10 questions your executives will ask before investing in your product
Aug 22, 2017 · 3 min read

Ok — you have a validated user need, you have a validated solution to that need, you may even have some early in-market results. Now you just need your executive team to “invest” in your product — in terms of budget, resources and mind-share. This is most likely going to come through a series of high stakes meetings with the decision makers.
Here are the 10 questions that you need to be ready to answer
- What is the user problem you’re trying to solve — and how are you planning to solve it? This is the part where you succinctly describe the user research, insights, the product and any validation you have around the product idea
- What is the industry structure, and who is the competition? Is it a very fragmented industry, or there are 1–2 major players that you will be going up against. Equally important is a discussion of the competition (which could include the status quo, if your product is defining a brand new category). Who are the major competitors, how much traction do they have — what do they do well, what are their weaknesses that you can capitalize on?
- What is your “right to win”? What is it about your product or capabilities that will allow it to gain traction / beat competition? Is it new IP you’ve built, do you have an advantage in terms of distribution? Essentially — what is your competitive advantage — and how can you build a moat around you to prevent new entrants from catching up? (This feels especially important given how quickly the tech giants are building fast follower products in categories that are gaining traction e.g. this
- Has our company tried anything like this before? This is unique to large companies — where there are multiple groups, and multiple years of history of trying to solve similar problems. If so — what were the learnings from that experience?
- How much money can we make? This is where you describe the source of value e.g. Increase in revenue or reduction in some cost. Important to show payback period, ROI on initial investment, maybe under a few scenarios e.g. High growth, low growth, intense competition etc.
- What is your go-to-market plan? Describe product launch plan — what does MVP look like, what is a minimum “marketable” product; what is the marketing plan and how will you support the product (customer service etc.). In some cases you may also have to make a build vs. partner vs. buy decision
- To do all this — what resources do you require? Types of engineering resources (data, front end, back end — any specific skills), budget,
- What are the risks inherent to this product, and how do you plan to mitigate them? This could be in the form of legal risk, or regulatory risk (e.g. Uber and taxi commissions) — analysis on risks should include a plan on mitigating the main risks — detecting and preventing
- How will you know if you are on the right track? What are the measures of success, and what intermediate milestones can you establish that help you determine if you are on the right track, or if you need to change strategy, or think about things differently
- Finally — what’s the Monday morning plan? Once you get approval for this investment — what are the next 2–3 things you are going to do to get started
