Beyond Product: How Cosmonic Turned Standards Development into a GTM Advantage
Most startups treat technical standards as a necessary evil. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Liam Randall revealed how Cosmonic turned WebAssembly standards development into a core part of their go-to-market strategy.
Identifying the Strategic Opportunity
“The WebAssembly ecosystem as a whole is really in its Cambrian explosion days,” Liam explains. Rather than viewing this immaturity as a challenge, Cosmonic saw it as a strategic opportunity. The lack of established standards meant they could help shape the technology’s future.
The Research-Driven Approach
Instead of pushing ahead with product development, Cosmonic started with systematic research. “We took a very structured approach to interviewing our customers, people that weren’t our customers, as well as other community members about what they perceived their biggest challenges to be,” Liam shares. This research revealed that standards development pace was itself a barrier to adoption.
Building Community Through Standards
Rather than working on standards in isolation, Cosmonic took a community-first approach. They organized a Plumber summit, bringing together leaders from various WebAssembly projects to align on shared roadmaps. This positioned them at the center of the ecosystem’s development.
Translating Standards into Enterprise Value
Their deep involvement in standards development helps them understand and address enterprise needs. “When you want to deliver a microservice that charges you an interest rate, or that does a lookup to restaurants that are open late, you have to think about the web server and all of these supporting tools, tracing, logging, monitoring,” Liam explains. This understanding shapes both their standards contributions and product development.
The Validation Signal
The strategy is showing results. “The folks that are out publicly and talk about our open source, which is CNCF WASM Cloud, are people like Adobe or BMW orange business Systems,” Liam notes. These enterprise adoptions validate their standards-first approach.
Finding Natural Alignment
Rather than pushing adoption, Cosmonic focuses on finding natural alignment. “Entrepreneurship today isn’t really even about convincing people of things,” Liam shares. “It’s about finding people that already think the way that you do and casting wide enough nets in order to find them.”
The Future Vision
Their standards work supports a bigger vision. WebAssembly is “not just another abstraction in tech. It’s actually the final abstraction in tech,” Liam argues. This positions Cosmonic to play a crucial role in shaping how applications are built and deployed across diverse environments.
For founders building in emerging technology spaces, Cosmonic’s approach offers valuable lessons:
- Use standards development as a strategic tool, not just a technical requirement
- Build community alignment around standards development
- Connect standards work directly to enterprise needs
- Focus on finding natural market alignment
- Think beyond immediate product features to ecosystem development
The key insight? In emerging technologies, leadership in standards development can create more sustainable competitive advantages than pure product innovation. As Liam puts it, they’re helping “companies to adopt WebAssembly faster” by solving fundamental ecosystem challenges through standards work.
Their success suggests that for startups in emerging markets, participation in standards development isn’t just about technical credibility – it’s a powerful go-to-market strategy that can create lasting competitive advantages.