New Trend in Startups: Micro-Launching

How Entrepreneurs are Launching Businesses Quicker

By now I hope all of you have read or at least heard of Eric Ries’s: The Lean Startup. This book is iconic for any entrepreneur looking to launch a product into a market. This model works well if you have a co-founder or small team to help you develop and re-iterate a product but if you do not you must Micro-Launch.

Start with an Idea

Either you have thought up with a really cool product or working on solving an issue you have experienced, either way you have an idea for a company. Now it’s time to start your business, get funding, and start selling that product or service, right? Wrong! While your idea may be great (and it is) you have to appeal to your target audience and to do this you must learn about your ideal customer.

Don’t Have an Idea? No Problem! There are many exercises to get the creative juices flowing: go for walk, listen to a podcast, watch YouTube videos, talk to people. The one thing you do not want to do is rush into an idea. I have always loved to take things apart, I love figuring out how things work, this need to know mindset has lead me to consistently think about how things can be improved, no matter how small or large. I’ve had ideas as simple as changing the format of text all the way to re-devopoping the way we access the internet. Start somewhere, anywhere and go from there.

Meet Your Customer

Every great company is started with an idea then iterates on that idea based on their customer feedback, actual customers. This means you have present your idea in front of others you think would be interested an learn from thier reactions. Sure, you can ask your friends or parents but they will only offer moral support and most likely aren’t your ideal customer. The quicker you can share your idea the quicker receive feedback which means the quicker you can iterate.

Where Can I Find My Idea Customer: All Around You! Let’s say you have an idea for product that allows you to build mobile apps without needing to learn code. Great! You can reach out to developers and engineers and ask questions like: what tools would help you simplify your job? Is there anyone else woorking on a similar idea, call them and see how they explain thier product. Get creative on how you dig up information, this is the time to put on your detective hat.

Micro-Launch

You’ve gone out in the field and talked to people who would want your product or scheduled calls with professionals in the industry. You’ve learned about their products, problems or feedback, now it’s time to launch. Launch what though! Launch what ever you a physically able to launch. Heck, you can start with a blog post but is best to launch something were you can at least capture interested peoples email addresses. This is important because you will want to reach out to further understand your customer. Secondly, you want their email because one day you will have a product for them to buy. Remember, this applies to many aspects of your business: product, pricing, marketing, etc. Each iteration should build on your original idea. If this is done correctly your prodcut will look radically different than you intially imagined. This may scare you now but don’t worry you will still have the same love for the project that you did with the original idea.

Micro-Launching is about launching as many products in the realm of your idea as possible and seeing which one gains the most traction. An MVP would be the next step. An MVP is a Minimum Viable Product which is a version of a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development. The goal of Micro-Launching is to understand before going to market if your idea will be successful. A great way to do this is set up a landing page and run an ad campaign. The landing page will provide enough information for the customer to learn about your product and a way for you to capture their information. There is a direct correlation between the number of people who submit their information to the level of interest potential customers have. Next you will want to run an ad campaign like Google Ads or Facebook Ads to get your idea in front of people. Tip: use Google Trends to find your target audience and key words.

You are basically A/B Testing before you even have released a product. Think about how valuable this is! Most companies don’t test like this until they have raised capital meaning if their findings are unfavorable they are met with the decision to push forward and cross their fingers or try pivoting their entire business model.

When it does come time to raise money, any investor would love to see that you have: 1) Researched the Market, 2) Made Yourself Fluent in the the Industry, 3) Learned About Your Customers, and 4) Offered Multiple Products before choosing to move forward with your new and improved idea. Don’t be afraid to mention where you failed and where you were wrong. These learnings will show that you were able to recognize your faults and that you have your customer’s best interest in mind. Which of course is key to offering a product that people will want to buy.

TL;DR

1. Come up with an Idea
2. Talk to People in your Industry
3. Apply these learnings to your Idea
4. Launch 2–3 Landing Pages offering your idea in different ways
5. Collect Potential Customer Information
6. Reach out to your potential customers, what do they want, why did they choose Site A vs Site B? Which site got the most traction? Do customers want more features or lower cost? etc.
7. Take these learnings to an investor to rasie capital and launch and MVP.