5 questions to ask before building a successful dApp
It’s not enough to just assume
Jeff Mann, Programme Director of the Centrality Accelerator powered by Lightning Lab shares insights from his wealth of experience running startups. To stay up-to-date on the progress of Centrality’s ecosystem, follow us on Twitter and our Telegram Announcements channel, plus join our community on Centrality’s Official Telegram, Instagram, Reddit and Facebook.
In a previous blog post, we’ve discussed the importance of performing market validation before launching a product. Anyone can build tech and hope that someone will come and buy it — so it’s critical to go through a formal process to eliminate any assumptions.
During the Centrality Accelerator programme powered by Lightning Lab, teams will go through an intensive process of market discovery and validation. Here we share 5 key questions you should consider to validate your idea:
- What is the problem?
You might think you know what the problem is. Wrong! Test your assumptions with the target market and gain a deep understanding of how that problem is currently being solved. And if it’s not being solved, gain a deep understanding of why that is.
2. Who has the problem?
Again, test your assumption on who has the problem. This audience might be obvious to you, but what’s less obvious is that unless you test your assumptions, there could be even greater need from a less obvious yet related audience that could later provide you with a competitive or defensible edge.
3. How is the problem currently being solved?
Pinpoint how competitors are currently addressing this issue. Consider emerging success trends and/or likely potential threats from new competitors entering this market.
4. Why would your solution be uniquely different?
Once again, test your assumption with the identified audience. What other related problems do they have and how are they solving them? Is there an opportunity for a new entrant to either provide a value add solution as a bolt on to an existing solution? Or is there an opportunity to provide a unique and defensible new solution?
5. How would a decentralised solution solve the problem better?
Does a blockchain solution provide significant value and advantages to the identified audience? Test your assumptions with the audience and prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are willing to have this problem solved and they have the skills and motivation to use your solution idea.
Whilst the above actions does not guarantee you success, going through these steps will help reduce costs of building something that no-one wants to buy — and that reduces the risks of failure. It achieves this by continuously testing your assumptions within the market.
Once you’ve completed market validation, you may like to consider additional questions outlined in the blog post How to growth-hack your dApp.
To stay up-to-date on the progress of Centrality’s ecosystem, follow us on Twitter and our Telegram Announcements channel, plus join our community on Centrality’s Official Telegram, Instagram, Reddit and Facebook.
