scale? Absence of competition usually signals insufficient customers, not opportunity.

Fourth, timeline alignment: Can you reach venture milestones within your runway given current market conditions, not future projections? If market maturation is a prerequisite, you’re building too early.

Fifth, pain intensity: Even in mature markets, are customers losing enough money to justify switching costs? Maturity plus weak pain still equals slow growth.

When to Ignore the Framework

Albert’s framework has one important caveat: it optimizes for venture-scale businesses. If you’re building a bootstrapped business or have patient capital with a 7-10 year horizon, immature markets become more viable. You can grow with the market rather than needing immediate scale.

But for venture-backed companies with defined milestones and timelines, market timing often matters more than product quality. “It’s taken us quite a long time to get to the point where we’re at today,” Albert acknowledges. That time included learning when to walk away from immature markets, regardless of how compelling the opportunity seemed.

The hardest skill in B2B isn’t building products—it’s knowing which markets are ready for them.