Innovation Academy
One time I built a product no one wanted
A few years ago I had the idea to build an application that simplified workflow between freelancers and their clients.
I worked for months on a business plan. I pitched the idea to friends and freelancers I knew.
In my first investor meeting I raised $150k from an Angel. BAM. I was unstoppable.
Or so I thought.
I quickly got together a product team. I convinced an award-winning designer and developer to work with me.
For over a year we worked hard (and we thought smart) to build a polished product.
We launched believing that once the world experienced our application, we would have 100,000 users over night.
And then nothing happened…
Users signed up. Many thought our idea was good.
But nobody used our product.
Because so much design and development had already gone into building the application, changing even small aspects were expensive.
After we launched we learned so much about our users. If at that time we went back and rebuilt our product from scratch we would have greatly improved our chances of success.
We would have seen where in the onboarding process our users got trapped and been able to make adjustments to make sure we don’t lose them in the experience.
As I’ve built more products over the years I’ve realized this happens to everyone from small startups to large corporations.
How do we solve this?
The #1 thing you need to know about building successful products
Much of what we know about building innovative products is incorrect.
It feels like the iphone manifested in a single moment of genius. It demonstrates mastery in engineering as well as design. But what’s less obvious is that under the surface were hundreds of experiments.
Nearly 8 years of experiments and technologies went into the polished product that debuted to the world as a revolution in communication.
Innovation is a process.
How many experiments have you run for your product? How many times do real users touch what you’ve built and respond with feedback that changes the way you think?
Discovering matters.
To discover, we need to learn. To learn, we need to try our product experiences on real users.
If we can learn faster, then we can move closer to a great product in a shorter amount of time.
The most important thing: LEARN FAST.
The rate of learning is what many great entrepreneurs mean when they say “fail fast”. Failing fast is not ever about failure. It is about learning to succeed.
You can Start learning faster
Last week I published a blog post describing some of the inspiration behind HackerFleet. We’re powering a movement to accelerate innovation, build Smarter, connect industry leads, investors and makers.
The weekend before that we ran the first of many experiments we’re calling “Innovation Academy”.
We did not market.
We reached out to mostly engineers in our network and asked them to apply through a selective application process.
24 teams of 2–4 people applied. After much deliberation we ended up accepting 7.
Some of the teams that applied had been working on startup ideas for over a year. Others came in fresh — hoping to glean some product insight from Tom and I.
The Innovator’s Mindset
The goal of Innovation Academy workshop
Our aim was to show participants how to reduce the risk of introducing a new method, idea, or product to market. Some of the skills they picked up were how to:
- Question assumptions
- Identify a hypothesis
- Build a prototype
- Run an experiment
- Record learnings
Keep in mind that innovating is not the same thing as building. Building takes a long time. What we’re after is carefully crafting experiments to simulate intended experiences.
Become an Innovation Scientist
The good news about building successful products is that anyone can become good at it with practice and discipline.
Curious to learn more about the innovation process we employ at HackerFleet?
We’ll be holding workshops once per month.
To learn more email marcus@hackerfleet.com.
We’ll also be posting announcements to Our Facebook
Thanks for reading!
Marcus Ellison is the CEO of HackerFleet, a global venture building studio.
